Electra Complex: An Exploration of ‘The Daddy’s Girl’
- Tina Pascual
- Mar 22, 2019
- 2 min read
Updated: Feb 1, 2021
PRINCESS ELECTRA
Electra is derived from the name of the Princess of Argos, the daughter of King Agamemnon and Queen Clytemnestra.
Princess Electra, together with his brother, Orestes, plotted a revenge against their mother and stepfather, Aegisthus, for their father’s murder. Electra, is one of the most popular Greek mythological characters in tragedies.
THE PSYCHO FATHERS
Electra Complex is a psychoanalytical term propounded by a Neo-Freudian Swiss Psychiatrist and founder of Analytical Psychology, Carl Gustav Jung. It is manifested by a young girl’s psychosexual rivalry against her mother for the possession of her father. Electra is also comparable to the Oedipus Complex of am Austrian Neurologist and founder of Psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, wherein a young boy psychosexually competes with his father for winning and possessing his mother.
SEXUAL CURIOSITY
According to Jung, the young girl’s attraction to his father occurs during the third (phallic) stage of Freud’s Five Levels of Sexual Development - that is between the age of 3 to 6 years old.
In Phallic Stage, the child’s sexual sensitivity is upon their genitalia. It is the stage when children becomes aware of their bodies and of their parent’s. The youngsters satisfy their curiosity and learn their physical differences by undressing and investigating each other and their sexual organs.
PENIS ENVY
Penis Envy is developed from girls towards all males. It is rooted from a biological awareness that without a penis she cannot sexually possess her mother. Thus, the girl redirects his desire to his father. Freud consider this desire as more emotionally intense.
TEMPORARY SOLUTION
The execution of defence mechanism provides transitory solution for the conflict of Id and Ego self drives. First through repression, where the memories, emotional impulses and conscious ideas are being blocked by the brain. Second is identification, in which the girl embody the personality of the mother. The objective is for a girl to develop a mature sexual role and identity as she grows up.
FAILURE TO RESOLVE
Fixation may arise if the sexual competition with the mother is unresolved. It may lead to a girl growing up to be a woman who struggles to control, overpower and seduce men due to unconscious penis envy. She may also have low self worth, be more submissive and less confident.
Sources: Wikipedia
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