Ralph Matthew Leck. Vita Sexualis: Karl Ulrichs and the Origins of Sexual Science. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2016. 304 pp. $60.00, cloth, ISBN 978-0-252-04000-9.

Reviewed by Harry Oosterhuis (Maastricht University)

Published on H-Ideas (November, 2018)

Commissioned by Eliah Bures

Politics and the Study of Sexual Science? An Exchange Between Harry Oosterhuis and Ralph Leck

Editor’s note: The following exchange was ini‐ tiated by Harry Oosterhuis, who was asked to re‐ view Ralph Leck’s Vita Sexualis for H-Ideas. After reading the book, Oosterhuis believed that a longer review was called for, one that could rebut central claims put forward in Vita Sexualis and address fundamental issues about the role of presentist political concerns in writing the history of sexual science. Professor Oosterhuis proposed that the author be given the chance to respond formally, and Ralph Leck graciously accepted the ofer. The following is their exchange. ______

The Pitfalls of Political Correctness in Writ‐ ing Sexual History Harry Oosterhuis (Maastricht University) Ralph Leck’s book about the historical origins of "modernist" sexual science and the related ideal of a liberated "vital sexualis" has a neatly ar‐ ranged plot. There is the pioneering hero men‐ tioned in the book’s title, the German lawyer Karl Heinrich Ulrichs (1825-95), who was the first pub‐ lic advocate of equal rights, not only for "urnings," or homosexuals, but also for other minorities whose gender identity or sexual preference did not conform to the established heterosexual and H-Net Reviews reproductive norm. Then there are a number of ing of such rights with human and civil rights; and German and British disciples of Leck’s idol who the replacement of the procreative norm with the bravely continued his rebellion against the op‐ free expression of consensual sexual pleasure. pressive legacy of Christian doctrines, Victorian This agenda was inspired by an empathic and prudery, and bourgeois hypocrisy: Karl Maria compassionate attitude that was rooted in the per‐ Kertbeny, Johanna Elberskirchen, Magnus sonal experiences of its main proponents, most of Hirschfeld, Iwan Bloch, Auguste Forel, Ferdinand whom—Ulrichs, Symonds, Carpenter, Hirschfeld, Karsch-Haack, John Addington Symonds, Havelock Karsch-Haack, and Elberskirchen—were homo‐ Ellis, and Edward Carpenter. These courageous sexual. Their subjective involvement played a cru‐ and democratically minded luminaries distin‐ cial role in their scholarship and emancipatory guished themselves from the elitist and conservat‐ outlook. ive—if not reactionary—defenders of the patri‐ Leck’s historical account of these sexual mod‐ archal and "heterosexist" status quo as well as of ernists appears to be inspired by a particular polit‐ bourgeois-capitalist hegemony (pp. 29, 68). These ical commitment as well. His intention, which he prejudiced villains include leading medical sexolo‐ almost formulates as a moral imperative for schol‐ gists such as Richard von Krafft-Ebing, Albert Moll, ars of sexuality, is clear: "any history of the sexual Albert Schrenck-Notzing, Albert Eulenburg, Paul science movement," he writes, "must delineate Mantegazza, Jean Martin Charcot, Valentin Mag‐ between those who described the protean sexual‐ nan, and Cesare Lombroso, who systematically de‐ ity found in human history as natural from those monized all irregular sexual behavior and fully who inserted a preemptory moral division supported "compulsory heterosexuality" (p. 29). between natural and unnatural sexuality into the According to Leck, the pioneering scholarship and study of sexual variance. Classificatory-epistemo‐ sexual politics of Ulrichs has been forgotten be‐ logical differences often correspond to political cause he was overshadowed and disregarded by differences" (p. 18). Leck claims that there is a fun‐ these mainstream sexologists, as well as by Sig‐ damental distinction between the medicalizing mund Freud. Whether Freud also belonged to the and stigmatizing science of psychopathia sexualis, conservative camp remains unclear, because Leck which affirmed the oppressive status quo, and does not discuss psychoanalysis in relation to critical scholarship that celebrated the free ex‐ sexual modernism. pression of sexual diversity. The objective of sexual modernism, as Leck Leck admits that modernist thought was not defines it, was the social and legal recognition of a without contradictions and that at the time it was variety of sexual desires and gender identities as still entangled with established notions of gender, natural and equal. Several strategies were em‐ sexuality, and politics. The intellectual elitism and ployed to advance this ideal: the introduction of political liberalism of Ulrichs, Kertbeny, and Sy‐ neologisms such as "urning" and "homosexual," monds did not include any consideration of class "dioning" and "heterosexual," sexual "intermediar‐ and feminist issues and, as Leck phrases it, "ten‐ ies," "third sex" and "psychosexual hermaphrodit‐ ded to perpetuate an exclusionary tradition of ism," all of which contributed to "a complete new civic fraternity" (p. 54). Also, modernist explana‐ epistemology of human sexuality" (p. 41); the re‐ tions of sexuality, in particular those of Ulrichs definition of nature in empirical, quantitative, and and Hirschfeld, hinged on biological determinism. inclusionary terms against the view of nature as a They adopted the dominant view of sexual desire normative standard implying the branding of de‐ as a magnetic attraction between male and female viance as unnatural; the framing of sexual rights opposites. Their conflation of sexual desire and as a fundamental sociopolitical issue and the link‐

2 H-Net Reviews gender identity, which implied that a same-sex the argument that sexual diversity is rooted in preference was equated with gender inversion nature, because this would imply that enforced (homosexual men and women were supposedly and violent sexuality, including rape, sadism, in‐ born with a soul of the opposite sex), confirmed cest, and abuse of children, should also be en‐ gender stereotypes and the hierarchy of active dorsed. This radical view, expressed earlier by (masculine) and passive (effeminate) roles. The Marquis de Sade, was not maintained by Ulrichs model of sexuality as magnetism between and his followers. Moreover, employing a dis‐ gendered opposites barred an understanding of course of nature could prove to be counterpro‐ sexuality as an attraction between the like- ductive (as it also was), because the opponents of minded. This perspective complicated their de‐ sexual modernity used a similar naturalist rhetor‐ fense of homosexual rights, as pointed out by one ic in order to disqualify what they branded as "un‐ of the leading German medical authorities, Rudolf natural" sexualities. According to Kertbeny, the Virchow. Virchow, who corresponded with Ulrichs (un)naturalness of any sexual conduct was irrelev‐ and chaired a commission that advised the Prussi‐ ant for its legitimacy; the moral, legal, or social an government in 1869 to abolish the penalization validity of sexual acts could only be based on the of "unnatural" intercourse between men, criti‐ liberal definition of individual rights, including cized Ulrichs’s approach. According to Virchow, the need for mutual consent and the prevention of Ulrich's assumption that effeminate urnings were harm to others. Interestingly, Leck suggests that attracted to masculine "dionings" (heterosexuals), the arguments put forward by the heterosexual together with his claim that they were entitled to Kertbeny were part of his allegation that Ulrichs sexual gratification, implied that heterosexual was too subjective—in other words, the self-inter‐ men should engage in same-sex behavior and thus ested logic put forward by Ulrichs in his fight for act against their own inborn sexual nature. This legal equality was not necessarily the best one. perspective tended to confirm the widespread pre‐ The divergent perspectives and involvement of judice and fear that urnings would seduce hetero‐ these two protagonists also showed up in their dif‐ sexuals into homosexuality. ferent understanding of the essence of homosexu‐ One of the most problematic aspects of sexual ality: whereas Ulrichs defined it in terms of a men‐ modernism was its reliance on the moral author‐ tal and emotional constitution and gender iden‐ ity of naturalistic discourse, positing that a wide tity, Kertbeny prioritized physical impulse and variety of sexual behaviors should be accepted be‐ bodily contact. cause they are supposedly given in nature and Ulrichs’s (disputable) argument that natural therefore cannot be wrong. In fact this contention categories of sexual desire are given and fixed mimicked the age-old naturalistic fallacy, current served as a major tenet of the twentieth-century in both Christian doctrine and enlightened think‐ homosexual rights movement, even though time ing: the confusion of nature as empirical reality and again some of its leaders—who, I would sug‐ beyond good and evil and its definition as a moral gest, were more "modern" than those relying on standard and prescription for what is supposedly biological arguments—would articulate Kertbeny’s acceptable or not. The suggestion of Ulrichs and viewpoint. Although Leck acknowledges that nat‐ other sexual modernists up to Alfred Kinsey that uralization as an emancipatory strategy has its what is natural cannot be immoral, was disputed weak spots, he still defends it—not very convin‐ by Ulrichs’s fellow-traveler, the Hungarian writer cingly, I believe—as an intrinsic part of the hu‐ and journalist Karl Maria Kertbeny (1824-82), who manistic values in sexual modernism. In his view coined the term "homosexuality." He insisted that there is a crucial difference between, on the one the legitimacy of sexual acts could not be based on hand, deductive and dualist discourses of nature

