Electra complex of "Mother" develops the super-ego as the girl establishes a discrete sexual identity (ego). Without a penis, the girl cannot sexually possess her mother, as the infantile id demands. Consequently, the girl redirects her desire for sexual union upon her father, and thus progresses to heterosexual femininity, which culminates in bearing a child who replaces the absent penis. Moreover, after the phallic stage, the girl’s psychosexual development includes transferring her primary erogenous zone from the infantile clitoris to the adult vagina. Freud thus considered the feminine Oedipus attitude ("Electra complex") to be more emotionally intense than the Oedipal conflict of
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