Chapter 14 Elektra Complex

The "Oedipus complex" is a boy complex; its corresponding girl complex is called the "Electra complex". Elektra was a mythological figure in ancient Greece who participated in the killing of mothers. "Electra complex" summarizes the Electra complex that women form in childhood. Like the "Oedipus complex", the "Electra complex" is also an inevitable tendency of children.It is not difficult to discover the boy's "Oedipus complex", and then associate and discover the girl's "Electra complex". The "Electra complex" is also commonly formed in childhood.It is not only determined by the biological sexual instinct mentioned by Freud, but also has many castings of human social culture.

In a normal childhood environment, the Elektra complex will be gradually suppressed and overcome by human society and culture, and eventually develop a sound and ideal personality.In a sound and ideal personality, although the Elektra complex will still be hidden in the depths of a woman's heart to varying degrees, and there will be manifestations in one way or another, but that is a very normal situation. If the relationship with parents during childhood is not traumatized, if fatherly love and motherly love are neither lacking nor excessive, and if there is a mother who is better at treating her daughter's growth correctly, then the girl can successfully suppress and overcome the "Eyes" A healthy and ideal personality is developed in the process of "Lectra complex".

Girls, like boys, already have a biological sex from the time of conception.Once she landed in the world crying, she not only appeared with a clear biological sex, but also began to be in a psychological environment with a clear gender role.Her biological parents (that is, her father Mother) from that moment on she was a girl, and the whole world naturally was a girl too. Thus, from birth, she develops both physically and psychologically the characteristics of a girl. When a mother breastfeeds and takes care of her, what she gives is a mother's love.When the father looked after and caressed her, what he gave was father's love.Although she is still an ignorant baby, although she is also a continuation of her parents' life, there are also gender differences in the love of her parents for her.

Mother was the first woman she met in this world. Her father was the first man she faced in this world. The little girl grew up day by day under the love of her parents. Just as the boy gradually develops the Oedipus complex of Oedipus and father, so she gradually develops the Electra complex of Oedipus and mother. However, since infants and young children are often under the direct care of the mother, the formation process of the Elektra complex in a daughter is quite different from that in a boy's Oedipus complex. The boy is in the process of sucking breast milk from birth, lying peacefully in the arms of the mother, and establishes an attachment to the mother rooted in life instinct, and the mother is all the caress he feels.When he differentiates his love for his mother from that of his father in terms of gender, and thus gradually develops an Oedipus-paternal complex, the process appears very straightforward.He was already clinging to his mother's breast, attached to her milk, so it was only natural to look at a man who was both caring for him and constantly competing for her attention.Oedipus-hater-complex develops in a boy's mind with special ease in this way.

For girls, the situation is quite different. From the first day she was breastfed by her mother, she regarded maternal love as the greatest source of warmth.When the mother's love for the young life shows almost pure life instinct, the young baby girl must regard the mother as the only object of dependence and love for a period of time.Under her father's caressing, she gradually learned that there is another kind of love in the world that is different from the mother's love that breastfeeds her. When she was a little older and gradually raised the body attached to her mother's arms to her father, she gradually formed a gender difference in her love for the two biological parents.

For a little daughter who is out of breastfeeding and can speak, the father shows more and more paternal love, and the mother looks more and more attractive to her husband when she sees her daughter standing up from her nipple, and also likes to be caressed by her husband more and more Sometimes, there will be a faint, unconscious change in my heart. She would look at her little daughter wriggling happily in her husband's arms at first with loving eyes, filled with love for her husband, love for her daughter, and the peace of being both a wife and a mother. Feeling, she will even feel gratified for the happiness and joy that her husband bursts out when he is playing with his daughter.

However, as the daughter grows up day by day, her relationship with her father is getting closer day by day, and the mother's generous smile will reveal a different kind of emotion from time to time. Whenever she sees her daughter excitedly raising her young arms to her father, and the husband puts more and more love on his daughter, thereby distracting his love for his wife, the mother gradually and unconsciously changes her attitude. reacted.She often said gently to her little daughter who was stuck in her father's arms: Don't keep tossing about her father, let him rest for a while, and play on the bed by herself.The father continued to play with his daughter in his arms: I am not tired.The younger daughter looked at her mother, and continued to stroke her father's beard with her little hand, giggling and laughing.

When the father and daughter laughed together, the wife felt a little cold.This is as much neglect for the mother as it is for the wife.Even a woman with generous maternal love will unconsciously have new elements in her attitude towards her daughter and her husband. The daughter accepted all this with the sensitivity of her young age, and she finally separated herself more and more from the mother who nursed her and grew up.She subconsciously realized that when she looked up at her father's kind smiling face in her mother's arms, she was often separated from her mother's huge body.Maternal love may still be important, but at the same time, her mother has become an obstacle to her connection with her father.