3 H-Net Reviews that confirm the (unjust) status quo and exclude monds, although he also used the Greek example what is stamped as "unnatural," and, on the other in order to bestow dignity on homoeroticism. Leck hand, the inductive and monistic understanding contrasts Symonds, Ulrichs, and also some femin‐ of nature which is inclusionary and undermines ist thinkers to the antimodernist masculine the normative purport of the first approach. Re‐ branch of the German homosexual movement rep‐ grettably, Leck does not explain how this would resented by, among others, Adolf Brand, Elisár von solve the problem of differentiating between Kupffer, Benedikt Friedländer, and Hans Blüher, "good" (consensual) and "bad" (enforced) sex with‐ who fully embraced the Greek model and largely in the inclusionary modernist framework. adopted its elitist, masculine—"male homosexist" Another thorny issue was the penchant for (p. 24), in Leck’s words—and antifeminist ele‐ taking ancient Greek culture as a model for mod‐ ments. Unfortunately, he does not elaborate on ern sexual mores in general and the social shaping these outspoken critics of Ulrichs’s and of homosexuality in particular—an approach that Hirschfeld’s approach. Their cultural and homoso‐ was cultural and historical rather than naturalistic cial perspective allowed them to question the lib‐ and that had been introduced by Heinrich Hössli erating potential of sexual modernism and its epi‐ in the 1830s. Hössli emphasized the relational di‐ stemic and normative assumptions. They rejected mension of sexuality in order to bestow moral biological determinism and the related assump‐ value on and incite a sympathetic understanding tion of a fixed boundary between exclusive homo- for same-sex relations. The ideal of durable amat‐ and heterosexuality (one is either straight or gay) ory attraction of the like-minded on the basis of in particular. For them, the struggle for accept‐ free choice and common cultural, aesthetic, and ance of homosexuality as a fixed minority cat‐ civic values was an alternative for an understand‐ egory was restrictive because it would rule out ing of sexuality in terms of gender polarization, any sexual ambiguity or a more general "bisexual‐ biological necessity, and the passing impulsiveness ity," while also tabooing sex between adults and of physical urges. Leck devotes a chapter to the ad‐ minors. option of the Greek ideal of agape in modernist Although Leck acknowledges, mostly only in sexual science, which in his view broadened psy‐ passing, that there was quite some overlap chopathia sexualis into "a science of love" (p. xiii), between "modernist" and "conservative" sexual even though the classics scholar John Addington science and politics, and that the complexity of Symonds, who admired Ulrichs, demystified Greek historical reality does not always allow for a erotic culture as an example for modern sexual re‐ black-and-white picture, his presentation of the lationships. Whereas other sexual modernists first is far more nuanced than that of the second. rather uncritically embraced Greek erotic culture, He briefly refers to the autobiographical case stud‐ Symonds pointed out that Greek homosexuality, or ies in the works of Krafft-Ebing, Moll, and several paiderastia, in military, athletic, and educational other medical authors, which enabled "perverts" settings should not be idealized. More often than to express themselves, even when their views not, it was rooted in differences of age and power, were not in line with medical theories. Rejecting social inequalities, and misogyny. This was in line Michel Foucault’s well-known depiction of medical neither with a modern liberal approach toward sexology as an instrument of control and discip‐ sexuality in general, nor with the consensual egal‐ line, Leck adds that these psychiatric experts were itarianism of modern intimate relationships along not "medical tyrants" and that not all of their pa‐ romantic lines in particular. Ulrichs, who stressed tients "were passive victims of the medicalization that urnings were similar to dionings in their of deviance" (pp. 223-24). But he does not elabor‐ craving for romantic love, tended to agree with Sy‐ ate on this any further, while he also ignores the

4 H-Net Reviews broader significance of the prominent role of ho‐ In fact, Leck steadily downplays the many mosexuals, fetishists, masochists, and other "per‐ similarities between progressive and mainstream verts" in the development of sexological know‐ sexual scholars, building his repetitive and insist‐ ledge—an issue to which I return below. ent narrative on their alleged "monumental dis‐ similarity" (p. 26). He claims that there was a deep-seated cultural conflict between the two groups, which "was historically real," adding that "the sexology of Ulrichs and Krafft-Ebing can be treated as ideal types of sexual modernism and conservative sexual science" (pp. xv, 187). But Leck fails to support this claim by a close reading and thorough analysis of the work of the so-called conservative thinkers, nor does he assimilate oth‐ er, widely available historical studies about med‐ ical sexology. For example, my Stepchildren of Nature: Krafft-Ebing, Psychiatry, and the Making of Sexual Identity (2000), a study about the various interactions of "perverts" with psychiatry and the ambivalences and innovations in Krafft-Ebing’s consideration of sexual deviance, is listed in Leck’s bibliography and is occasionally cited, but he has chosen to ignore my argument and similar ones by other historians, such as Klaus Müller's Aber in meinem Herzen sprach eine Stimme so laut: Ho‐ mosexuelle Autobiographien und medizinische Pathographien im neunzehnten Jahrhundert (1991), which is cited briefly only once, and Phil‐ ippe Weber's Der Trieb zum Erzählen: Sexu‐ alpathologie und Homosexualität, 1852-1914 (2008), which is not mentioned at all. Many other important studies are missing in Leck’s references, such as Jonathan Katz’s The Invention of Hetero‐ sexuality (1995), Marita Keilson-Lauritz’s Die Geschichte der Eigenen Geschichte (1997), Arnold Davidson’s The Emergence of Sexuality: Historical Epistemology and The Formation of Concepts (2001), Robert Beachy’s Gay Berlin: Birthplace of a Modern Identity (2014), Edward Ross Dickinson’s Sex, Freedom, and Power in Imperial Germany, 1880-1914 (2014), and Robert Tobin’s Peripheral Desires: The German Discovery of Sex (2015). Whereas Leck’s presentation of the sexual modernists is rather nuanced and therefore inter‐ esting, his picture of their alleged opponents is

5 H-Net Reviews simplistic and selective, even close to outright ca‐ which the issue of sexual modernity is also ad‐ ricature. This misrepresentation, it seems, helps dressed. him to forge a false contrast between the two My key point is that Krafft-Ebing and Moll groups, with the progressives paving the way for cannot be labeled sexual conformists. Their work the recognition of sexual variance and egalitarian‐ also challenged the status quo, and they were in‐ ism and the conventional medical experts holding novators, too, and at least as radical as Leck’s on to established patterns of thought, merely rep‐ modernist heroes, if in slightly different ways. At licating all irrational and unfounded prejudices of the same time, both the modernist and conservat‐ the day. Apart from some other influential "con‐ ive groups grappled with established notions servative" thinkers on sexuality, such as the about sexuality and still echoed time-honored ste‐ renowned criminologist Cesare Lombroso and reotypes. The theoretical differences between, on Max Nordau (author of an influential best-seller the one hand, Krafft-Ebing and Moll, and, on the about cultural degeneration from 1892), two other hand, Ulrichs, Kertbeny, Hirschfeld, Bloch, prominent pioneers of sexology, Richard von and some others were in no way larger than such Krafft-Ebing (1840-1902) and Albert Moll diferences among the members of the last group. (1862-1939), seem to function as Leck’s main It would take up too much space to discuss in phantom enemies of sexual modernism. Again detail all of Leck’s unfounded and arbitrary gener‐ and again he refers to them as the prototypical alizations, partisan claims, and failures to mention doctors who stood for a stigmatizing sexual sci‐ crucial facts about Krafft-Ebing and Moll, but I will ence that relied on the sociobiological theory of briefly address the main flaws in his argument. degeneration, bolstered the repressive sexual and For one thing, it is just not true that Krafft-Ebing gender order of bourgeois society, and suppressed and Moll, as Leck claims, "drew sharp distinctions Ulrichs’s legacy. Their pathologizing perspective, between normal and abnormal sexual desires" (p. according to Leck, was in fact nothing more than 182) on the basis of the procreative norm; that "a medicalization of sin" and a replication, in sci‐ their explanation of perversion was completely entific guise, of Christian and Victorian prejudices molded by pathologization, biological determin‐ (p. 147). ism, and degeneration theory; that Moll "simply All these various assessments are misguided branded homosexuality as carnal madness" (p. and not based on any evidence whatsoever. Leck 112); that they were blinded by cultural ethnocen‐ refers to the first edition (1886) and a supplement‐ trism; that they hardly addressed "the injustice of ary edition (1890) of Psychopathia sexualis, but he existing penal codes" (p. 187) and systematically does not mention its other eleven editions pub‐ denied human rights to sexual minorities; that lished between 1887 and 1903, or any other work they did not empathize with their homosexual and by Krafft-Ebing apart from a book review. With re‐ otherwise sexually deviant patients or clients; that gard to Moll, Leck does refer to his main works, they banned discussions of love and affection Die konträre Sexualempfindung (the third edition from their, in Leck’s words, "anti-Greek science" of 1899, not the first one of 1891) and Unter‐ (p. 111); that they fully discredited Ulrichs’s ideas suchungen über die Libido sexualis (1897-98), but because of his subjective involvement in the issue only in a succinct, fragmented, and selective way as a homosexual; that they highlighted the ac‐ that does not do justice to their manifold and com‐ quired and immoral character of homosexuality plex contents. He appears to have ignored the and tended to deny its innate and permanent most recent historical publications about Moll in nature; or that Hirschfeld, instead of Krafft-Ebing the special issue of Medical History (2012), edited and Moll, was the "undisputed leader of the Cent‐ by Andreas-Holger Maehle and Lutz Sauerteig, in

