The stage of development hypothesized by Sigmund Freud in his book The interpretation of dreams (1899) in which a boy, at around 3-5 years of age, falls in love with his mother, has an unconscious desire to have sex with her, but fears castration by his father. The female analogue is the Electra complex as proposed by Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961), but for Freud it referred more to ‘penis envy’. The successful resolution of this dilemma is supposed to lead to male gender identification. If not, then the trauma of infantile neurosis foreshadows similar problems in adulthood. Overcoming the Oedipal complex facilitates the superego, a moral factor that comes to dominate the adult mind. The term derives from the mythical king of Thebes, Oedipus, who unwittingly killed his father and then married his mother. The same course of events is considered to have operated in the Electra complex, who slew his mother.