R. v. Krafft-Ebing. Psychopathia Sexualis with Especial Reference to the Antipathic Sexual Instinct: A Medico-Forensic Study. Brooklyn: Physicians and Surgeons Book Company, 1930
(240 x 160 mm) pp. xiii, 617. Bound in crimson publishers' cloth binding with gilt publisher's device on cover and title, author, and publisher's device on spine. English text based on 12th German printing. Several pages torn throughout due to friable early 20th century paper. Endbands worn. Overall FAIR to GOOD condition.
Richard von Krafft-Ebing’s Psychopathia Sexualis—a landmark in the development of modern sexology—was first issued in 1886 and expanded through numerous editions, the twelfth and final authorial edition containing 238 detailed case histories. Conceived as a clinical and forensic reference for psychiatrists, physicians, and jurists, the work examines sexual behavior within a medico-legal framework and argues for consideration of mental state in legal judgments concerning sexual crimes. Written in a deliberately academic style—parts in Latin to deter casual readership—it became the leading late nineteenth-century authority on sexual pathology.
The work is notable for introducing into English such terms as “sadism,” “masochism,” “homosexuality,” “bisexuality,” “necrophilia,” and “anilingus.” In its final edition, Krafft-Ebing classified sexual “cerebral neuroses” into four categories: paradoxia (sexual excitation independent of physiological maturity), anaesthesia (absence of sexual instinct), hyperaesthesia (excessive desire), and paraesthesia (perversion of sexual instinct). Viewing procreation as the natural aim of sexuality, he characterized non-procreative acts—including homosexuality—as forms of “sexual inversion,” theorized as congenital in origin. Though many of his conclusions were later eclipsed by Freudian theory, Psychopathia Sexualis remains a foundational and controversial text in the history of psychiatry, criminology, and the scientific study of sexuality.
And to keep the perverts at bay, all the jucy details are written in Latin.