 Can you become sexually attracted to your own body, passionately desire it? Can you become sexually attracted to an introject, a self-state, a representation of someone in your mind and in a voice? Can you be sexually attracted to a Transformation of yourself in your own mind yourself as a child yourself as a woman if you're a man Yourself as a man if you're a woman yourself as an animal Can you be sexually attracted to a story a narrative which involves only you? Can you be sexually attracted to a future version of yourself to a past version of yourself? Can you be sexually attracted to your own absence to your own death for example? These are all forms of auto erotism phenomena, which is one of the cornerstones of pathological narcissism and the topic of today's video today. We have a saucy saucy video We're going to discuss what else six Some people are sexually attracted to their own bodies They are their own sexual objects Even when they have sex with partners They're actually masturbating with a partner's body Some people are sexually attracted to how they imagine themselves to be They imagine themselves to be for example children and then they are attracted to themselves as children Some people imagine themselves to be of the opposite sex some men Imagine themselves to be women and then they are attracted to themselves as women and so All these are manifestations of a phenomenon known as auto erotism first described who else by Zygmunt Freud Today we are going to survey We're going to explore the entire range of auto erotism The attraction to one's body The attraction to one's self as a sexual object the attraction to one's self as one could have been Role play with oneself Masturbating as a main form of sexual activity. We're going to discuss phenomena such as homosexuality transgender states and gender dysphoria and we're going to link them to various mental health theories including Freud's original theory of narcissism because as Freud said some people are sexually invested and Emotionally invested in an internal object which represents themselves. This is called narcissistic libido people who are sexually attracted to themselves and people who interact sexually only with themselves People who are emotionally and sexually invested only in themselves are of course incapable of maintaining any libidinal Attraction or relationship with others in other words, they have an impaired impaired object relations Even when they have sex even when they have a sexual or intimate partner They're all alone They're solipsistic They're isolated in their own minds and their own universe and they within this universe They undergo fascinating transformations from one gender to another from one sex to another and from one Libidinal object from one sexual object to another these transitions these manifestations of internal turmoil a kind of identity disorders Underly and permeate the narcissistic dynamic My name is Sam Vaknin and I'm the author of Malignant self-love narcissism revisited I'm 100,000 percent heterosexual So don't entertain any any unseemly thoughts And I'm a professor of psychology. I will start by reviewing some recent literature Then I will discuss homosexuality transgender and gender dysphoria and Then I will give you a review of the original concept of auto erotism in Freud's work These are the three parts of the video and you're completely at liberty to watch only those parts That ingests you as is always the case So shortly I will review for you the most recent literature on auto erotism and similar paraphernalias But before we go there, let's start by a general overview of homosexuality transvestism transgender and Gender dysphoria and try to place it in the continuum of narcissism and more specifically auto erotism So this is the first part of the lecture and I go on to literature review and then at the very end I will describe Freud's concept of auto erotism Let's start with homosexuality Research failed to find any substantive difference between the psychological makeup of a narcissist who happens to be heterosexual and a narcissist who happens to have homosexual preferences There is no typical profile of a homosexual narcissists The the homosexual narcissist is not more predatory than the heterosexual narcissists The question of whether the homosexual narcissist is lying or telling the truth when he says that he wants to get laid by one and all The question of whether the homosexual narcissist is suicidal whether he's not afraid of AIDS. These are all essentially homophobic questions Both heterosexual narcissists and homosexual narcissists are predators Both of them devour Narcissistic supply sources as they go along Narcissists of all tribes and all sexual orientations look for new victims the way tigers look for prey They're hungry. They're hungry for adoration and admiration and acceptance approval any kind of attention All sources die hard once taken for granted the narcissistic element of Conquest simply dies and very often the narcissist is compelled to devalue the source and move on as I've explained in previous videos in my interviews with Richard Brennan Conquest is important To all narcissists whether they are heterosexual or homosexual and somatic Conquest is important because it proves To the narcissists his own superiority Irresistibility the very act of subduing Subjugating or acquiring the power to influence someone provides a narcissist with narcissistic supply Empowers him the newly conquered idolized the narcissists this serve as kind of trophies The act of conquering the act of subordinating They're epitomized by the sexual encounter It is an objective and atavistic interaction regardless of the sex of the target Making love to someone means that the consenting partner