Oedipus Complex

In classical psychoanalytic theory, the Oedipus complex describes a son's sexual desire for his mother together with hostility toward his father, said to form during the phallic stage of psychosexual development. Sigmund Freud considered the general idea in The Interpretation of Dreams in 1899 and introduced the term itself in a 1910 paper. Freud used the equivalent pattern in a daughter, desire for her father alongside hostility toward her mother, as the feminine Oedipus complex.