Electra complex

The Electra complex is the psychoanalytic theory that a female's psychosexual development involves a sexual attachment to her father, and is analogous to a boy's attachment to his mother that forms the basis of the Oedipus complex.

Jung and Freud

The idea is based largely on the work of Sigmund Freud, who uses the Oedipus complex as a point of reference for its elaboration. The term, however, was introduced by Carl Jung in 1913.^[1][2] Freud himself explicitly rejected Jung's term, because it "seeks to emphasize the analogy between the attitude of the two sexes"^[3], and continued to use the feminine Oedipus attitude in his own writings.

Freud's research on female psychology, sexuality in particular, was limited by then relevant social conventions of gender and class. Women of the period were considered the 'second sex' and many of his female patients were labeled "degenerates."^[4] The "feminine Oedipus attitude" was posited by Freud as a theoretical counterpart to the Oedipus complex. Carl Jung proposed the name Electra complex for Freud's concept, deriving the name from the Greek myth of Electra, who wanted her brother (Orestes) to avenge the death of the siblings' father Agamemnon, by killing their mother, Clytemnestra.

According to Freud, a girl, like a boy, is originally attached to the mother figure. However, during the phallic stage, when she discovers that she lacks a penis, she becomes libidinally attached to the father figure, and imagines that she will become pregnant by him, all the while becoming more hostile toward her mother. Freud attributes the character of this developmental stage in girls to the idea of "penis envy", where a girl is envious of the male penis. According to the theory, this penis envy leads to resentment towards the mother figure, who is believed to have caused the girl's "castration." The hostility towards the mother is then later revoked for fear of losing the mother's love, and the mother becomes internalized, much the same as the Oedipus complex.

In literature

Sylvia Plath, introducing the poem for a BBC radio reading shortly before her suicide, famously described her poem "Daddy" (1981: 222ff) as about "a girl with an electra complex. Her father died while she thought he was God."

Popular culture references

• In the popular television crime drama CSI, the episode "Got Murder?" features a mother who abandons her husband and children and turns up dead. The daughter has an Electra complex involving her father and killed her own mother when she caught the mother sleeping with her father.
• The Electra complex is also mentioned in the movie Mona Lisa Smile.
• Marvel Comics' Elektra famously suffers from Electra complex.
• Detective Morgenstren claims that Sand Serif has an Electra Complex in the 2008 movie, The Spirit.
• In the Ingmar Bergman movie Persona, the antagonist suffers from the Electra complex.
• Rock band,Ludo, released a song in 2009 called Elektra's Complex

References

• Breuer, J & Freud, S. Studies on Hysteria. (1909). Basic Books.
• DeBeauvoir, S. (1952). The Second Sex. New York: Vintage Books.
• Freud, S. (1905). Dora: Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria. New York: WW Norton & Company.
• Freud, S. (1920). “A Case of Homosexuality in a Woman”. The Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. New York: Hogarth Press.
• Lauzen, G. (1965). Sigmund Freud: The Man and his Theories. New York: Paul S. Eriksson, Inc.
• Lerman, H. (1986). A Mote in Freud’s Eye. New York: Springer Publishing Company.
• Mitchell, J. (1974). Psychoanalysis and Feminism. New York: Vintage Books.
• Tobin, B. (1988). "Reverse Oedipal Complex" Analysis. New York: Random House Publishing Company.

See also

• Genetic sexual attraction
• Feminism and the Oedipus complex