Inneo-Freudian psychology, theElectra complex, as proposed by Swisspsychiatrist andpsychoanalystCarl Jung (26 July 1875 – 6 June 1961) in hisTheory of Psychoanalysis,^[1][2] is a girl'spsychosexual competition with her mother for possession of her father. In the course of her psychosexual development, thecomplex is the girl'sphallic stage; a boy's analogous experience is theOedipus complex. The Electra complex occurs in the third—phallic stage (ages 3–6)—of fivepsychosexual development stages: theoral, theanal, thephallic, thelatent, and thegenital—in which the source oflibido pleasure is in a differenterogenous zone of the infant's body.^[3]

The idea of the Electra complex is not widely used by mental health professionals today. There is little empirical evidence for it, as the theory's predictions do not match scientific observations of child development. It is not listed in theDiagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

As apsychoanalytic term for daughter–mother psychosexual conflict, the Electra complex derives from theGreek mythological characterElectra, who plottedmatricidal revenge withOrestes, her brother, againstClytemnestra, their mother, andAegisthus, their stepfather, for their murder ofAgamemnon, their father (cf.Electra, by Sophocles).^[4][5][6]Sigmund Freud developed the female aspects of thesexual developmenttheory — describing thepsychodynamics of a girl's sexual competition with her mother for sexual possession of thefather — as thefeminine Oedipus attitude and thenegative Oedipus complex.^[7] It wasCarl Jung who coined the termElectra complex in 1913.^{[8][9][10]: 8} Freud rejected Jung's term aspsychoanalytically inaccurate: "that what we have said about the Oedipus complex applies with complete strictness to the male child only, and that we are right in rejecting the term 'Electra complex', which seeks to emphasize the analogy between the attitude of the two sexes".^[11][2]

In forming a discrete sexual identity (ego), a girl's decisive psychosexual experience is the Electra complex: daughter–mother competition for possession of the father.^[12] It is in thephallic stage (ages 3–6), when children become aware of their bodies, the bodies of other children, and the bodies of their parents that they gratify physical curiosity by undressing and exploring each other and theirgenitals — theerogenouscenter — of the phallic stage; thereby learning the physicalsex differences between male and female, "boy" and "girl". When a girl's initial sexual attachment to her mother ends upon discovering thatshe — thedaughter — has nopenis, she then transfers herlibidinal desire (sexual attachment) to her father and increases sexual competition with her mother.^[13]

The psychodynamic nature of the daughter–mother relationship in the Electra complex derives frompenis envy, caused by the mother, who also caused the girl'scastration; however, upon re-aligning her sexual attraction to her father (heterosexuality), the girlrepresses the hostile female competition, for fear of losing the love of her mother. Thisinternalization of "Mother" develops thesuper-ego as the girl establishes a discrete sexual identity (ego). Without a penis, the girl cannot sexually possess her mother, as the infantileid demands. Consequently, the girl redirects herdesire for sexual union upon her father, and thus progresses toheterosexual femininity, which culminates in bearing a child who replaces the absentpenis. Moreover, after thephallic stage, the girl's psychosexual development includes transferring her primaryerogenous zone from the infantileclitoris to the adultvagina. Freud thus considered the feminine Oedipus attitude ("Electra complex") to be more emotionally intense than the Oedipal conflict of a boy, resulting, potentially, in a woman with a submissive, less confident personality.^[14]

In both sexes,defense mechanisms provide transitory resolutions of the conflicts between the drives of theId and the drives of the ego. The first defense mechanism isrepression, the blocking of memories, emotional impulses, and ideas from the conscious mind; yet it does not resolve the Id–Ego conflict. The second defense mechanism isidentification, by which the child incorporates, to his or her ego, the personality characteristics of the same-sex parent; in so adapting, the girl facilitates identifying with the mother, because she understands that, in being females, neither of them possesses a penis, thus are not antagonists.^[15]

A 1921 study of patients at a New York state mental hospital,On the Prognostic Significance of the Mental Content in Manic-Depressive Psychosis, reported that of 31manic-depressive patients studied, 22 (70%) had been diagnosed with an Electra complex; and that 12 of the 22 patients hadregressed to early stages ofpsychosexual development.^[16]

Some purported examples of the Electra complex in literature come frompsychoanalytic literary criticism andarchetypal literary criticism, which flourished in the mid-twentieth century. These theories attempt to identify universal symbols in literature theorized to represent patterns in the human psyche. Psychoanalytic literary critics have claimed to discover the Electra complex in fairy tales and other historic sources. In addition, some authors who were conversant in Freud and Jung's work, such as Sylvia Plath, made intentional use of the Electra complex symbol.^[10]: 150

