Psychopathia sexualis: With especial reference to contrary sexual instinct
Published in 1886, this notorious work attempted the first systematic medical classification of sexual variations that fell outside Victorian norms. Krafft-Ebing, an Austrian psychiatrist, gathered case studies and legal evidence to document what he termed 'psychopathia sexualis' : a clinical catalog of sexual behaviors he considered pathological, including the controversial 'contrary sexual instinct' (homosexuality). The book reads as both scientific inquiry and moral alarm, reflecting 19th-century anxieties about degeneracy, deviance, and social order. Its clinical language masks a fundamental question: what does society do with bodies and desires that refuse to conform? Today, the text serves as a historical artifact : a window into how medicine once pathologized desire, and how categories of 'normal' and 'perverse' were forged in courtrooms and consulting rooms alike. Essential for readers interested in the history of sexuality, the emergence of sexology as a discipline, or the roots of ongoing debates about desire, identity, and social control.
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“All my joys resemble more a momentary intoxication than the real gold of happiness. It was all but an illusion.””
— R. von Krafft-Ebing
“The thought of a comedy with paid prostitutes always seemed so silly and purposeless, for a person hired by me could never take the place of my imagination of a 'cruel mistress'.””
— R. von Krafft-Ebing
“I have also fantasised myself to be his female slave, but this does not suffice, for after all every woman can be the slave of her husband.””
— R. von Krafft-Ebing
“He soon recognized the fact that the stimulus proceeded from the idea to be in the power of a woman rather than from the act of violence itself.””
— R. von Krafft-Ebing
“Nature has made a mistake in the choice of my sexuality and I must do a life-long penance for it, for the moral power to suffer the unavoidable with dignity is lost.””
— R. von Krafft-Ebing
“All our hope rests upon the possibility of a change of the laws which concern it, so that only rape or the comission of public offence, when this can be proved at the same time, shall be punishable.””
— R. von Krafft-Ebing
“There are men who have themselves whipped simply to increase their sexual pleasure. These, in contrast with true masochists, regard flagellation as a means to an end.””
— R. von Krafft-Ebing
“Thus masochism and sadism appear as the fundamental forms of psychosexual perversion, which may make their appearance at any point in the domain of sexual aberration.””
— R. von Krafft-Ebing
“He loved to eat rats and cats.””
— R. von Krafft-Ebing
