Both the Oedipus Complex and the Elektra Complex arise making mention of two stories from Greek mythology.
In the first story, Oedipus, not knowing who his parents really were, kills his father Layo and marries his mother Yocasta. As time passes, Yocasta realizes who her son really is and that they committed incest, so she commits suicide. The horror of his actions led Oedipus to gouge out his eyes and wander all over Greece.
In the second story, Electra is in charge of avenging her father, who was assassinated on his return from the Trojan War.
The famous psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, as part of his psychoanalytic theory, mentioned that there are five psychosexual stages, among which we can distinguish: oral, anal, phallic, latency and genital stage.
We will specifically focus on the phallic stage, this stage develops in a child from three to five or six years. During this age, children discover the erogenous zone that manifests through the genitals, which are clitoris in women and penis in men; that is, they discover a certain pleasure when urinating and touching these areas.
The manifestations of this stage are presented differently if it is a man or a woman. In men it is called the Oedipus Complex, boys develop a sexual desire for their mother, which generates in them an impulse of competition and aggressiveness towards their father. The fear of castration ends with the Oedipus Complex in the boy, who from this point on will generate an identification with his father.
In girls what psychoanalyst Carl Gustav Jung calls Elektra Complex happens, they feel a hatred for their mother for not having given them one, likewise, girls feel in competition with their mother for the love of their dad. Finally, this complex disappears because the girls, living with their mother for a long time, gradually identify with them.
