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
Oedipus in the Trobriands Oedipus in the Trobriands Oedipus in the Trobriands is a 1982 book about the Oedipus complex by the anthropologist Melford Spiro, in which the author criticizes the research of Bronislaw Malinowski on the Trobriand Islanders. The work received positive reviews, and Spiro's criticism of Malinowski was compared to Derek Freeman's criticism of Margaret Mead in "Margaret Mead and Samoa" (1983). Spiro discusses the Oedipus complex and controversies over it that have involved psychoanalysts and anthropologists. He notes that there is already a vast literature on the topic, which in his view shows that it has a "persistent claim on the