Oedipus Complex is a Freudian concept describing a male child’s desire for his mother and an accompanying sense of rivalry with the father while the Electra Complex is a Jungian concept describing a girl’s adoration and attraction to her father and rivalry, hostility and resentment toward the mother. This period of a girl’s development happens between the age of 3 to 6. But conventional wisdom tells us this phenomenon lasts much longer.
My daughter has always been an affectionate child. She is loved by both parents and she’s grown up with a lot of handholding and hugging. Perhaps I compensate partly because I felt she needed extra affirmation as a child of divorce. She went to a school where the environment is composed of many hippy-like parents who are into nature, organics and homespun endeavors. She knows me to be very warm and welcoming with some family and close friends and seen me embracing men and women alike, whether in public or private. So my daughter hugging me is a very normal thing, even when I am shirtless sitting on a patio deck. She likes to do this, especially as she exits the swimming pool, still dripping wet.
While there are many childhood development theories and approaches, each can lend itself to describing only limited facets of my daughter’s development, I believe the best explanation has little to do with gender but with the alignment in rationality and philosophy.
The development of my relationship with my daughter is very wholesome and positive. Our closeness probably has less to do with Jungian explanations and more to do with the fact that I’m just social and default to see the lighter side of things (until I don’t). But what I also notice is her increasing hostility towards her mother. She may only be 12, but my daughter in some respects act less of a child and more a young woman in her noisy dealings with her mother. She may be rebelling against her mother as typical tweens do to assert their individuality and independence. But I see more than that. I have seen and heard where my daughter not only asserts herself, but she can be downright dismissive with brutal comebacks effectively shutting down the mother. Another ploy she uses is passive aggression where she’ll simply walk away from her mother after delivering a devastating rebuttal and remain uncommunicative for days. These are tactics I never see her use with me. For one thing, I won’t tolerate this kind of behavior as an effective form of conflict resolution and for another, I don’t think I corner my daughter in a way that leaves her only with a survival response.
While there are many childhood development theories and approaches, each can lend itself to describing only limited facets of my daughter’s development, yet no theory will fully explain the inner workings and behavior of a still transforming persona. But one thing I do know as a non-child psychologist, is that a child will have an attraction to the parent they have the most affinity. And this affinity has little to do with gender, wealth or opportunity. It has to do with alignment in rationality and philosophy.
I don’t presume to know what my daughter thinks of me as her dad, but a major role I play in her life is one of protector. There is only one thing that is more formidable than getting between momma bear and her cubs, and that is a daddy protecting his little girl. Hell hath no fury like the ire of a man with nothing to lose—or perhaps with everything to lose. Electra or no Electra, my role as father to my daughter is even more paramount in light of her increasingly worrisome antagonism towards her mother. Her battles have been going on for years and a war is unfolding. I once said I would not pick sides, but that doesn’t mean I won’t arm my daughter to the teeth so if she is dragged into war, she won’t be annihilated. But the primary reason why I arm her isn’t to do damage to another, but so others will see her armaments as a deterrent. When my daughter sees that I stick up for her even when I’m not around, it’s just her knowing that I’ve got her back…and little to do with her being Electra.
