Sexology, Psychoanalysis, Literature
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LANG, DAMOUSI & LEWIS BIRGIT LANG, JOY DAMOUSI AND Birgit Lang is Starting with Central Europe and concluding with the AlISON LEWIS Associate Professor United States of America, A history of the case study tells of German at the story of the genre as inseparable from the foundation The University of Melbourne of sexology and psychoanalysis and integral to the history of European literature. It examines the nineteenth- and Joy Damousi is twentieth-century pioneers of the case study who sought ARC Kathleen answers to the mysteries of sexual identity and shaped Fitzpatrick Laureate the way we think about sexual modernity. These pioneers Fellow and Professor of History at include members of professional elites (psychiatrists, A history of study of case the A history A history of The University psychoanalysts and jurists) and creative writers, writing of Melbourne for newly emerging sexual publics. Alison Lewis Where previous accounts of the case study have is Professor of German at approached the history of the genre from a single The University disciplinary perspective, this book stands out for its the case study of Melbourne interdisciplinary approach, well-suited to negotiating the ambivalent contexts of modernity. It focuses on key Sexology, psychoanalysis, literature formative moments and locations in the genre’s past COVER Schad, Christian where the conventions of the case study were contested (1894–1982): Portrait as part of a more profound enquiry into the nature of the literature psychoanalysis, Sexology, of Dr Haustein, 1928. Madrid, Museo human subject. Thyssen-Bornemisza. Oil on canvas, 80.5 x 55 cm. Dimension with frame: Among the figures considered in this volume are 97 x 72 x 5 cm. Inv. N.: prolific Austrian writer Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, 1979.57. © 2016. Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza/ the psychoanalytic master of case-writing Sigmund Freud, Scala, Florence and the influential New York psychoanalyst Viola Bernard, ‘Case study no. 69 on who all embraced the case study genre for its ability to Fetishism and Masochism’ convey new knowledge – and indeed a new paradigm Wellcome Library, London From Richard von for knowledge – in an authoritative manner. At the same Krafft-Ebing, Psychopathia time, these writers reinvented the genre’s parameters, Sexualis. a medico-forensic study (London: W. Heine- reflecting constantly on its pertinence to definitions of mann, 1931), pp. 172–3 the modern subject. Unnumbered folio, from Alfred Döblin, A history of the case study will be essential reading for Die beiden Freundinnen und ihr Giftmord (Berlin: lecturers and students working in the fields of history of Die Schmiede, 1924) sexuality, psychoanalysis and literary and cultural history. www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk A history of the case study A history of the case study Sexology, psychoanalysis, literature Birgit Lang, Joy Damousi and Alison Lewis Manchester University Press Copyright © Birgit Lang, Joy Damousi and Alison Lewis 2017 The rights of Birgit Lang, Joy Damousi and Alison Lewis to be identified as the authors of this work have been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Published by Manchester University Press Altrincham Street, Manchester M1 7JA www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data applied for ISBN 978 0719 09943 4 hardback ISBN 978 1526 10611 7 open access First published 2017 This electronic version has been made freely available under a Creative Commons (CC-BY- NC-ND) licence. A copy of the licence can be viewed at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by-nc-nd/3.0/ The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. Typeset in Bodoni and Futura by R. J. Footring Ltd, Derby Contents Acknowledgements vi Introduction 1 Birgit Lang, Joy Damousi and Alison Lewis 1 The shifting case of masochism: Leopold von Sacher-Masoch’s Venus im Pelz (1870) 19 Birgit Lang 2 Fin-de-siècle investigations of the ‘creative genius’ in psychiatry and psychoanalysis 55 Birgit Lang 3 ‘Writing back’: literary satire and Oskar Panizza’s Psichopatia criminalis (1898) 90 Birgit Lang 4 Erich Wulffen and the case of the criminal 119 Birgit Lang 5 Alfred Döblin’s literary cases about women and crime in Weimar Germany 156 Alison Lewis 6 Viola Bernard and the case study of race in post-war America 189 Joy Damousi Conclusion 215 Birgit Lang, Joy Damousi and Alison Lewis Select bibliography 221 Index 232 ∙ v ∙ Acknowledgements This volume was made possible by the Australian Research Council (ARC), which funded the Discovery Project