Sexual Knowledge: Feeling, Fact, and Social Reform in Vienna, 1900-1934 (13) (Austrian and Habsburg Studies, 13) - Hardcover

"This is a very well-researched and informative book, which will be helpful to researchers and students in the field of Austrian cultural history - conceptually and methodologically sophisticated." * Steven Beller, author of A Concise History of Austria " - represents an important addition to the burgeoning literature on how progressive states defined sexuality in scientific terms - It contains a wealth of research and information not yet systematically analyzed [and offers] a valuable contribution to the history of sexuality, which is still neglected in the context of Continental Europe." * Carolyn Dean, Brown University

Vienna's unique intellectual, political, and religious traditions had a powerful impact on the transformation of sexual knowledge in the early twentieth century. Whereas turn-of-the-century sexology, as practiced in Vienna as a medical science, sought to classify and heal individuals, during the interwar years, sexual knowledge was employed by a variety of actors to heal the social body: the truncated, diseased, and impoverished population of the newly created Republic of Austria. Based on rich source material, this book charts cultural changes that are hallmarks of the modern era, such as the rise of the companionate marriage, the role of expert advice in intimate matters, and the body as a source of pleasure and anxiety. These changes are evidence of adramatic shift in attitudes from a form of scientific inquiry largely practiced by medical specialists to a social reform movement led by and intended for a wider audience that included workers, women, and children.