6 H-Net Reviews ral European sexual science movement by 1900" ing the forum of medical science, upper- and (p. 64). middle-class men contacted Krafft-Ebing and Moll Already in the second edition of his Psycho‐ of their own accord as private patients or inform‐ pathia sexualis (1887) and also in his laudatory ants, and they would analyze themselves, speak preface to Moll’s book about homosexuality (1891), for themselves, and tell their personal life stories. Krafft-Ebing referred to homosexuals and other These articulate individuals hoped to find accept‐ deviants as "stepchildren of nature," and this am‐ ance and support; for several of them Krafft- biguous characterization was all but an outright Ebing’s and Moll’s work was an eye-opener and it denigration: it expressed the feeling that the crim‐ even brought them some relief. They capitalized inalization of their behavior was cruel and unjust, on it in order to part with the charge of immoral‐ and that they deserved compassion and humanit‐ ity and illegality and, by appealing to the natural‐ arian treatment.[1] Whereas Krafft-Ebing first ex‐ ness and authenticity of their feelings, to explain plained homosexuality in terms of immorality and and justify themselves. Their stories certainly pathological degeneration, in the 1890s he de‐ touched a nerve in Krafft-Ebing and Moll, and veloped a more psychological and sympathetic both referred to such cases as an empirical basis perspective. Around 1900 he admitted that his for their theoretical considerations, which, rather earlier views had been one-sided and that Ulrichs than being static, changed in response to informa‐ had a point with his plea for homosexual mar‐ tion and insights from some of their patients and riage: same-sex love was comparable to hetero‐ informants. sexual love and therefore legitimate. He had come Building on the work of Krafft-Ebing, Moll, in to believe that homosexuality was not so much a his monographs about homosexuality (1891) and disease as a biological and psychological condition libido sexualis (1897-98), elaborated the most com‐ that had to be accepted as a more or less deplor‐ prehensive and sophisticated sexual theory before able but natural fate. From the early 1890s on, Freud wrote his Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexual‐ both Krafft-Ebing and Moll criticized traditional theorie (1905) and Havelock Ellis completed his moral-religious and legal denunciations of homo‐ Studies in the Psychology of Sex (1897-1928). Moll’s sexuality (with arguments similar to those of Ul‐ perspective shared many elements with those of richs and Kertbeny), and they were among the the sexual modernists, and some aspects were per‐ first to sign Hirschfeld’s petition (1897) against haps even more innovative than the approach of Section 175 of the German penal code that made Leck’s prototypical sexual progressives. Although particular sexual acts between men punishable. Moll’s views on homosexuality would regress after Around 1900, Krafft-Ebing and Moll were, together 1900 to a more judgmental position, though with Hirschfeld, at the forefront of a liberal and without renouncing his basic theoretical assump‐ humanitarian approach to homosexuality. tions, in the 1890s he was the modernist sexologist The works of Krafft-Ebing and Moll contain a par excellence. wide range of case histories, including In his book about homosexuality, Moll ques‐ (auto)biographical accounts, letters, and intimate tioned several of the prevailing notions about it. confessions of patients and correspondents. The He doubted that a same-sex preference could be prominent role of the individual case study model acquired through mere behavioral influences, opened a space for "perverts," in particular homo‐ such as moral corruption, seduction, or masturba‐ sexual men but also others such as fetishists and tion. His central tenet was that in most cases ho‐ masochists, to express feelings and experiences mosexuality involved a deep-seated innate feeling that so far had been largely silenced in public. Us‐ and that as such it should not be considered im‐

7 H-Net Reviews moral and illegal: same-sex acts between consent‐ als. In line with what some of his patients made ing individuals above the age of sixteen or eight‐ clear—that partnership was as important to them een should not be punishable. Echoing Krafft- as sexual gratification—he noticed that the man‐ Ebing’s "stepchildren of nature," Moll talked about ner in which they experienced sexual passion, as "unfortunate human beings" who deserved com‐ well as dating and love, was in no way different passion and fair treatment. He also acknowledged from how heterosexuals felt these things. Neither the importance of Ulrichs’s writings, even though did homosexuals distinguish themselves from het‐ in his eyes his appeal for the right of "urnings" to erosexuals through a particular preference for marry was bizarre. youngsters; in both groups only a minority Moll did not doubt that homosexuality was a showed such desires and therefore there was no medical issue, but his evaluation of its pathologic‐ reason to equate homosexuality with "pederasty" al nature and the associated physical causes was or pedophilia. Another, even more consequential cautious. Like other physiological and psychologic‐ finding of Moll was that (other) sexual perversions al functions, sexuality, he explained, showed con‐ occurred in the same way and to the same degree siderable variation without absolute boundaries among homo- and heterosexuals. Ten years before between normal and abnormal. Although numer‐ Krafft-Ebing, Moll thus underlined the dichotomy ous homosexuals came from neuropathic families of hetero- and homosexuality as the fundamental and suffered from hereditary taints and nervous sexual categorization, while bisexuality would be troubles, he also found that many of them were their stepchild, and perversions were to be con‐ healthy, without any degenerative or other patho‐ sidered as derived subvariations. logical symptoms. There was no sufficient ground Moll’s frequent use of the term "heterosexual‐ for considering inborn homosexuality to be full- ity" next to homosexuality implied a separation blown psycho- or neuropathy. Using the qualifica‐ between sexuality and reproduction. Without rul‐ tion "morbid-like" and occasionally also "vari‐ ing out procreation as the underlying natural aim ation," Moll’s comparison of it to more elusive dis‐ of sexuality, he shifted the focus to its subjective, turbances was not very different from Hirschfeld’s experiential dimension. He made a crucial distinc‐ equation of this orientation with harmless mal‐ tion between the sexual drive, of which people are formations, such as color-blindness or a harelip. subjectively aware, and the unconscious, goal-ori‐ [2] Mental and nervous distress among homosexu‐ ented reproductive instinct. This instinct, merely a als, Moll added, could be caused by the social pres‐ biomedical matter according to Moll, was not rel‐ sure they endured or by sexual frustration. evant for sexual science’s task to work out a joint Tacitly Moll undermined the labeling of ho‐ physiological, psychological, and cultural under‐ mosexuality as pathology even further by putting standing of the sexual drive. In his work the tradi‐ it on a par with heterosexuality, which he defined tional moral distinction between procreative and as attraction and intercourse between males and nonprocreative acts clearly gave way to the mod‐ females without any procreative intention—beha‐ ern focus on the differentiation of sexual desires. vior which according to traditional norms devi‐ This also marked a shift from the medical-psychi‐ ated from nature’s purpose. Both orientations, atric understanding of deviant sexuality as a de‐ Moll suggested, were of the same kind. The close rived, episodic, and more or less singular symp‐ connection between the sexual drive and the love tom of an underlying physical or mental disorder impulse toward a specific individual, which distin‐ to viewing it as an integral part of an autonomous guished humans from lower animals, was as pre‐ and continuous sexual drive. valent among homosexuals as among heterosexu‐

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In his Untersuchungen über die Libido sexual‐ If the largely random sexual drive had a built- is (1897-98), Moll argued that perversions were in natural aim at all, Moll stressed, it was not re‐ nothing more and nothing less than modifications production but physical as well as mental pleasure of the sexual drive, which, he added, was not in‐ and satisfaction. He distinguished two dimensions herently and exclusively heterosexual. Thus he of the sexual drive: physical discharge (Detumes‐ cast doubt on the self-evidence of heterosexuality cenztrieb) and physical as well as psychological at‐ as the standard of normality. The diversity of indi‐ traction (Contrectationstrieb). The first manifested vidual preferences, he noticed, was boundless—a itself in physical arousal and centered on the sexu‐ complete catalogue of all existing sexual urges ba‐ al act, whether with someone else or alone, as a sically being unfeasible, an assertion that re‐ means for the release of sensual energy and ten‐ sembled Ulrichs’s claim, cited by Leck, that nature sion in orgasm. The attraction drive incited love of had created "thousands of gradations" (p. 74). Reg‐ a real or imagined partner and expressions of af‐ ular and deviant sexualities were interconnected, fection, which were linked to social feelings. Moll’s Moll stressed, and could only be understood in discussion of the attraction drive underlined the their reciprocal relation. His study of homosexual‐ decisive role of mental factors in the development ity fueled his thinking about heterosexuality, but of relational sexuality. Physiological processes and his consideration of fetishism, sadism, masochism, abilities were not more than necessary precondi‐ and other perversions raised his understanding of tions for sexual functioning. Mental stimuli, such normal sexuality as well. Fetishism, for example, as imagination and fantasies, were crucial, and was an intrinsic feature of it, because the specific the satisfaction of the sexual urge was not only individual preferences in sexual attraction and, made up of physical release but also of emotional connected to that, monogamous love were groun‐ fulfilment. In Moll’s analysis, sexuality emerged as ded in a distinct penchant for particular physical an intricate complex of physical functions, re‐ and mental characteristics of one’s partner. flexes, bodily sensations, behaviors, experiences, The blurring of clear boundaries between the feelings, thoughts, memories, mental associations, normal and the abnormal showed itself in particu‐ desires, imagination, fantasies, and dreams. lar in Moll’s analysis of childhood sexuality, which Therefore, sexuality as a field of research did not in his view also clarified the nature of adult sexu‐ belong to biology and medicine only, but should ality. Infantile sexual manifestations, including also, in Moll’s view, involve psychology and cultur‐ masturbation, homosexual leanings, and even fet‐ al analysis. ishist and sadomasochistic tendencies, were far This approach to sexuality indeed initiated a from exceptional and in themselves not necessar‐ shift from a biological and physiological to a more ily symptoms of perversion caused by either de‐ psychological approach. Moll distanced himself generation or immorality, as many believed. The from the medical endeavor to locate the causal wide range of sexual impulses and activities found factors of sexual aberrations in hereditary and de‐ among children and adolescents were, according generative defects of the body. There was no defin‐ to Moll, part of a transitory stage from undifferen‐ ite proof that the sexual drive could be reduced to tiated and erratic sexuality to a differentiated and the physiological process of the brain, nervous sys‐ constant drive in adulthood. Eventually, the ma‐ tem, gonads, or hormones. Since the physiological jority of adults would show a heterosexual desire, functioning of homosexuals and other deviants while a minority of them would exhibit a homo‐ was in many ways similar to that of heterosexuals, sexual or bisexual one, and all of them possibly the difference in their desire was to be found in with specifc perverse leanings. psychic processes and emotional arousal. Subject‐ ive inner life and personal history, not the body or

