Deadlead1

Sexual imprinting is the process whereby a parental figure imprints physical and psychological characteristics on its offspring so that when an individual reaches sexual maturity it finds its self attracted to mates that resemble their parent. This makes a lot of sense from an evolutionary perspective because if an individual reaches sexual maturity there parents presumably did something right. Still an unsettling thought when thought about in the context of human psychology. Of course there has been a lot of theorizing about 'The Oedipus Complex', as coined by Sigmund Freud. The idea being that young children, particularly boys, become possessive over their parent of the opposite gender and begin feeling jealous and threatened by the parent of the same gender. This theory has largely been dismissed, but has this been dismissed purely on the grounds that people feel uncomfortable discussing such an awkward topic? There is a great video which covers parental influence in mate choice here