Electra complex

File:1869 Frederic Leighton - Electra at the Tomb of Agamemnon.jpg by Frederic Leighton, c. 1869]]

In neo-Freudian psychology, the Electra complex, as proposed by Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Carl Jung (26 July 1875 – 6 June 1961) in his Theory of Psychoanalysis,{{Cite book|url=https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.32044020083374;view=1up;seq=7 |title=The Theory of Psychoanalysis |last=Jung |first=C. G. |series=Nervous and mental disease monograph series, no. 19 |date=1915 |publisher=Nervous and Mental Disease Publishing Co. |location=New York |page=69}}{{Cite book |title=The language of psycho-analysis |last1=Laplanche |first1=Jean |date=1973 |publisher=W.W. Norton |last2=Pontalis |first2=J.B. |isbn=0393011054 |location=New York |page=[https://archive.org/details/languageofpsycho00lapl/page/152 152] |oclc=741058 |url-access=registration |url=https://archive.org/details/languageofpsycho00lapl/page/152 }} is a girl's psychosexual competition with her mother for possession of her father. In the course of her psychosexual development, the complex is the girl's phallic stage; a boy's analogous experience is the Oedipus complex. The Electra complex occurs in the third—phallic stage (ages 3–6)—of five psychosexual development stages: the oral, the anal, the phallic, the latent, and the genital—in which the source of libido pleasure is in a different erogenous zone of the infant's body.{{Cite book |url=http://dx.doi.org/10.1164/ajrccm-conference.2022.a55 |title=A55. TREASURE ISLAND: CASE REPORTS IN AVMs AND ECMO |date=May 2022 |publisher=American Thoracic Society|doi=10.1164/ajrccm-conference.2022.a55 }}

The idea of the Electra complex is not widely used by mental health professionals today. There is little empirical evidence for it, as the theory's predictions do not match scientific observations of child development. It is not listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

Background

File:Electra and Orestes - Project Gutenberg eText 14994.png

As a psychoanalytic term for daughter–mother psychosexual conflict, the Electra complex derives from the Greek mythological character Electra, who plotted matricidal revenge with Orestes, her brother, against Clytemnestra, their mother, and Aegisthus, their stepfather, for their murder of Agamemnon, their father (cf. Electra, by Sophocles).{{cite book |last=Murphy |first=Bruce |year=1996 |title=Benét's Reader's Encyclopedia |url=https://archive.org/details/bentsreadersen00murp |url-access=registration |edition=4th |publisher=HarperCollins Publishers |location=New York |page=[https://archive.org/details/bentsreadersen00murp/page/310 310]}}{{cite book |last=Bell |first=Robert E. |year=1991 |title=Women of Classical Mythology: A Biographical Dictionary |publisher=Oxford University Press |location=California |pages=177–178}}{{cite book |author=Hornblower S, Spawforth A |year=1998 |title=The Oxford Companion to Classical Civilization |pages= 254–255}} Sigmund Freud developed the female aspects of the sexual development {{nowrap|theory{{tsp}}{{mdash}}}}{{tsp}}describing the psychodynamics of a girl's sexual competition with her mother for sexual possession of the {{nowrap|father{{tsp}}{{mdash}}}}{{tsp}}as the feminine Oedipus attitude and the negative Oedipus complex.{{cite book |last=Freud|first=Sigmund |author-link=Sigmund Freud|title=On Sexuality |year=1956 |publisher=Penguin Books Ltd}} It was Carl Jung who coined the term Electra complex in 1913.Jung, Carl (1913). The Theory of Psychoanalysis.{{cite book |last=Jung |first=Carl |author-link=Carl Jung|title=Psychoanalysis and Neurosis |year=1970 |publisher=Princeton University Press}}.{{cite book |last=Scott |first=Jill |year=2005 |title=Electra after Freud: Myth and Culture |publisher=Cornell University Press |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=83JE6sEFP9cC&pg=PA8 |isbn=978-0-8014-4261-2}}{{rp|8}} Freud rejected Jung's term as psychoanalytically inaccurate: "that what we have said about the Oedipus complex applies with complete strictness to the male child only, and that we are right in rejecting the term 'Electra complex', which seeks to emphasize the analogy between the attitude of the two sexes".{{cite book|last1=Freud|first1=Sigmund|title=On Sexuality|date=1991|publisher=Penguin Books|location=London|page=375}}