titled ‘Making the Case: The Case Study Genre in Sexology, Psychoanalysis, and Literature’ led by Birgit Lang and Joy Damousi. The authors acknowledge the vital importance of the ARC in providing generous support for the project. Thank you to the unfailingly helpful staff of the following archives and libraries (in alphabetical order): Bavarian State Archives Munich; German Literary Archive (Marbach); Monacensia, Literary Archive of the City of Munich; Rare Book and Manuscript Library and the A. C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University (New York); Saxon State and University Library (Dresden); Wellcome Library (London). Warmest thanks to Katie Sutton, the former Australian Postdoctoral Fellow attached to the ARC project, for commenting on the manuscript. We acknowledge Jana Verhoeven and Mary Tomsic for their outstanding research assistance in Melbourne and New York respectively. The authors extend special thanks to Cynthia Troup, who has managed the editorial process, and prepared and polished all aspects of the manuscript with extraordinary thoroughness and diligence. We owe much to Emma Brennan, Commissioning Editor and Editorial Director at Manchester University Press. Also at Manchester University Press we sincerely thank the anonymous reviewers and editorial board, and Paul Clarke, Assistant Editor, and Ralph Footring, freelance produc- tion editor, for their expertise, efficiency and responsiveness. Birgit Lang, Joy Damousi, Alison Lewis ∙ vi ∙ Introduction Birgit Lang, Joy Damousi and Alison Lewis A History of the Case Study represents a critical intervention into contem- porary debate concerning the construction of knowledge which – after Michel Foucault’s elaborations on modern discourses of power – considers the medical case study in particular as an expression of new forms of disciplinary authority. This volume scrutinises the changing status of the human case study, that is, the medical, legal or literary case study that places an individual at its centre. With close reference to the dawning of ‘sexual modernity’ during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and to ideas about sexual identity in the period immediately before and after the fin de siècle, the following chapters examine the case writing practices of selected pioneers of the case study genre.1 Alertness to the exchange of ideas between the empirical life sciences and the humanities is key to A History of the Case Study. Defined by desire to unravel the mystery of human sexuality and the depths of the human condition, the case study can be linked to the modernist project itself. Indeed, the case study can be defined as one of modernity’s vital narrative forms and means of explanation. A History of the Case Study builds on our earlier edited collection, Case Studies and the Dissemination of Knowledge, and outlines how case knowledge actively contributed to the construction of the sexed subject.2 The present volume tells the story of the medical case study genre in a historically and geo- graphic ally contingent manner, with a focus on Central Europe, extended also to the USA. The lives of individual brokers of case knowledge are pivotal to this book, as is the task of mapping their agency and inter- ventions. ‘Brokers of case knowledge’, however, can be shown to include newly emerging sexual publics, as well as members of professional elites (psychiatrists, psycho analysts and jurists) and creative writers. These practitioners took up case studies as a representational practice so as to demonstrate or classify a new phenomenon or pathology; to register a deviation from existing knowledge; to raise questions concern- ing the meaning of a given example (and by implication its explanatory framework); and to disseminate specialist knowledge to reading publics. ∙ 1 ∙ A HISTORY OF THE CASE STUDY In this context, case studies regularly became sites of reinterpretation and translation, sometimes of resistance. There resulted a range of case modalities. Such ‘incarnations of case studies’ across different social and disciplinary contexts came to encompass published psychiatric, sexological and psychoanalytic case studies of individuals, as well as case study compilations; unpublished medical notes and juridical case files; autobiographical or journalistic case studies; and fictional ised or fictional case studies (‘case stories’). All of these iterations of the case study are inseparable from the history of three fields or kinds of knowledge: sexology, psychoanalysis and literature. The case study pioneers at the centre of our investigation all participated and were actively involved in discourses connected to the disciplinary sphere