Autosexuality

Autosexuality is a sexual orientation defined by sexual attraction directed primarily, and in some cases exclusively, toward oneself rather than toward other people (Wikipedia). Clinical sexologist Cyndi Darnell describes autosexual individuals as people who "prefer solo erotic practice, solo pleasure practice, or self-touch practices—such as masturbation—over partnered sexual activities" (WebMD). The orientation exists on a spectrum: some autosexual people continue to pursue romantic and sexual relationships with others, while for some the attraction to self is the dominant or sole pattern of arousal (Medical News Today). The term itself has also been formalized as a standalone headword in the American Psychological Association's own reference work, the APA Dictionary of Psychology, a sign of lexicographic recognition that sits alongside, rather than resolves, the term's thin empirical research base.

Autosexuality is explicitly distinguished, by every clinical source that defines it, from narcissism and narcissistic personality disorder. Narcissism is a personality disorder marked by grandiosity, an excessive need for admiration, and low empathy, with research pointing to genetic predisposition and early-life factors such as rejection or excessive praise as contributors; autosexuality, by contrast, is a pattern of sexual attraction and carries no such clinical profile (Medical News Today). It is likewise distinct from autoeroticism, the general practice of self-stimulation, which is a behavior that can accompany any sexual orientation rather than an orientation itself (Wikipedia). It is also distinct from asexuality: an asexual person does not experience sexual attraction to others, whereas an autosexual person does experience attraction — directed at themselves (Medical News Today). Autosexuality is sometimes discussed as adjacent to the asexual spectrum without being a subset of it, and it has not been the subject of extensive academic research to date (Wikipedia).

History

Clinical use of "autosexual" predates its adoption as a self-identified orientation label. In 1989, sex therapist Bernard Apfelbaum introduced the term "autosexual orientation" in his chapter "Retarded Ejaculation: A Much-Misunderstood Syndrome," published in Sandra Leiblum and Raymond Rosen's edited volume Principles and Practice of Sex Therapy (2nd ed., Guilford Press, pp. 168–202); there, he described some men with delayed ejaculation as having developed an idiosyncratic, intensely reinforced masturbation style that left partnered stimulation comparatively unarousing, which he framed as a disguised sexual-desire difficulty rather than a mechanical dysfunction (National Library of Medicine / PMC). Later clinical reviews of delayed-ejaculation treatment continued to cite this chapter, alongside its third edition (2000, pp. 205–241), as the origin of "autosexual orientation" as a diagnostic construct — a purely clinical, dysfunction-linked usage rather than a freestanding, self-determined identity (National Library of Medicine / PMC).

Use of "autosexual" as a positive, self-applied identity label — describing attraction to oneself on its own terms, independent of any dysfunction — developed later and separately, discussed and debated across years of threads on the Asexual Visibility and Education Network forums, the largest English-language ace-spectrum community, where members have long worked out how the label differs from ordinary asexuality and from autoromanticism. Public documentation of this identity-based sense nonetheless remains comparatively recent and thin: Wikipedia's entry on the topic states plainly that autosexuality "has not been widely studied" (Wikipedia). General health-information outlets began publishing explanatory coverage of the identity-based definition in the 2020s, consistently pairing the definition with clarifications that it is not narcissism and not simply a synonym for masturbation (WebMD).

Terminology & related identities

Autoromantic is the romantic-orientation counterpart to autosexuality, describing romantic feelings directed at oneself rather than at other people (Wikipedia). Autosexuality is not itself a position on the monosexual/plurisexual axis or on the asexual spectrum: it can co-occur with essentially any other orientation, since it describes the object of attraction (oneself) rather than the gender(s) of attraction or its presence or absence (Medical News Today). The AVEN wiki, maintained by the asexual community that has hosted most of the term's public discussion, defines autosexual simply as "a form of asexuality described as the sexual attraction towards oneself" — a community framing that nonetheless coexists with the clinical and journalistic consensus that autosexuality is attraction (toward the self) rather than the absence of attraction that defines asexuality proper; this tension, between a community shorthand that files the label under "asexual" and reference sources that treat it as attraction-adjacent rather than ace-adjacent, is itself part of why the term resists a single settled classification (AVENwiki; Medical News Today). The two most common points of confusion — that autosexuality is a synonym for masturbation (autoeroticism) and that it is a form of narcissism — are rejected by every clinical and health-reference source that defines the term (WebMD; Wikipedia).