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==Dictionary==
The term '[[Oedipus complex]]', one of the cornerstones of [[psychoanalytic theory]], derives from a [[Greek]] [[myth]] in which [[Oedipus]] unwittingly kills his [[father]] and marries his [[mother]].
[[Freud]] dates the [[Oedipus complex]] to the ages of three to five years.
The [[Oedipus complex]] explains the [[child]]'s sexual attraction towards the parent of the opposite sex and [[jealousy]] of the parent of the same sex.
The [[Oedipus complex]] is central to [[Freud]]'s theory of [[human]] [[development]].
For [[Lacan]], the [[Oedipus complex]] marks the transition from a [[dual relation|dual]] and potentially [[incest]]uous relationship with the [[mother]] to a [[triadic structure|triadic]] relationship in which the role and [[authority]] of the [[father]] or the [[Name-of-the-Father]] are recognized.
Failure to negotiate this transition is held by all schools of [[psychoanalysis]] to be the primary cause of [[neurosis]].
==Sigmund Freud==
[[Freud]] remarks that [[Sophocles]]'s ''[[Oedipus Rex]]'' has such "gripping power" because being in [[love]] with one's [[mother]] and [[jealousy|jealous]] of one's [[father]] is "a universal event in early childhood."<ref>Freud 1985</ref>
The expression 'the Oedipus complex' is not used until 1910.
It initially refers to the boy's perception of his [[mother]] as a sexual [[object]] and of his [[father]] as a [[rivalry|rival]].
The [[Oedipus complex]] (''complexe d'Oedipe'') was defined by [[Freud]] as an [[unconscious]] set of loving and hostile [[desire]]s which the [[subject]] experiences in relation to its parents; the subject desires one parent, and thus enters into rivalry with the other parent.
Although the term does not appear in Freud's writings until 1910, traces of its origins can be found much earlier in his work, and by 1910 it was already showing signs of the central importance that it was to acquire in all psychoanalytic theory thereafter.
==More Freud==
[[Freud]]'s sexual theories of children are attempts to explain the phenomenon of [[sexual difference]], and assume the existence of a primal state in which only maleness exists; the fact that a girl does not have male genitals is therefore the result of her castration.
A girl may believe that she has been castrated by a [[jealousy|jealous]] [[mother]] who resents her sexual feelings for her [[father]], whilst the boy [[fear]]s that he might be castrated by a [[jealousy|jealous]] [[father]].
As he comes to accept the [[reality]] of that threat and to identify with his [[father]], the [[Oedipus complex]] begins to dissolve.
For the girl, matters are more difficult.
The dissolution of her [[Oedipus complex]] requires her to adopt a 'feminine attitude' towards her [[father]], and to [[displacement|displace]] her [[desire]] to regain the [[penis]] she has lost onto the [[desire]] to have a baby.<ref>1924b</ref>
==Jacques Lacan More==
Although [[Lacan]] follows [[Freud]] in making the [[Oedipus complex]] the crual moment in [[human]] [[development]], he modifies the concept in a number of ways, both by introducing the idea of a [[symbolic]] [[phallus]] which is distinct from the [[biology|biological]] [[penis]], and by mapping it onto the transition from [[nature]] to [[culture]] described by [[Levi-Strauss]].
A successful negotiation of the Oedipal triangle is a precondition for entry into the [[human]] [[symbolic]] [[order]].
==Jacques Lacan==
