Feminist views on the Oedipus complex

Feminists have long struggled with Sigmund Freud's classical model of gender and identity development, which centers on the Oedipus complex.

In his late theory on the feminine, Freud recognized the early and long lasting libidinal attachment of the daughter to the mother during the pre-oedipal stages.

Feminist psychoanalysts have confronted these ideas (particularly the female relationship to the real, imaginary and symbolic phallus) and reached different conclusions.

Hélène Deutsch (1884–1982) was one of Freud's first female pupils and the first analyst who made an integral, chronological study of woman's psychological development.

[1] Deutsch sees the female development as exceedingly difficult and tortuous, because at some point she must transfer her primary sexual object choice from her mother to her father (and males), if she is to attain her expected heterosexual adulthood.

When she recognizes her failure, a decline to the pre-genital stage takes place: a wish for the earlier active (phallic) clitoris.

Nancy Chodorow noted that Freud believed that males possess physical superiority and that a woman's personality is inevitably determined by her lack of a penis.