The harmonious heterosexual love between girls and their fathers grows more and more; the emotions of competing for fathers and excluding mothers also grow day by day. A girl's "Electra complex" usually comes more slowly than a boy's "Oedipus complex"; however, it does come. When a little girl fantasizes about the story between her and her father in childish longing, she is actually repeating the story in the adult world.In her childhood fantasies, she had the idea of ​​growing up and marrying her father, and even hoped to replace her mother in the future.When a little girl sometimes expresses special envy for her mother's clothes, she just hopes that she will grow up earlier and be able to replace her mother.

At this young age, her father was the only opposite sex she loved.All the phenomena and stories of love in the adult world are fermenting the only love.All the knowledge about love and marriage that her childish mind has gained from observing the adult world is used to enrich this wishful thinking. However, just as little boys finally have the initial sense of shame about their Oedipus complex under a series of cultural influences similar to "children avoid their mothers", girls will also experience a series of cultural reminders similar to "female avoiding their fathers". , with a sense of shame about the Electra complex.

It is very likely that her mother coaxed her to sleep and bathed her since she was a child. The naked contact between her and her father was very rare. Naturally, that rare contact once aroused very vague and lingering stimulation and associations in her. Now, the distance between her and her father is getting farther and farther. When she was being bathed by her mother while she was sitting in the bathtub, her father pushed the door open and entered the room. Although he was still calm and not panicked, he naturally began to avoid it.While mother was holding water and bathing her with a towel, she would throw a sentence to father: You wait until we finish washing before coming in.The father smiled, took a book and quit, and the mother's words rang in his ears: the girl is too old to take a bath in front of her father. The similar voice gradually made the daughter understand that her love for her father is limited.She began to re-examine the seemingly unshakable relationship between her father and mother with silent eyes, and she began to understand more and more the special significance of parents sleeping in the same bed. She sometimes feels that her mother is standing between her and her father; sometimes she feels that she is standing between her father and mother; however, as she grows up day by day, all the truths of this world are telling her, She should withdraw from her parents. Maybe she still vaguely remembers that when she was younger, she slept between her parents, and the two parents used to caress her together.Now, she could never sleep between them.Only when the family of three is walking on the sunny road, she may still win the middle position. She will hold the hands of her parents from left to right, but after all, it is completely different from sleeping between parents. She is still growing up, and she understands more and more the meaning of the relationship between father and mother, and understands more and more what it means to be an adult in love and marriage, and only when an adult is married can a child be born. At this time, she began to contact people other than her parents, including children of the same age, in her increasingly larger radius of activities.They imitate the roles of their parents in the house-playing game, set up a small family with toys, and use dolls to act as the children of these little parents. In these games, she gradually learned the role of a big woman and a mother. She observed her mother's mannerisms and gestures more carefully.She saw her mother cooking, washing, and doing housework. She saw her mother arranging her father's life. She saw her mother taking on various responsibilities in this world.She felt that her mother was great, and began to identify with her, imitate her, and take her as an example. This may be a continuation of the long-standing fantasy of taking the mother's place. Yet another girl forming a full female character in the true sense. If her father always has enough paternal love for her and has an appropriate distance; if her mother is always generous, patient, and loving, and at the same time can continue to give her correct guidance; Break free from a series of wishful thinking of Electra and hate mother, and look at the relationship between yourself and your parents with more and more realistic understanding. At this time, her father is still the number one person in the world she loves, her pride, her sun, and the primary source of a girl's self-esteem; however, she knows how far she should love her father. And no matter how strict the mother is in her mind, she is undoubtedly still a symbol of world order. She must learn all the rules of a girl's life and behavior from her mother's teachings. Perhaps she will find from time to time that her presence creates some conflict between the parents: the mother will accuse the father of spoiling the child, and the father may say that the mother is impatient with the child.These disputes caused a very sharp reaction in the little girl's heart. She would look gratefully at the father who protected her through tears in her grievances, and would also feel deeply sorry for her father because of her mother's reprimand.No matter how insignificant the parents' quarrel is, it will leave an unforgettable memory in her young mind. She is older, maybe a primary school student, or a middle school student. At this time, she is more concerned about the relationship between herself and her parents. Know how to deal with it. When walking with her parents, she may hold her mother's arm more and less her father's; when her father behaves unreasonably and rudely towards her mother, she will stand up to ease the conflict and try to criticize her father for being unreasonable. Soothe my mother's