can anybody explain Oedipus/Electra complex and who the child identifies with

From past reading, I thought that during the Oedipus/Electra complex, when the child is attracted to the parent of the opposite sex (boy is attracted to mother, then realizes he's competing with father, and he can't possibly gain his mother) or (girl is attracted to father and can't compete against mother for father's love),
then the boy will identify with father, and the girl will identify with mother (because the child cannot compete)

Who does the child identify with?

The reason that I ask is that the book I am currently reading says that the child identifies with the parent of the opposite sex. This does not make sense.

Can anybody help with this?

These are my opinions: different children identify with different parents. I think I identified with my father, because he was the loving one in the family. My brother identified with my mother, in order to escape her punishments.

This does not agree with theories which say that the boy MUST identify with the father (or with the mother) and that the girl MUST identify with the mother (or with the father).

The child is (according to psychodynamic theory) identifying with the opposite parent, to the fact that they are attracted to them. A lot of parents (just for example) will have "Daddy's Little Girl" or "Mom's Little Boy".

The male child, in this theory, is supposed to be afraid that the father will want (in case of the boy) to cut off their penis because they are (in their mind) competition for the mother, whom they consider their first love interest.

According to Freud, anyhoo.

With the Electra complex, it is in reverse. The girl loves her father, and worries about her mother hating her. Freud talks in very simplistic (and stupid for Freud) terms about girls wanting to have a penis, and that since they dont, they feel the attraction to their father.

Here are the two links for Oedipus and Electra in Wikipedia for your perusal... Oedipus
Electra

Hope this helps...

i thought it was both. they identify with the oposite sex parent and then (since they realise that the parents have a special relationship that the kid can't be a part of) they identify with the same sex parent. the identification with the same sex parent is meant to be the resolution, i thought.

thanks,
and I already read the wikipedia material

the explanation seems to be that the boy is attracted to his mother, and the girl is attracted to her father,
then
the boy internalizes the father and the girl internalizes the mother (I think somewhere else it said that this is how the superego develops)

yeah... though... i'm not sure how many theorists accept the freudian notion without modification. i guess there is a lot of controversy and different theorists have different takes on the situation...

the one i like... is fairly non-sexual, though it is erotic. but you can have erotic attachment to BOTH parents though of course you might be more attached to one than the other. i mean... the infants bond to the mother is usually the strongest though i guess sometimes infants turn to their father if the mother is a source of distress... i guess i don't really buy the 'opposite gender' assumption. i also don't really buy the 'homosexuality is a developmental failure / perversion' take, either. different individuals will have their different attachments.

and the notion is then that the infant longs for a special relationship with the attachment figure / figures. but the infant notices that they are excluded from some things. the parents have a bond that the infant is not part of. the parents need alone time away from the infant. the infant has to come to terms with the fact that they are not the centre of the universe / of their parents lives. this is helped by the infant having a special bond with each of the parents which excludes the other parent. so... everybody has special connections...

the initial idea was that the infant literally wanted to have sexual contact with the opposite sex parent. i'm not sure i buy that. then the infant fears that the same sex parent would castrate / kill them if they were to have sexual contact with the opposite sex parent. the infant has this conflict... and the resolution is for the infant to internalise the values of the same sex parent (the social norm that incest is prohibited) and this is the identification with the norms of the same sex parent. the super-ego is supposed to be about norms...

but... i don't think i buy this story...

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alexandra_k said:
yeah... though... i'm not sure how many theorists accept the freudian notion without modification. i guess there is a lot of controversy and different theorists have different takes on the situation...

the one i like... is fairly non-sexual, though it is erotic. but you can have erotic attachment to BOTH parents though of course you might be more attached to one than the other. i mean... the infants bond to the mother is usually the strongest though i guess sometimes infants turn to their father if the mother is a source of distress... i guess i don't really buy the 'opposite gender' assumption. i also don't really buy the 'homosexuality is a developmental failure / perversion' take, either. different individuals will have their different attachments.

and the notion is then that the infant longs for a special relationship with the attachment figure / figures. but the infant notices that they are excluded from some things. the parents have a bond that the infant is not part of. the parents need alone time away from the infant. the infant has to come to terms with the fact that they are not the centre of the universe / of their parents lives. this is helped by the infant having a special bond with each of the parents which excludes the other parent. so... everybody has special connections...

the initial idea was that the infant literally wanted to have sexual contact with the opposite sex parent. i'm not sure i buy that. then the infant fears that the same sex parent would castrate / kill them if they were to have sexual contact with the opposite sex parent. the infant has this conflict... and the resolution is for the infant to internalise the values of the same sex parent (the social norm that incest is prohibited) and this is the identification with the norms of the same sex parent. the super-ego is supposed to be about norms...

but... i don't think i buy this story...

