The Oedipus complex and the Electra complex are concepts introduced into psychoanalytic theory by Sigmund Freud to denote the phenomenon of a child's attraction to a parent of the opposite sex, as well as a jealous attitude towards a parent of the same sex.
Oedipus and Electra are characters in ancient Greek mythology. In the opinion of Z. Freud, it is the stories of these mythical characters that most fully reveal the essence of the phenomenon he discovered. He believed that these complexes determine the tastes, inclinations and values of a person, tk. they are pushed into the unconscious by public opinion and culture.
The Theban King Lai and his wife Jocasta received a prophecy according to which their son Oedipus would murder his father and marry his mother. Lai ordered to kill his son, but the slave disobeyed and saved the baby. Oedipus was brought up in Carinth, believing that the Carinthian king Polybus is his own father. All the same prophet predicted to Oedipus that he would kill his father and marry his mother. Oedipus leaves home in fear, goes to Thebes and on the way meets his own father Lai. Having entered into a quarrel with him, Oedipus, unknowingly, fulfills the first part of the prophecy: he kills his father. On the way to Thebes, he encounters the Sphinx, devouring all passers-by who have not solved his riddle. Oedipus becomes the first to solve the riddle, and the Sphinx rushes to the rocks. The inhabitants thank Oedipus for saving him, and he gets the king's widow, Jocasta, as his wife. Having learned a terrible secret many years later that Oedipus had married his own mother, and she bore him daughters and sons, Jocasta hanged herself, and Oedipus gouged out his eyes in agony.
Agamemnon, father of Electra and Orestes, was killed by his own wife, Clytemnestra, and her lover. Clytemnestra wanted to kill her own son, so that he would not take revenge on her for the death of his father, but Electra saved her brother, giving him to an old uncle who took the boy to Phocis. Electra could not forget her murdered father and hated her mother who lived with Aegisthus, her lover. She constantly reproached Clytemnestra and Aegisthus for what they had done. Eight years later, Orestes returns. At first he hesitates, but Electra persistently convinces him that his mother needs revenge. Electra achieved her goal, and Orestes kills first Clytemnestra, then Aegisthus.