Finds a narcissist or one or more of the narcissist traits such as his intelligence is physique or his money Finds them or him the narcissist irresistible The distinction between passive and active sexual partners is mechanical. It's false It's superfluous and superficial Penetration does not make one of the parties the stronger one To cause someone to have sex with you is a powerful stimulus and always provokes a sensation of omnipotence in the narcissist Whether one is physically passive or active one is always psychosexually active Anyone who has unsafe sex is gambling with his or her life Though the odds are much smaller than public hysteria would have us believe Reality does not matter though. It is a perception of reality that matters Getting this close to perceive danger is the equivalent of engaging in self-destruction. So it's it's a form of suicide Narcissists are at times suicidal in this sense in this way. They are self-destructive by being reckless and This is common to all narcissists heterosexual and homosexual But there is one element which might be unique to homosexuals The fact that their self-definition that their core identity hinges on their sexual orientation. I Know of no heterosexual who would use his sexual preference or sexual orientation to define himself Almost fully. I know of no heterosexual who would who would say I'm heterosexual when he seeks to describe himself Homosexuals would a homosexual gay man would say I'm gay a Lesbian would say I'm lesbian. This is their core identity homosexuality homosexuality has been inflated to the level of a subculture a separate psychology Identity politics a myth. This is typical of persecuted minorities However, it does have an influence on the individual. Of course preoccupation with body and sex makes most homosexual narcissists somatic narcissists If what I'm trying to say is that prevalence and incidence of somatic narcissism among homosexuals is bound to be a lot more common Than among heterosexual narcissists. In other words many more homosexual narcissists are somatic than heterosexual narcissists Moreover the homosexual as Freud had observed Makes love to a person of the same sex In a way the homosexual makes love to his reflection in very substantial ways In this respect the homosexual homosexual relations are highly narcissistic or if they are not Narcissistic the highly autoerotic Making love to someone who looks like you to a very large extent is Autoerotic the same way that making love to your offspring is autoerotic The somatic narcissists Directs his libido his sex drive at his own body as opposed to the cerebral narcissists Who directs at libido his libido at his intellect? So somatic narcissists is emotionally and sexually Protected invested in his own body The somatic narcissists cultivates his body nourishes his body Nurtures his body is often a hypochondriac He dedicates an inordinate amount of time to the needs real or imaginary of his body It is through his body that the somatic narcissists Tracks down and captures his supply sources And the supply that the somatic narcissists so badly requires Is derived from his shape from his form from his constitution from his build from his profile Physical profile physiological profile from his beauty from his physical attractiveness his health or his age If I am right in the majority of homosexual narcissists are somatic This is their psychological profile The somatic narcissists down plays narcissistic supply directed at other traits. He uses six To reaffirm his prowess his attractiveness his youth Love to the somatic narcissists is synonymous with sex and he focuses his learning skills on the sexual act The foreplay the coital aftermath. How many orgasms did I give you? It's like a scorecard Seduction becomes addictive because it leads to a quick succession of supply sources Naturally boredom a form of transmuted aggression Sets in Once the going gets routine routine is counter narcissistic By definition because routine threatens a narcissist sense of uniqueness being not average above the common And so this leads us to transsexuals Philosophically, there's little difference between a narcissist who seeks to avoid his true self a narcissist who positively attempts to become his foresail and A transsexual who seeks to discard his true gender or her true gender There is a similarity there Superficially appealing similarity, but is it doubtful? Is it questionable or is it real? Is the rejection of one's gender gender dysphoria the equivalent of the narcissist rejection of his true self? People sometimes seek Sex reassignment because of advantages and opportunities which they believe are enjoyed by the opposite sex and This rather unrealistic fantastic view of the other is is faintly narcissistic it includes elements of entitlement Idealized overvaluation self preoccupation and objectification of one's self and others This gender dysphoria demonstrates Deficient ability to empathize in some grandiose sense of entitlement I deserve to be taken care of There's also some omnipotence. I can be whatever I want to be despite nature despite God So transsexualism involves a lot of grandiosity a lot of entitlement and Is very reminiscent of narcissism? The feeling of entitlement is especially manifest in some gender dysphoric individuals who aggressively pursue hormonal or surgical treatment They feel that it is their inalienable inalienable right to receive such treatment on demand and without any restrictions or restrictions For instance, they often time refuse to undergo psychological evaluation or treatment as a condition for the hormonal or surgical treatment It is interesting to note that both narcissism and gender dysphoria are early childhood phenomena This could be explained