In this post, we’ll tackle Sigmund Freud’s most controversial concepts: the Oedipus and Electra complexes. While these theories are heavily debated—and largely rejected by modern psychology—understanding them is essential to seeing how early psychoanalysis evolved.
Currently, it seems that there are few people who see the Oedipus and Electra complexes as Freud did. In fact, this is likely Freud’s most controversial theory, and is perhaps one of the more controversial theories in all of psychology. If you are familiar with these, you will understand why, and if not, you may be surprised by some of these ideas. Let’s dive in with some of the basics.
To start, a quick refresher. Freud theorized five Psychosexual stages of development. If you want to learn more about all of these, check out my video on the subject. The third stage is our focus today. During this stage, which he called the phallic stage, Freud believed this stage occurred from ages 3-6. During this stage, the person’s pleasure zone becomes their genitals, which is then a target of their attention. However, their interest was not only for their own genitals, but others’ as well.
This brings us to the Oedipus complex (pronounced edipus—with a silent “o”), sometimes called the Oedipal complex. Freud believed this occurred during the Phallic stage for boys. His thought was that they had unconscious incestuous desires for their mothers and would want all of their mother’s attention. He thought they would unconsciously see their fathers as a barrier to getting to their mother, and would want them out of the picture. As a result, they would experience rage toward their father. Not only that, but he believed that boys would have an unconscious fear that their fathers would castrate them. The fear that boys experience that they would lose their penis is what Freud termed the Castration Complex. Furthermore, during this stage, he believed that boys would also begin to realize girls do not have a penis, and that this would bring about castration anxiety.
In the end, Freud believed that boys would learn to manage their feelings toward their mother by suppressing them, and would manage their rage toward their father by aligning with him.
The Oedipus complex gets its name from the Greek tragedy, Oedipus Rex. In the play, Oedipus was abandoned at birth as he was seen as defective. He marries a widowed queen, and searches for the murderer of the king. He eventually finds that he is the murderer of the king, who was his father, and that the queen is his mother. This play is not only where Freud got the name for the Oedipus complex, but he also saw this as a sort of proof and confirmation of the unconscious fantasy that people hold.
The Electra complex follows a similar structure to the Oedipus complex. With this, girls would desire their fathers and have a strong love for them. While at the same time, they would be jealous of their mothers and feel they were in the way. However, they would eventually suppress these feelings.
As if these theories were not controversial enough, there’s more. Freud believed that girls would realize in the Phallic stage that they do not have a penis. The lack of a penis would be blamed on their mother. As a result, he thought girls would have feelings of being “handicapped and ill-treated”, would blame their mothers, and would want to have their penis back. Because of their lack of a penis and the strong feelings they had associated with this, Freud coined the term Penis Envy to describe this experience.
We’re not done yet though. Freud also believed that women would feel less than men because they lacked a penis. He referred to this as Organ Inferiority. He thought that women would have children to help compensate for these feelings. There are more recent thoughts on these concepts, so we’ll come back to them shortly.
There are a couple of other things to cover though before we move on to that.
First, I should mention that Freud is often referenced as the one to come up with the Electra complex, but it was actually Carl Jung who did so. When Jung introduced this, Freud disagreed. In fact, he said “It is only in the male child that we find the fateful combination of love for the one parent and simultaneous hatred of the other as a rival”.
Second, the Electra complex gets its name from the Greek myth of Electra. In this, the character, Electra, and her brother plot to kill their mother to avenge their father’s death. The pair do go on to then attack and kill her.
Third, there are a few other things that should be mentioned about the Phallic stage. Freud believed that those who struggled or became fixed at this stage would develop homosexuality. For psychoanalysts more broadly, their belief has been that those who experience difficulty with the stage, they are prone to experience problems related to sexual identity. Additionally, those who become fixated in the Phallic stage are thought to be more reckless and vane, and can be more narcissistic.
Finally, when one is not able to resolve the conflict of the Oedipus complex, the belief was that they would be afraid of love or incapable of experiencing close love.
I mentioned that there was more to say about Organ Inferiority and Penis Envy. I think most would say that it seems these is bias in play with these theories, and that the biased view has skewed Freud’s theory in a way where men are seen as dominant and women as less than. In 1926, Karen Horney disagreed with Freud that women have children to compensate for their Organ Inferiority. However, her views weren’t exactly what might be expected. She said that “Freud’s image of women was biased because he based it on the observations of neurotic women”.
With Penis Envy, they have felt that this was another display of the advantages men have in society. Now, Psychoanalysts believe the boys feel inferior for not being able to bear children. As a result, they will try to work toward positions of high achievement and status to compensate for their feeling of inferiority.
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