Concept in Definition ABC

The term oedipal is used to refer to everything that relative or proper to the Oedipus complex.

Meanwhile, it is known as Oedipus complex to the set of emotions Y feelings children in which he simultaneously and ambivalently sends loving and hostile wishes towards the parents.

The Oedipus complex was developed by the German psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud and formed a central and prominent part of his famoustheory psychoanalytic. According to Freud, this complex was recognized because he had the unconscious desire to establish a sexual relationship with the parent of the opposite sex and therefore also expresses the desire to eliminate the other progenitor.

Meanwhile, the Oedipus complex can manifest itself in a positive way, it is hated or rivaled with the parent of the same sex while feeling a attraction sexual towards the parent of the opposite sex; or negative, it feels love toward the parent of the same sex and rejection toward the parent of the opposite sex.

Freud opportunely distinguished three phases in the psychosexual development of the kids: oral, anal and phallic, meanwhile, the Oedipus complex arises in the phallic phase, between 3 and 6 years, then disappears at approximately 7 years and is rekindled in the puberty to finally disappear at the entrance to adulthood.

The aforementioned concept of Oedipus was developed by Freud from the Greek myth of King Oedipus expounded by Sophocles. Oedipus was a mythical king of Thebes, son of Laius and Jocasta, who unknowingly murdered his own father and married his own mother. The Oracle of Delphi had announced such a situation to his father, therefore, he ordered to get rid of his son, however, who had the homework if he did, he did not do it, and so Oedipus' destiny will end up being fulfilled.

The counterpart of the Oedipus Complex is the Electra Complex, that is, in the Electra Complex, proposed by the psychologist Carl Jung in 1912, it is the girl who manifests a loving attraction to her father.