Ophelia complex is the term used by Gaston Bachelard to refer to the links between femininity, liquids, and drowning which he saw as symbolised in the fate of Shakespeare's Ophelia.
[1] Bachelard traced in Romanticism a nexus of ideas linking the dissolution of the self[2] – male or female – with immersion in the feminine element of water, as symbolised by Ophelia's drowning.
[3] Federico García Lorca explored the image of water and a despairing sexuality, epitomised in the Ophelia complex, throughout his writings.
There she argued for a view of Shakespeare's character as lacking inner direction and externally defined by men (father/brother),[5] and suggested that similar external pressures were currently faced by post-pubescent girls.
[6] The danger of the Ophelia syndrome was that of abandoning a rooted childhood self for an apparently more sophisticated but over-externalised façade self.