Sexual Modernity in the Works of Richard von Krafft-Ebing and Albert Moll

Abstract

Abstract:The modern notion of sexuality took shape at the end of the nineteenth century, especially in the works of Richard von Krafft-Ebing and Albert Moll. This modernisation of sexuality was closely linked to the recognition of sexual diversity, as it was articulated in the medical-psychiatric understanding of what, at that time, was labelled as perversion. From around 1870, psychiatrists shifted the focus from immoral acts, a temporary deviation of the norm, to an innate morbid condition. In the late nineteenth century, several psychiatrists, collecting and publishing more and more case histories, classified and explained the wide range of deviant sexual behaviours they traced. The emergence of medical sexology meant that perversions could be diagnosed and discussed. Against this background both Krafft-Ebing and Moll articulated a new perspective, not only on perversion, but also on sexuality in general. Krafft-Ebing initiated and Moll elaborated a shift from a psychiatric perspective in which deviant sexuality was explained as a derived, episodic and more or less singular symptom of a more fundamental mental disorder, to a consideration of perversion as an integral part of a more general, autonomous and continuous sexual instinct. Before Sigmund Freud and others had expressed similar views, it was primarily through the writings of Krafft-Ebing and Moll that a new understanding of human sexuality emerged.

Sexuality and its object in Freud's 1905 edition ofThree Essays on the Theory of Sexuality

“…This first of all concerns the conceptualization of sexuality as a prevailing natural instinct that is also the most powerful force in cultural development, notably in social bonding and family life, morality, religion and art (Krafft‐Ebing, , pp. 1 ff; Oosterhuis, , pp. 141–143).…”

Richard Freiherr v. Krafft-Ebing and Sigmund Freud - discourse on the "normality" and "perversion" of human sexuality at the close of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century

“…Krafft-Ebing übernimmt fair und weitgehend unverfälscht viele wörtliche Passagen aus dem reichhaltigen Briefverkehr und den zugeschickten autobiographischen Erörterungen individueller sexueller Geschicke in seine Neuauflagen. Er bewirkt, möglicherweise unreflektiert, dass über diese wissenschaftliche Darstellung kulturell wirksame Narrativmuster, Modelle und Skripte entstehen können, die in der gesellschaftlichen Öffentlichkeit neue sexuelle Identitäten fördern [50,52]. So hätte sich das ursprüngliche "Krankheitsobjektiv" [61] bei Krafft-1 3 sur von S. Freud beim Ministerium einsetzen (Gay 1987 [19] spricht später von der "Neurose als (dem) Negativ der Perversion".…”

Adultery and the double standard in a Dutch city in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries

“…Whereas in early modern societies, sexuality was embedded in a strict moral order, expressed in institutions such as marriage and kinship and policed by the church and the state, modern sexuality was defined by academic disciplines like sexology and psychiatry. 13 Michel Foucault argued that scientific knowledge partially replaced the authority of the church on sexuality in the late eighteenth and in the nineteenth century. Sexologists came to distinguish sexual pathologies from normal sexual activity.…”

“…15 The debate on normal, modern sexuality was not only led by sexologists and psychiatrists, although their interference was certainly a new feature. Sexual behaviour was also policed by the state and by informal social networks.…”