9 H-Net Reviews behavior as such, were the decisive criteria for the ance of the psychic and infantile components of diagnosis of sexual orientation. Mental processes sexuality; the libido as a fragmented pleasure affected the sexual organs rather than the other drive; and the explanation of normal heterosexu‐ way around. Moll was one of the first to adopt a ality as the result of a conversion of polymorph‐ new style of reasoning, before Freud would do so, ous perversity. Moll also shared with Freud a about perversions as functional disorders of a more or less pessimistic assessment of the unsolv‐ sexual drive that was situated in the personality able tension between sexuality and civilization. instead of the body. His evaluation of sexuality—on the one hand be‐ In his explanation of the genesis of the sexual lieving that it is beneficial as a relational force and drive, Moll shunned monocausality and reduction‐ that sexual restraint may turn into unhealthy re‐ ism. He questioned the causal role of hereditary pression, while on the other hand viewing it as a degeneration as well as the idea that perversion destructive threat to the social and moral order— was merely acquired by psychological association. was perhaps more true to life than the sexual Shades of both perspectives can be found in his ar‐ modernists’ wishful assumption of some sort of gument, but he foregrounded the interaction of unspoiled "natural" sexuality. nature and nurture. The inherited biological basis Moll’s consideration of the historical and cul‐ of sexuality should not be understood as a prede‐ tural shaping of sexuality was somewhat akin to termining cause, but as a potential. The sexual that of Iwan Bloch and at least as sophisticated. drive was the result of possible "reaction-capacit‐ Leck glorifies Bloch as a brilliant sexual innovator ies" or "reaction-modes" that had to be incited by because he supposedly cleared away "the old external stimuli and attachments to particular views" (p. 182) of Krafft-Ebing and Moll and, love objects.[3] In general the sexual potential through his historical interpretation of the work would eventually tend towards the opposite sex, of Marquis de Sade (published in 1900 and 1904), but if this inclination was fragile or hampered, a because he paved the way for a social and cultural susceptibility to homosexuality possibly emerged. analysis of sexuality. That may be true, but the Environmental, behavioral, psychological, and so‐ views of Bloch were not as unique as Leck claims, ciocultural factors played a seminal role in the for in the previous decade Moll had already ex‐ formation of the more specific, possibly perverse, plained sexuality in terms of an interplay of biolo‐ contents of hetero- and homosexual desires. Moll’s gical, psychological, and cultural factors. Neither basic idea was that sexual desire is neither natur‐ was Bloch a proponent of sexual modernism in al, definite, and inevitable nor made-up, accident‐ other aspects. Just like Moll and Krafft-Ebing, he al, or shaped by conscious will. Sensorial stimuli, envisioned the connection of sexual pleasure with mental association, education, and habit forma‐ egalitarian romantic love as a central tenet of the tion during childhood and adolescence were cru‐ modern sexual ethos, but whereas the first two cial on the individual level, whereas the broader cautiously suggested that homosexual relation‐ cultural and historical dimension also mattered. ships could be included in this model, Bloch mar‐ Not just people’s moral and social attitudes, in‐ ginalized nonheterosexual preferences in terms of cluding their openness or feelings of shame to‐ social abnormality and "cultural degeneracy" (p. ward sexuality, were shaped by culture and his‐ 210). So, who is the sexual modernist and the tory; the same was also true of the substance of sexual conservative here? Leck’s claim that Bloch’s the sexual drive itself. prioritization of heterosexuality was "less judg‐ Several of Moll’s insights foreshadowed cent‐ mental" (p. 215) than the interrelated views of ral tenets of Freud’s psychoanalysis: the import‐ Krafft-Ebing and Moll is highly disputable. The same applies to his assessment of the Swiss psychi‐

10 H-Net Reviews atrist Auguste Forel as modernist because he ad‐ sire as gender inversion to the (more modern) vocated "sexually frank, free, and egalitarian rela‐ idea of sexual orientation in terms of same-sex tions" between heterosexuals (p. 140). But how partner-choice only. Moll also fundamentally should we evaluate Forel’s exclusion of "nonhet‐ questioned Hirschfeld’s notion of a clear-cut and erosexuals" (p. 140), as acknowledged by Leck, his fixed homosexual identity and his emancipatory pathologization of homosexuality, and his social- strategy that was based on biological determinism. hygienic, eugenic, and even racist perspectives? Hirschfeld’s fight for acceptance of homosexuality Why should Forel be viewed as progressive and and against legal discrimination was intrinsically Moll, who also favored relational sexuality and a linked to his biogenetic explanation in terms of a social-hygienic approach but who explicitly rejec‐ deep-seated innate disposition, implying that ted eugenics and racism, be considered conservat‐ those concerned generally bore no responsibility ive? for their condition and sexual behavior. Moll, on Similar questions can be asked if we compare the other hand, pointed out that whatever its the views of Moll and those of Hirschfeld, the two causes might be—whether inborn or acquired or a leading sexologists who were continually involved combination—these were not relevant for the leg‐ in bitter conflicts between the early 1900s and the al and political assessment of homosexuality and 1930s. Following Ulrichs, Hirschfeld basically ad‐ individual responsibility. Hirschfeld’s biological opted the current understanding of sexual desire model was also entangled with eugenic assump‐ as a secondary gender characteristic and as attrac‐ tions, and he would accept drastic experiments tion between contrasting male and female ele‐ such as Eugen Steinach’s transplantation of ments. Evolution had supposedly advanced an in‐ testicles, because the underlying endocrine re‐ creasing distinction between males and females search appeared to underpin his biological theory. and their mutual polar magnetism, but at the In this connection, Hirschfeld suggested that ho‐ same time nature continued to produce a range of mosexuals should not propagate because of the intermediate genders. According to Ulrichs, considerable risk that their offspring would suffer Hirschfeld, and other sexual scientists, sexual di‐ from degenerative disorders. Arguing that the nat‐ versity was the result of a range of random vari‐ ural purpose of homosexuality was in fact the pre‐ ations in the differentiation of the physical and vention of degeneration, Hirschfeld was willing to mental characteristics of men and women: homo‐ link the decriminalization of homosexual inter‐ sexuals, characterized by a female soul in a male course with a legal ban for homosexuals to have body (or vice versa with regard to lesbians) be‐ children. Moll remained skeptical about such ar‐ longed to an intermediate "third sex,’" which also guments and all biological explanations of homo‐ included bisexuality, androgyny, transvestitism, sexuality, including Steinach’s endocrine theory. and transsexuality. To be sure, for several reasons, including his Moll did not completely rule out this explana‐ social-conservative and nationalist leanings, Moll tion, but at the same time he cast doubt on the cor‐ increasingly opposed Hirschfeld’s emancipatory relation between same-sex desire and physical, sexual politics (without withdrawing his support mental, and behavioral features of the opposite for legal reform), but that does not imply that we sex. Many homosexuals were entirely masculine can explain the differences between them simply in their thinking, appearance, and behavior, he in terms of progressiveness versus conservatism. noticed, whereas effeminate men could be found If Moll was not as pro-gay as Ulrichs and among heterosexuals. His observations signaled a Hirschfeld, overall his level-headed and pragmatic shift away from the understanding of same-sex de‐ views overlapped with those of other sexual schol‐ ars whom Leck foregrounds as modernists such as

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Bloch, Forel, and Havelock Ellis. All of them balanced way, and also to do justice to earlier and shared an enlightened and liberal trust in ration‐ canonical historical contributions to the subject. ality and science, as well as in the ideal of sexual Leck is not the first American historian of sexual‐ egalitarianism, reciprocity, and relational intim‐ ity who has tended to ignore the earlier work of acy. The means for ensuring and promoting sexual European historians about the development of health had to rely not so much on penal law or re‐ sexual science in central Europe or read it in a se‐ ligious authority, but on medicine, psychology, lective way. Overall his book is arbitrary and con‐ education, social hygiene and reform, and re‐ tradictory; it is also often biased and misleading. sponsible citizenship. This reformist approach im‐ Leck’s claim that there are close affinities among, plied liberating as well as restrictive con‐ on the one hand, sexual modernity and gay eman‐ sequences; sexual modernism is much more am‐ cipation, feminism, and socialism, and, on the oth‐ biguous than Leck’s rather one-dimensional pic‐ er hand, among mainstream sexual science and ture suggests. the repressive sexual politics of bourgeois conser‐ All of this indicates the arbitrary nature of vatism, fascism, and Nazism, is untenable. Such a Leck’s judgment of sexual progressiveness and crude scheme overlooks the ambiguities and di‐ conservatism. More troublesome, his systematic lemmas in the development of the modern science disregard of the modernist elements in the sex‐ and politics of sexuality. Leck’s book exemplifies ology of Krafft-Ebing and Moll comes close to his‐ the dubious trend among scholars in the history of torical falsification. Although I do not dispute the sexuality and gay and lesbian studies to smuggle a author’s pro-gay or "queer," feminist, antibour‐ presentist and politically correct agenda into their geois, anticapitalist, or whatever political position interpretation and assessment of the past. The fab‐ as such, what I find disturbing is that it seems to rication of such a "usable" history may serve the fully dictate his interpretation, which, aside from identity politics that nowadays sways (and pois‐ being selective, grossly misrepresents the thinking ons) the political and cultural agenda in the of Krafft-Ebing and Moll. Neither do I want to United States (and increasingly in Europe as well), trash Leck's entire study. Many parts of it are in‐ but it comes with the risk of hampering our histor‐ formative and stimulating, such as his discussion ical understanding. of the interaction between Ulrichs and Kertbeny; Notes the (un)suitability of Greek models for a liberal de‐ [1]. Albert Moll, Die Conträre Sexualempfind‐ fense of sexual rights; the relevance of philo‐ ung: Mit Benutzung amtlichen Materials (Berlin: sophies of love for sexual science; the difficulties Fischers Medicinische Buchhandlung H. Kornfeld, that anal sex posed for the acceptance of homo‐ 1891), v-vi. sexuality and the modernists’ troubled relation to [2]. Moll, Die Conträre Sexualempfindung, 131, "pederasty"; the significance of Bloch’s cultural- 189-190, 202-204; Albert Moll, Untersuchungen historical interpretation of de Sade; and the ways über die Libido sexualis (Berlin: Fischers Medicin‐ in which beliefs about sexual deviance and degen‐ ische Buchhandlung H. Kornfeld, 1898), 543-546, eration were entangled with deeply engrained 555-556, 626, 635, 644; Albert Moll and Henry bourgeois fears about social upheaval and politic‐ Havelock Ellis, "Die Funktionsstörungen des Sexu‐ al subversion. allebens," in Handbuch der Sexualwissenschaften: Unfortunately, these merits can only in part Mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der Kul‐ compensate for the book’s basic flaw, which turgeschichtlichen Beziehungen, ed. Albert Moll touches on a historian’s fundamental task to (Leipzig: Verlag von F. C. W. Vogel), 603-740; quote present sources and facts in an open-minded and on 652.

