from Part III - Specific treatments
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 May 2010
Editor's note
Treatment for sexual problems is a relatively new venture for psychiatry. If one imagines the evidence base for treatment of all mental disorders in 1906, it has a parallel for sexual therapies today. This granted, a tremendous amount has been achieved in a short time, particularly when one considers that the views of Krafft-Ebing, the author of Psychopathia sexualis (Krafft-Ebing, 1886), one of the least evidence-based psychiatric textbooks ever written, were the standard teaching 100 years ago. Krafft-Ebing regarded all sexual problems as indicative of degeneracy, and his book is well summarized by Shorter (1997, p. 96) as ‘a classic example of psychiatry run off the rails, of the misuse of scientific authority to demonize cultural preferences’. Now sexual disorders are recognized as problems that people recognize about their own sexual function, not problems from afar decided by censorious public opinion. However, even at this relatively early stage in understanding treatment there is concern that sexual therapy might become a ‘life-style issue’, with many with normal sexual function wishing to improve their performance for special occasions, and this trivializes what to others are serious difficulties that create much handicap. If we maintain the level of vigilance and common sense shown in this chapter, we should not go too far awry.
Introduction
Claims for a scientific approach to sexual behaviour stem from antiquity (King, 1994). However, the reduction of sexual behaviour into medical terms accelerated in the late nineteenth century with Krafft-Ebing (1886) and Havelock-Ellis (Ellis & Symonds, 1897).
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