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Autoerotism and secondary narcissism are developmental phases that refer to the aim, distribution, and, according to some authors (e.g., Kohut, 1971), the charge of the libido. During the first year of life, erotogenic bodily zones are cathected. At this stage of autoerotism, individual zones compete with each other for psychic attention. This disparate sense of self and self-cathexis is eventually replaced by a consolidated self, which is cathected as a whole. This cathexis of a consolidated self-representation and ego structure is referred to as secondary narcissism. It is the purpose of this paper to trace the development of these concepts and to discuss a topic that is relatively obscure in the psychoanalytic literature: the developmental changes that allow a consolidated self-cathexis to evolve out of what was formerly only a collection of libidinized erotogenic zones. The developmental discussion will roughly conform to Anna Freud's (1962) Diagnostic Profile.
Sigmund Freud (1905) first outlined a theory of infantile sexuality in his Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality. In this seminal work, he proposed a developmental progression of libidinal cathexis from the oral to the anal and phallic erotogenic zones. In early infancy, when the mouth is the center of libidinal interest, the libido is autoerotically cathected. Freud (1905) observed that “the most striking feature of this sexual activity is that the instinct is not directed towards other people, but obtains satisfaction from the subject's own body” (p. 181). This notion of the autoerotic instinct as one of self-rather than object-gratification continued throughout Freud's writings (see