When he published the first edition of the tome, 45 case histories — such as people exhibiting necrophilia to cross-dressing to various sexual fetishes — comprised the bulk of the book. This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Jörg Hutter: Richard von Krafft-Ebing. In: Rüdiger Lautmann (Hrsg.): Homosexualität. Handbuch der Theorie- und Forschungsgeschichte. Campus, Frankfurt am Main u. a. 1993, ISBN 3-593-34747-4, S. 48–54.

die Libido sexualis in 1933, was largely forgotten in the English-speaking world, probably because it was overshadowed by Freud’s psychoanalytic theory. 15 Kennedy, H (2001), "Research and commentaries on Richard von Krafft-Ebing and Karl Heinrich Ulrichs.", Journal of Homosexuality, vol.42, no.1, pp.165–78, doi: 10.1300/J082v42n01_09, PMID 11991564, S2CID 42582792 Krafft-Ebing’s basic classification saw another remarkable change in the mid-1890s, as he shifted attention away from the traditional distinction between procreative and non-procreative acts to the relational, affective dimension of sexuality. This shift meant that he focused increasingly on the dichotomy of heterosexuality and homosexuality as the basic sexual categories. His use of the term heterosexual, meaning sexual attraction between a male and a female free from a reproductive goal – and as such initially considered as a perversion – marked a shift away from the procreative norm. In one of his last publications on sexual perversion he identified other perversions as derived sub-variations of the more fundamental hetero–homosexual division. 62 Such a view can be found right from the beginning in Moll’s Die Conträre Sexualempfindung, in which he argued that perversions occurred equally among hetero- and homosexuals. 63and even criminal acts. A. Paradoxia. Sexual Instinct Manifesting itself Independently of Physiological Processes. 1. Sexual Instinct Manifested in Childhood. Rosario, Vernon A (2002), "Science and sexual identity: an essay review.", Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences (published January 2002), vol.57, no.1, pp.79–85, doi: 10.1093/jhmas/57.1.79, PMID 11892515, S2CID 29913060 He was an utterly noble nature," reads the obituary in the Wiener Klinische Wochenschrift, "toward his patients he was of touching kindness and friendliness. Nothing could disturb his calm; he possessed perfect self-control and proved himself equal to any situation. His tall figure, his firm stride, his calm gaze, his intellectual countenance had often a marvelous effect on the most agitated patients." Homosexuality [ edit ] Art Nouveau- Exlibris for Krafft-Ebing by Alfred Schrötter von Kristelli (circa 1900) The central argument of this article is that the modern notion of sexuality, as we experience and understand it today, took shape in the last two decades of the nineteenth century, especially in the works of the psychiatrist Richard von Krafft-Ebing (1840–1902) and the neurologist Albert Moll (1862–1939). This modernisation of sexuality was closely linked to the recognition of sexual diversity, as it was articulated in the medical–psychiatric understanding of what, at that time, was labelled as sexual perversion. 1

Krafft-Ebing and Moll heralded a new approach to sexuality, not only because they transferred it from the realm of sin and crime to the domain of health and illness, but even more because they made clear that sexual passion was an essential part of human nature. The first characteristic of sexual modernity is the notion that sexuality is a powerful, continuous, compulsive and irresistible force in human life, which is dangerous as well as wholesome, and with which everybody has to come to terms. Following the biological argument of Charles Darwin, Krafft-Ebing believed that self-preservation and sexual gratification were fundamental human instincts. 34 Moll also stressed that the sexual instinct was a basic, irrational, complicated and very powerful drive that was difficult to suppress. 35 Harry Oosterhuis: Stepchildren of nature. Krafft-Ebing, Psychiatry, and the making of sexual Identity. University of Chicago Press, Chicago 2000, ISBN 0-226-63059-5. Leahey, Th. H. [1991] 2000. A History of Modern Psychology. Englewood Cliff, NJ. Prentice Hall. 3rd edition. ISBN 0130175730 In Western Civilization, Psychopathia Sexualis ("Psychopathology of Sex") was the first scientific discussion of homosexuality and consideration of the mental states of sexual offenders in judging their actions. It was also one of the first books to scientifically study "sexual topics" such as the importance of clitoral orgasm and female sexual pleasure. Harry Oosterhuis. Stepchildren of Nature: Krafft-Ebing, Psychiatry, and the Making of Sexual Identity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000. ISBN 0-226-63059-5Richard von Krafft-Ebing was born as the eldest of five children to Friedrich Karl Konrad Christoph von Krafft-Ebing, a high-ranking official in the Grand Duchy of Baden. In Krafft-Ebing’s work there was a gradual shift away from a classification of perversions within clear boundaries to a tentative understanding of ‘normal’ sexuality in the context of deviance. He ceased to make hard distinctions between normal and abnormal mental states as well as sexualities, holding that – in the fashion of experimental physiology – only quantitative differences along a scale of infinite variations could be made. In his Lehrbuch der Psychiatrie auf klinischer Unknown author (2001), "Richard Freiherr von Krafft-Ebing (1840–1903); comments on the cover portrait", Der Nervenarzt (published September 2001), vol.72, no.9, p.742, doi: 10.1007/s001150170056, PMID 11599501, S2CID 40857058 {{ citation}}: |author= has generic name ( help) Krafft-Ebing saw and viewed women as basically sexually passive, and recorded no female sadists or fetishists in his case studies. Behavior that would be classified as masochism in men was categorized as "sexual bondage" in women, which was not a perversion, again because such behavior did not interfere with procreation. So beyond the historic Cesare Lombroso [vi] influenced eugenic tone of hereditary defect and degeneracy used as the framework for scientific study of human sexual behavior, this book harbors a feel of fetishistic pornographic voyeurism; providing a place for what historian Henry Oosterhuis claimed as “a kind of forum that allowed homosexuals and others to breach the loneliness and alienation that characterized their lives within nineteenth-century bourgeois society.” [vii] Krafft-Ebing extensively and explicitly validates homosexual experiences. He was the first to claim innate homosexual tendency and advocated for its therapeutic treatment. There is no way of determining how much of Krafft-Ebing’s case studies detailed the actual sexual thoughts and experiences of his patients, and how much was a fabricated elaborate fantasy of the doctor himself. From a historical standpoint, this book is a classic example of medical science providing the only socially acceptable, albeit legal, outlet for the display, discussion, and venue of all matters sexual, in this case, the criminally deviant; hence the reason the book fell into public popularity, particularly with those who felt a sense of validation through Krafft-Ebing’s authentication of non-normative sexuality.