by problematic primary objects parental figures dysfunctional families or a common genetic or biochemical problem It is too early to say which as yet there isn't even an agreed typology of gender identity disorders Let alone an in-depth comprehension of their sources A radical view to some extent was preferred in the 90s by Ray Blanchard Ray Blanchard seems to indicate that pathological narcissism is more likely to be found among non-core ecodistonic auto-genophilic Gynophilic transsexuals and among heterosexual transvestites. It is less manifest in core egosyntonic homosexual transsexuals Auto-gynophilic transsexuals are subject to an intense urge to become the opposite sex And so to be rendered the sexual object of their own desire This is the path they choose A male chooses to become a female because then he can become his own object of unbridled desire and passion In other words, these people are so sexually attracted to themselves that they wish to become both lovers in the romantic equation They wish to become the male and the female simultaneously It is a fulfillment of the ultimate narcissistic fantasy of self-sufficiency The false self is a fetish, narcissistic fetish Freud made the distinction between anacliptic objects and narcissistic objects and this is the ultimate in narcissistic objects Auto-gynophilic transsexuals start off as heterosexuals They end up being either bisexual or homosexual By shifting their attentions to the opposite sex the auto-gynophilic transsexual proves Proof to themselves that they have finally become true and desirable So for example by shifting his attention or her attentions to men The male auto-gynophilic transsexual proves to himself that he has finally become a true and desirable woman And this is all of course linked to Auto-erotism First describe who else was Zygmunt Freud, but before we go there I would like to give you a literature review You can skip the literature review and go directly to the last part of the video which deals with Freud's auto-erotism But before we go there, I want to coin a new word auto-sexual Not asexual, but auto-sexual The label asexual Has had come to signify anyone who does not feel the need to engage in partner sex Who does not who is not attracted to? another person sexually attracted This is of course misleading People who avoid having sex with other people But they must debate on a regular basis and an ex as an exclusive sexual outlet May not be asexual at all They may be auto-sexual So I want to suggest that within the range of asexuality and gray sexuality We should this to distinguish a sub variant the subspecies of auto-sexuals These are people who actually have a sex drive a very active or sometimes hyperactive sex drive But it is directed at themselves Directed at their own bodies. That's why they must debate But they are not attracted to other people They must debate not only as a release because masturbation is often coupled with fantasies But these fantasies are auto-erotic. They concern the person who is masturbating All auto-sexuals are auto-erotic But only a minority of auto-erotics are auto-sexual and come to it a bit later Auto-erotism more frequently finds expression via activities such as same-sex partnerships homosexuality or incest Incest is actually having sex with a living expression of one's own genetic makeup When you're having incest you have a you're having sex with someone who is 50% you So this is highly auto-erotic Similarly homosexuals are having sex with the same sex This is narcissism thrice removed or more precisely auto-erotism twice or thrice removed I'm going to delve into all this deeply a little bit later, and I know it's going to be highly controversial The gay community in general rejects any attempt any attempt to analyze the Mental issues or psychological issues underlying homosexuality homosexuality to be clear is Determined mostly biologically. It's a biological phenomenon, and it probably is determined in uterus in the womb long before birth But having been born a homosexual there are layers and layers of psychology and a Social context and a cultural context within within which homosexuality Operates and it is there that homosexuality becomes very closely identified with auto-erotism So as promised we start with a review of the recent literature the Journal of sexual medicine January 2020 there's an article there erotic target identity Inversions among men and women in an internet sample was authored by Ashley Brown Edward Barker Kazi Rahman and others And I read to you a few highlights from this fascinating article Erotic target identity inversions ETI eyes Are poorly studied our affiliates that involve sexual arousal By the idea or the fantasy of being the object of one's own sexual desires So the results of the study were mild levels of reported sexual arousal to the idea of being the preferred erotic target Were common among the four groups in the study characterizing about half of them Gender identity discomfort was associated with auto-gynephilia auto-androphilia and auto-anthropomorpho Zofilia I'll discuss one or two of these a bit later Greater gender non-conformity was associated with auto-gynephilia auto-androphilia and auto Nipio filia Autism scores were associated with auto-androphilia and auto-nipio filia masochism was not associated with ETI eyes scores But humiliation was and here's a linkage by the way to the BDSM community The clinical implications of a study are Finding suggests that it may be important to distinguish between subgroups of those with different levels and types of ETI eye arousal and expression the results support the concept of ETI eyes as a Paraphilic dimension in non-clinical samples and the possible role of gender-related psychological factors So