IV
There are other phases of infantile sexual life that rule a person for life. One of these is that stage between the first period of the child's first sex life known as autoeroticism when it finds pleasure from its own body, and the period when it selects an object to love apart from itself. This stage is called narcissism because then the child loves itself. Many people never grow out of this; we are all more or less narcisstic. This narcissism is the basis of egoism in literature and is no doubt related to extreme individualism. Stirner, Nietzsche, and Stendhal, who rank intellectually among the greatest writers the world has had, are largely narcisstic.
Walt Whitman would form a good subject for study of the manner in which infantile narcisstic sex life is sublimated in later life into individualism.
The following are passages from the Song of Myself, showing that the narcisstic infantile life of Whitman was sublimated into good poetry and philosophy:
"While they discuss I am silent, and go bathe and admire myself.
Welcome is every organ and attribute of me, and of any man hearty and clean,
Not an inch nor a particle of an inch is vile, and none shall be less familiar than the rest ...
Having pried through the strata, analysed to a hair, counsel'd with doctors and calculated close,
I find no sweeter fat than sticks to my own bones....
Divine am I, inside and out, and I make holy whatever I touch or am touch'd from,