Havelock Ellis
Overview
Henry Havelock Ellis, known as Havelock Ellis (2 February 1859 – 8 July 1939), was a British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 physician and psychologist
Psychologist
Psychologist is a professional or academic title used by individuals who are either:* Clinical professionals who work with patients in a variety of therapeutic contexts .* Scientists conducting psychological research or teaching psychology in a college...

, writer, and social reformer who studied human sexuality. He was co-author of the first medical textbook in English on homosexuality
Homosexuality
Homosexuality is romantic or sexual attraction or behavior between members of the same sex or gender. As a sexual orientation, homosexuality refers to "an enduring pattern of or disposition to experience sexual, affectional, or romantic attractions" primarily or exclusively to people of the same...

 in 1897, and also published works on a variety of sexual practices and inclinations, including transgender
Transgender
Transgender is a general term applied to a variety of individuals, behaviors, and groups involving tendencies to vary from culturally conventional gender roles....

 psychology. He is credited with introducing the notions of narcissism
Narcissism
Narcissism is a term with a wide range of meanings, depending on whether it is used to describe a central concept of psychoanalytic theory, a mental illness, a social or cultural problem, or simply a personality trait...

 and autoeroticism
Autoeroticism
Autoeroticism is the practice of stimulating oneself sexually. The term was popularized toward the end of the 19th century by British sexologist Havelock Ellis, who defined autoeroticism as "the phenomena of spontaneous sexual emotion generated in the absence of an external stimulus proceeding,...

, later adopted by psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis is a psychological theory developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud. Psychoanalysis has expanded, been criticized and developed in different directions, mostly by some of Freud's former students, such as Alfred Adler and Carl Gustav...

.
Quotations

The omnipresent process of sex, as it is woven into the whole texture of our man's or woman's body, is the pattern of all the process of our life.

The New Spirit (1890)

" 'Homosexual' is a barbarously hybrid word, and I claim no responsibility for it.

Studies in Psychology (1897)

Every artist writes his own autobiography.

The New Spirit

If men and women are to understand each other, to enter into each other's nature with mutual sympathy, and to become capable of genuine comradeship, the foundation must be laid in youth.

The Task of Social Hygiene, ch. 1 (1912)

There has never been any country at every moment so virtuous and so wise that it has not sometimes needed to be saved from itself.

The Task of Social Hygiene, ch. 10

Had there been a lunatic asylum in the suburbs of Jerusalem, Jesus Christ would infallibly have been shut up in it at the outset of his public career. That interview with Satan on the pinnacle of the Temple would alone have damned him, and everything that happened after could but have confirmed the diagnosis.

Impressions and Comments, series 3

The text of the Bible is but a feeble symbol of the Revelation held in the text of Men and Women.

The whole religious complexion of the modern world is due to the absence from Jerusalem of a lunatic asylum.

It is curious how there seems to be an instinctive disgust in Man for his nearest ancestors and relations. If only Darwin could conscientiously have traced man back to the Elephant or the Lion or the Antelope, how much ridicule and prejudice would have been spared to the doctrine of Evolution.

The family only represents one aspect, however important an aspect, of a human being's functions and activities...A life is beautiful and ideal, or the reverse, only when we have taken into our consideration the social as well as the family relationship.

Ch. 1

 
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