Electra complex

Did You Know?

• A 1921 study of 31 manic-depressive patients at a New York state mental hospital found that 22 (70%) had been diagnosed with an Electra complex.
• Of those 22 patients, 12 had regressed to early stages of psychosexual development.

Background

The Electra complex draws its name from the Greek myth of Electra, who with her brother Orestes sought matricidal revenge against their mother Clytemnestra and stepfather Aegisthus for murdering their father Agamemnon. Clytemnestra had been avenging the death of her daughter Iphigenia, sacrificed by Agamemnon. Sigmund Freud described the female psychodynamics as the feminine Oedipus attitude and negative Oedipus complex, but Carl Jung coined the term Electra complex in 1913. Freud rejected this term as psychoanalytically inaccurate, stating that the Oedipus complex applied strictly only to male children. During the phallic stage, a girl becomes aware of physical sex differences and, upon discovering she lacks a penis, transfers her libidinal attachment from her mother to her father, intensifying competition with her mother.

Characteristics

The Electra complex is psychodynamically rooted in penis envy, attributed to the mother who is seen as causing the girl's castration. After redirecting her sexual attraction to her father, the girl represses hostile competition for fear of losing her mother's love, as girls typically form stronger bonds with their mothers. This internalization of the mother develops the super-ego as the girl establishes a discrete sexual identity. Without a penis, the girl cannot sexually possess her mother as the id demands, so she redirects desire toward her father, progressing to heterosexual femininity that culminates in bearing a child to replace the absent penis. After the phallic stage, the girl's primary erogenous zone transfers from the clitoris to the vagina. Freud considered this feminine attitude more emotionally intense than the male Oedipal conflict, potentially resulting in a submissive, less confident personality. Defense mechanisms such as repression and identification provide transitory resolutions of Id–Ego conflicts.

In culture

Psychoanalytic and archetypal literary criticism in the mid-twentieth century identified the Electra complex in fairy tales and historic sources. Some authors familiar with Freud and Jung, such as Sylvia Plath, intentionally used the Electra complex as a symbol. According to this criticism, fiction allows people to identify with protagonists acting upon desires, while myths and stories often promote social conformity by frightening people from acting on those desires. Fairy tales socialize children; girls aged three to six may identify with heroines whose love of a prince charming sates penis envy. In stories like Cinderella, two maternal figures appear: the stepmother representing the girl's feelings toward her mother, and the fairy godmother teaching that the girl must emulate good Cinderella to retain mother's love. Portrayals of Electra in Ancient Greece generally did not present her devotion to her father as sexually motivated, but adaptations since the early twentieth century have often depicted incestuous desires.

Criticism

The Electra complex faces much of the same criticism as the Oedipus complex, including lack of empirical evidence and inapplicability to single-parent or same-sex parent households. Freud himself later rejected the term, and some implications are regarded as sexist toward women. There is very little scientific evidence for the reality of the Electra complex; its predictions are not substantiated by experiment. It is not widely accepted among modern mental health professionals and is not listed in current versions of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Social worker Florence Rush accused the female Oedipus complex of being a tool to cover up sexual abuse of children by parents, particularly fathers. Rush noted that Freud initially took his female patients' reports of childhood abuse seriously, leading to his seduction theory, but then replaced it with the Oedipus complex to dismiss such stories as fantasies. Freud wrote that he recognized in the fantasy of being seduced by the father the typical Oedipus complex in women. Freud was critical of Jung's premise, stating in 1931 that the fateful combination of love for one parent and hatred for the other as a rival occurs only in male children, though at other times he seemed to accept the Electra complex. Several authors have observed that Freud's theories were based on men and extended to women as an afterthought, fitting women poorly; the idea that women want a penis or feel castrated assumes they feel like defective men, a phallocentrism described as sexist. The notion that women must give up clitoral stimulation for psychological health is contradicted by evidence.