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[3]. Moll, Untersuchungen über die Libido Diamond Sutra—that fascinated and confused me. sexualis, 306-308, 497, 505. What puzzled me was this: throughout the transla‐ tion of the text, crucial passages were cited twice, ______first with and then without quotation marks. This seemed redundant. What did the quotation marks Karl Ulrichs’s Threat to the Canon of Sexual mean? Why say the exact same thing twice? The Science: Quotation Marks and the Unbiased answer that I cobbled together from several History of Gender sources was rather startling to me. The quotation Ralph M. Leck (Indiana State University) marks circumscribe religious truth claims by de‐ As part of the methodological preamble to noting their provisional character. Buddhist truth Vita Sexualis, I cite and praise Harry Oosterhuis’s claims are skillful means of thinking, but ulti‐ scholarship. We have much in common histori‐ mately they refuse to claim universal or tran‐ ographically. We both reject the Foucaultian con‐ scendent authority. My academic training in mod‐ tention that early sexual science was exclusively ern European intellectual history (commencing disciplinary and conservative. Moreover, we have with the Enlightenment) and critical theory made both published on homosexuality and the Left. me familiar with the sociological implications of Anyway, please imagine my deep appreciation of reification and false universals. I was fascinated to his willingness to write a review of my book, Vita find similar critiques of conceptual reification in Sexualis. What I set out to offer in Vita Sexualis much older, non-Western traditions. Like these was a contribution to a growing awareness of the two traditions of Enlightenment, I am devoted to central importance, both scientific and political, of theoretical self-consciousness. In fact, Vita Sexual‐ Karl Ulrichs’s life and works. He was, I argue, a is places my principle methodologies, truth claims, leading figure in the emergence of sexual modern‐ and organizing principles in so-to-speak quotation ism. Oosterhuis graciously gives me high praise in marks. My goal was to reveal biases and avoid in‐ this regard: “Leck’s presentation of sexual mod‐ flated generalizations. I lay out the methodological ernists is rather nuanced and therefore interest‐ line of Vita Sexualis on pp. xiv-xv in the book’s in‐ ing.” He readily admits that my principle scholarly troduction, “Post-Victorians and Sexual Science”: goal, the depiction of sexual modernism as multi‐ This study articulates the philosophical and faceted, was accomplished. cultural differences between modernists and tradi‐ However, along with praise and acknowledg‐ tional sexologists by way of a distinction between ments, comes a variety of imprecations as to both vita sexualis and psychopathia sexualis. In The my motives and methodology. There are, in fact, Sexual Life of Our Time in Relation to Culture pivotal differences between Oosterhuis’s and my (1907), the Berlin sexologist Iwan Bloch defined definition of sexual modernity. Furthermore, our “the great field of so-called psychopathia sexualis” historical methodologies, what I call the politics as a scholarly fascination with “sexual aberra‐ before politics, are poles apart. I welcome and ap‐ tions, degenerations, anomalies, perversities, and preciate the opportunity to enumerate those dif‐ perversions.”[1] The term psychopathia sexualis ferences here. dates to the early nineteenth century, but scholars I. Theoretical Quotations Marks generally associated it with Richard von Krafft- Ebing’s canonical Pychopathia Sexualis (1886). Some years ago, I taught comparative religion, Krafft-Ebing used psychopathia sexualis as an or‐ and now I teach a course entitled “Eastern Philo‐ ganizing principle for explaining the legal, moral, sophy in the Axial Age.” As part of my pedagogical and scientific meanings of erotic heterogeneity. preparation, I alighted upon a text—namely, The Through the use of this term, he essentially secu‐

13 H-Net Reviews larized long-standing theological orthodoxies. He mittee and thereby became a public advocate for did this by criminalizing and pathologizing sexual homosexual rights. behaviors that, from the perspective of compuls‐ Similarly, modernists often were unable to ory heterosexuality, were aberrant and abnormal. free themselves from suppositions of their histor‐ As a regulative concept of scientific explanation, ical horizon. The traditional ascription of sexual then, psychopathia sexualis expressed a largely activity to males and sexual passivity to females is conservative and censorial Victorian attitude to‐ a case in point. This was true of Ulrichs, the par‐ ward sexual variance and one that affirmed dom‐ agon of modernist vita sexualis. Ulrichs invented a inant heterosexual and religious mores. new science of sexual variance, yet, his conceptual Still, a word of caution is offered in regards to stockroom retained some traditional conjectures. vita sexualis and psychopathia sexualis as ideal This cognitive cargo erected barriers to the realiz‐ types, that is, as symbols of dichotomous schol‐ ation of his scholarly goal: the articulation of arly and civic approaches to sexual variance. The sexual diversity. In light of these complexities, this contrast between vita sexualis and psychopathia study seeks to use analytical concepts in a way sexualis is analytically valid and cognitively use‐ that does not simplify the convoluted coexistence ful, but readers should keep in mind that many of modernist vita sexualis and traditional psycho‐ sexual scientists cannot easily be assigned to one pathia sexualis in the scholarship of individual cultural rubric or the other. For example, all prac‐ sexologists. titioners of psychopathia sexualis experienced the Oosterhuis labels my methodology a “crude frisson of sexual scholarship and advanced the scheme [that] overlooks ambiguities and dilem‐ study of sexual diversity. Yes, sexologists like mas in the development of the modern science Krafft-Ebing greatly constricted the transformat‐ and politics of sexuality.” His introductory para‐ ive potential of knowledge about sexual variability graph similarly asserts that Vita Sexualis is an un‐ by discussing it under the umbrella of morally de‐ sophisticated story of heroes and villains. In fact, risive nomenclature. Nonetheless, Krafft-Ebing my use of Max Weber’s concept of ideal types ar‐ also greatly expanded the empirical knowledge of ticulates and anticipates numerous ambiguities sexual heterogeneity, and this had positive, if unin‐ and interpretive dilemmas in the history of sexual tended, consequences for sexual minorities. Fur‐ science. Note that my quintessential modernist, Ul‐ thermore, the scientific apprehensions and civic richs, is not treated in a hagiographic fashion as conclusions of sexual scientists often changed Oosterhuis alleges. Here and elsewhere, my articu‐ over time. Krafft-Ebing’s intellectual biography il‐ lation of complexity leads to a critical and bal‐ lustrates this point. His Psychopathia Sexualis anced presentation of numerous figures in the his‐ medicalized homosexuality as pathological and tory of sexology, including John Addington Sy‐ degenerate. In line with the sentiments of this dis‐ monds, Max Nordau, and the Marquis de Sade. course, Krafft-Ebing predictably opposed the de‐ By emphasizing the social construction of ana‐ criminalization and de-stigmatization of homo‐ lytical categories, the methodology of ideal types sexuality in the late 1880s. Years later, however, plays an important interpretive role in history- he reversed his initial political convictions and writing. It humbly and self-consciously denies the came out publicly in support of decriminalization validity of older traditions of social analysis (such and de-stigmatization. Similar complexities as universal histories and positivist claims). Unlike resided in the life and works of Swiss sexologist these traditions, Weber does not seek to establish August Forel. While Forel’s scholarship stigmat‐ the validity of sociology via the proclamation of ized homosexuality as pathological, he ultimately transcendent authority or universal truth. Rather, joined Hirschfeld’s Scientific-Humanitarian Com‐

