Oedipus complex from the infantile clitoris to the adult vagina. Freud thus considered a girl's negative Oedipus complex to be more emotionally intense than that of a boy, resulting, potentially, in a woman of submissive, insecure personality; thus might an unresolved Electra complex, daughter–mother competition for psychosexual possession of father, lead to a phallic-stage fixation conducive to a girl becoming a woman who continually strives to dominate men (viz. penis envy), either as an unusually seductive woman (high self-esteem) or as an unusually submissive woman (low self-esteem). Therefore, the satisfactory parental handling and resolution of the Electra complex are most important in
Oedipus and the Sphinx and evil, but also between the sexes, and that the opening poem of "Buch der Leider" by Heinrich Heine was the source for the idea of the painting. In that poem the Sphinx triumphs over Oedipus. In a Freudian interpretation, it has been argued that the Sphinx represents the castrating effect of Moreau's mother that he has seeking to escape. At the time the painting was created, Moreau's father had recently died. By contrast, Henri Dorra has suggested that the poses of the sphinx and Oedipus are derived from the Greek etymological meaning of the word sphinx, which is to