this is the first study that seems to indicate that auto-erotism has a variety of manifestations of clinical manifestations and that these Manifestations are critically dependent on gender roles and psychological factors another recent article auto-gynephilia and unappreciated underappreciated Paraphilia was published by Anne Lawrence and the abstract is Auto-gynephilia is defined as a male's men's propensity to be sexually aroused by the thought of himself as a female It is the paraphilia that is theorized to underlie transvestism in some forms of male to female transsexualism Auto-gynephilia encompasses sexual arousal with cross-dressing and cross-gender expression that does not involve women's clothing per se The concept of auto-gynephilia auto-gynephilia defines a typology of male to female transsexualism and offers a theory of motivation for one type of male to female male to female transsexualism Auto-gynephilia resembles a sexual orientation in that it involves elements of idealization and attachment as well as erotic desire. I want to make clear This is idealization of oneself What what can be called self idealization? And it involves attachment to oneself as a sexual object of the opposite sex So male would get attached to himself as a female He would idealize himself as a female The article continues Nearly three percent of men in Western societies may experience auto-gynephilia Its most severe manifestation male to female transsexualism is rare but increasing in prevalence Some theorists and clinicians reject the transsexual typology and theory of motivation derived from auto-gynephilia Their objections suggest a need for additional research The concept of auto-gynephilia can assist clinicians in understanding some otherwise puzzling manifestations of non-homosexual male to female transsexual transsexualism Auto-gynephilia exemplifies an unusual paraffili category called erotic target identity inversions in which men desire to impersonate or turn their bodies Into facsimiles of the persons or things to which they are sexually attracted. I want to clarify that target inversion doesn't have to involve the opposite sex a Man can imagine himself to be a child and this is known as auto pedophilia a Man can imagine himself to be a woman and this is auto-gynephilia a woman can imagine herself to be a man auto-androphilia Both sexes can imagine themselves to be animal an animal and this is bestiality and so these Target inversions involve auto-erotism plus Inversion plus conversion to another type another organism in a way Separate from this We have classical auto-erotism which involves sexual attraction and libidinal investment in one's own body or one's introjects and Separate from this we have sexual activities that involve sexual partners which resemble the active person for example homosexuality or lesbianism in Both cases there is attraction to the same sex which somehow embodies the active partner similarly insist as I've mentioned before Another article it was published in in journal of sexual research in March in the quarterly March to June 2009 was titled erotic target location errors and underappreciated paraphilia dimension and It says based on studies of heterosexual Based on studies of heterosexual male fetishes transvestites and transsexuals Blanchard in 1991 Proposed the existence of a hitherto unrecognized paraphilic dimension erotic target location errors ETLEs involving the erroneous location of erotic targets in the environment Erotic target location errors can involve preferential attention to a peripheral or in Inessential part of an erotic target manifesting as fetishism or mislocation of an erotic target in one's own body Manifesting as a desire to impersonate or become a facsimile of the erotic target transvestism or transsexualism Despite its potential clinical and heuristic value this concept Defines a paraphilic dimension that is underappreciated and so this review summarizes the studies leading to the concept of ETLEs and describes how they are believed to manifest in men whose preferred prefer erotic targets are women, children, men, amputees, plush animals and real animals This review also describes the same phenomena in women and discusses possible etiologies Consider the implications of this concept for psychoanalytic theories of transvestism and male-to-female transsexualism as well as for the forthcoming revision of the diagnostic and statistical manual Another article that I wish to refer you to is clinical observations and systematic studies of autogenophilia The term autogenophilia denotes a male's Paraphilic tendency to be sexually aroused by the photo image of himself as a woman This term subsumes transvestism as well as erotic ideas or situations in which women's garments per se play a small role on none at all this review article which was published by the way in Journal of sexual marital therapy By bloodshed himself This review article presents clinical examples of the lesser known types of autogenophilia Those in which the element of cross-dressing is secondary or entirely absent It sketches earlier attempts to label and conceptualize this phenomena It summarizes recent quantitative studies exploring the relationships between autogenophilia and other psychosexual variables heterosexual attraction and Speculates on the etiology of autogenophilia and its relationship to transsexualism It is concluded that the concept of autogenophilia is Needed to fill a gap in our current battery of concepts and categories for thinking about gender identity disorders and finally an article in the archives of sexual behavior August 2005 Titled early history of the concept of autogenophilia again by Ray Blanchard It says since the beginning of the last century Clinical observers