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castration complex

Syllabification: (cas·tra·tion com·plex)
Definition of castration complex

noun

Psychoanalysis
  • (in Freudian theory) an unconscious anxiety arising during psychosexual development, represented in males as a fear that the penis will be removed by the father in response to sexual interest in the mother, and in females as a compulsion to demonstrate that they have an adequate symbolic equivalent to the penis, whose absence is blamed on the mother.

castration complex in other Oxford dictionaries

Definition of castration complex in the British & World English dictionary