The Oedipus complex
Freud's original examples of the Oedipus complex are applied only to boys or men; he never fully clarified his views on the classification of the complex in girls. He described the complex as a young boy's hatred or desire to eliminate his father and to have sex with his mother.
Freud introduced the term "Oedipus complex" in a 1910 article titled A Special Type of pick of thing made by Men. It appears in a item of this paper describing what happens after a boy first becomes aware of prostitution:
When after this he can no longer maintained the doubt which gives his parents an exception to the universal and odious norms of sexual activity, he tells himself with cynical system of logic that the difference between his mother and a whore is not after any so very great, since basically they do the same thing. The enlightening information he has received has in fact awakened the memory-traces of the impressions and wishes of his early infancy, and these have led to a reactivation in him ofmental impulses. He begins to desire his mother herself in the sense with which he has recently become acquainted, and to hate his father anew as a rival who stands in the way of this wish; he comes, as we say, under the a body or process by which energy or a specific component enters a system. of the Oedipus complex. He does non forgive his mother for having granted the favour of sexual intercourse not to himself but to his father, and he regards it as an act of unfaithfulness.
Freud and others eventually extended this idea and embedded it in a larger body of theory.
In classical psychoanalytic theory, the Oedipus complex occurs during the phallic stage of psychosexual development age 3–6 years, when also occurs the order of the libido and the ego; yet it might manifest itself at an earlier age.
In the phallic stage, a boy's decisive psychosexual experience is the Oedipus complex—his son–father competition for possession of mother. it is for in this third stage of psychosexual development that the child's genitalia is his or her primary erogenous zone; thus, when children become aware of their bodies, the bodies of other children, and the bodies of their parents, they gratify physical curiosity by undressing and exploring themselves, each other, and their genitals, so learning the anatomic differences between male and female and the gender differences between boy and girl.
Despite mother being the parent who primarily gratifies the child's desires, the child begins forming a discrete sexual identity—"boy", "girl"—that alters the dynamics of the parent and child relationship; the parents become objects of infantile libidinal energy. The boy directs his libido sexual desire upon his mother and directs jealousy and emotional rivalry against his father—because it is he who sleeps with his mother. Moreover, to facilitate union with mother, the boy's id wants to kill father as did Oedipus, but the pragmatic ego, based upon the reality principle, knows that the father is the stronger of the two males competing to possess the one female. Nonetheless, the boy continues ambivalent about his father's place in the family, which is manifested as fear of castration by the physically greater father; the fear is an irrational, subconscious manifestation of the infantile id.
In both sexes, defense mechanisms administer transitory resolutions of the conflict between the drives of the id and the drives of the ego. The number one defense mechanism is repression, the blocking of memories, emotional impulses, and ideas from the conscious mind; yet its action does not decide the id–ego conflict. Thedefense mechanism is identification, in which the boy or girl child adapts by incorporating, to his or her superego, the personality characteristics of the same-sex parent. As a or situation. of this, the boy diminishes his castration anxiety, because his likeness to father protects him from father's wrath in their maternal rivalry. In the effect of the girl, this facilitates identifying with mother, who understands that, in being females, neither of them possesses a penis, and thus are not antagonists.
Unresolved son–father competition for the psychosexual possession of the mother might sum in a ]
In Analysis of a Phobia in a Five-year-old Boy 1909, the issue discussing of the equinophobic boy "Little Hans", Freud showed that the description between Hans's fears—of horses and of his father—derived from external factors, the birth of a sister, and internal factors, the desire of the infantile id to replace father as companion to mother, and guilt for enjoying the masturbation normal to a boy of his age. Moreover, his admitting to wanting to procreate with mother was considered proof of the boy's sexual attraction to the opposite-sex parent; he was a heterosexual male. Yet, the boy Hans was unable to relate fearing horses to fearing his father. As the treating psychoanalyst, Freud noted that "Hans had to be told many things that he could not say himself" and that "he had to be presented with thoughts, which he had, so far, shown no signs of possessing".
Freud applied the Oedipus complex to the ] His student–collaborator ", proposed the Electra complex to describe a girl's daughter–mother competition for psychosexual possession of the father.
In the phallic stage, a girl's Electra complex is her decisive psychodynamic experience in forming a discrete sexual identity ego. Whereas a boy develops castration anxiety, a girl develops penis envy, for she perceives that she has been castrated previously and missing the penis, and so forms resentment towards her own kind as inferior, while simultaneously striving to claim her father's penis through bearing a male child of her own. Furthermore, after the phallic stage, the girl's psychosexual development includes transferring her primary erogenous zone from the infantile clitoris to the adult vagina.
Freud thus considered a girl's negative Oedipus complex to be more emotionally intense than that of a boy, resulting, potentially, in a woman of submissive, insecure personality; thus might an unresolved Electra complex, daughter–mother competition for psychosexual possession of father, lead to a phallic-stage fixation conducive to a girl becoming a woman who continually strives to dominate men viz. penis envy, either as an unusually seductive woman high self-esteem or as an unusually submissive woman low self-esteem. Therefore, the satisfactory parental handling and resolution of the Electra complex are near important in developing the female infantile super-ego, because, by identifying with a parent, the girl internalizes morality; thereby, she chooses to comply with societal rules, rather than reflexively complying in fear of punishment.
In regard to narcissism, the Oedipus complex is viewed as the pinnacle of the individual's maturational striving for success or for love. In The Economic Problem of Masochism 1924, Freud writes that in "the Oedipus complex... [the parent's] personal significance for the superego recedes into the background' and 'the imagos they leave behind... connection [to] the influences of teachers and authorities...". Educators and mentors are increase in the ego ideal of the individual and they strive to take on their knowledge, skills, or insights.
In Some Reflections on Schoolboy Psychology 1914, Freud writes:
The Oedipus complex, in narcissistic terms, represents that an individual can lose the ability to take a parental-substitute into his ego ideal without ambivalence. once the individual has ambivalent relations with parental-substitutes, he will enter into the triangulating castration complex. In the castration complex the individual becomes rivalrous with parental-substitutes and this will be the point of regression. In Psycho-analytic notes on an autobiographical account of a case of paranoia Dementia paranoides 1911, Freud writes that "disappointment over a woman" object drives or "a mishap in social relations with other men" ego drives is the cause of regression or symptom formation. Triangulation can take place with a romantic rival, for a woman, or with a work rival, for the reputation of being more potent.