As the child begins his or her third year of age, they enter the phallic stage. This stage is one of the stressful one of all and lasts for approximately two years. During this stage, children become more aware of their genitalia. The children become attracted to the opposite sex, predominantly their opposite sex parent. The term Oedipal Complex is given to boys who go through this and Electra Complex for the girls. The child feels as if his or her same sex parent is their challenger. Boys tend to face castration anxiety. This stems from their fear of their father punishing them (Thorton). The girls begin to develop a penis envy. Freud believes that the girls felt they once had a penis but it has been stolen from them. The girls therefore wish to have bear a child by their father to make up for the loss (“Sigmund Freud’s Theory of Personality”). Freud did admit that he was unsure of his theory of penis envy. If a person successfully resolves this conflict, he or she will be able to deal with personal animosity or envy. The individual will have learned to regulate their impulses; in other words, the superego will become more powerful than the id (Kaplan and Sadock, Synopsis of Psychiatry 214)
