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Sigmund Freud's Views on the Sexual Disorders in Historical Perspective
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 January 2018
Extract
The study of the sexual disorders has made considerable strides during the past 90 years since Krafft-Ebing published his Psychopathia Sexualis in 1886. There were earlier beginnings which had provided very important insights into the nature of abnormal sexual behaviour, but it fell to Krafft-Ebing to bring sex research into the discipline of medicine, thereby giving it a methodology and a framework within which to unfold. The subsequent history has been described by Wettley and Leibbrand (1959) and constitutes the development of the basis of modern ‘sexology'—a translation of the term ‘Sexualwissenschaft’ created by Iwan Bloch in 1906. The period from the Psychopathia Sexualis to the time of the First World War saw the development of ideas which are still important for modern sexology, although the discipline has since matured into an experimental science using the methodologies of the biological as well as the behavioural sciences—psychology, sociology and anthropology.
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- Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1976
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