14 H-Net Reviews the authority and value of an ideal type can be as‐ Moll’s general propositions concerning the hered‐ certained only in terms of its explanatory poten‐ itary nature of sexual anomalies. He especially re‐ tial or truth-value (to borrow a concept from Willi‐ jected the monolithic character of degenerative ex‐ am James). My invocation of Weberian ideal types planations and noted the “uncritical spirit … of was intended as theoretical quotation marks. This Krafft-Ebing’s method”: “In the area of etiological level of circumspection and self-consciousness is inquiry handled here, the theoretical one-sided‐ an example of best practices in the discipline of in‐ ness [of degenerative theory] leads more readily to tellectual history. the obfuscation than the clarification of the essen‐ The most perplexing aspect of Oosterhuis’s re‐ tial question of causation…. There are a great view is its simultaneous recognition and denial of number of external factors which have nothing to my intention to “not simplify the convoluted coex‐ do with … degeneration, or degenerative hered‐ istence of modernist vita sexualis and traditional ity.”[4] psychopathia sexualis in the scholarship of indi‐ While Oosterhuis suggests that my dichotomy vidual sexologists.” He writes: “Leck acknowledges between modernists and conservatives is a … that there was quite some overlap between tendentious fabrication, time after time my nar‐ ‘modernist’ and ‘conservative’ sexual science and rative makes insightful and important distinctions politics and that the complexity of historical real‐ between modernists and conservatives. For ex‐ ity does not always allow for the presentation of a ample, Bloch’s critique of Krafft-Ebing’s method— black-and-white answer.” By the end of his review, as an “uncritical” science typical of “old views”— however, Oosterhuis writes as though he has no linked Krafft-Ebing to the hegemonic episteme of notion of my methodological propaedeutic. This degeneration. By organizing the study of sexual di‐ creates an absurd situation: Oosterhuis cites my versity around the concept of psychopathology scholarly revelations of complexity as an argu‐ and the theory of degeneration, Krafft-Ebing ment against my thesis of complexity. Let me ex‐ thwarted the development of new methods of in‐ plain. For instance, in chapter 6, “Normalizing the quiry. According to Bloch, scholars immersed in Marquis de Sade” (pp. 182-83), I write: the degenerative episteme impeded the explora‐ Bloch’s first sustained critique of degenerative tion of cultural and historical determinants, that theory appeared in Contributions to the Etiology is, “external factors.” Krafft-Ebing’s “old view” of of Psychopathia Sexualis (1902). The first chapter sexual etiology ignored these sociological factors. of this book read like an avant-garde manifesto In The Sexual Life of Our Time (1909), Bloch re‐ announcing the passing of previous intellectual ti‐ called the methodological shift to cultural sex‐ tans into the nether world of scientific insignific‐ ology that he initiated with his Contributions to ance. Bloch spoke of himself as the “advocate of a the Etiology of Psychopathia Sexualis (1902). I new sexology” and contrasted himself to the “the quote Bloch’s views on pp. 182-83: supporters of the old views.”[2] The supporters of In my Contributions to the Etiology of Psycho‐ older views were none other than Krafft-Ebing and pathia Sexualis, which appeared in 1902 and 1903, Moll.[3] By 1900, Bloch explained, hereditary de‐ I for the first time attempted to systematically generation had become the etiology ushering forth analyze the great field of so-called “psychopathia from nearly every authoritative publication, and sexualis”—sexual aberrations, degenerations, an‐ no etiological treatments of sexuality were more omalies, perversities and perversions—from the important than Krafft-Ebing’s Psychopathia perspective of anthropologists and ethnographers. Sexualis (1886) and Moll’s Examinations of Libido Consequently, I started from the perspective that, Sexualis (1898). Bloch savaged Krafft-Ebing and in order to (1) obtain new perspectives concerning

15 H-Net Reviews the nature of psychopathia, and (2) correct and By asserting that Krafft-Ebing and Moll were modify old interpretations, we must not begin politically radical modernists, Oosterhuis would with the one-sided view of sexual differences as have one believe that the political and epistemic evidence of “sick humanity”; rather, we must keep differences between modernists, like Ulrichs and in mind the multi-sided idea of “man as man,” Bloch, and theorists of sexual degeneracy, like both as civilized [Kulturmensch] and uncivilized Krafft-Ebing and Eduard Reich, were nonexistent. [Naturmensch] man. Until now, the science of psy‐ In fact, my scholarship highlights meaningful dif‐ chopathia sexualis has been totally dominated by ferences. One of those differences had to do with the clinical, purely medical interpretation … the acceptance or rejection of the disciplinary wherein sexual anomalies are described as symp‐ trope of degeneration. Bloch interpreted Krafft- toms of degeneration. From the 1820s to the 1840s, Ebing’s brand of sexual science as outdated and as Hermann Joseph Loewenstein, Joseph Haussler a narrow-minded replication of the degenerative and Heinrich Kaan initiated this medicalization of episteme. In chapter 5, “Sexual Degeneration and sexual aberrations; then, in the last quarter of the Bourgeois Culture,” I explained the significance of same century, Richard von Krafft-Ebing trans‐ the trope of degeneration to the history of sexual formed modern sexual pathology into a compre‐ science: “The present moribund status of degener‐ hensive scientific system that stands or falls with ation as a diagnostic concept belies its colossal sig‐ the concept of degeneration.[5] nificance to European scientific and civic culture. Degeneration was the conceptual scaffolding around which fin-de-siècle Central European sexu‐ al science originally was constructed.[6] While it no longer holds scientific validity, degeneration was one of the most important power-languages of the late nineteenth century, and therefore con‐ sideration of its various deployments is indispens‐ able for a study sexual modernism” (p. 141). In his review, Oosterhuis never mentions that I devote a large section—entitled “Krafft-Ebing and the Cultivated Pervert”—of chapter 5 to an ex‐ amination of Krafft-Ebing’s stigmatizing discourse, opposition to homosexual rights, and devotion to degenerative theory. Here and elsewhere, I make clear and illuminating distinctions between mod‐ ernists and mainstream sexologists. My chapter on degeneration investigated the civic and moral implications of dominant tropes within the discip‐ line of sexual science. My point was simple. The affirmation or denunciation of degenerative the‐ ory was an epistemic dividing line between Ul‐ richs and Bloch, on the one hand, and mainline sexologists like Eduard Reich and Krafft-Ebing, on the other.

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However, in keeping to my methodology of al ambiguities and contradictions on pages 209-10. ideal types, I also noted that Bloch—although a Readers of Vita Sexualis will learn something that modernist from the perspective of degenerative is very instructive. Although we typically think of theory—opposed homosexual rights, and in this “equality for all,” historical evidence reveals that regard, betrayed the modernist ideal of sexual people confer equality very selectively. Forel was a equality. Indeed, Bloch continued to use the stig‐ staunch feminist and socialist, but his devotion to matizing language in reference to homosexuals. equality stopped there. He was also a racist and My scholarship reveals moral and civic ambigu‐ medical doctor who used stigmatizing language ities and composes a multifaceted portrait of sex‐ (such as Perversionen, that is, “perversions”) to de‐ ologists like Ulrichs and Bloch. Oosterhuis, how‐ scribe homosexuality. His medical language car‐ ever, discusses my uncovering of civic ambiguity ried a much different meaning than the classificat‐ not as a logical outcome of my stated scholarly as‐ ory neologisms Ulrichs invented to remove stigma pirations, but as a defect. Here is how he inter‐ from the scientific lexicon of sexual diversity. To prets my revelation that the modernist Bloch sim‐ get to the point, this intricate analysis of Forel ultaneously expressed political views that contra‐ achieved my methodological goal of, first, avoid‐ dicted the modernist ideal type: “Bloch marginal‐ ing rigid dichotomies (modernist versus conser‐ ized nonheterosexual preferences in terms of so‐ vative) and, second, articulating the political unde‐ cial abnormality and ‘cultural degeneracy’ (p. cidability of many sexologists. Here is Oosterhuis’s 210). So, who is the sexual modernist and conser‐ appraisal: “The same applies to his [i.e., my] as‐ vative here?” sessment of the Swiss psychiatrist Auguste Forel as My narrative provides a nuanced answer to a modernist because he advocated ‘scientifically Oosterhuis’s question about Bloch. If opposition to frank, free, and egalitarian relations’ between het‐ degenerative theory and support for homosexual erosexuals (p. 140). But how should we evaluate rights signify two aspects of the modernist ideal Forel’s exclusion of nonheterosexuals (p. 140), as type, then Bloch should be seen as an interesting acknowledged by Leck, his pathologization of ho‐ liminal figure who traverses the boundaries of mosexuality, and his social-hygienic, eugenic, and sexual modernism and psychopathia sexualis. In even racist perspectives? Why should Forel be short, my text provides an answer to Oosterhuis’s viewed as a progressive … ?” presumably unanswerable question. Oosterhuis’s Repeatedly, Oosterhuis takes evidence of com‐ question implicitly confirms my thesis about the plexity uncovered by my research, fashions it into moral undecidability and civic ambiguity of indi‐ a question, and then presents this question as bit‐ vidual sexologists. Far from ignoring the poly‐ ing evidence of the deficiency of my line of reas‐ valent character of individual sexologists, my oning. He repeatedly ignores my methodological study of Ulrichs and the sexual science movement quotation marks. The methodology of ideal types self-consciously constructs polychrome portraits enables us to see that any sexual scientist—or hu‐ of leading sexologists. man being for that matter—is not a monodimen‐ Oosterhuis applies the same line of argument‐ sional stereotype but an intricate matrix of mul‐ ation to my reading of the Swiss sexologist Au‐ tiple social identities. Ideal types articulate both guste Forel. Because of his support for women’s similarities to and deviations from themselves. In equality, economic equality, and the amatory code practice, this means any sexologist can simultan‐ of Agape, I treated Forel as an example of a mod‐ eously possess elements of modernism and con‐ ernist. However, in keeping with my methodology servatism. By spotlighting the civic undecidability and interpretive goals, I foreground Forel’s politic‐ of so many sexologists, Oosterhuis’s review accom‐ plishes a goal that was not part of his intention: he