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What do YOU think, Alexandra?

um. the second and third paragraphs of my above response.
starting with 'the one i like...'
and ending with 'the initial idea was that...'

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alexandra_k said:
um. the second and third paragraphs of my above response.
starting with 'the one i like...'
and ending with 'the initial idea was that...'

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Um, indeed. "The initial idea was..." Whose initial idea? What do you think about it?

You are quick to reply. How come; you are in Australia (I assume) and I am in the U.S.? What time is it there?

freud.
i think it is a load of bollocks.
i'm in australia.
10.47pm for me.
now i have to call mr man (who will be just waking up)

:-)

freud.
i think it is a load of bollocks.


I'll agree with you there. I only ever took a few college psychology classes, but that is what I always came away with.

and mr man has gone to work already... hmm... i'm not really sure what 'identify' means... maybe it means 'appreciates their mental states' or 'appreciates where they are coming from' or something like that. i guess the Freudian notion is... well... that the infant identifies with their same sex parent's ideals (that incest is not okay, i guess) and internalises those ideals out of the fear of castration / death. hence... the super-ego (which has to do with norms like incest not being okay and stealing not being okay and stuff like that).

i guess i think... that might be attributing a little too much cognitive ability to an infant.

and i guess i think... that the structural model of mind (id, ego, super-ego) is no more than an obfuscatory metaphor...

i guess i also think... that co-operation is the norm rather than conflict (which is a very "self-psychology" rather than "ego-psychology" / "freudian" thing to say). i don't figure that an infant really has sexual desires for the opposite sex parent. erotic desires (broadly conceived) sure. but i don't see why parents of either or both sexes can't be the object of erotic desires (which is to say that the infant longs to be emotionally close to them).

i did try searching google for "electra complex" at some point and didn't really come up with much. didn't even come up with much about "oedipus complex" which surprised me rather. not sure how much of an essential place they have in current theorising... i can't access "PEP web", though, which seems to be the main database for access to psychoanalytic articles :-( i restrict my searches to "-PEP" now because i get sick to death of getting all these really interesting hits where i can only read the frigging abstract and can't access the fulltext. i guess i could interloan, but i lack the patience really...

cross cultural research shows freud (and a lot of current theorising too - to be fair) to be very culturally biased.

for example, sometimes fathers are the primary attachment figure. it might be that the mother works and the father is the primary caregiver. it might be that the mother died during childbirth and the father is a solo parent. it might be that rather than having a SINGLE attachment figure children are able to spread their attachment relationships amongst different members of the tribe (including grandparents and siblings and uncles and aunties - take that freud, maybe an infant doesn't need to attach to one PARTICULAR person at all).

just like how a lot of stuff that Schore goes on about (the importance of looking with respect to attachment) simply can't apply to BLIND infants now, can it.

sigh.

cross cultural research is important because it shows us different ways of being. often things we take to be part of human nature (e.g., that an infant needs to bond to ONE person and that person needs to be the infants BIOLOGICAL MOTHER has exceptions in many cultures - including our own). methinks the fact that the needs are met (including emotional) is far more important than WHO it is that meets those needs in particular.

personally... i don't know if i was ever properly attached to my mother. my earliest memory is of trying to get the hell away from her and trying to get closer to my dad. maybe i was attached to her initially but then pulled away... or maybe not. i don't know. verbal memories before age 2 or 3 are unreliable because they simply can't be encoded in verbal form (we haven't developed that capacity yet) and as for my body memories... i'm not sure they were encoded in a 'happened before age two' form either because i'm not sure you have the cognitive ability to time-mark memories before you are two...