ABSTRACT
For instance, in manic-depressive psychosis to the later oral (cannibalistic) stage, and in schizophrenia even right back to the earlier sucking stage. The degree of introversion and auto-erotic preoccupation of the libido, with relatively complete withdrawal from reality, is therefore often extreme. Satisfactions are essentially auto-erotic, that is to say, achieved in relation to its own person, but in so far as it enters into relationships with the outside world, consisting at that stage of “part-objects”, it has phantasies (unconscious in later life, but revealed during the process of psycho-analysis) of incorporation (through the mouth) and of the expulsion, control and retention by the anus. The psychological importance of the description of libidinal development is evidenced by the fact that the developing infant’s relationship to his environment undergoes progressive alterations which are undoubtedly and essentially related to it.