17 H-Net Reviews presents indisputable proof that Vita Sexualis sciences have a long history of universal truth achieved its scholarly aims. My methodology and claims. For instance, in the late nineteenth cen‐ narrative evoked from Oosterhuis clear recogni‐ tury, the objective science of social Darwinism le‐ tion of the moral and civic polyvalence of Krafft- gitimized racial slavery, patriarchy, and imperial‐ Ebing, Moll, Bloch, Forel, and Hirschfeld’s legacies. ism. In light of this history, my mentors jettisoned My unearthing of perplexing and complicated theological and positivistic truth claims like pois‐ civic legacies is not, as Oosterhuis suggests, a onous ballast of a bygone academic age. If we shortcoming, but the expressed and fully realized must speak of objectivity, then, it is best to ac‐ objective of my research. knowledge that any approximation of scholarly II. Unbiased and Antipolitical History objectivity requires revelations about methodolo‐ gies, subjectivities, and civic values. Indeed, best Professor Oosterhuis would have us believe practices within my academic episteme require that a neat and orderly disjuncture exists between methodological self-consciousness and the exhibi‐ social science and politics and that an unwilling‐ tion of biases to the reader. Biases and value ness to recognize this represents a biased and con‐ judgements are unavoidable, necessary, and pro‐ taminated scholarship. I disagree. As an organiz‐ ductive. ing system, the methodology of ideal types pos‐ sesses the merit of avoiding simplistic political As I demonstrated above with the methodo‐ binaries. Some binaries function differently, how‐ logy of ideal types, methodologies are the politics ever. Oosterhuis deploys three disparaging binar‐ before politics. Methodological frameworks have ies in his review: American/European, biased/un‐ decisive interpretive consequences. The methodo‐ biased, and political/objective. Much of his cri‐ logy of ideal types produces the possibility of see‐ tique of Vita Sexualis turns on accusations that my ing individuals as a matrix of identities. Several scholarship is “biased” and tarnished by “a partic‐ contemporary social theories reflect this approach ular political commitment.” Oosterhuis’s binaries to understanding social identity. I have been par‐ are not nuanced and pliable like ideal types. They ticularly influenced by the sociological theory of a are rigid and annihilative. What follows is a reflec‐ matrix of domination and privilege (Patricia Hill tion on Oosterhuis’s sponsorship of a so-called un‐ Collins, Estelle Disch, and Allan Johnson) and by biased and value-free history-writing. As you shall the gender theory of intersectionality. Both of see, he and I agree. My work is biased. Instead of these methodologies enable social theorist to denying bias, I will elaborate upon it. grasp the individual as a polyvalent pastiche, not as a monodimensional identity. How does this in‐ Here is my first confession of interpretive par‐ fluence the writing of Vita Sexualis? I define sexu‐ tiality. The scholars who trained me in intellectual al modernism as an egalitarian ideal. Far from be‐ history, philosophy, and critical theory denounced ing a tendentious politics, this definition reflects the idea of an unbiased and value-free production the impact of the 1848 Revolution upon Ulrichs of knowledge. For too long, similar claims to ob‐ and his lifelong devotion to the fight for the polit‐ jective truth—via the European doctrine of Divine ical and social equality of sexual minorities. How‐ Right and the transcendental authority of the ever, if I had merely praised Ulrichs’s sexual polit‐ Mandate from Heaven in the case of China, for ex‐ ics, my study would have been a hagiographic fail‐ ample—legitimized brutal absolutist monarchies. ure. My appreciation of intersectional theory led The oldest major transcendent religion, Hinduism, me to ask about Ulrichs’s support for other move‐ still legitimizes the injustices of the caste system. ments for equality. My answer reveals something Religious cultures are not the only cultural factor‐ very important: unlike many other Europeans in ies of false universals. Both the natural and social the nineteenth century, Ulrichs did not advocate

18 H-Net Reviews for women’s or workers’ rights. By emphasizing My use of an intersectional methodology pro‐ this intersectional social dimension, Vita Sexualis duced political conclusions about the masculinist shuns an exclusively heroic portrait, and instead branch of the German homosexual movement that Ulrichs comes to life as a multifaceted historical Oosterhuis disagreed with. Let me set the scene. figure who often contradicted his own ideal of Ulrichs heavily influenced the late-nineteenth-cen‐ equality. tury English classicist John Addington Symonds. Intersectional theory, too, is a politics before Using Ulrichs’s nomenclature, Symonds produced politics; methodologically, it prescribes a com‐ a fascinating sexological analysis of ancient pound rendering of social and political identity. Greece. Although Symonds hoped to find a justific‐ Oosterhuis fails to comprehend this methodologic‐ ation for his own homosexuality in Greek gender al dimension of gender history. According to Oost‐ relations, what he found was something else. An‐ erhuis, “Leck’s claim that there are close affinities cient Greece was a slave society and a patriarchal among … sexual modernity and gay emancipation, civilization that oppressed both young boys and feminism and socialism … is untenable.” First, this women. Too often, Symonds suggested, young statement is false. Sexual modernists like Max boys, especially those who were poor, were sus‐ Hoddan, Helene Stöcker, and Hirschfeld simultan‐ ceptible to the power and prestige of predatory eously supported homosexual, women’s, and males. Women were largely sequestered and soci‐ workers’ rights. Their politics constituted a much ety was aggressively patriarchal. Retrospectively, more inclusive and expansive conception of social we might say that Symonds pioneered a type of in‐ equality than one finds in the sexology of Krafft- tersectional thinking. While ancient Greece Ebing and Albert Moll. Second, Oosterhuis has not offered him an approving model of homosocial accurately reproduced my argument. I define culture and male-male love, it violated the egalit‐ sexual modernism as a movement for social arian civic ideal of modernity by subjugating wo‐ equality. However, through the use of an intersec‐ men and boys. In the early twentieth century, tional perspective, Vita Sexualis demarcates the some German homosexual activists revived the boundaries of sexologists’ devotion to this ideal. Greek model. They were predictably misogynistic As the history of American feminism shows, and antifeminist. As Symonds’s scholarship pre‐ movements for women’s equality can simultan‐ dicted, the revival of Greek gender relations facil‐ eously naturalize the injustices and inequalities of itated the homosocial needs of gay men but at the slavery. Following the reasoning of intersectional expense of the rights of women and boys. thought, I show that Ulrichs’s devotion to a demo‐ cratic Rechtsstaat, a state based on equal rights, had limits. Women and workers were excluded. To my mind, intersectional analyses—especially when one is writing about movements for equality —enrich historical narratives. Intersectional the‐ ory places the self-righteousness of activists and revolutionaries in quotation marks. Their claims of liberation are not blindly affirmed but instead are critically evaluated. This is done by asking about devotion to equality beyond the domain of activists’ particular concerns.

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Oosterhuis takes special umbrage at my inter‐ ality and homosocial bonding entirely overlooks sectional reading of this subsection of the German intersectional consequences. homosexual rights movement. He writes: “Their III. Language and Politics cultural and homosocial perspective allowed them Oosterhuis, an overtly political scholar, ob‐ to question the liberating potential of sexual mod‐ jects to my narrative history of the sexual science ernism and its epistemic and normative assump‐ movement, because, via a focus on Ulrichs, it dis‐ tions. They rejected biological determinism and places Krafft-Ebing and the male-bonding subsec‐ the related assumption of a fixed boundary tion of the homosexual rights movement from the between exclusive homo- and heterosexuality…. protagonist role of gender history. For instance, in For them, the struggle for acceptance of homo‐ “Commencing with Ulrichs,” a subsection of sexuality as a fixed minority category was restrict‐ chapter 1, I place Ulrichs at the headwaters of ive because it would rule out any sexual ambigu‐ modernism. Comparatively, I portray Krafft-Ebing ity or a more general ‘bisexuality,’ while also ta‐ as a conservative and mainstream sexual scientist. booing sex between adults and minors.” In his turgid and profuse vindication of Krafft- We need to unpack this. Sexual modernists Ebing and Moll, Oosterhuis says little about the like Ulrichs, Symonds, and Hirschfeld completely differences between Ulrichs and Krafft-Ebing, so I affirmed the rights of homosexuals and bisexuals. will mention them as a conclusion. Vita Sexualis Why, then, does Oosterhuis suggest that sexual emphasizes three differences between modernists modernism limits sexual liberation? To answer and mainstream sexologists. this question, let’s examine the “liberating poten‐ 1. The Political Diference tial” of Oosterhuis’s version of bisexuality. Mas‐ culinists in the homosexual movement defended At a national convention of German jurists in male bisexuality. Women obviously did not parti‐ 1865, Ulrichs called for his colleagues to condemn cipate in male-bonding culture. As masculinists the criminalization of homosexuality. More than were antifeminist, there was no expectation of three decades later, late in life, Krafft-Ebing en‐ women’s amatory freedom. Symonds reasoned dorsed homosexual rights. Unlike Ulrichs and that a liberatory focus only on the rights of male Hirschfeld, Krafft-Ebing was not a pioneering homosexuals violated the highest principle of sexual activist. democratic society: equality for all. Seen from this In 2013, homosexual rights activists in Berlin perspective, the “liberating potential” Oosterhuis demanded that Einem Street be renamed Ulrichs defends is not only antifeminist; it also sanctioned Street. In the early twentieth century, General Karl sex between male adults and prepubescence boys. von Einem, as Prussian minister of war, purged Oosterhuis, for instance, identifies “tabooing sex homosexuals from the officer corps and later cel‐ between adults and minors”—a practice celeb‐ ebrated the Nazis destruction of democracy. When rated in the masculinist branch of the German ho‐ he died in 1934, the Nazi regime honored his pub‐ mosexual movement—as an unwanted byproduct lic legacy by renaming a street in his honor. Con‐ of the modernist (i.e., egalitarian) model of sexual temporary human rights activists experienced liberty. Unlike Symonds, Oosterhuis does not prob‐ Einem Street as an unwanted heirloom of Nazism, lematize the asymmetries of authority and age and in 2013 they succeeded in having the street found in sex between adult males and prepubes‐ name changed. As internet photos can attest, hu‐ cent boys. Recall that most societies criminalize man rights demonstrations now regularly parade sex between adults and minors, because it is as‐ to and through Ulrichs Street. Ulrichs’s legacy is sumed that minors cannot give consent. Ooster‐ appreciated as an antidote to fascist sexual polit‐ huis’s defense of the liberating potential of bisexu‐ ics. By contrast, a dusty sculpture of Krafft-Ebing

