The Electra complex is the daughter’s love obsession with her father, between 4 and 6 years old. This passion leads her to compete with her mother, considering her a rival. This phenomenon is resolved when the girl begins to fear losing her mother’s love and begins to identify with her.
The Electra complex usually emerges between 3 and 6 years of age, during the phallic stage defined by Sigmund Freud. It is comparable to the Oedipus complex, so Freud called it “female Oedipus”.
The concept of the “Electra complex” was established by Carl Jung, a Swiss psychiatrist and psychologist, in 1913. It is framed in psychoanalytic theory and has been used to address issues of female development.
Jung defined the Electra complex as the unconscious sexual desire a girl feels for her father. Despite appearing to be the same theory, Freud and Jung highlighted different aspects of this phenomenon.
For example, Freud highlighted the importance of a girl’s inclination toward her mother early in development. Furthermore, he places the phallus in the development of the boy and the girl in a central role. Jung, on the other hand, did not agree with these ideas.
In general, the Electra complex was not widely accepted by psychoanalysts.
History: Greek Mythology
The complex term Electra comes from a Greek myth from the 5th century BC. In this story, Electra and her brother Orestes join forces to take revenge on their mother, Cythenestra, and stepfather for killing Agamemnon (her father).
Electra appears as the main character in different classics: “La Trilogía de Orestes”, by Aeschylus, “Electra”, by Sophocles, and “Electra”, by Aeschylus. Jung never mentioned which of these works he used to describe the complex.
Features of the Electra complex
For Freud, the anatomy of the genitals is decisive for psychosexual development. He indicates that in the minds of little ones there is only one complete genital, the “phallus”. They think everyone has a phallus. It is necessary to emphasize that, during the phallic stage, the phallus acquires a meaning. That is, it symbolizes law and power.
Another aspect that must be taken into account is that Freud considered the male and female genders to be independent of the genitals. He spoke of them more as a subjective ranking based on how each person behaves and how he relates to others.
libidinal desire
Once that is understood, we can enter the Electra complex. At first, the girl is very close to her mother, as are the children. This union is conceived as a sexual attachment, known as “libidinal desire”.
When the girl finds the opportunity to compare her genitals with those of a boy, she observes that they are small in relation to the boy’s and the same as the mother’s. This makes her feel inferior and disadvantaged, as without the phallus the girl cannot sexually possess her mother.
For a while, he expects his genitals to resemble a phallus. So, the girl starts to think that, at first, she had a penis like a boy, but she was “castrated”, losing the body organ.
penis envy
The difference between the boy and the girl at these stages is that the boy fears castration, while the girl thinks she has been castrated. This causes so-called “penis envy“.
child’s idea
To compensate for the lack of a penis, the girl switches from “penis envy” to “the boy idea”. This idea is that her father “gives” a child. To achieve this goal, the girl resorts to seduction. He begins to flirt with his father, trying to fascinate him with offers and gifts, and constantly demanding his attention.
However, the girl realizes that her father cannot give himself completely to her because there is someone else: her mother. Thus, she sees the mother figure as an impediment to accessing her father’s love, trying to replace her.
For this reason, the girl begins to behave more and more hostile towards her mother, feeling jealousy and rejection. This hatred is also because he believes that her mother castrated her and that, because of her, she does not have the phallus.
Electra complex resolution
There are two defense mechanisms that will participate to resolve the Electra complex:
– Repression: it is about blocking desires, memories, emotions, impulses and ideas from consciousness.
– Identification: the girl is incorporating her mother’s personality traits into her ego.
With the passage of time, the desire to have a penis and to have a child from his father is being abandoned, since the girl assumes that they will not be fulfilled. In addition, he begins to be afraid of losing his mother’s love (according to Freud, the love of parents for their children is fundamental for them).
On the other hand, to resolve the conflict, the girl must gradually identify with the mother figure. This is possibly an unconscious way of “earning” the father’s love, because if he manages to look like his mother, it will be easier to win him over. In this way, he incorporates characteristics of his mother’s personality into his own ego.
If over 8 years old the girl begins to imitate her mother, trying to do the same tasks as her, talking like her and wearing her things, it can be said that the Electra complex has been overcome.
Thus, these desires are internalized and locked away in some part of the unconscious. According to the theory, they prepare women for their sexual role in the future.
Unresolved Electra complex
On the other hand, if the Electra complex is not resolved, fixation may occur in the phallic stage. The girl would therefore continue to experience “penis envy“. He would continually try to dominate men either through seduction (if he has high self-esteem) or through extreme submission (if his self-esteem is low).
Another indication of the Electra complex‘s lack of resolution is the choice of couples similar to the father figure and much older in age. Also, there may be difficulties interacting properly with other women.
Even if they become mothers before this complex is resolved, they may see their daughters as rivals who “steal” their partner’s love.
Unresolved Electra Complex Symptoms
It is possible that, despite being adult women, some are still “daddy’s girls”. That is, they present an excessive union with the father, maintaining the rivalry with the mother.
It can go to the extreme that they can’t even have a stable love relationship with other men, as they can’t find anyone like their father. Some of the symptoms are:
– unexplained feelings of hostility towards the mother, seeing her guilty of his failures and problems.
– Fantasies about her mother disappearing or what her life would be like if she didn’t exist. Often, these thoughts cause discomfort to the patient, causing him to avoid thinking about them.
– When your parents fight, no matter what happens, always stay on the father’s side.
– Always think of your father when he is sad or happy.
– When making an important decision, always think first of what your father would say and what he would prefer.
– Dissatisfaction or excessive demand with your relationships. It is possible that her partners will have conflicts with her when she discovers that she devotes too much attention to her father.
– Their partners usually have physical characteristics or a way of being very similar to their father and tend to be much older.
In these cases, psychological therapy can be very useful, as in many cases this problem affects the patient’s life. Being usual that he suffers problems in his social relationships or stagnation in his professional or work career.
Female Oedipus Complex
Note that Freud never agreed to equate the Oedipus complex and the Electra complex. Freud always pointed out that these processes were different in men and women and that presenting them as parallel was an oversimplification of the problem.
For him, the main aspect had to do with castration. While the Oedipus complex appears first in men and then in the fear of castration, in women the process is reversed.
It should also be noted that Freud’s research on female sexuality was conditioned by social conventions of gender and class. Women were considered the “second sex”, even some patients were considered “degenerate”.
