By "auto-erotism" I mean the phenomena of spontaneous sexual emotion
generated in the absence of an external stimulus proceeding, directly or
indirectly, from another person. In a wide sense, which cannot be wholly
ignored here, auto-erotism may be said to include those transformations of
repressed sexual activity which are a factor of some morbid conditions as
well as of the normal manifestation of art and poetry, and, indeed, more
or less color the whole of life.
Such a definition excludes the normal sexual excitement aroused by the
presence of a beloved person of the opposite sex; it also excludes the
perverted sexuality associated with an attraction to a person of the same
sex; it further excludes the manifold forms of erotic fetichism, in which
the normal focus of sexual attraction is displaced, and voluptuous
emotions are only aroused by some object--hair, shoes, garments,
etc.--which, to the ordinary lover, are of subordinate--though still,
indeed, considerable--importance.[176] The auto-erotic field remains
extensive; it ranges from occasional voluptuous day-dreams, in which the
subject is entirely passive, to the perpetual unashamed efforts at sexual
self-manipulation witnessed among the insane. It also includes, though
chiefly as curiosities, those cases in which individuals fall in love with
themselves. Among auto-erotic phenomena, or on the borderland, we must
further include those religious sexual manifestations for an ideal object,
of which we may find evidence in the lives of saints and ecstatics.
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