Electra complex

Sigmund Freud believed that all daughters unconsciously want to sleep with their fathers, in what he called the Electra complex, which he believed to be the female counterpart to the Oedipus complex in males.

Freud also believed that, as part of the Electra complex, women have unconscious penis envy, the tragic desire to possess the same sexual organ as men.

Feminists generally regard this theory as sexist. Freud's teaching that women suffer from penis envy is generally attributed to the Victorian assertion that male sex organs are somehow better than those of females.

While fashionable for a number of decades, this idea is no longer regarded as a serious psychological concept except by fundamentalist Freudians.

See also:

• Electra
• psychoanalysis