The Queer Cases of Psychoanalysis: Rethinking the Scientific Study of Homosexuality, 1890s–1920s

Lang, Birgit; Sutton, Katie

doi:10.1093/gerhis/ghw038

Cited by 8 publications

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“…Yet, while Krafft-Ebing engaged with the normal only implicitly, for Freud, the normal became polysemic, and the proliferation of the normal in Freud’s work – here analysed with a focus on his early case studies and a close reading of the first of his Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality of 1905 – led to a cacophony of meanings, with homosexuality finding itself centre stage but still at the margins of the normal. 19 At the same time, Freud criticized early identity politics as idealizing specific representations of homosexuality (see Lang and Sutton, 2016: 419–23; Makari, 2008: 114; Sutton, 2020: 78). Indeed, Freud was more cautious in his embrace of early homosexual identity politics than Krafft-Ebing, who provided some individuals with a platform.…”

Section: Invoking Normality: Sigmund Freudmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Whereas Hirschfeld focused his academic attention towards the ‘third sex’, Krafft-Ebing and Freud were interested in sexuality in more general terms. They both saw homosexuality as neither a crime nor a moral failure and supported the decriminalization of homosexuality (see Bauer, 2003; Lang and Sutton, 2016), yet at the same time, homosexuals and homosexuality remained enigmatic boundary concepts and figures in their exploration of human sexuality exactly because Krafft-Ebing and Freud saw them as, by and large, ‘normal enough’.…”

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confidence: 99%

“…In so doing, he made the case study (and not its framing narrative) the site of theory formation. Again, there exists comparatively little exploration of the case study genre in Freud (see Forrester, 1996; Kiceluk, 1992; Lang and Sutton, 2016; Sealey, 2011), despite the fact that discussion of some of his cases, in particular Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria , formed the centre of the Freud critique by second-wave feminists and others. Yet, as we will see, his thinking in cases influenced his take on (homo)sexual normality, which he invoked and marginalized at the same time.…”

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Normal enough? Krafft-Ebing, Freud, and homosexuality

Lang

2021

History of the Human Sciences

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This article analyses the slippery notions of the normal and normality in select works of Richard von Krafft-Ebing (1840–1902) and Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) and argues that homosexuality became a ‘boundary object’ between the normal and the abnormal in their works. Constructing homosexuality as ‘normal enough’ provided these two key thinkers of the fin de siècle with an opportunity to challenge societal and medical norms: Krafft-Ebing did this through mapping perversions; Freud, by challenging perceived norms about sexual development more broadly. The article submits that the scientific logic presented in Krafft-Ebing’s seminal case study compilation Psychopathia Sexualis and Freud’s early theoretical writings and cases, including Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905), was itself haunted by notions of norms and the normal that were not always easy to resolve, and sometimes involved a certain amount of inspired conjecture on the part of both thinkers in order to develop and validate their differing tripartite models of normality. Krafft-Ebing imagined homosexuality as a variation of the normal by generalizing a gay male experience. He also recorded the obstreperous cases of homosexual women based largely inside the clinic but by and large ignored this evidence. Freud inextricably bound homosexuality to normality (and vice versa) by redefining homosexuals as a group to include individuals with unconscious same-sex desire. Doing so allowed him to conceptualize the fear of homosexuality as crucial in the formation of neurosis and psychosis, and at the same time put him at odds with relevant early identity politics.

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Section: Invoking Normality: Sigmund Freudmentioning

confidence: 99%

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confidence: 99%

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Normal enough? Krafft-Ebing, Freud, and homosexuality

Lang

2021

History of the Human Sciences

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“…From the 1900s to the 1920s, Freudians developed a wide spectrum of approaches to same-sex desire: While some, such as Isidor Sadger of Vienna, had worked along normative lines to develop a ‘cure’ centred on heterosexual conversion, others pursued more liberal lines of thought, critiquing the intolerance of society rather than the homosexual condition. Freud himself had sat somewhat on the fence earlier in his career, but later moved towards accepting homosexuality as a non-pathological variant (Lang and Sutton, 2016). In contrast, by the mid century many outspoken post-war US psychoanalysts, including Edmund Bergler, Irving Bieber, and Charles Socarides, took a decidedly pathologizing approach to the clinical treatment of homosexuality (Bergler, 1956; Bieber, 1962; Socarides, 1960; see also Hale, 1995: 298–9; Herzog, 2017: 62–5, 70, 73; Terry, 1999: 297–314).…”

Section: Growing Tensions: the Human Female Report And The Conservatimentioning

confidence: 99%

Kinsey and the psychoanalysts: Cross-disciplinary knowledge production in post-war US sex research

Sutton

2020

History of the Human Sciences

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The historical forces of war and migration impacted heavily on the disciplinary locations, practitioners, and structures of sexology and psychoanalysis that had developed in the first decades of the 20th century. By the late 1940s, the US was fast becoming the world centre of each of these prominent fields within the modern human sciences. During these years, the work of Alfred C. Kinsey and his team became synonymous with a distinctly North American brand of empirical sex research. This article offers the most nuanced account to date of the shifting relationship between these two fields in the late 1940s to mid 1950s. It argues that this was more collaborative and mutually influential than previous historians have assumed, even as, following the publication of the first ‘Kinsey report’, tensions grew between the Indiana team and the conservative brand of psychoanalysis that by this stage dominated 1950s North American psychiatry. A keen sense of professional competitiveness accelerated the growing split between these two fields, as Kinsey’s team developed a distinctly modern, technologized brand of statistically oriented sexology that contrasted with the older patient case history, and assumed a very different approach to conservative analysts on ideas of homosexuality and ‘normal’ sexual behaviour. Yet this story of divergence is also tempered through consideration of other aspects of ‘situated knowledge’ such as religion and gender identity, even as accounts of cross-disciplinary competitiveness are expanded by contrasting Kinsey’s positions on psychoanalysis with those of contemporaries such as Harry Benjamin.

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“…33 Freud was well aware of Sadger's theoretical limitations; however, he also appreciated Sadger's work with openly homosexual patients at a time when no other analyst acknowledged the needs of such individuals in their practice. 34 Moreover, Freud valued Sadger's role in the early dissemination of psychoanalytic knowledge.…”

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confidence: 99%

The Queer Cases of Psychoanalysis: Rethinking the Scientific Study of Homosexuality, 1890s–1920s

Cited by 8 publications

References 0 publications

Normal enough? Krafft-Ebing, Freud, and homosexuality

Normal enough? Krafft-Ebing, Freud, and homosexuality

Kinsey and the psychoanalysts: Cross-disciplinary knowledge production in post-war US sex research

Fin-de-siècle investigations of the ‘creative genius’ in psychiatry and psychoanalysis

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