have described the propensity of certain males to be erotically aroused by the thought or image of themselves as women Because there was no specific term to denote this phenomenon Clinicians references to it were generally oblique or erythrastic The closest available word was word was transvestism the definition of transvestism accepted by the end of the 20th century, however Did not just fail to capture the wide range of erotically arousing cross-gender behavior in fantasies in which women's garments per se play a small role or none at all It actually directed attention away from this phenomenon The absence of an adequate terminology became acute in the writer's research on the taxonomy of gender identity disorders in biological males This had suggested that heterosexual Asexual and bisexual transsexuals are more similar to each other and to transvestize Than any of them is to the homosexual type and that the common feature in transvestites and the three types of non Homosexual transsexuals is a history of erotic arousal in association with the thought or image of themselves as women At the same time the writer was becoming aware of male patients Who are sexually aroused only by the idea of having a woman's body and not at all by the idea of wearing women's clothes To fill this Terminological and conceptual gap the writer introduced the term Autogenophilia love of oneself as a woman. I would like to also Dwell upon the concept of autopedophilia. It was described by Kevin Sue and Michael Bailey and Here is the abstract of their article titled autopedophilia The most salient dimension of men's sexual orientation is gender attraction to males versus females a Second dimension is sexual maturity attraction to children versus adults a less appreciated dimension is location Attraction to other individuals versus a sexual fantasy of being one of these individuals Men sexually aroused by the idea of fantasy of being the kinds of individuals to whom they're sexually attracted They have an erotic target identity inversion ETII We conducted say the authors an online survey to investigate the prevalence and phenomenology of ETII among 475 men sexually attracted to children Autopedophilia or sexual arousal by the idea of being a child was common among them Furthermore autopedophilic men tended to be sexually aroused by imagining themselves as the kind of children With respect to gender or age to whom they are sexually attracted The results support the concept of ETIIs and exemplify the simultaneous importance of three dimensions of male sexual orientation auto-erotism, I'm going to read to you the entry on auto-erotism in the Freud encyclopedia Auto-erotism is the term used to describe those forms of sexual activity that do not involve a sexual object The specifically psychoanalytic sense of auto-erotism is distinct from its general sense as a synonym for masturbation Although this distinction is sometimes blurred by psychoanalytic writers Freud's concept of auto-erotism had important ramifications for several central components of psychoanalytic theory including the problem of the choice of neurosis psychosexual development and the etiology of perversion The thesis that infantile sexuality is predominantly auto-erotic Underwent a gradual attrition after its publication in 1905 The term auto-erotism was introduced by the British sexologist Havlock Ellis in 1989 He used it to denote spontaneous unprovoked episodes of sexual arousal Ellis published a second paper in 1898 linking the symptoms of hysteria to auto-erotism citing Freud and Joseph Breuer And he sent an off-print to Freud Freud adopted the term auto-erotism a year later in a letter to Wilhelm Vliss in which he describes Auto-erotism as the lowest of the sexual strata which dispenses with any psychosexual aim and seeks only locally gratified sensations Even at this point Freud defined the term differently than Ellis As he later put it the essential point is not the genesis of the excitation But the question of its three relation to an object Freud made no published reference to auto-erotism Until the three essays on the theory of sexuality in which he cited Ellis's work and Distinguish Ellis's views from his own. This was in 1905 Freud distanced himself from Ellis's inclusion of the whole of hysteria and all the manifestations of masturbation under auto-erotism as Freud later made explicit both hysterical symptoms and many examples of masturbation involve fantasized sexual objects Whereas auto-erotism is not directed towards any object as he wrote in 1908 In 1905 Freud believed the entire period of infantile sexuality to be Predominantly auto-erotic although not exclusively so with object choice prevailing only once puberty is reached Although over the next few years. He began to qualify this these emphasis on the auto-erotic character of infantile sexuality Children said Freud Initially stimulate their anal and genital zones to obtain pleasure without reference to a real or fantasy fantasized object Unlike early genital and anal impulses the oral drive is an object from the beginning the breast and Only later becomes auto-erotic Auto-erotic activities become object related by being brought into association with the psychological attitude Attitudes towards others or by the attachment of sexual instincts to vital self-preservative activities requiring objects During the auto-erotic phase the components of the sexual drive behave autonomously Seeking gratification independently of one another Each of them goes its own way to obtain pleasure said Freud in 1916 It is only at puberty that these drives are subordinated to the general organization into reproduction and this feature of auto-erotism in conjunction with its objectlessness Determines the perverse