anger. If father and mother are always in love with each other, a daughter will be happy but also have mixed emotions watching her parents get married, and she will feel somewhat sad of being excluded. If the relationship between the parents is already aging, only her appearance can make the father feel happy and make the mother a little more active, and she will make both parents happy with a particularly tolerant attitude.She often plays a happy angel who listens to her parents' mutual complaints and can effectively resolve them. When the mother is exhausted, she will be very happy to take on the responsibility of taking care of the house and taking care of her father, and at the same time, she will redouble her enthusiasm for taking care of her mother.If the mother is still strong and the leader inside and out, she can help the mother to do things, but she will never violate the mother's rights. How a growing daughter treats her parents depends entirely on what kind of parents she faces. A girl who grows up in a basically healthy family also has a basically healthy relationship with her parents; this means that she is also able to deal with the world correctly. When she faces her life with a smile, she cannot imagine the situation without her father and mother.The Elektra complex she had formed with her parents since she was a child has long been regulated by human culture to be peaceful, if there is any. It will only be subtly revealed at some special moments, when we will see that the girl has more affection for her father and more guilt for her mother. Sufficient and not excessive paternal love is an important condition for a girl to develop a healthy personality. If the father loves too much and there is no mother's restraint, we will see that girls who have entered puberty are still tired of their father, lingering and showing a deformed Electra complex.This kind of deformed Electra complex probably comes to an end only after finding a suitable marriage. If the father loves too much and the mother is too strict, this kind of childhood environment often makes the girl have a strong Electra-hate complex, and she will become an over-willed woman in front of men and even in front of the whole world. However, the deformed Electra complex is more formed in the opposite direction. If a girl lacks paternal love since childhood, or even has no paternal love at all, she will form a much stronger Electra complex than excessive paternal love. . Deficiency creates craving, which is probably a psychological law in all fields. Girls who grew up in an environment lacking fatherly love often have the following manifestations of their Electra complex: First, she fully exhibits the characteristics of the Electra type, always likes to get along with men who are older than herself, especially likes to get along with men of her father's generation, and is not good at interacting with men of the same age.Sometimes it turns into a lifelong search for a teacher, a male protector, a kind but strong man. It's just a variant of finding the father. Second, they are often full of femininity and always live in the role of a little woman. Because they have not received sufficient fatherly love, they have not been enough daughters in essence, they always feel self-pity and self-love in the role of little women, and they are unwilling to take on the responsibilities of adult women all their lives, rejecting the role and obligations of mothers.This kind of woman has always maintained the so-called "naive".They are naive in their youth, naive in their youth, naive in their middle age, and even naive in their old age. In the "always innocent" role, their endless drive is to continue to play the role of the youngest daughter. Three, little women always like to complain about their grievances in front of men, and they are always looking for the feeling of being comforted and protected.They are especially willing to tell a man the grievance of being bullied by another man, which often becomes a driving force for their emotional life to wind up. Telling brings them great spiritual satisfaction, and telling will also evolve into an overall attitude towards the world.They are easily seized by their own grievances, and when there is no suitable man to listen to, they will also look for a woman to tell. Talking out the grievances of little girls is their lifelong emotional need. Fourth, such women have latent sexual desires since adolescence, have persistent and strong sexual fantasies, and often last throughout their lives. Related to this, they have a tendency to romanticize love and men, and like to poetize things about love and men. When it comes to actual love and men, they often appear hypersensitive.People who indulge in fantasies will always show nervous hypersensitivity when faced with things they have fantasized about for a long time.This is probably the law of human psychology in many similar fields. Fifth, due to the lack of paternal love since childhood, girls who indulge in fantasies lack self-confidence in front of men at first; they often find enough compensation for their inferiority in fantasies. After a stage of fantasy that permeates the growth period of adolescents, and a stage of longing for love that is quite romanticized with trepidation, if in reality she gets the admiration of some men and has the initial victory in love, she will behave excessively. Sensitive and excited.She will taste her own victory and happiness repeatedly in her fantasy, and then she will imagine to expand it and create a new splendor in her imagination. Sometimes, she would bear the happiness of being caressed by a man with tears all over her face. Sometimes, she will doubt and reject it nervously. Sixth, they may then have a lifelong urge to prove that they are loved. From the first victory of love, they have an irresistible and endless impulse to accumulate their achievements of being loved.They observe the world of men with themselves as the center, and imagine that men revolve around themselves. When they swirl in the vortex of love one after another, when