Motifs in Sexual Science

Unlike other disciplines, sexual science knows no borders; its domain is life itself.

— Max Marcuse, Dictionary of Sexual Science

the next three chapters of this book are devoted to an analysis of Ulrichs's scholarship, politics, and intellectual influence on subsequent sexual modernists. This chapter, however, crafts a contextual setting for understanding Ulrichs's contributions to sexual modernism. Vita sexualis is an organizing concept of this book. It designates two historical developments: (1) the growth of sexual science as an academic field and (2) the emergence of sexual modernism. By the late nineteenth century, the phrase vita sexualis enjoyed a broad cultural significance in fin de siècle Central Europe. Vita Sexualis: Journal of Research on Sexual Life was the title of an early professional journal of sexual science. Richard von Krafft-Ebing (1840–1902) and Albert Moll (1862–1939), who helped to establish the academic discipline of sexology in Austria and Germany, used the phrase vita sexualis as a synonym for sexual science.3 They conscripted this term to designate the vital meaning of sexuality to the life of humanity. What I hope to recall by invoking vita sexualis is the ascension of the science of sexuality as a robust and legitimate realm of scholarly inquiry. Yes, sexual research had been undertaken prior to 1850, but by 1900 sexology had attained an unprecedented degree of professional stature. In fin de siècle Europe, the application of the scientific method to the study of human sexuality became a recognized academic discipline with correlative journals, academic legitimacy, and professional organizations. In contrast to Ulrichs, however, many late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century sexual scientists endorsed the academic legitimacy of sexual science but rejected the egalitarian politics of sexual modernists. Ulrichs was unique because he linked his pioneering sexual science to a radical demand for sexual revolution. This hyphenation of methodological innovation and insurgent politics might best be understood as an epistemic revolution in civic virtue. A new science of sexual diversity potentiated the modernist assault on Victorian mores and amatory codes.

Despite the immense volume of contemporary scholarship devoted to sexuality, the pioneering scholarship of European sexual modernists like Ulrichs has been largely forgotten. One reason for this lacuna may be contemporary arrogance and ignorance. Many contemporary scholars of gender assume that early sex research was deficient, if not disreputable. Another explanation for the mnemonic eclipse of sexology is the long shadow cast by Sigmund Freud. Prior to the Great War, Freud was not universally recognized as the leading European theorist of sexuality; before 1910, he was seen as one among many sexologists. He served, for example, on the editorial board of Anthroprophyteia, a pathbreaking Viennese journal, edited by Freud's Viennese colleague, Friedrich Krauss (1884–1930) and devoted to the study of erotic folklore and sexual anthropology. As Freud's reputation grew, however, so too did his presence in the debates and journals of the sexual science movement. For instance, in his 1913 essay "The Three Foundational Forms of Homosexuality," which appeared in the Yearbook of Sexual Intermediaries, Hans Blüher (1888–1955) amended "An Open Letter to Sigmund Freud." He criticized Freud's insouciance toward his publication on the youth movement as an erotic phenomenon. Like Freud's presence on the board of Anthroprophyteia, this letter from the theoretical mastermind of the German youth movement evinces the growing integration of Freudian psychoanalysis into the cultural fabric of sexual science. Eventually, Freud's centripetal intellectual gravity largely obliterated from our collective memory the sagacious contributions of Freud's contemporaries to European sexology.

The Freudian eclipse was long lasting. In the early 1950s, Simone de Beauvoir penned Must We Burn de Sade? Here, she wrote: "Not only does de Sade ... anticipate what has been called the 'pansexuality of Freud,' he makes eroticism the mainspring of human behavior." However, Richard von Krafft-Ebing, not Freud, coined the term sadism in Psychopathia Sexualis (1886). Krafft-Ebing's scholarship therefore deserved more than passing notice by de Beauvoir, but by the 1950s the gravitational pull of Freudian theory was much greater. Still, hidden amid de Beauvoir's notes were traces of a lost matrix of erudition. She cited the first French edition of Sade's 120 Days of Sodom (1904) with critical commentary by "Docteur Eugen Duehren." Dühren, it turns out, was none other than Iwan Bloch (1872–1922), a renowned Berlin sexual scientist who had rediscovered 120 Days of Sodom in Paris while doing research on Sade. Bloch produced two fascinating volumes on the significance of Sade to the history of sexual science. However, neither of those studies, nor Sadism and Masochism (1902) by Albert Eulenburg (1840–1917), nor a correlative study by her French compatriot, Dr. Emile Laurent (1861–1904), was referenced by de Beauvoir. In other words, the immense intellectual achievements of sexual science, from which Freud's work drew its nourishment, and the enormous sexual research produced simultaneously to Freud's great works, were either unknown or largely forgotten after WWII. Due to the disproportionate volume of research devoted to Freud, the present work will not re-till this well-turned soil. Instead this book focuses on the larger movement of sexual science, which preceded and accompanied his scholarly production.

More recently, Foucault's The History of Sexuality has displaced Freud as the dominant theoretical lens of sexual scholarship. Foucault, like earlier scholars of Freudian thought, rarely invoked the foundational contributions of early sexual researchers. However, this does not mean he lacked an outlook on sexual research prior to Freud. His outlook was wholly dismissive. He tended to see the pre-Freudian science of sexuality as a moralistic medicalization of sin and as an example of instrumental science. Yes, these elements structured much of the classificatory science of fin de siècle sexology. However, there was much more here. For instance, the major methodological form of fin de siècle sexology was the case study. The civic meaning of this methodology is not a clear case of epistemic bio-power. Case studies accomplished something completely new in the annals of Western culture. As we shall see, they gave voice to sexual others and, thereby, produced the greatest scholarly chronicle of sexual...