A Psychoanalytic Study of Peer Pressure and Sexual Identity Formation in Selected African Novels

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@article{1725028,
      author = {Benjamin Ruth Ababo Otaria},
      title = {A Psychoanalytic Study of Peer Pressure and Sexual Identity Formation in Selected African Novels},
      journal = {Iconic Research And Engineering Journals},
      year = {2026},
      volume = {10},
      number = {5},
      pages = {2670-2686},
      issn = {2456-8880},
      url = {https://www.irejournals.com/formatedpaper/1725028.pdf},
      abstract = {This study investigates the formative role of peer relationships in the development of sexual consciousness in Trifonia Melibea Obono’s La Bastarda (2018), Ani Kayode Somtochukwu’s And Then He Sang a Lullaby (2023), and Chukwuebuka Ibeh’s Blessings (2024). The novels portray peer encounters as experiences through which characters interpret desire, imagine intimacy, and develop their understanding of sexuality, rather than merely providing opportunities to express desires they already understand. Employing Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis and Albert Bandura’s Social Learning Theory as its theoretical frameworks, the study examines how unconscious desire, repression, inner conflict, observational learning, and social influence contribute to sexual consciousness. Using a qualitative approach, the study analyses the selected novels through close reading and textual analysis, with reference to relevant secondary sources. The analysis demonstrates that peer relationships influence sexual consciousness through observation, invitation, experimentation, emotional identification, and unequal power dynamics. It further reveals that peer encounters may involve curiosity, pressure, coercion, pleasure, and acceptance within the same encounter. The findings indicate that sexual identity formation in the selected novels is a process in which private feeling and social experience meet. The study concludes that interpersonal encounters play a formative role in how characters understand desire, experience intimacy, and develop sexual consciousness, without reducing desire to imitation or treating every intimate encounter as freely chosen.},
      keywords = {Sexual identity formation, peer influence, psychoanalysis, sexual consciousness, Social Learning Theory},
      month = {November},
      doi = {https://doi.org/10.64388/ire1725028}
  }