Oedipus complex

In Freudian theory, a child’s unconscious desire for the opposite-sex parent and rivalry with the same-sex parent, typically situated in the phallic stage of psychosexual development.

Phallic stage: Freud’s psychosexual stage, usually placed between ages three and six, in which attention centers on the genitals. Freud placed the Oedipus complex within this stage of childhood development.
Oedipus Rex: A tragedy by Sophocles in which Oedipus unknowingly kills his father and marries his mother. Freud borrowed Oedipus’s family relationships as the complex’s mythic namesake.
Karen Horney: A German-American psychoanalyst who challenged Freud’s theories of female psychology and emphasized culture and relationships. Horney rejected Freud’s account of women’s development and criticized its assumptions about penis envy.
Psychoanalysis: A theory and therapeutic practice that investigates unconscious mental processes, conflicts, and early experiences. The complex became a central element of classical psychoanalytic theory.
Identification (psychology): An unconscious process in which a person adopts qualities or characteristics of another person. Freud described identification with the same-sex parent as one resolution of the rivalry.
Sigmund Freud: An Austrian neurologist who founded psychoanalysis and developed theories of the unconscious and psychosexual development. Freud formulated and popularized the Oedipus complex within psychoanalysis.
Object relations theory: A psychoanalytic approach that explains personality through internalized relationships with significant others. It shifts emphasis from instinctual wishes toward early relationships and their internal representations.
Oedipal conflict: A psychoanalytic conflict involving a child’s attachment to one parent and rivalry with the other. This phrase emphasizes the conflictual structure often meant by the complex.
Repression: An unconscious defense process that keeps distressing thoughts, wishes, or memories from conscious awareness. The theory treats the complex’s desires as unconscious and repressed.
The Interpretation of Dreams: Sigmund Freud’s 1899 book, published with the date 1900, on dreams and the unconscious. Freud presented his early account of childhood wishes and the Oedipal pattern in this work.

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