In forming a discrete sexual identity (ego), a girl's decisive psychosexual experience is the Electra complex: daughter–mother competition for possession of the father.{{cite encyclopedia |title=Sigmund Freud 1856–1939 |year=2000 |encyclopedia=Encyclopaedia of German Literature |publisher=Routledge |location=London |access-date=2 September 2009 |url=https://www.credoreference.com/entry/routgermanlit/sigmund_freud_1856_1939}} It is in the phallic stage (ages 3–6), when children become aware of their bodies, the bodies of other children, and the bodies of their parents that they gratify physical curiosity by undressing and exploring each other and their {{nowrap|genitals{{tsp}}{{mdash}}}}{{tsp}}the erogenous {{nowrap|center{{tsp}}{{mdash}}}}{{tsp}}of the phallic stage; thereby learning the physical sex differences between male and female, "boy" and "girl". When a girl's initial sexual attachment to her mother ends upon discovering that {{nowrap|she{{tsp}}{{mdash}}}}{{tsp}}the {{nowrap|daughter{{tsp}}{{mdash}}}}{{tsp}}has no penis, she then transfers her libidinal desire (sexual attachment) to her father and increases sexual competition with her mother.{{Cite journal |last=Chodorow |first=Nancy |date=February 1978 |title=Mothering, Object-Relations, and the Female Oedipal Configuration |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/3177630 |journal=Feminist Studies |volume=4 |issue=1 |pages=137–158 |doi=10.2307/3177630|jstor=3177630 |hdl=2027/spo.0499697.0004.108 |hdl-access=free }}

Characteristics

The psychodynamic nature of the daughter–mother relationship in the Electra complex derives from penis envy, caused by the mother, who also caused the girl's castration; however, upon re-aligning her sexual attraction to her father (heterosexuality), the girl represses the hostile female competition, for fear of losing the love of her mother. This internalization of "Mother" develops the super-ego as the girl establishes a discrete sexual identity (ego). Without a penis, the girl cannot sexually possess her mother, as the infantile id demands. Consequently, the girl redirects her desire for sexual union upon her father, and thus progresses to heterosexual femininity, which culminates in bearing a child who replaces the absent penis. Moreover, 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 the feminine Oedipus attitude ("Electra complex") to be more emotionally intense than the Oedipal conflict of a boy, resulting, potentially, in a woman with a submissive, less confident personality.{{cite book |author=Bullock A, Trombley S |year=1999 |title=The New Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought |publisher=Harper Collins |location=London |pages=259, 705}}

In both sexes, defense mechanisms provide transitory resolutions of the conflicts between the drives of the Id and the drives of the ego. The first defense mechanism is repression, the blocking of memories, emotional impulses, and ideas from the conscious mind; yet it does not resolve the Id–Ego conflict. The second defense mechanism is identification, by which the child incorporates, to his or her ego, the personality characteristics of the same-sex parent; in so adapting, the girl facilitates identifying with the mother, because she understands that, in being females, neither of them possesses a penis, thus are not antagonists.Bullock, A., Trombley, S. (1999) The New Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought Harper Collins: London pp. 205, 107

Case studies

A 1921 study of patients at a New York state mental hospital, On the Prognostic Significance of the Mental Content in Manic-Depressive Psychosis, reported that of 31 manic-depressive patients studied, 22 (70%) had been diagnosed with an Electra complex; and that 12 of the 22 patients had regressed to early stages of psychosexual development.{{cite journal |last=Levin |first=Hyman L. |year=1921 |title=On the prognostic significance of the mental content in manic-depressive psychosis |journal=The State Hospital Quarterly |volume=VII |pages=594–95 |access-date=2010-11-18 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=2qpXAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA594}}

