Masturbation and Character

As the ego develops the capacity to distinguish between self-representations and object representations, narcissistic frustrations impede the development of real object relations. There result attempts to obtain instinctual gratification through various autoerotic activities with fantasies embodying excessive cathexis of the self-representation and the early object representations. These archaic fantasies become attached to the earliest rhythmic precursors of genital masturbation. Concomitant with the development of these earliest fantasies to their more complex derivatives, there occurs the development of the masturbation process up to the eventual act of genital masturbation or its various equivalents. Such genital masturbation or masturbation equivalents may be used to express pregenital conflicts related to any of the stages of psychosexual development through the associated masturbation fantasies. Derivatives of such unconscious infantile masturbation fantasies may also be lived out in behavior patterns, which may be isolated from conscious awareness and well integrated into the personality. Such basic unconscious fantasies with the excessive cathexis of self-representations and early object representations may prove more readily accessible to emotional uncovering and working through by increased emphasis on the careful and persistent analysis of the total masturbatory process. This is not meant to imply that such analysis of the total masturbatory process is a substitute for the usual analysis of the patient's defenses,

symptoms, behavior, dreams, and transference relationships. Excerpts from the analyses of a number of patients have been presented to illustrate the therapeutic value of such emphasis, along with some attempt to indicate some of the vicissitudes of the total masturbatory process.