Oedipus complex

The term Oedipus complex (or, less commonly, Oedipal complex) explains the emotions and ideas that the mind keeps in the unconscious, via dynamic repression, that concentrates upon a child's desire to have sexual relations with the parent of the opposite sex (i.e. males attracted to their mothers, and females attracted to their fathers). Sigmund Freud, who coined the term "Oedipus complex" believed that the Oedipus complex is a desire for the parent in both males and females; Freud deprecated the term "Electra complex", which was introduced by Carl Gustav Jung in regard to the Oedipus complex manifested in young girls. The Oedipus complex occurs in the third — phallic stage (ages 3–6) — of the five psychosexual development stages: (i) the oral, (ii) the anal, (iii) the phallic, (iv) the latent, and (v) the genital — in which the source of libidinal pleasure is in a different erogenous zone of the infant's body.