Many-to-many relationship on the same entity without additional join table columns

Question

I have an entity that has many-to-many association to itself.

If I needed some additional properties (like asked here) the answer would be to use a new intermediate entity. But without them is it bad practice to use direct many-to-many association to the entity itself?

Answer 1

Using a mapping table is the optimal way for N to N relations without creating new columns in the mapped tables themselve.

Answer 2

Aleksey,

If you have additional columns, you need a new intermediate Entity.

But without them is it bad practice to use direct many-to-many association to the entity itself ?

No, you can if you want since you do not have additional columns on The joined Table