Richard Freiherr von Krafft-Ebing
Richard Freiherr von Krafft-Ebing was an Austro-German psychiatrist who wrote
Psychopathia Sexualis , a famous study of
sexual perversity, and remains well-known for his coinage of the term
sadism . He also coined the term
masochism using the name of a contemporary writer,
Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, whose partially autobiographical novel
Venus in Furs tells of the protagonist's desire to be whipped and enslaved by a beautiful woman.
Krafft-Ebing was born in
Mannheim,
Baden,
Germany, educated in
Prague,
Austria-Hungary , and studied
medicine at the
University of Heidelberg.
Encyclopedia
Richard Freiherr von Krafft-Ebing was an Austro-German psychiatrist who wrote
Psychopathia Sexualis , a famous study of
sexual perversity, and remains well-known for his coinage of the term
sadism . He also coined the term
masochism using the name of a contemporary writer,
Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, whose partially autobiographical novel
Venus in Furs tells of the protagonist's desire to be whipped and enslaved by a beautiful woman.
Krafft-Ebing was born in
Mannheim,
Baden,
Germany, educated in
Prague,
Austria-Hungary , and studied
medicine at the
University of Heidelberg.
After Krafft-Ebing graduated in medicine and finished his specialisation in psychiatry, he worked in several
asylums, but he soon felt that the way those institutions worked deceived him and decided to become an educator. He became a professor at
Strasbourg,
Graz and
Vienna, and also a forensic expert at the
Austrian capital. He was a popularizer of psychiatry, giving public lectures on the subject as well as theatrical demonstrations of the power of
hypnotism.
Psychopathia Sexualis
Krafft-Ebing wrote and published several articles on psychiatry, but his book
Psychopathia Sexualis , became his best-known work. He wrote the book, intended as a forensic reference for doctors and judges, in high academic tone and in the introduction noted that he had "delibrately chosen a scientific term for the name of the book to discourage lay readers". He also wrote "sections of the book in
Latin for the same purpose". Despite this, the book was highly popular with lay readers and it went through many printings and translations.
In the first edition of PS in 1886, Krafft-Ebing divided sexual deviance into four categories:
- paradoxia, sexual desire at the wrong time of life, i.e. childhood or old age
- anesthesia, insufficient desire
- hyperesthesia, excessive desire
- paraesthesia, sexual desire for the wrong goal or object. This included homosexuality , sexual fetishism, sadism, masochism, pederasty and so on.
Krafft-Ebing believed that the purpose of sexual desire was procreation, and any form of desire that didn't go towards that ultimate goal was a perversion.
Rape, for instance, was an aberrant act, but not a perversion, since pregnancy could result.
Krafft-Ebing saw women as basically sexually passive, and recorded no female sadists or fetishists in his case studies. Behaviour that would be classified as masochism in men was categorized as "sexual bondage" in women, which was not a perversion, again because such behaviour did not interfere with procreation.
After interviewing many homosexuals, both as his private patients and as a forensic expert, and reading some works in favour of gay rights , Krafft-Ebing reached the conclusion that both male and female homosexuals did not suffer from mental illness or perversion , and became interested in the study of the subject.
Krafft-Ebing elaborated an
evolutionist theory considering homosexuality as an anomalous process developed during the gestation of the
embryo and
fetus, evolving into a
sexual inversion of the
brain. Some years later, in 1901, he corrected himself in an article published in the
Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen, changing the term
anomaly to
differentiation. But his final conclusions remained forgotten for years, partly because
Sigmund Freud's theories captivated the attention of those that considered homosexuality a
psychological problem , and partly because Krafft-Ebing had incurred some enmity from the Austrian Catholic church by associating the desire for sanctity and
martyrdom with hysteria and
masochism .
Some years later Krafft-Ebing's theory led other specialists on mental studies to reach the same conclusion and to the study of transgenderism as another differentiation correctable by means of
surgery .
Note that most contemporary psychiatrists no longer consider homosexual practices as pathological : partly due to new conceptions, and partly due to Krafft-Ebing's own self-correction.
Trivia about Psychopathia Sexualis
- The book reached 12 editions in his lifetime.
- Parts were written in Latin, in its 2nd printing, due to demand for the book by lay-people for less than academic purposes. Some publishers translated those passages back into other languages.
- This was one of the first books to study, in a "painstaking" manner, sexual topics such as the importance of clitoral orgasm and female sexual pleasure, consideration of the mental states of sexual offenders in judging their actions, and the first scientific discussion of homosexuality.
- It was for decades an authority on sexual aberrance, and arguably one of the most influential books on human sexuality prior to Freud
The name Freud is generally pronounced [i] [] in English [i] and [] in German [i] ...
.
- The author was praised and condemned for the book - praised for opening up a new area of much-needed psychological study, condemned for immorality and justifying perversion.
Notes
References
- Psychopathia Sexualis , reprinted by Bloat Books, 1999; ISBN 0-9650324-1-8
- Oosterhuis, Harry. Stepchildren of Nature , University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-63059-5
Compositions
Baron von Kraft-Ebbing wrote numerous books, including:
- Die Melancholie: Eine klinische Studie, ;
- Grundzüge der Kriminalpsychologie für Juristen, ;
- Die progressive allgemeine Paralyse, ;
- Nervosität und neurasthenische Zustände. .
Four of his books appear in English translations by Craddock:
- An Experimental Study in the Domain of Hypnotism, ;
- Psychosis Menstrualis, ;
- Psychopathia Sexualis, ;
- Text Book of Insanity, .
See also
- Fetishism
- Paraphilia
- Sadism and masochism as medical terms
External links
-
- 2006 feature film dramatizing the case studies
