Principal Work
Krafft-Ebing's principal work is Psychopathia Sexualis: eine Klinisch-Forensische Studie (Sexual Psychopathy: A Clinical-Forensic Study), which was first published in 1886 and expanded in subsequent editions. The last edition from the hand of the author (the twelfth) contained a total of 238 case histories of human sexual behaviour.
This book popularized the terms sadism (derived from the brutal sexual practices depicted in the novels of Marquis de Sade) and masochism (derived from the name of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch), although these terms apparently were in use prior to its publication.
Psychopathia Sexualis is a forensic reference book for psychiatrists, physicians, and judges. Written in an academic style, its introduction noted that, to discourage lay readers, the author had deliberately chosen a scientific term for the title of the book and that he had written parts of it in Latin for the same purpose.
Psychopathia Sexualis was one of the first books about sexual practices that studied homosexuality/bisexuality. It proposed consideration of the mental state of sex criminals in legal judgements of their crimes. During its time, it became the leading medico–legal textual authority on sexual pathology.
The first edition of Psychopathia Sexualis (1886) presented four categories of what Krafft-Ebing called "cerebral neuroses":
- paradoxia — sexual desire at the wrong time of life
- anesthesia — insufficient sexual desire
- hyperesthesia — excessive sexual desire
- paraesthesia — misdirected sexual desire (e.g., homosexuality/bisexuality, sexual fetishism, sadism, masochism, and pedophilia)
Krafft-Ebing considered procreation the purpose of sexual desire and that any form of recreational sex was a perversion of the sex drive. 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. 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 of Sexual Intermediate Stages), he changed the biological term from anomaly to differentiation.
Krafft-Ebing perceived women as sexually passive, and thus he recorded no sexual case studies of sadistic or fetishistic women.
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. Moreover, in a footnote added to the 1915 edition of Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905), Sigmund Freud urged that homosexuals not be segregated from mainstream society.
Read more about this topic: Richard Von Krafft-Ebing
Famous quotes containing the words principal and/or work:
“I would urge that the yeast of education is the idea of excellence, and the idea of excellence comprises as many forms as there are individuals, each of whom develops his own image of excellence. The school must have as one of its principal functions the nurturing of images of excellence.”
—Jerome S. Bruner (20th century)
“I think the most important education that we have is the education which now I am glad to say is being accepted as the proper one, and one which ought to be widely diffused, that industrial, vocational education which puts young men and women in a position from which they can by their own efforts work themselves to independence.”
—William Howard Taft (18571930)