Do the names Oedipus and Electra sound familiar? It should be so, because they were developed by legendary psychoanalysts and refer to the so-called deviant behaviors of the child, which center on the parents of the opposite sex.
The Oedipus complex was first described by the famous psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud in 1910, referring to the ancient myth in which Oedipus, the son of the king of Thebes, kills his own father, Laius, and marries his mother, Jocasta . The Electra complex, on the other hand, developed in 1913 by a former student of Freud’s, as well as the well-known Carl Jung, was named after the Greek myth of Electra. In ancient times, Electra convinces her brother to avenge the death of her father, Agamemnon, by helping her kill her mother and her lover.
This is how it manifests itself
In psychoanalysis, the Oedipus complex and the Electra complex symbolize the unconscious erotic connection with the parent of the opposite sex and the rivalry with the parent of the same sex, things that develop from childhood. Specifically, a boy feels the need to compete with his father for his mother’s attention, and a girl adores her father and is hostile to her mother. The symptoms and signs of the two complexes are not necessarily sexual (sometimes, not at all) and can be very subtle, so that parents cannot detect them easily. However, some signs are a bit more obvious and should raise questions: a boy who is possessive of his mother and gets upset when his father touches her; a child who insists on sleeping between his parents or a little girl who says she wants to marry her father when she grows up.
How it affects the child’s sexual development
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If the two complexes are not resolved when their first stages appear, in childhood, there is a risk of developing an unhealthy fixation on the opposite-sex parent, one that remains even into adulthood. This means that young people who suffer from these complexes end up choosing romantic partners who resemble their parents of the opposite sex. Freud was of the opinion that these complexes appear around the ages of three to six, a period called the phallic stage, and that, although these feelings are unconscious and involuntary, they have a strong impact on the subsequent development of the child. Adolescence is the age when the child gradually frees himself from the Oedipus and Electra complex and looks for sexual partners outside of his parents, building his own personality with elements that come from both the mother and the father. However, the best idea if you are worried about your child’s mental or sexual development is to contact a specialist, doctor or pediatric psychologist.
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