Psychology of sex - Total No. of Records in System :: 2032

THE SEXUAL IMPULSE IN YOUTHMARGARET MEAD, Growing up in New Guinea.Coming of Age in Samoa.FREUD, Introductory Lectures on Psycho-analysis.ERNEST JONES, Papers on Psycho-analysis.Auto-erotismIn considering even the earliest phenomena of childhoodwe have already reached the manifestations coveredby the term auto-erotism. I devised this term, "autoerotism,"in 1898 for those spontaneous solitary sexualphenomena of which genital excitement during sleep maybe said to be the type. The term, is now generally used,though not always in the exact sense in which I defined it,but sometimes only to connote sexual activity directedtowards the self. That isunduly to narrow the term down,and it is not in accordance with the usual sense of theauto-group of terms; thus automatic action does not meanaction towards, but by, the self, without direct externalimpulse. If we narrow the term auto-erotic we have noterm left to indicate the whole group.By "auto-erotism," therefore, I mean the phenomenaof spontaneous sexual emotion generated in the absenceof an external stimulus proceeding directly or indirectlyfrom another person. In a wide sense, which cannot bewholly ignored here, auto-erotism may be said to includethose transformations of repressed sexual activity whichare a factor of some morbid conditions (as probably inhysteria)as well as of the normal manifestations of artand poetry, and, indeed, more or lesslife.color the whole ofAuto-erotism in the largest sense, says Dickinson, includesany self-love in any self-expression, not merely thevictims of sexual deviation, but the scientist, the explorer,the sportman, the mountain-climber.[107]