"When You Are Their Sex Prop: Exhibitionism, Autoeroticism, Masochism" by Prof. Sam Vaknin
Channel: Pavel Šmejkal (pan Psax)
Date: 11/06/2023

Autoeroticism (regarding oneself as one’s sex object) often goes hand in hand with exhibitionism (becoming sexually aroused by another’s objectifying gaze). The more numerous the observers, the more intense the sexual excitatory state.
That is why the autoerotic - mainly narcissists and psychopaths - gravitate to group sex with total strangers even in early adolescence.
The autoerotic objectify not only themselves but also the partner, whose body they use as a sex toy, to masturbate with.
Thus, the partner’s identity is utterly incidental: he or she could be anonymous strangers encountered only minutes or a few hours before the act.
Casual sex is the autoerotic’s staple: in his committed relationships, s/he is typically sexless.
Sex with the autoerotic is an eerie sensation: disembodied, mechanical, non-reciprocated, infantile, and lonely as the autoerotic partners focus exclusively on their bodies and on their self-gratification.
The intimate partners of the autoerotic invariably develop sex aversion to them. The autoerotic’s solipsistic self-focus, defiance, and oblivion to the partner is also a narcissistic injury and triggers aggression in narcissists and psychopaths.
Paradoxically, precisely because the partner is a mere generic, undifferentiated prop, as long as they are sexually catered to within the relationship, the autoerotic rarely cheat on their mates. At any rate, they are actually making love to themselves.
If s/he is masochistic, the autoerotic’s on the fly sex involves extreme self-trashing: sex with unwanted, little-known, or inappropriate partners in degrading circumstances or environments. Less commonly, cheating serve or even celibacy the same purpose of self-despoiling (“I am a bad, unworthy object”).
The self-trashing autoerotic abuses substances with the aim of disinhibiting herself and numbing herself to her socially unacceptable conduct and possible unconscious ego dystony.
Narcissists and psychopaths are an imitative “surface” only: there is no depth, just an empty schizoid core where a person should have been. They are carbon-based simulations.
As Hervey Cleckley noted already in 1942, these mutants prefer sexual self-trashing to normal sex and to mainstream trashing (BDSM).
Sexual SELF-trashing is defiant and reckless: it is assertive and involves self-efficacious agency, even when it is ego dystonic. By contradistinction, sexual trashing by OTHERS is an entirely submissive, even self-annihilating role which involves total objectification and ritualized helplessness.
Self-trashers and subs are easily mistaken for each other. Narcissists and psychopaths can never enjoy being the bottom masochistic sub: they need to control and to defy. They self-trash to gratify their masochism.
Narcissists and psychopaths view the world, sex included, as a zero sum game.
When they regard themselves as inferior or superior to a potential sex partner, they gravitate impulsively towards self-trashing casual sex.
When the possible mate is perceived as an equal peer, they decline to have a one night stand and instead insist on grooming, lovebombing, and an ensuing shared fantasy.
As narcissism and antisocial traits and behaviors become more normative and widespread, sexual self-trashing is rendered a common practice at least in the forms of “meaningless and emotionless sex” and flagrant serial cheating.


Shmuel "Sam" Vaknin, @samvakninis , an Israeli writer and professor of psychology.
He is the author of Malignant Self Love: Narcissism Revisited (1999), was the last editor-in-chief of the now-defunct political news website Global Politician, and runs a private website about narcissistic personality disorder (NPD).
He has also postulated a theory on chronons and time asymmetry.