I'm not sure if the stage before the auto-erotic is the birth stage, maybe it should just be called the oral stage. The problem is that I don't work with the psychosexual or erotogenic zones directly.
In some ways I envy the classical analysts who do work with the zones and body parts now along with the Kleinians. I didn't get trained in their techniques and I sometimes feel like they are working with some primal part of the person that I don't have access to. Of course, this envy rises when I experience frustration with my techniques but when they are working then I think I've found the 'the way' that gets to the essence and that the interpersonal is the bedrock...
Anyway, if you take the phantasy from the Truman Show of someone feeling like their world is unreal it's also linked not to a representation of God but of other people doing it. Similarly, in the Hobbesian phantasy of the Leviathan there is a war of all against all which we've seen in Mad Max is also mixed with the representations of others with the land. I've had patients that have had both of these phantasies.
They can be contrasted to higher level phantasies in the volar stage in which paranoia doesn't concern all people but, Matrix or Highlander style, there is a person who is special/magical/superhuman in a crowd of normal people and he is the object of paranoia. Similarly, instead of the wold/people feeling unreal then this becomes transferred to an object and there's the phantasy of the unreal lover who the object egoist isn't really sure about. However, it's not just his love that is questioned, but the ideal of some giant humiliation that is supposed to occur from him. This is one patient, however, and the phantasy of a con-man who has made one's whole life a lie (as opposed to the world) seems suitable here too.
I've also differentiated the volar deutero from an earlier stage. In the former a person inspires a regal sense in others, or can't bow before any authority. He feels bigger than the all humans (partly divine, superhuman, immortal, etc.). At the auto-erotic level, he gives one the impression of being an encylopedia or knowing all facts.
In some ways, the auto-erotic stage is probably the stage of autism in the sense of asperger's. In the object egoist who is a "chameleon" or plays roles with others and doesn't feel real (or projects that onto the world/people) there is an "as if" quality or something off about the person and it leads to eccentricity in pathology when the person is playing the "house wife" or another role in a way that is almost campy. Similarly, the great memory and recall of facts that can get in the way and bore others in "asperger" types is very clear too.
Now, in some ways this makes the preceding stage, the stage of phantasy and daydreaming which might deserve auto-erotic more than the part-object stage preceding the volar stage...
Additionally, the preceding stage, which as I've mentioned, has representations of the earth and great storms in phantasy without reference to humans, seems to be the one with the representation of God.
Additionally, one of the patients with the earth and the machine phantasy, also came forward with autistic (not asperger) behavior of rubbing his jeans when talking to other people. He noted that it was the "feel" that kept him grounded when he was anxious.
There is still an open question, however, about whether "the machine" means that inanimate objects become the first real father-substitute for the child, as opposed to their later importance as transitional objects. It makes sense with the idea that real autistic kids are focused on their "autistic shapes" in the feelings of objects. This echoes the importance of light and dark in vision without reference to more specific colors. Autistic kids are interested in the non-human environment and so they cling to the father-substitute of things once power is transcribed to them from the mother's deutero seduction of the child.
Thus, while many analysts talk about the breast as the part-object, and part-object relations in a way that deals with sexual using another person, or some other banal sense of it, there is a good chance that this is the stage of the fetish object in sexual terms. It also seems like the true autoe-erotic sense of phantasy about an object while getting pleasure, from oneself, can come from autistic objects and sensations and doesn't require an actual mnemic trace. The mnemic trace can come to populate one's daydreams just as more important object relations do afterwards. However, it seems to make sense to say the inside and outside division happens at this stage, and then next, the Space of mnemic traces and memories of specific things and objects appears. In the previous stage, the sense of animate vs. inanimate and not just autistic shapes as nonsense, but some Reichian 'orgone' like connection to energies in other things and their fields seems to be afoot.
I don't think the child's mnemic trace of the breast is attached to a simple visual image... Also the part-object of the breast seems to be replaced by inanimate objects. So now we have part-object referring to breast and we have it referring to humans that are in some ways dependent on or linked to the land.
So, the Mad Max paranoia of all against all and the link to the land there, must be differentiated from the earlier form of paranoia in which the earth is destroyed. The end of the world phantasy is paranoia at this earlier oral stage...
phantasy of inner vs. external world is also oral too
the earth vs. the machine is a fantasy involving the breast and its precious internal contents
There doesn't seem to be a reference to human objects in the oral deutero stage as there is in the auto-erotic stage. There is the reference to inanimate objects though....
Is there any reason to keep the name auto-erotic for the stage preceding the volar? As far as Freud meant it, wasn't it for the relationship of masturbation that doesn't reference an external object? However, he also used it for mnemic trace too in phantasy, and if mnemic traces, memory, and the asperger stage keeps the name auto-erotic with its part object (mixed with the land) or the general stage of the encounter with Otherness, then maybe the people who I insulted above have something to offer. The relation to others in which they are treated as instruments and in which the volar fascination, the anal infatuation, or the phallic love (i.e. object drive relations) aren't yet there, does indicate a part-object drive relation to them here... so if auto-erotic is loosely used as for the purposes of oneself maybe, it can be salvaged...
I'm probably committing a grammar crime here that might not be forgivable.
Anyway, these, are my unedited thoughts at this stage in my career.
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