So the term “Oedipus complex” can be applied to a subconcsious behaviour, as theorized by Freud, where a male wants to kill his father and sleep with his mother. Right?
The opposite of this, where a female wants to kill her mother and sleep with her father is…?
I’ve heard the terms “Oedipus complex” and “Electra complex” both used to describe this. What’s the Straight Dope on the Electra complex–does it exist?
Freud called it the “feminine Oedipus attitude.” Karl Jung suggested the name “Electra complex” as a substitute. It’s not exactly the same as the Oedipal complex is for boys. In the Electra version, the girl is still bonded with her mother, but imagines that her lack of a penis can be rectified by getting pregnant by her father, thus giving her equal status with him.
:dubious:
I’ve never seen it, and frankly can’t quite imagine it happening in our current culture. If anything, it seems that in most current families, mom has more “status” than dad. I’m sure this may have looked different in Freud’s Victorian era - or maybe it just looked different to a Victorian father like Freud!
I have seen an endless number of little boys try to push away their father when he’s affectionate with mommy, and then attempt to be “the little man” and replace daddy in mommy’s affections. Generally, doesn’t work. They get over it. It would take an extremely disfunctional mother for this to be damaging in the long run.
Weirdness. :dubious:
Many thanks! smooch
Here be Electra spoilers.
Offhand, I find the term “Electra complex” rather odd. Electra was not bonded to her mother - she wanted to kill her (and ended up helping bring about her death, though she wasn’t personally the one who did Clytemnestra in). She also, as far as I know, did not have an erotic love for (or want to get pregnant by) her father Agamemnon - she appeared to love him in a familial way and was understandably crushed when he died at the hands of Clytemnestra’s secret lover.
I may well be wrong - any professors or literature out there who can clear it up a bit?
Nightwatch, I’ve read the Electra plays and I know what you’re getting at. I imagine at this point that Jung just wanted to find something that sounded catchy, cast about for a similar-sounding myth to the Oedipus cycle, and came up with Electra. YMMV. 
I agree, Nightwatch. What’s more, I think is we were to invent a complex based on the name Electra, it would look more like “Little girls get really angry with mommy and want to destroy them to be exclusively loved by daddy.” While this is much closer to the public perception of the Electra complex (as well as closer to what happens in real life) it is not what Freud or Jung meant by the term. Confused the heck out of me in Psych 201.
Part of the reason for the name choice may be because in the later part of his career, Freud was trying to demonstrate that his theories held true in all cultures and all civilizations. For some strange reason, rather than compare notes with researchers actually in other cultures, he decided to do this by looking into literature and finding classical stories which echoed his theories. His love of greek terms came from his attempts to validate his own work and prove cross-cultural applicability by reading Homer and Euripedes. He chose the name “Oedipal” from this - although Oedipus isn’t in the least Oedipal, really. He has no idea who his father even is when he kills him or his mother when he marries her. Freud saw this as evidence that the Oedipal motivations are unconscious. Perhaps Jung was trying to emulate Freud by choosing a woman from classical literature who had conflicted parental feelings.
Incidentally, Amelia Earhart’s last ride was a Lockheed Electra. In astronomy, Electra* is sometimes called the ‘lost sister’ of the Pleiades.
[sub]*AKA Merope, Taygeta, Celaeno, Maia, Alcyone, and Asterope[/sub]
Oops. Error in the footnote. Nine of the stars are named after the Seven Sisters and their parents: Alcyone, Maia, Electra, Merope, Taygeta, Celaeno, Asterope, Atlas, and Pleione.
IANAAstronomer.
There’s no Oedipus complex either, you know. Those women weren’t fantasizing being done by their Daddies, Freud had run into genuine cases of child sexual molestation, originally said so, and then backed off and repackaged it as an erotic projection.
I’d agree there’s no Oedipus complex exactly like Freud outlined it. There certainly is often, for children of both genders, a period of anger and aggression towards one parent and attempts to alienate them in an effort to bond exclusively with the other. I’m not sure I accept that this is a sexual drive, but it is an emotional one. With good parenting, it’s simply another stage. Bobby learns that he can’t make Daddy stop hugging Mommy and Cindy learns that Mommy can sit on Daddy’s lap too.
I’ve seen only two instances where I thought some damage might be happening, and both of those were cases where the marriage was rocky and the preferred parent welcomed the child’s exclusive affection to the point of turning away their spouse. While it wasn’t sexual in nature, the exclusivity of the affection worried me, as it seemed the child was being positively reinforced for jealous and controlling behavior.
(Woah! She just threw in behaviorism with Freud! Well, yeah. I’m not a practicing psychologist with an agenda, just a mom who took lots and lots of psych classes in college and still loves the stuff!)
Many psychologists denounce the Oedipus Complex wholesale rather than make the appropriate changes from its origins in drive theory to ego or object relations theory. It may only pertain to a traditional nuclear family, may not be sexual in origin, and may not result in the child’s fear of castration, but nevertheless, a competition and comparison between father and son is a central issue in development and the obvious choice for the “judge” is the mother. It’s also reasonably predictive in determining the origin of a neurosis.
The Electra Complex is another term from Freud’s theory on penis envy. A girl believes she once had a penis but lost it and can get it back via her father. The Electra Complex is not considered as central to development as the Oedipus complex because women are less sexually competitive and don’t fear castration.
An unresolved Oedipus complex is much more damaging if the boy felt he “won” the battle for his mother. These are the types that constantly “sabotage their success” because of guilt about having beaten their father once already.