Psychosexual development character Oedipus, who unwittingly killed his father, Laius, and sexually possessed his mother, Jocasta. Analogously, in the phallic stage, a girl's decisive psychosexual experience is the Electra complex, her daughter–mother competition for psychosexual possession of father. This psychological complex derives from the 5th-century BC Greek mythologic character Electra, who plotted matricidal revenge with Orestes, her brother, against Clytemnestra, their mother, and Aegisthus, their stepfather, for their murder of Agamemnon, their father, (cf. "Electra", by Sophocles). Initially, Freud equally applied the Oedipus complex to the psychosexual development of boys and girls, but later developed the female aspects of the theory as
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