necrophilia". Oxford English Dictionary (Onlineed.). Oxford University Press . Retrieved 16 July 2018. (Subscription or participating institution membership required.) Krafft-Ebing’s and Moll’s publications offered a public forum in which sexual desire, in the form of autobiographical narrative, could be articulated, understood and justified. The genres of the psychiatric case history, in which a diagnosis was made by reconstructing the past life of the patient from the perspective of the present, and of the autobiography, merged seamlessly. For many of Krafft-Ebing’s and Moll’s patients and correspondents, the whole process of telling or writing their life history, giving coherence and intelligibility to their torn self, might result in a ‘catharsis’ of comprehension. In fact, most of them did not need or want medical treatment because pouring out one’s heart was something of a cure in itself. Their detailed self-examinations and the belief that their sexual desire and behaviour expressed something deep and fixed from within the inner self were crucial in the development of sexual identity.

Safar Saydshoev

Sex (1897–1910). Whereas systematic classification of deviant sexualities formed the leading principle of the composition of Krafft-Ebing’s Psychopathia The psychiatric understanding of perversion signalled that in the modern experience, sexuality, as a distinct impulse with its particular internal physical and psychological mechanisms, dissociated itself from other social domains and began to generate its own meanings. As such, sexuality became associated with profound and complex human emotions and anxieties. Foucault rightly understood the continuity of nineteenth-century psychiatric interference with sexuality and the present-day craving for self-expression. Both are based on the confessional model that proclaims sexuality to be the key to individual authenticity and identity. However, I would argue that Foucault’s assessment of this model of sexuality as limiting possibilities is one-sided. It is more than an instrument of professional power and social control. The formation and articulation of sexual identities only became possible in a self-conscious, reflexive bourgeois society in which there was a dialectic between humanitarian reform and emancipation on the one hand, and efforts to enforce social adaptation and integration on the other. The elaboration of psychological explanations of various sexual tastes at the end of the nineteenth century was advanced by professional psychiatry, as well as by the historical development of individualisation and social democratisation. Krafft-Ebing can be seen as the founder of the modern concept of sexuality, while Moll followed in his wake by elaborating it. From around 1890, Moll ran a private practice in Berlin as a neurologist and psychotherapist; he also worked as a forensic expert. 8 As Geheimer Sanitätsrath he was part of the medical elite and he established himself as a pioneering expert on therapeutic hypnosis and suggestion, treating, among other conditions, sexual perversions. 9 In 1891, he published one of the first medical textbooks exclusively devoted to homosexuality, Die Conträre Krafft-Ebing's conclusions about homosexuality are now largely forgotten, partly because Sigmund Freud's theories were more interesting to physicians (who considered homosexuality to be a psychological problem) and partly because he incurred the enmity of the Austrian Catholic Church when he psychologically associated martyrdom (a desire for sanctity) with hysteria and masochism. [18] The following year, his wife Maria Luise Kißling (1846–1903), who was originally from Baden-Baden, joined him there.