they step onto the podium of love one after another to enjoy their victories, they often don't realize that they don't love for love, but for victory. Love. Seventh, some girls who lack fatherly love since childhood, if their mother treats her badly, she will have a strong mother-hatred complex. If her mother lived with her and raised her responsibly since she was a child, she may seem to be with her mother day and night or even accompany her for life on the surface, but there may also be a deep mother-hate complex hidden in her heart.Because there is no balance of father's love, the mother's cultivation is often extremely strict discipline. The mother's excessive care and discipline often greatly limit the girl's vision and fantasy at the same time. While she regards her mother as the most benefactor in the world, she also regards her mother as the most hostile opposite. Eighth, girls who grow up in an environment that lacks paternal love, who are fanciful, neurotic, allergic, have the desire to confide their grievances, and refuse to grow up, often have the qualities of an artist. In this way we see certain literary artists. These fanciful, sensitive, adult-resistant women, as ordinary women, must make themselves and others hard; but as an artist, she may have found her own place. Literary art is originally a special field of expressing allergies, letting go of fantasy, pouring out grievances, avoiding reality, creating romance, refusing to grow up, and achieving continuous victories of loving and being loved. The deformed complexes caused by the lack of love are not all bad things. Sometimes it brings untold pain. Sometimes, it brings people endless pursuit. There will be endless pain in the endless pursuit, but there may be endless fulfillment and happiness. If human society were separated from all kinds of powerful complexes, there would be a lot less pain, but it would also have a lot less pursuit and color. The Chinese often say that "a loving mother is strict with a father", which makes sense, but only half the truth; the real correct saying is that all parents should be "compassionate and strict". When facing a son, a loving mother and a strict father are necessary, and sometimes a strict mother and a loving father are also necessary, so that the son’s personality can develop healthier; when facing a daughter, a loving mother and a strict father have a greater truth , because in front of the daughter, the mother is often more than strict but not loving enough, and the father is more than loving but not strict enough. In the process of a daughter's free growth, it is naturally inappropriate for a mother to over-dote on her daughter and lack necessary and principled teaching, which will affect the normal growth of her daughter; however, if the mother is too strict with her daughter and lacks enough love , or even more inappropriately, is the main bias that should be avoided. There is no psychological barrier for a mother to accept her son, but to accept a growing daughter, a mother has to overcome some potential psychological barrier. If there is not enough psychological maturity, the mother will more or less play the role of an older sister who competes with her younger sister in front of her daughter, and the relationship between mother and daughter will inevitably appear tense. Even if the mother is not a little woman and has enough maturity and strength, if she is not lenient and harsh on her daughter, the daughter will feel great pressure from the mother since she was a child.At this time, if a strong father comes out to protect his daughter to resist the mother's harsh pressure, the daughter can grow up relatively normally, but at the same time, she will develop a strong love for her father and mother-hating complex. If the mother is domineering and rude, but the father subserviently submits to his wife, and even responds to the harsh reprimands and disciplines of the mother to the daughter like an answering man, the daughter will develop a deformed psychology: she not only hates the mother, but may even hate the father even more.Gradually growing up in the young mind is a common hostility towards parents. Most of these girls had the most unfortunate childhoods. But as the dreadful lives rolled further and further away, as they mastered the ability to survive independently, with more and more money, friendship and self-confidence, they also seemed to be normal and happy.Apart from a great distrust of men of my father's age, and an almost neurotic suspicion of my boyfriend's fidelity, everything would appear normal. Even they appear tolerant towards their parents.Although I have less contact with my parents, my tone of voice when talking about them is much calmer.Even talking about the unfair treatment I received when I was a child is just like telling an ordinary past event. Of course, there is still a latent complex in their hearts that hates their mothers and fathers. However, in the norms of human society and culture, due to the transformation of fate, they bury it deep in their hearts. Human vitality is very strong; human adaptability to life is also very strong. Any deformed living environment may cause deformed psychological complexes; however, most people can struggle to survive in the course of struggling for life. The complexes caused by unfortunate experiences are not necessarily bad things── Some have become the driving force for a lifetime of hard work and fulfillment; Some have become rare experiences to understand life. A woman's entire relationship with her parents since childhood is forged in her personality throughout her life. When a woman faces the whole world, whether she is an adult or not, she is always with her parents.She not only carries the genetic genes of her parents, but also carries everything that her parents forged for her in childhood. The girl has finally grown up, she should have a correct understanding of all the relationships she had with her parents, and be able to Treat your parents; at the same time, you are ready to treat your future children with a complete attitude.