character of infantile sexuality 1911 Freud introduced a modification into his developmental model of a stage auto-erotism Giving way to object related sexuality at puberty So the modification was this Originally Freud said that there is a stage of auto-erotism in Infantile sexuality and it gives way it disappears and is replaced by object-related sexuality more or less in adolescence but now Freud introduced a stage of narcissism Interpose the stage of narcissism self-love between auto-erotic mature and mature sexuality So now there are three phases auto-erotism narcissism and object sexuality During the narcissistic stage the child takes himself as his first love object and only later learns to love other people Freud so distinguished between obtaining sexual pleasure from one's body without Request to a real or imagined sexual object and that is auto-erotism and Being sexually excited by one's body as a sexual object narcissism Freud went on to claim that paranoiac Suffixated in the stage of narcissism whereas schizophrenics are fixated in the stage of auto-erotism He said this in 1911 and luckily for him. He never repeated it because it's sheer nonsense the unification of the sexual drive which Freud had earlier claimed occurred only a puberty is Now described as a characteristic of the narcissistic stage The problem posed by Freud's 1911 thesis of the stages of auto-erotism and Narcissism as the respective fixation points for schizophrenia and paranoia was dealt with by abandoning the nozzle logical distinction In the disposition to obsessional neurosis published in 1913 Freud Propounded the idea of a pregenital organization of the libido the anal sadistic stage that Follows the narcissistic state During this period the component instincts said Freud have already come together for the choice of an object The object is already something extraneous Auto-erotism was now implicitly confined only to the earliest phase of infancy and then of course in 1914 The famous essay on narcissism and introduction again from Freud changes his mind He altered his scheme by describing the original oral relation to the breast as an auto-erotic sexual activity the first auto-erotic sexual Satisfactions brought Freud are experiencing connection with vital functions which serve the purpose of self-preservation Reservation Object less oral sexual drive find satisfaction through the necessarily object-directed self-preservative impulse to feed in 1915 another essay the instincts and their vicissitudes Freud wrote that the stage of auto-erotism is a abruptly Gun in other ways in this essay. He doesn't mention auto-erotism at all Auto-erotism becomes the characteristic mode of sexual activity during the narcissistic stage So he unifies the auto-erotic with the narcissistic the same way by the way I do Auto-erotism becomes the characteristic mode of sexual activity during the narcissistic stage Freud does not spell out the implications of this change for his earlier concept of the disunity of Sexuality during the stage of auto-erotism and the view that auto-erotism is a phenomenon of the narcissistic stage Seems to preclude the existence of truly object-less sexuality In other words by unifying auto-erotism with narcissism Freud destroyed the very concept undermined the very concept of auto-erotism because narcissism is object-oriented The object is oneself In the 1915 edition of the three essays of theory of sexuality Freud emphasized that I quote The choice of an object such as we have shown to be characteristic of the pubertal phase of development Has already been frequently or habitually affected during childhood That is to say the whole of the sexual currents have become directed towards a single person in relation to whom they seek to achieve their aims Freud drops completely auto-erotism. He just distinguishes between two types of objects Self-object the self as an object and other people as objects In introductory lectures on psychoanalysis 1916 Freud again reverted to his earlier position of the primary object-directedness of the oral drive a view that he reiterated seven years later in 1923 In the letter text in 1923 he also maintains the view that auto-erotism is directed at the child's own body In other words that is narcissistic. He writes in the first instance the oral component instinct Find satisfaction by attaching itself to the sating of the desire for nourishment and its object is the mother's breast It then detaches itself becomes independent. There's the same time auto-erotic That is it finds an object in the child's own body Freud's last major statement concerning auto-erotism is found in an autobiographical study He returns to the notion of a non-centralized stage of auto-erotism But describes this as preceding the oral stage This was a logical outcome of Freud's thesis of oral anal and phallic organizations of the libido published in 1925 It's earlier concept of anarchic and structured sexual activity is not compatible with the concept of infantile sexual organization Unless it's it is taken to precedence Freud regards it as likely that the infant does not distinguish the breast from his own body during the oral phase And therefore it becomes a self-object Freud's account of auto-erotism Became more and more contradictory and ambiguous during the course of his career There is an ambiguity for example in his use of the term object Does it refer to a real object out there or a physiological object an introjet? This equivocation and confusion have been discussed by several psychoanalytic commentators not only Compton and McMillan So as we see auto-erotism in the Freudian sense Is a problem I choose to define auto-erotism as a libidinal or sexual or emotional investment either in one's own body or in an introjet