According to psychoanalytic literary criticism, fiction affords people the opportunity toidentify with the protagonists of fantastic stories depicting what might be if they could act upon theirdesires. Often, in aid to promoting social conformity, themyth, story,stage play, orfilm presents a story meant to frighten people from acting upon their desires.^[17] In the course of infantilesocialization,fairy tales fulfill said function; boys and girls identify with thehero andheroine in the course of their adventures. Often, the travails of hero and heroine are caused by an evil stepmother who is envious of him, her, or both, and will obstruct their fulfilling of desire. Girls, especially in the three-to-six year age range, can especially identify with a heroine for whom the love of aprince charming will sate herpenis envy. Moreover, stories such asCinderella have two maternal figures, the stepmother (society) and thefairy godmother; stepmother represents the girl's feelings towards mother; the fairy godmother teaches the girl that her mother loves her, thus, to have mother's love, the girl must emulate the good Cinderella, not the wicked stepsisters.^[18]

Portrayals of Electra in Ancient Greece did not generally present her devotion to her father as sexually motivated; however, since the early twentieth century, adaptations of the Electra story have often presented the character as exhibiting incestuous desires.^[19]

American poetSylvia Plath (1932–1963) acknowledged that the poemDaddy (1962) is about a woman, afflicted with an unresolved Electra complex, who conflates her dead father and derelict husband in dealing with having been emotionally abandoned.^[20] Her biographers noted a psychologic irony about the life of the poet Plath: she knew her father for only eight years, before he died; she knew her husband for eight years, before she killed herself. Her husband was her substitute father,psychosexually apparent when she addresses him (the husband) as the "vampire father" haunting her since his death. In conflating father and husband as one man, Sylvia Plath indicates their emotional equality in her life; the unresolved Electra complex.^[21]

On their self-titled album, thealternative music groupLudo have a song titled, "Electra's Complex".

Welsh singerMarina and The Diamonds released her sophomore albumElectra Heart in 2012, with themes revolving around the Electra complex.

In 2021, electronic musicianArca releasedElectra Rex as a preview for her albumKick iii. The song is a combination of the Electra complex andOedipus complex in "a nonbinary psychosexual narrative".^[22]

Because of their similarity, the Electra complex is exposed to much of the criticism that the Oedipus complex has faced, including a lack of empirical evidence and an apparent inapplicability to single parent or same-sex parent households. In addition, it was later rejected by Freud himself, and some of its implications are regarded as sexist towards women.^[23]

There is very little scientific evidence for the reality of the Electra complex. The predictions of the theory are not substantiated by experiment.^[24][25] The Electra complex is not widely accepted among modern mental health professionals and is not listed in current versions of theDiagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.^[26]

AuthorFlorence Rush has accused the female Oedipus complex of being a tool to cover up sexual abuse of children by their parents, particularly by their fathers. Rush writes that when Freud's female patients told him of being abused as children, he first took them seriously, resulting inFreud's seduction theory that mental illness is caused by sexual abuse. Then, however, Freud became uncomfortable with the implication of widespread sexual abuse that this theory implied. He replaced it with the Oedipus complex theory, which allowed Freud to dismiss women's stories of childhood abuse as imaginary, writing "I was able to recognize in this phantasy of being seduced by the father the typical Oedipus complex in women."^[27] Rush refers to this dismissal asthe Freudian coverup.

Freud was critical of the premise behind Jung's idea, writing in 1931 "It is only in the male child that we find the fateful combination of love for the one parent and simultaneous hatred for the other as a rival,"^[10]: 9 though at other times he seems to accept the premise of the Electra complex. Freud never made clear his view of the applicability of the Oedipus complex to girls or women.^[28]

A number of authors have observed that Freud's theories were based on men and then extended to women as an afterthought, with the result that they fit women poorly. For example, the idea that women want to have a penis or believe they have been castrated appears to assume that women feel like defective men. Thisphallocentrism has been described as sexist. The idea that women must give up clitoral sexual stimulation to be psychologically healthy is contradicted by evidence.^[25]

Somefeminist authors reexamine or appropriate Freud's ideas to make their points about the sexism in the female Oedipus complex. For example,Hélène Cixous's 1976 playPortrait of Dora reconstructs the story of patientIda Bauer, whom Freud gave the pseudonym Dora. Cixous portrays Dora's alleged hysteria as a reasonable reaction to her father's misbehavior, with Freud hired to cover it up.^[29]

• Feminism and the Oedipus complex
• Genetic sexual attraction
• Triad (sociology)