Electra complex Electra complex In Neo-Freudian psychology, the Electra complex, as proposed by Carl Jung in his ""Theory of Psychoanalysis"", 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: (i) the Oral, (ii) the Anal, (iii) the Phallic, (iv) the Latent, and (v) the Genital—in which the source of libido pleasure is in a different erogenous zone of the infant’s body. In
The Sexual Life of Savages in North-Western Melanesia child as from child to parent. In later chapters, the parent-child relationship of the Trobrianders is described with details of their complex matrilineal relationship structure in which the biological parentage is ignored. Based on ethnographic data, Malinowski argues that the Freudian Oedipus complex is not universal. Malinowski's argument that the Oedipus complex is not universal has been questioned by anthropologist Melford E. Spiro in his book "Oedipus in the Trobriands" (1982). The Sexual Life of Savages in North-Western Melanesia The Sexual Life of Savages in North-Western Melanesia () is a 1929 book by anthropologist Bronisław Malinowski. The work is his