Discusses gender identity, gender role, and sex-role identity as seen by clinicians and theorists. Issues included are achieving gender constancy, sex-typed content area categories, Freud’s views of psychosexual development, basic self-categorization, the social learning position, cognitive-developmental theory, and information-processing models. It is hypothesized that distinguishing between men and women is an early part of the development of gender categories but that this knowledge is not yet assimilated into the self-concept. It is further hypothesized that when children can identify boys and girls and assign themselves to the correct category, they must have a rudimentary gender identity. It is suggested that the process of acquiring an appropriate gender identity is more than the sum of reinforcements and more than a cognitive achievement.