THE EROTICIZED SELF

The transparency of the self in traditional societies, where individuals are assumed to be what they appear to be, gives way in modern settings to the emergence of the more opaque strategies of the narrating subject. Objects of sexual desire, being representations of what is experienced as coming from within the self, as well as a statement to the external world, are the projections of an enlarged and empowered complex intrapsychic reality. While thumb-sucking ultimately gives way to its inability to provide nourishment, the same cannot be said of the numerous objects and experiences that nourish the psyche, which has a more enduring ability to feed upon its own creations. It is in this empowerment of the intrapsychic that the modern world’s capacity to democratize eroticism rests, as well as its capacity—albeit a diminishing capacity—to transform sexual desire into specific types of persons.