ABSTRACT
This chapter makes a clear distinction between infantile sexuality and primary love. The author proposes a theory that is infantile sexuality does not involve the genetically determined programs organizing primary attachment, that is, the relational patterns entering into interaction with the social environment. It involves the pure subjectivity proper to fantasmatic activity. Infantile sexuality involves autoerotism, not for want of anything better and by way of compensation, as is suggested by the thesis of the biological continuity between infantile and adult sexuality, but because it expresses an imaginary relation to the object. The distinctive feature of the phallic-narcissistic organization is that it best expresses the autoerotic dimension of infantile sexuality at the same time as it clearly refers to the reality of adult relationships. Seeking the expressions of infantile sexuality in what the analysand is saying and thinking is undoubtedly one of the fundamental aspects, if not the foundation itself, of the psychoanalytic approach.
