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Psychological Phenomena

Electra Complex

Clinical and Motivational Phenomena

In neo-Freudian psychology, the Electra complex was proposed by the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung as a girl's psychosexual rivalry with her mother for her father's attention. Jung placed it in the phallic stage, the third of five psychosexual stages he described (oral, anal, phallic, latent, and genital), each marked by a different erogenous zone as the source of libidinal pleasure. He offered it as the female counterpart to the Oedipus complex Freud described in boys.

Facts
Core Claim
A young girl in the phallic stage of psychosexual development is theorized to transfer her libidinal attachment from her mother to her father, entering competition with her mother for the father's affection, the feminine counterpart Carl Jung proposed to the boy's Oedipus complex. 1
First Described Year
1913 1
Classification
Type of Phenomenon
Developmental Phenomenon 1
Sources
1. Wikipedia: Electra complex
Wikimedia Foundation
  • Lead section, first sentence.
    In neo-Freudian psychology, the Electra complex, as proposed by Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Carl Jung in his Theory of Psychoanalysis, is a girl's psychosexual competition with her mother for possession of her father.
  • Background section.
    It was Carl Jung who coined the term Electra complex in 1913.
  • lead section, phenomenon-kind classification
    There is little empirical evidence for it, as the theory's predictions do not match scientific observations of child development.
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