20 H-Net Reviews reposes in a medical building of Vienna Univer‐ ics, Krafft-Ebing’s scholarship abounded in stig‐ sity. Not far from Vienna’s Baumgarten Cemetery matizing discourse. For this reason, I use Krafft- there is also a street named in his honor, Krafft- Ebing’s master concept psychopathia sexualis to Ebing Lane. To my knowledge, activists have nev‐ denote antimodernist discourse. This contrast is er gathered there. linguistic and historical. According to Ulrichs, dis‐ 2. The Epistemic Diference courses that brand sexual minorities as patholo‐ gical and mentally ill are prejudicial, harmful, and Ulrichs’s sexology was characterized by an unscientific. Ulrichs’s pioneering political linguist‐ epochal innovation in the science of induction. In ics demonstrates that it is neither unbiased nor contrast to the normal/abnormal binary that value-free to organize sexual variations under the framed Krafft-Ebing’s classification of sexual vari‐ classifcatory discourse of psychopathology. ety, Ulrichs defined all examples of sexuality as natural. This classificatory difference reflected re‐ Like the condemned man in Franz Kafka’s “In sponses to degeneration as a master trope of sex‐ the Penal Colony” (1919), the corpus of Ooster‐ ology. Ulrichs rejected it; Krafft-Ebing’s scholar‐ huis’s sexological scholarship is imprinted with an ship, by comparison, reproduced the regulative as‐ antimodernist language whose meaning he cannot sumptions and stigmatizations of the degenerative decipher. In Stepchildren of Nature and in his re‐ episteme. view of Vita Sexualis, Oosterhuis liberally uses the discourse of “perversions” as an organizing prin‐ 3. Diferent Politics of Language ciple of sexual diversity. It speaks to the revolu‐ Many of my interpretive biases are connected tionary character of Ulrichs’s thought that, a hun‐ to my educational lineage. As a student of Mark dred and fifty years after his linguistic break‐ Poster, Bernd Witte, Samuel Weber, and Jean- throughs, sexual scientists like Frank Sulloway François Lyotard, I have been educated to think and Oosterhuis use stigmatizing discourses with deeply about the politics of language. Two no regard to their civic implications. The dis‐ chapters of Vita Sexualis are devoted to a history courses of psychopathology and perversion un‐ and sociology of medical languages and disciplin‐ consciously bifurcate nature into natural and un‐ ary tropes. The introduction to chapter 2 is en‐ natural types of sexuality. Ulrichs’s master titled “Discourse and the History of Sexual Sci‐ concept, Varietät (variety), is ontological and in‐ ence.” Similarly, chapter 5 is devoted to an analys‐ clusive. There is, Ulrichs argues, no such thing as is of the medical and social meaning of degenera‐ an unnatural gender identity. Oosterhuis’s use of tion. This is a tropic analysis. Moreover, a central the concept of “stepchildren of nature” is similarly argument of my book is that Ulrichs’s activism and problematic. Despite Oosterhuis’s central argu‐ scholarship were inextricably bound up with the ment that this language represents an empathetic politics of language. Prior to Ulrichs, for example, attitude toward sexual minorities, Ulrichs would there was no way to refer to homosexuals without have denied the scientific validity of the notion of the use of a demeaning slur. In response, Ulrichs stepchildren of nature. Nature has no stepchil‐ invented a new classificatory nomenclature that dren; all varieties are natural. Furthermore, largely eliminated stigmatizing terminology. (Ul‐ nature is not to blame for the persecution of sexu‐ richs’s new lexicon inspired his colleague, Karl al minorities. A heterosexist and unjust society is Maria Kerbeny, to invent the words homosexual to blame. This is a crucial difference in the soci‐ and heterosexual in the 1870s.) Because he classi‐ ology and etiology of sexual heterogeneity. Ooster‐ fied all sexual variations as natural, Ulrichs rejec‐ huis goes on and on, page after page, seeking to ted concepts like unnatural sexuality and perver‐ defend the legacies of his primary subjects, Krafft- sion. In stark contrast to Ulrichs’s linguistic polit‐ Ebbing and Moll. He tells readers that Vita Sexual‐

21 H-Net Reviews is “grossly misrepresents the thinking of Krafft- ence, which Hirschfeld founded in the early twen‐ Ebing and Moll.” But, while defending Krafft-Ebing ties. Hirschfeld died in exile. Had he returned to and Moll as cultural radicals, Oosterhuis uncon‐ Germany, his Jewish heritage and homosexuality sciously offers evidence to the contrary by repro‐ would have marked him for extermination. Due to ducing and imitating their antimodernist political the centrality of antifeminism and anti-homosexu‐ linguistics. al rights to the Nazi cultural appeal, it seems In addition to comparisons between Ulrichs to ludicrous to suggest that Hirschfeld and Moll were Krafft-Ebing, Vita Sexualis also compares Hirch‐ equally “radical.” Their differences in gender feld to Moll. This makes sense chronologically and politics signify divergences of the most profound generationally. Unlike Moll, who disparaged Ul‐ kind; they were a matter of life or death for mil‐ richs’s scholarship, Hirschfeld was the greatest lions of Europeans, including homosexuals, Jews, champion of Ulrichs’s legacy. He edited and pub‐ and so-called Jewish Bolsheviks. lished Ulrichs’s collected works in 1899. By con‐ Clearly, my work viscerally engaged Ooster‐ trast, neither Krafft-Ebing nor Moll championed huis. However, his patronizing tone—positioning Ulrichs’s sexual science. In the late nineteenth cen‐ me in a class of typical “American historian[s]” tury, Hirschfeld worked closely, if unsuccessfully, whose scholarship pales in comparison with the with the leader of German socialism, Friedrich vastly superior erudition of European historians— Ebert, to decriminalize homosexuality. In addition and his annihilative allegations (that leave no to the homosexual rights movement and social room for respectful differences of interpretation) democracy, Hirschfeld was an ally of the feminist surprised me. Let’s not be too highfalutin, though. movement. Due to his support for egalitarian What we have here is an old-fashioned histori‐ movements, I present him as an example of the ographical scrum. Readers should know that no modernist ideal type. scholar has a greater stake in criticizing my work Although Oosterhuis claims that Moll was than Oosterhuis, the author of “Sexual Modernity equally as radical as Hirschfeld, nothing could be in the Works of Richard von Krafft-Ebing and Al‐ further from the truth. Moll’s Die conträre bert Moll.”[7] Because he is a highly political his‐ Sexualempfndung (The contrary sexual feeling, torian—gay men, fascism, the political Left, male 1891) pathologized the sentiments of sexual bonding, homosexuality, and the political cultures minorities as contrary to nature. His sexual sci‐ of health are among his broad scholarly interests ence contained hygienic seeds that blossomed into —Oosterhuis was horrified to find that my narrat‐ an open embrace of Nazism. Is it unbiased and im‐ ive positioned his heroes of sexual modernity as partial to omit mention of Moll’s reactionary polit‐ antimodernists. “My key point,” he writes, “is that ics? Has not Oosterhuis forgotten the danger that Krafft-Ebing and [Albert] Moll … were at least as pro-Nazi academics like Moll posed to people like radical as Leck’s modernist heroes.” I have not, as Hirschfeld? As a Jew, a socialist sympathizer, a ho‐ Oosterhuis alleges, disparaged or misrepresented mosexual, and an ally of feminism, Hirschfeld was the contributions of sexologists whom he ardu‐ a multiheaded hydra of egalitarian politics. The ously seeks to valorize and defend. Quite simply, Nazis were deadly enemies of feminism, social via comparisons with Ulrichs, Vita Sexualis offers democracy, and homosexual rights. When Hitler an alternative historical interpretation of early came to power, Hirschfeld was outside of Ger‐ sexual science. many, and fearing for his life, he never returned Notes to his home in Berlin. In early 1933, the Nazis ran‐ [1]. Iwan Bloch, Das Sexuelleben unserer Zeit sacked and destroyed the Institute of Sexual Sci‐ in Beziehungen zur modernen Kultur (Berlin:

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Louis Marcus, 1919), 481. [Cited in note 14 in the original.—Ed.] [2]. Bloch, Das Sexuelleben unserer Zeit, vi. [Note 5 in the original.—Ed.] [3]. As I write in note 6 (p. 255) in the book, “Bloch’s passionate rebuke of an older generation of sexual scientists was not merely scholarly. He especially loathed his Berlin contemporary and fellow sexologist Albert Moll. This disdain was so intense that Bloch would involuntarily tremble in disgust when Moll’s name was spoken. See Volk‐ mar Sigusch, Geschichte der Sexualwissenschaft (Frankfurt/M: Campus Verlag, 2009), 295.” [4]. Iwan Bloch, Beiträge zur Aetiologie der Psychopathia Sexualis I (Dresden: H. R. Dohrn, 1902), 5-7. [Note 5 in the orignal.—Ed.] [5]. Bloch, Das Sexualleben unserer Zeit, 481-82. [Note 6 in the original.—Ed.] The emphasis is mine. [6]. On the centrality of degeneration to sex‐ ology, see Erwin Haeberle, “Iwan Bloch (1872-1922), und seine Wissenschaft des mesch‐ lichen Geschlechtlebens,” in “Meinetwegen ist die Welt erschaffen”: Das intellektuelle Vermächnis des deutschsprachigen Judenturms, ed. Hans Erler, Ernst Ehrlich, and Ludger Heid (Frankfurt/ M: Campus, 1997), 167. [7]. Harry Oosterhuis, “Sexual Modernity in the Works of Richard von Krafft-Ebing and Albert Moll,” Medical History 56, no. 2 (2012): 133-55.

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Citation: Harry Oosterhuis. Review of Leck, Ralph Matthew. Vita Sexualis: Karl Ulrichs and the Origins of Sexual Science. H-Ideas, H-Net Reviews. November, 2018.

URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=51478

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