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Freud felt that fixation at, or severe regression to, infantile levels of functioning could not be helped by psychoanalysis. If patients had not reached the stage of clear delineation of object and self, they could not develop a transference neurosis. However, in the past decade the intensive study of early infancy has brought increased understanding of what is required for age-appropriate maturation in the pre-oedipal period. It is now felt that with the encouragement of a narcissistic transference and a treatment planned to resolve the resistances of this period, a corrective experience can be provided to facilitate maturational processes. Growth to object relationship can then be achieved.
Understanding patients, their behavior, their symbolic and verbal communications, requires a knowledge of the libidinal levels of their functioning and the object-ego state of their relationships. In his paper “On Narcissim” (1914), Freud states that primary narcissism is the libidinal cathexis of the self between the phases of autoeroticism and object love. He explains that the isolated sexual instincts have come together into a single whole, taking as object the infant's own ego, a narcissistic organization never thereafter wholly abandoned even after external objects are cathected with libido in a constant way. This is part of normal development.
In the autoerotic stage independent parts of the body are used for tension discharge, functioning on the pleasure-unpleasure principle.