{{Short description|Psychological term}} '''Ophelia complex''' is the term used by Gaston Bachelard to refer to the links between femininity, liquids, and drowning which he saw as symbolised in the fate of Shakespeare's Ophelia.<ref>A. Thompson ed., ''Hamlet'' (Arden 2016) p. 26-7</ref>

==Main theme== Bachelard traced in Romanticism a nexus of ideas linking the dissolution of the self<ref>G. Wisker, ''Rites of Passage in Postcolonial Women's Writing'' (2010) p. 241</ref> – male or female – with immersion in the feminine element of water, as symbolised by Ophelia's drowning.<ref>P. Brooker, ''A Practical Reader in Contemporary Literary Theory'' (2010) p. 34</ref>

===Literary offshoots=== Federico García Lorca explored the image of water and a despairing sexuality, epitomised in the Ophelia complex, throughout his writings.<ref>[https://muse.jhu.edu/article/510609/pdf The Weeping Brook]</ref>

==Exteriorised adolescence== A later, and unconnected, use of the terms Ophelia complex/Ophelia syndrome was introduced by Mary Pipher in her ''Reviving Ophelia'' of 1994. There she argued for a view of Shakespeare's character as lacking inner direction and externally defined by men (father/brother),<ref>D. Lester, ''Katie's Diary'' (2004) p. 93–5</ref> and suggested that similar external pressures were currently faced by post-pubescent girls.<ref>K. Douglas, ''Life Narratives and Youth Culture'' (2007) p. 160</ref> The danger of the Ophelia syndrome was that of abandoning a rooted childhood self for an apparently more sophisticated but over-externalised façade self.<ref>D. Lester, ''Katie's Diary'' (2004) p. 95</ref>

==See also== {{Columns-list|colwidth=22em| *Abjection *''Bruges-la-Morte'' *Complex (psychology) *Matriarchy *Melusina *Oceanic feeling }}

== References == <!--- See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Footnotes on how to create references using <ref></ref> tags, these references will then appear here automatically --> {{Reflist|2|}}

==Sources== * G. Bachelard, ''L’Eau et les rêves: Essai sur l’imagination de la matière'' (Paris, 1942).

== External links == * [https://www.academia.edu/970991/Ophelia_and_Isabella_exoticizing_the_body_of_the_mad_woman Ophelia and Isabella]

Category:Psychoanalytic terminology Category:Analytical psychology Category:Complex (psychology) Category:Freudian psychology Category:Ophelia Category:Drowning Category:Femininity