A group or collection (i.e., a complex) of
unconscious wishes, feelings, and ideas focusing on the desire to "possess" the
opposite-sexxed parent and "eliminate" the same-sexxed parent. In the
traditional Freudian view, the complex is seen as emerging during the Oedipal
stage, which corresponds roughly to ages 3-5 and is characterized as a universal
component of development irrespective of culture. The complex is assumed to
become partly resolved, within this classical view, through the child making an
appropriate identification with the same-sexxed parent, with full resolution
theoretically achieved when the opposite-sexed parent is "rediscovered" in a
mature, adult sexual relationship. In Freud's view, a variety of neurotic
fixations, sexual aberrations, and debilitating guilt feelings were
theoretically traceable to an "unresolved" Oedipus complex. Interestingly, the
theoretical genesis of the complex -- which derives its name from the mythical
figure Oedipus, the hero of two of Sophocles' tragedies who unknowingly killed
his father and married his mother -- was Freud's own self-analysis, carried out
after his father's death. At first, Oedipus referred only to the male complex,
Electra being used for the female. Today, however, both are subsumed under
Oedipus largely for convenience, although it should be noted that Electra's sins
were different from Oedipus'. Rather than directly murdering her mother, she
urged her brother to do it. Contemporary psychoanalytic theory places somewhat
less importance on the complex than did Freud and his immediate followers.