In culture

File:Princecharming.jpg hero meets Cinderella heroine (1912)]]

Some purported examples of the Electra complex in literature come from psychoanalytic literary criticism and archetypal literary criticism, which flourished in the mid-twentieth century. These theories attempt to identify universal symbols in literature theorized to represent patterns in the human psyche. Psychoanalytic literary critics have claimed to discover the Electra complex in fairy tales and other historic sources. In addition, some authors who were conversant in Freud and Jung's work, such as Sylvia Plath, made intentional use of the Electra complex symbol.{{rp|150}}

=Fiction=

According to psychoanalytic literary criticism, fiction affords people the opportunity to identify with the protagonists of fantastic stories depicting what might be if they could act upon their desires. Often, in aid to promoting social conformity, the myth, story, stage play, or film presents a story meant to frighten people from acting upon their desires.Berger, Arthur Asa. Media Analysis Techniques, 3rd ed. Thousand Oaks:Sage Press (2005) In the course of infantile socialization, fairy tales fulfill said function; boys and girls identify with the hero and heroine in the course of their adventures. Often, the travails of hero and heroine are caused by an evil stepmother who is envious of him, her, or both, and will obstruct their fulfilling of desire. Girls, especially in the three-to-six year age range, can especially identify with a heroine for whom the love of a prince charming will sate her penis envy. Moreover, stories such as Cinderella have two maternal figures, the stepmother (society) and the fairy godmother; stepmother represents the girl's feelings towards mother; the fairy godmother teaches the girl that her mother loves her, thus, to have mother's love, the girl must emulate the good Cinderella, not the wicked stepsisters.Berger, Arthur Asa Media Analysis Techniques 3rd ed. Thousand Oaks: Sage Press (2005)

Portrayals of Electra in Ancient Greece did not generally present her devotion to her father as sexually motivated; however, since the early twentieth century, adaptations of the Electra story have often presented the character as exhibiting incestuous desires.{{cite journal|last1=Olive|first1=Peter|title=Reinventing the barbarian: Electra, sibling incest, and twentieth-century Hellenism|journal=Classical Receptions Journal|volume=11|issue=4|year=2019|pages=407–426|issn=1759-5142|doi=10.1093/crj/clz012}}

=Poetry=

File:Sylvia Plath.jpg employed the Electra complex in poetry]]

American poet Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) acknowledged that the poem Daddy (1962) is about a woman, afflicted with an unresolved Electra complex, who conflates her dead father and derelict husband in dealing with having been emotionally abandoned.Van Dyne, Susan R. Sylvia Plath’s Ariel Poems Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993. Her biographers noted a psychologic irony about the life of the poet Plath: she knew her father for only eight years, before he died; she knew her husband for eight years, before she killed herself. Her husband was her substitute father, psychosexually apparent when she addresses him (the husband) as the "vampire father" haunting her since his death. In conflating father and husband as one man, Sylvia Plath indicates their emotional equality in her life; the unresolved Electra complex.Plath, Sylvia "Daddy" Ariel Harper & Row:New York (1966).

=Music=

On their self-titled album, the alternative music group Ludo have a song titled, "Electra's Complex".

Welsh singer Marina and The Diamonds released her sophomore album Electra Heart in 2012, with themes revolving around the Electra complex.

In 2021, electronic musician Arca released Electra Rex as a preview for her album Kick iii. The song is a combination of the Electra complex and Oedipus complex in "a nonbinary psychosexual narrative".{{Cite web|date=2021-11-09|title=Arca Shares New Song "Electra Rex": Listen|url=https://www.stereogum.com/2166748/arca-electra-rex-kick-iii/music/|access-date=2021-11-16|website=Stereogum|language=en}}

