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
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