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removed. The Oedipus complex in Freudian psychoanalysis refers
to a stage of psychosexual development in childhood where
children of both sexes regard their father as an adversary and
competitor for the exclusive love of their mother. The name
derives from the Greek myth of Oedipus, who unwittingly kills
his father, Laius, and marries his mother, Jocasta. In Jungian
thought, the Oedipus complex tends to refer only to the
experience of male children, with female children experiencing
an Electra complex in which they regard their mothers as
competitor for the exclusive love of their fathers. Freud
considered the successful resolution of the Oedipus complex to
be key to the development of gender roles and identity. He
posited that boys and girls resolved the conflicts differently
as a result of castration anxiety (for males) and penis e