Psychopathia Sexualis

Love, Krafft-Ebing warns, can be a fire that consumes honor, fortune, and well-being—or a force that lifts sensual impulse toward beauty and morality.

Writing in the late nineteenth century, physician R. von Krafft-Ebing takes up sexuality as a force shaping private feeling and public life. In this medico-legal study, he turns especially to what he calls “contrary sexual instinct,” asking how sexual desire relates to the mind, morality, and the law. His opening frames the subject as both a source of human bonds and a power that may overwhelm them—a tension that makes clear-eyed inquiry urgent. Where, in his account, does natural instinct end and the claims of society begin?

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