Psychopathia sexualis : with especial reference to contrary sexual instinct: a medico-legal study / By Dr. R. von Krafft-Ebing.

  • Krafft-Ebing, R. von (Richard), 1840-1902.
Date:
1893
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Psychopathia sexualis : with especial reference to contrary sexual instinct: a medico-legal study / By Dr. R. von Krafft-Ebing. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. Very few ever fully appreciate the powerful influence which sexuality exercises over feeling, thought, and conduct, both in the individual and in society. Schiller, in his poem, Die Welt- weisen, recognizes it with the words:— * Einstweilen bis den Bau der Welt Philosophde zusammenhalt, Erhalt sie das Getiiebe Durch Hunger und durch Liebe.1 It is remarkable that the sexual life has received but a very subordinate consideration on the part of philosophers. Schopenhauer ( The World as Will and Idea ) thought it strange that love had been thus far a subject for the poet alone, and that, with the exception of superficial treatment by Plato, Rousseau, and Kant, it had been foreign to philosophers. What Schopenhauer and, after him, the Philosopher of the Unconscious, E. v. Hartmann, philosophized concerning the sex- ual relations is so imperfect, and in its consequences so distaste- ful, that, aside from the treatment in the works of Michelet ( L'amour ) and Mantegazza ( Physiology of Love ), which are to be considered more as brilliant discussions than as scien- tific treatises, the empirical psychology and metaphysics of the sexual side of human existence rest upon a foundation which is scientifically almost puerile. The poets may be better psychologists than the psychol- ogists and philosophers; but they are men of feeling rather than of understanding, and at least one-sided in their consideration of the subject. They cannot see the deep shadow behind the light and sunny warmth of that from which they draw their inspira- tion. The poetry of all times and nations would furnish inex- haustible material for a monograph on the psychology of love; but the great problem can be solved only with the help of 1 Meanwhile, until Philosophy shall at last unite and maintain the world, HuDger and Love impel it onward.