Content area
Full Text
(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)
This paper, including the quotations, was translated by Dr Sebastian Pranghofer, Centre for the History of Medicine and Disease, Durham University.
Introduction
Albert Moll (1862-1939), Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) and Magnus Hirschfeld (1868-1935) were among the most influential sexologists of the twentieth century. After the death of the pioneer sexologists, the Italian physician, anthropologist and writer Paolo Mantegazza (1831-1912) and the German-Austrian psychiatrist Richard von Krafft-Ebing (1840-1902), the Geheimer Sanitätsrat [German Privy Councillor of Health] Albert Moll was regarded by many as the most competent specialist on sexual disorders in Europe. Today, however, he and his work are largely forgotten and overshadowed by Freud and Hirschfeld: Freud is remembered as the founder of psychoanalysis and father of the psychoanalytical movement; while Hirschfeld is considered to be the mastermind of the first German homosexual movement and the Weltliga für Sexualreform [World League for Sexual Reform] as well as the founder of the world's first institute for sexology. While elements of Freudian psychoanalysis became part of common speech, some kind of Hirschfeld-renaissance can be observed in Germany and elsewhere. As a result, his views are discussed relatively widely, for example in the context of the debate on what is natural, social, epistemic, predisposed, essential or constructed with regard to gender and sexuality; the transactions of the Magnus Hirschfeld Society, published since 1983, are but one example.1Hitherto, only a small number of historians of medicine and sexologists have studied Moll and his work. This is even more astonishing if one considers his wide-ranging ideas, interests and activities, as well as the sharpness of his criticism in academic debates.
Moll as Scientific Pioneer
Moll had received global recognition with his first book, Der Hypnotismus [Hypnotism].2William James described it as 'extraordinarily complete and judicious'.3Moll regarded himself as the pioneer of the Nancy school of Liébeault and Bernheim, and claimed to have introduced hypnotic and psychotherapeutic ideas into Germany. He was indeed one of the first in the medical profession who tried to amalgamate psychology and scientific medicine. Unlike Hirschfeld, he repeatedly objected to the somatic and causal thinking in medicine and sexology, for example with regard to eugenics or the transplantation of the testicles from heterosexual...