Psychopathia Sexualis

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources:  –  ·  ·  · scholar · JSTOR (July 2018) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

Psychopathia Sexualis: eine Klinisch-Forensische Studie (Sexual Psychopathy: A Clinical-Forensic Study, also known as Psychopathia Sexualis, with Especial Reference to the Antipathetic Sexual Instinct: A Medico-forensic Study) is a 1886 book by Richard Freiherr von Krafft-Ebing and one of the first texts about sexual pathology. The book details a wide range of paraphilias, and focuses on male homosexuality (the "antipathetic instinct" of the subtitle). Krafft-Ebing also coined the terms "sadism and masochism" in the book.

The Psychopathia Sexualis is notable for being one of the earliest works on homosexuality. Krafft-Ebing combined Karl Ulrichs' Urning theory with Bénédict Morel's theory of disease and concluded that most homosexuals have a mental illness caused by degenerate heredity. The book was controversial at the time, arousing the anger of the church in particular.

The book had a considerable influence on continental European forensic psychiatry in the first part of the 20th century. It is regarded as an important text in the history of psychopathology.^[1]

In 1982, experimental noise band Whitehouse titled their seventh album after the book. In 2006, an independent film based on the book was made in Atlanta; the film was titled Psychopathia Sexualis.^[2]

References[]

External links[]

• Psychopathia Sexualis (French) at Project Gutenberg
• Psychopathia Sexualis at the Internet Archive
• Psychopathia Sexualis at Google Books

This article about a sexuality-related book is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by .

• v
• t