In neo-Freudian psychology, the Electra complex, as proposed by Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Carl Jung (26 July 1875 – 6 June 1961) in his Theory of Psychoanalysis,[1][2] is a girl's psychosexual competition with her mother for possession of her father. In the course of her psychosexual development, the complex is the girl's phallic stage; 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: the oral, the anal, the phallic, the latent, and the genital—in which the source of libido pleasure is in a different erogenous 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 the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.
- ^ Jung, C. G. (1915). The Theory of Psychoanalysis. Nervous and mental disease monograph series, no. 19. New York: Nervous and Mental Disease Publishing Co. p. 69.
- ^ Laplanche, Jean; Pontalis, J.B. (1973). The language of psycho-analysis. New York: W.W. Norton. p. 152. ISBN 0393011054. OCLC 741058.
- ^ A55. TREASURE ISLAND: CASE REPORTS IN AVMs AND ECMO. American Thoracic Society. May 2022. doi:10.1164/ajrccm-conference.2022.a55.