Some Comments and Observations on Early Autoerotic Activities1

The reader of the 1912 symposium on masturbation—on which Dr. Reich's comments have thrown new light—may well feel humble in front of the wealth of clinical observations and the breadth of vision of pioneers joining in enviable teamwork under Freud's guidance. The co-operative effort no less than the frankness of controversy constitute a model for inquiries into an area, where clinical data of some general significance are not likely to be assembled by isolated observers. The need for such procedures has, if anything, increased with our growing insight into the complexity of psychoanalytic research, which seems greatest where early phases of childhood are concerned, in the specific framework of this contribution, the study of early autoerotic activities. It is at the same time the area, where our understanding, however fragmentary, has advanced most during the last decades, particularly through the comparison of data gained in various fields of work. These co-operative efforts had been postulated by Freud (15) and there is little that need be added to his reasoning. "The early observation of children has the disadvantage of working upon data which are easily misunderstandable; psychoanalysis is made difficult by the fact that it can only reach its data as well as its conclusions after long detours. But co-operation of the two methods can attain a satisfactory degree of certainty in their findings." This certainty has not been reached and even the discussion of methods and concrete procedures to be used in research is comparatively new.3 But the goal indicated by Freud, an integrated approach to the study of infancy and childhood, is likely to stimulate research over a long time to come. In what follows I propose to discuss and to illustrate some problems arising in connection with