Psychopathia Sexualis: The Classic Study of Deviant Sex

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Volkmar Sigusch: Richard von Krafft-Ebing (1840–1902). In: Volkmar Sigusch, Günter Grau (Hrsg.): Personenlexikon der Sexualforschung. Campus, Frankfurt am Main u. a. 2009, ISBN 978-3-593-39049-9, S. 375–382. A wide array of actors has attempted to get at just what human sexuality is, how it comes to be, and how it might be altered, if at all. For centuries, religion and its constitutive texts, rules, and prescriptions held the most authority when it came to the “truth” of sexuality. But toward the end of the 19th century, things began to change. Krafft-Ebing considered procreation the purpose of sexual desire and that any form of recreational sex was a perversion of the sex drive. "With opportunity for the natural satisfaction of the sexual instinct, every expression of it that does not correspond with the purpose of nature—i.e., propagation,—must be regarded as perverse." [16] Hence, he concluded that homosexuals suffered a degree of sexual perversion because homosexual practices could not result in procreation. In some cases, homosexual libido was classified as a moral vice induced by the early practice of masturbation. [17] Krafft-Ebing proposed a theory of homosexuality as biologically anomalous and originating in the embryonic and fetal stages of gestation, which evolved into a " sexual inversion" of the brain. In 1901, in an article in the Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen (Yearbook for Intermediate Sexual Types), he changed the biological term from anomaly to differentiation. Richard Freiherr von Krafft-Ebing [1] (full name Richard Fridolin Joseph Freiherr Krafft von Festenberg auf Frohnberg, genannt von Ebing; 14 August 1840 – 22 December 1902) was a German psychiatrist and author of the foundational work Psychopathia Sexualis (1886). In 1880 Krafft-Ebing resigned the asylum post to concentrate on teaching and research. He was already a profilic author, specialising in forensic psychiatry, and his first major work, Lehrbuch der gerichtlichen Psychopathologie (1875) was the first textbook in the German-speaking world to concentrate on the interface between psychiatry and the law. With his three-volume Lehrbuch der Psychiatrie auf klinischer Grundlage (1879-80) he established his reputation as a leader in clinical psychiatry. In 1882 Krafft-Ebing was made full professor and five years later Neurology was added to his chair. In 1889 he obtained one of the chairs of Psychiatry at Vienna; then in 1892 he succeeded Theodor Meynert in the second chair, which was associated with a small psychiatric clinic in the university's general hospital. At the same time Krafft-Ebing became president of the Verein für Psychiatrie und forensische Pyschologie, the leading professional organisation for psychiatrists in Austria.

Papers of Richard von Krafft-Ebing, German-born neurologist and clinical psychiatrist, best known as the author of Psychopathia sexualis (1886), the first scientific study of sexual deviation. The papers largely comprise clinical case histories which Krafft-Ebing amassed during his professional career with a view to working on them in retirement. In the event he died very shortly after retiring from practice and resigning his chair of Psychiatry at Vienna. A part of his research was focused on examining the relationships between psychiatry and criminal law. Already during his time in Strasbourg, he published his Fundamentals of Criminal Psychology, followed in 1875 by his first major work, Textbook of Forensic Psychopathology. Of the many publications he released, some of which saw multiple editions and became widely known, notable are his Textbook of Psychiatry (1st ed. 1879) and his most famous work Psychopathia Sexualis (1st ed. 1886), which through numerous, constantly expanded new editions, became the standard textbook on sexual pathology (see also: Sexology) of the 19th century.

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Domino Falls translated and edited Psychopathia Sexualis:The Case Histories (1997) ISBN 978-0-9820464-7-0

Closely related to the psychological experience of sexuality is its strong link to personal identity, the fifth distinctive characteristic of sexual modernity. Shifting the focus from a temporary deviation from the norm to a more or less permanent state of being – be it pathological or not – late nineteenth-century psychiatry advanced a paradigm change in the understanding of sexual deviance. It was no longer perceived as a more or less temporal, fleeting digression but as a continuous and essential feature of one’s inner being or personality. In this respect, Krafft-Ebing’s differentiation of perversity and perversion was crucial. Whereas the first was considered as contingent immoral conduct of essentially normal individuals, the latter referred to inevitable and permanent innate characteristics. 88 Paolo Savoia. "Sexual Science and Self-Narrative: Epistemology and Narrative Technologies of the Self between Krafft-Ebing and Freud," History of the Human Sciences, 23 (5), 2010.The Psychopathia Sexualis is notable for being one of the earliest works on homosexuality. Krafft-Ebing combined Karl Heinrich Ulrichs' Urning theory with Bénédict Morel's theory of social degeneration and proposed the theory that most homosexuals have a mental illness caused by degenerate heredity. The book was controversial at the time, arousing the anger of the church in particular [ citation needed]. Sex (1897–1910). Whereas systematic classification of deviant sexualities formed the leading principle of the composition of Krafft-Ebing’s Psychopathia 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. 63

In 1868, von Krafft-Ebing set up his own practice as a neurologist in Baden-Baden. At the beginning of his career, he looked after his younger, severely ill brother Friedrich for several months. After losing the battle for his brother’s life, who was just 24, a restorative and art-focused journey, coupled with visits to psychiatric and neurological institutions, took him several weeks through southern Europe. During the Franco-Prussian War (1870/71), he first served as a field doctor with the rank of captain in the Baden Division and was then transferred as a hospital doctor to the Fortress Rastatt. His observations, especially regarding patients suffering from typhus, were compiled in a special treatise. After the end of the war, he was put in charge of the electrotherapeutic station in Baden-Baden, mainly for the neurological follow-up treatment of wounded soldiers. Hans Georg Zapotoczky, P. Hofmann: Werk und Person von Krafft-Ebing aus der Sicht unserer Zeit. In: Gerhardt Nissen, Frank Badura (Hrsg.): Schriftenreihe der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Geschichte der Naturwissenschaften. Band 3. Würzburg 1997, S. 213–225. paradoxia, sexual excitement occurring independently of the period of the physiological processes in the generative organs 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.Krafft-Ebing studied sadism as a pathology, and in contemporary understanding, it is closely linked to sexual crime. After their crime, sexual sadists behave normally until their next offense. They report no guilt or remorse. They usually feel a great relief of tension after the crime. Finally, they may consider that they are superior to the police, because they avoid detection. In fact, a sexual sadist "may feel himself to be inferior, except as regard to his offense" (Brittain, p. 199). This approach to understanding sexual crime in terms of sadism has its origin in Krafft-Ebing's research and papers. Norbert Weiss: Das Grazer Universitäts-Klinikum: Eine Jubiläumsgeschichte in hundert Bildern. KAGesVerlag, Graz 2013, ISBN 978-3-9502281-5-1, S. 55.