ABSTRACT
According to Freud, the erotic or sexual instinct is active since birth. Its manifestations are, first of all, auto-erotic, then narcissistic, and finally alloerotic. Contrary to infantile sexuality and to adolescent sexuality, adult sexuality is based on integration and introjective identification: introjection of both parent's roles into the combined object, and introjective identification with the sexual union of the internal combined object. Donald Meltzer considers the object choice of sexual perversions and fetishism as dismantled objects rather than part-objects. Meltzer maintains that there is a clear distinction between infantile and adult sexuality. One of the most complex phases in the transition from infantile to adult sexuality is adolescence, typified by confused and fluctuating identity, emotional instability, and contradictory behaviour, which Meltzer explains as the result of splitting of the self and objects into "a multitude of part-objects".
