Oedipus complex the Electra complex to describe a girl's daughter–mother competition for psychosexual possession of the father. In the phallic stage, a girl's Electra complex is her decisive psychodynamic experience in forming a discrete sexual identity (ego). Whereas a boy develops castration anxiety, a girl develops penis envy, for she perceives that she has been castrated previously (and missing the penis), and so forms resentment towards her own kind as inferior, while simultaneously striving to claim her father's penis through bearing a male child of her own. Furthermore, after the phallic stage, the girl's psychosexual development includes transferring her primary erogenous zone
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