Electra Complex

In Neo-Freudian psychology, the Electra complex, as proposed by Carl Gustav Jung, is a child’s psychosexual competition with his/her mother for possession of his/her father. In the course of her psychosexual development, the complex is the girl's phallic stage; formation of a discrete sexual identity, a boy's analogous experience is the Oedipus complex. The Electra complex occurs in the third — phallic stage (ages 3–6) — of five psychosexual development stages: (i) the Oral, (ii) the Anal, (iii) the Phallic, (iv) the Latent, and (v) the Genital — in which the source libido pleasure is in a different erogenous zone of the infant’s body.

In classical psychoanalytic theory, the child's identification with the same-sex parent is the successful resolution of the Electra complex and of the Oedipus complex; his and her key psychological experience to developing a mature sexual role and identity. Sigmund Freud instead proposed that girls and boys resolved their complexes differently — she via penis envy, he via castration anxiety; and that unsuccessful resolutions might lead to neurosis and homosexuality. Hence, women and men who are fixated in the Electra and Oedipal stages of their psychosexual development might be considered "father-fixated" and "mother-fixated" as revealed when the mate (sexual partner) resembles the father or the mother.

Read more about Electra Complex:  Background, Characteristics, Case Studies, Electra in Fiction, Electra in Poetry, Electra in Music, See Also

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