Electra complex classical psychoanalytic theory, the child's identification with the same-sex parent is the successful resolution of the Electra complex and of the Oedipus complex; his and her key psychological experience to developing a mature sexual role and identity. Sigmund Freud instead proposed that girls and boys resolved their complexes differently—she via penis envy, he via castration anxiety; and that unsuccessful resolutions might lead to neurosis. Hence, women and men who are fixated in the Electra and Oedipal stages of their psychosexual development might be considered "father-fixated" and "mother-fixated". As a psychoanalytic term for daughter–mother psychosexual conflict, the Electra complex derives from
The Freudian Fallacy by Thornton's willingness to make "wild pronouncements without any supporting evidence". Satinover wrote that the book suffered from "specious neurologic diagnoses and misinterpretations of psychoanalytic theory" and that Thornton failed to accomplish of her purpose of "debunking" Freud. Torrey, writing in 1995, commented that Thornton's suggestion that Freud almost certainly continued to abuse cocaine until 1899 had been substantiated by the Freud scholar Peter Swales. "The Freudian Fallacy" was reviewed by the historian Paul Roazen in the "American Journal of Psychiatry" and A. J. Fogarty in the "British Medical Journal". Thornton's book was criticized by the historian Peter Gay, who