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
The Cambridge Companion to Freud discussion of the seduction theory, Simon and Blass's discussion of the Oedipus complex, Neu's discussion of sexuality, and Chodorow's discussion of female psychology. She credited Hopkins with providing the most lucid explanation of "ordinary explanations of actions in terms of motives or beliefs and desires" that she had ever seen. She found Paul's discussion of Freud's "myth of the primal horde" interesting, but criticized him for "leaving in place ... Freud's arguably grandiose view of the oedipal complex as an inscription in the very brain of the human infant" and for failing to "question such Freudian assumptions as that explaining