Psychopathia Sexualis

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In his early work, Krafft-Ebing inoculated general paresis patients with syphilis. Since they did not contract the disease, he concluded that they must have had it previously, developing immunity. In this fashion, Krafft-Ebing demonstrated the link between syphilis and general paresis prior to the "serological tests," such as the "Wassermann" used today. At the Moscow International Congress of 1897, Richard Freiherr von Krafft-Ebing made popular the phrase "civilization and syphilization."

Sexualempfindung, Moll referred to the ‘urning N.N.’, whose information about his ‘ Vita sexualis’ as well as about the lives of other homosexuals, was characterised by ‘extraordinary objectivity’. 30 Even if patients criticised medical thinking and the social and legal suppression of their sexual desires, Krafft-Ebing and Moll still published their statements more or less uncensored and remarked that these strikingly illustrated their feelings and suffering. 31 Both also took seriously the writings of the lawyer Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, who coined the term ‘uranism’ and asserted the rights of homosexuals in the 1860s and 1870s. 32 Zwischenstufen [ Yearbook for Intermediate Sexual Types], Krafft-Ebing admitted that his earlier views on the immoral and pathological nature of homosexuality had been one-sided and that there was truth in the point of view of many of his homosexual correspondents who asked for sympathy and compassion. 18 Moll, whose thinking on sexual matters, in the context of his times, was at first, before the First World War, generally open-minded and pragmatic, afterwards became more conservative and nationalistic, especially when he turned against Hirschfeld and his Wissenschaftlich-humanitäres Komitee [Scientific Humanitarian Committee], which he had earlier supported by signing Hirschfeld’s petition. In Moll’s view, Hirschfeld and his adherents, by promoting homosexual emancipation and the popularisation of sexological knowledge, mixed up scientific sexology and a leftist political agenda. 19 This might explain why Moll, who in the 1890s, in the three editions of his Die paraesthesia, sexual desire for the wrong goal or object. This included homosexuality (or "contrary sexual desire"), sexual fetishism, sadism, masochism, and pederasty.and even criminal acts. A. Paradoxia. Sexual Instinct Manifesting itself Independently of Physiological Processes. 1. Sexual Instinct Manifested in Childhood.

Volkmar Sigusch: Richard von Krafft-Ebing. Bericht über den Nachlass und Genogramm. In: Zeitschrift für Sexualforschung. 15, 2002, ISSN 0932-8114, S. 341–354.

The book had a considerable influence on continental European forensic psychiatry in the first part of the 20th century. It is regarded as an important text in the history of psychopathology. [2] 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.