oedipal phase

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oe·di·pal phase

in psychoanalysis, a stage in the psychosexual development of the child, characterized by erotic attachment to the parent of the opposite sex, repressed because of fear of the parent of the same sex; usually occurring in children 3-6 years old.

Synonym(s): oedipal period

oedipal phase

Psychiatry A psychoanalytical stage that occurs between ages 4 and 6, which partially overlaps components of the phallic stage and represents a time of inevitable conflict between a child and parents

oed·i·pal phase

(ed'i-păl fāz)

psychoanalysis A stage in the psychosexual development of the child, characterized by erotic attachment to the parent of the opposite sex, repressed because of fear of the parent of the same sex; usually seen in children aged 3-6 years.

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References in periodicals archive ?

The desired outcome of the Oedipal phase is that the five- or six-year-old boy should view himself as the Oedipal loser rather than the Oedipal victor.

Was Reuben an Oedipal winner? Fathers and Sons: Jacob and Reuben

The double function of weaving--to hold and to imperil--corresponds to the two phases in the development of femininity we find "out of joint" with the time of maturing masculinity, namely, the requirement to give up the mother as beloved in order to usher in the girl's Oedipal phase.

Child's play: Britney Shakespeares

According to Freud's analyses, the oedipal phase implies internalising patriarchal psychology and its sex/gender system.

Book review: Juliet Mitchell, the obsolescent Oedipus complex, and the decline of patriarchy

The end of this stage actually coincides with the opening of 'the Oedipus' ('l'OEdipe') or the Oedipal phase, where both the mother and the infant break themselves away from a hitherto inseparable unity by the function of 'the Name-of-the-Father' ('le Nom-du-Pere').

A reconsideration of Oa the earth goddess in William Golding's 'The Inheritors'

70) is to return to the countryside and pass through the Oedipal phase.

In search of a phallus: Jacinto's true quest in A Cidade e As Serras

Instead, in a triumph of Trendian, we hear about such things as "ideological writing/rewriting," the notion of "hailing," Lacanian "theory of suture," Kristeva's "chromatic jouissance," Freud's "cynosural oedipal phase," and Sedgwick's views on "maternaphobic and homophobic" culture.

Visualizing Boccaccio: Studies on Illustrations of The Decameron from Giotto to Pasolini

In 1978 The Reproduction of Mothering rescued the story of girls' passage through an Oedipal phase, which Freud had treated as a shadow of boys' development.

Femininities, Masculinities, Sexualities: Freud and Beyond

Their review of all reported murders of children by their parents and all murders of parents by their children in Canada between 1974 and 1983, and in Chicago between 1965 and 1981, finds no evidence of a same-sex bias in killings of children during the Oedipal phase (ages 2 to 5).