Criticism

Because of their similarity, the Electra complex is exposed to much of the criticism that the Oedipus complex has faced, including a lack of empirical evidence and an apparent inapplicability to single parent or same-sex parent households. In addition, it was later rejected by Freud himself, and some of its implications are regarded as sexist towards women.{{Cite journal |last=Freud |first=Sigmund |date=1931 |title="Female Sexuality" |url=http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~cavitch/pdf-library/Freud_SE_Female_Sexuality_complete.pdf |journal=The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud |volume=11 |pages=8 |via=University of Pennsylvania}}

= Lack of evidence =

There is very little scientific evidence for the reality of the Electra complex. The predictions of the theory are not substantiated by experiment.{{cite book |title=Psychoanalytic Theories: Perspectives from Developmental Psychopathology |publisher=Whurr Publishers |year=2006 |first1=Peter |last1=Fonagy |first2=Mary |last2=Target |isbn= 9781861562395 |oclc= 749483878 }} The Electra complex 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.{{cite web |url=https://flo.health/being-a-mom/your-baby/growth-and-development/oedipus-complex |title=Oedipus Сomplex in Children: What Parents Need to Know |last=Tantry |first=Tanya |website=Flo Health |access-date=November 30, 2021 }}

= As cover for sexual abuse =

Author Florence Rush has accused the female Oedipus complex of being a tool to cover up sexual abuse of children by their parents, particularly by their fathers. Rush writes that when Freud's female patients told him of being abused as children, he first took them seriously, resulting in Freud's seduction theory that mental illness is caused by sexual abuse. Then, however, Freud became uncomfortable with the implication of widespread sexual abuse that this theory implied. He replaced it with the Oedipus complex theory, which allowed Freud to dismiss women's stories of childhood abuse as imaginary, writing "I was able to recognize in this phantasy of being seduced by the father the typical Oedipus complex in women."{{cite book |title=The Best Kept Secret: The Sexual Abuse of Children |url=https://archive.org/details/bestkeptsecretse00rush/page/82/mode/2up |last=Rush |first=Florence |pages=82–83 |publisher=Prentice-Hall |location=Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey |date=1980|isbn=9780130747815 }} Rush refers to this dismissal as the Freudian coverup.

= Criticism by Freud =

Freud was critical of the premise behind Jung's idea, writing in 1931 "It is only in the male child that we find the fateful combination of love for the one parent and simultaneous hatred for the other as a rival,"{{rp|9}} though at other times he seems to accept the premise of the Electra complex. Freud never made clear his view of the applicability of the Oedipus complex to girls or women.{{cite encyclopedia |title=Oedipus complex |encyclopedia=A Dictionary of Psychology |edition=3rd |year=2014 |last=Colman |first=Andrew M. |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=9780191726828 |url=https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803100246932 |access-date=November 29, 2021 |doi=10.1093/acref/9780199534067.001.0001 }}

= As sexist =

A number of authors have observed that Freud's theories were based on men and then extended to women as an afterthought, with the result that they fit women poorly. For example, the idea that women want to have a penis or believe they have been castrated appears to assume that women feel like defective men. This phallocentrism has been described as sexist. The idea that women must give up clitoral sexual stimulation to be psychologically healthy is contradicted by evidence.{{cite book |title=Personality : strategies and issues |pages=144–146 |last=Liebert |first=Robert M. |location=Pacific Grove, Calif. |publisher=Brooks/Cole Pub. Co. |year=1993 |isbn=9780534175801 |url=https://archive.org/details/personalitystrat0007edlieb/page/144/mode/2up}}

Some feminist authors reexamine or appropriate Freud's ideas to make their points about the sexism in the female Oedipus complex. For example, Hélène Cixous's 1976 play Portrait of Dora reconstructs the story of patient Ida Bauer, whom Freud gave the pseudonym Dora. Cixous portrays Dora's alleged hysteria as a reasonable reaction to her father's misbehavior, with Freud hired to cover it up.{{cite journal |title=Portrait of Dora: Freud's Case History As Reviewed by Hélène Cixous |first=Martha Noel |last=Evans |journal=SubStance |volume=11 |number=3 |year=1982 |pages=64–71 |publisher=The Johns Hopkins University Press |doi=10.2307/3684315|jstor=3684315 }}