A German psychiatrist, Richard Freiherr von Krafft-Ebing wrote Psychopathia Sexualis in 1886, a famous study of sexual perversity, and remains well-known for his coinage of the term sadism.

Krafft-Ebing was born in Mannheim, Baden, Germany, educated in Prague, Austria-Hungary (presently Czech Republic), and studied medicine at the University of Heidelberg. After Krafft-Ebing graduated in medicine and finished his specialisation in psychiatry, he worked in several asylums, but he soon felt that the way those institutions operated was deceptive and he decided to become an educator. He became a professor at Strasbourg, Graz and Vienna, and also a forensic expert at Vienna.

Krafft-Ebing wrote and published several articles on psychiatry, but his book Psychopathia Sexualis ("Psychopathy of Sex," 1886), became his best-known work. He wrote the book in high academic tone and in the introduction noted that he had "deliberately chosen a scientific term for the name of the book to discourage lay readers." He also wrote "sections of the book in Latin for the same purpose."

Male homosexuality had become a criminal offence in Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire by the late 1800s; unlike lesbianism, but discrimination against lesbians functioned equally. After interviewing many homosexuals, both as his private patients and as a forensic expert, and reading some works in favor of gay rights, Krafft-Ebing reached the conclusion that both male and female homosexuals did not suffer from mental illness or perversion as persistent popular belief held, and became interested in the study of the subject.

Krafft-Ebing elaborated an evolutionist theory considering homosexuality as an anomalous process developed during the gestation of the embryo and fetus, evolving into a sexual inversion of the brain. Some years later, in 1901, he corrected himself in an article published in the Jahrbuch fur sexuelle Zwischenstufen, changing the term anomaly to differentiation. He thus revealed himself as, if not as the first, at least one of the first professionals seeing homosexuals as normal people with a different sexuality.

His final conclusions remained forgotten for years, partly because Sigmund Freud's theories captivated the attention of those that considered homosexuality a psychological problem, the majority at the time, and partly because Krafft-Ebing had incurred some enmity from the Austrian Catholic church by associating the desire for sanctity and martyrdom with hysteria and masochism, besides his denying the perversity of homosexuals.

Some years later Krafft-Ebing's theory led other specialists on mental studies to reach the same conclusion and to the study of transgenderism or transsexuality as another differentiation correctable by means of surgery rather than by psychiatry or psychology.

Note that many contemporary psychiatrists no longer consider homosexual practices as pathological as Krafft-Ebing did in his first studies partly due to new conceptions, and partly due to Krafft-Ebing's own self-correction.


Sigmund Freud was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of the psychoanalytic school of psychology, a movement that popularized the theory that unconscious motives control much behavior. He became interested in hypnotism and how it could be used to help the mentally ill. He later abandoned hypnotism in favor of free association and dream analysis in developing what is now known as "the talking cure." These became the core elements of psychoanalysis. Freud was especially interested in what was then called hysteria, and is now called conversion syndrome. The last name Freud is pronounced "Froyd" or "Froid" (or "Froyt" in German).

Freud's theories and his treatment of patients were controversial in 19th century Vienna, and remain hotly debated today. Freud's ideas are often discussed and analyzed as works of literature, philosophy, and general culture in addition to continuing debate around them as scientific and medical treatises.

Among many things, Freud believed that the libido developed in individuals by changing its object. He argued that humans are born "polymorphously perverse," meaning that any number of objects could be a source of pleasure. He further argued that, as humans developed, they fixated on different and specific objects through their stages of development- first in the oral stage (exemplified by an infant's pleasure in nursing), then in the anal stage (exemplified by a toddler's pleasure in controlling his or her bowels), then in the phallic stage. Freud argued that children then passed through a stage where they fixated on the parent of the opposite sex and thought the same-sexed parent a rival. Freud named his new theory the Oedipus Complex after the famous Greek tragedy by Sophocles. "I found in myself a constant love for my mother, and jealousy of my father. I now consider this to be a universal event in childhood" Freud said. He sought to anchor this pattern of development in the dynamics of the mind. Each stage is a progression into adult sexual maturity, characterized by a strong ego and the ability to delay gratification, see Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality. It also seems that Freud believed that the manipulation of the genitals and the sexual desires are something that undermines the human as oneself. Surrendering to his sexual desires would mean the unconscious as the triumphant mind.

Freud hoped to prove that his model was universally valid. He thus turned to ancient mythology and contemporary ethnography for comparative material. Freud used the Greek tragedy by Sophocles Oedipus Rex to point out how much he believed that people (young boys in particular) desire incest, and must repress that desire. The Oedipus conflict was described as a state of psychosexual development and awareness. He also turned to anthropological studies of totemism and argued that totemism reflected a ritualized enactment of a tribal Oedipal conflict.

Sigmund Freud remains a highly controversial and very well-known figure today partly for his brave and incredibly deep delvings into the workings of the obviously sexual human being.


A child of the victorian era, Havelock Ellis was marked with the sexual ignorance and fear of the time, a cause he later set out to correct in humanity. A British physician and sexual psychologist, Ellis studied medicine at St. Thomas' Hospital and joined the Fabian Society in 1883. In 1891, when still a virgin, Ellis married Edith Lees. He was interested in sexual liberation and wrote the seven volume "Studies in the Psychology of Sex" between 1897 and 1928. Until 1935 this work was only legally available to the medical profession. His Sexual Inversion described the sexual relations of homosexual men, something that Ellis did not consider to be a disease or a crime. A bookseller was prosecuted in 1896 for stocking it.

Ellis was one of the first affirmers of modern sexuality, "Sex lies at the root of life, and we can never learn to reverence life until we know how to understand sex." (1900). He challenged the view that masturbation was abnormal, and was the first to suggest many common sexual "problems" of the day such as lesbianism and masturbation, were merely normal sexual deviations. He was also supporter of Eugenics which he wrote about in The Task of Social Hygiene.

"Eventually, it seems evident, a general system, whether private or public, whereby all personal facts, biological and mental, normal and morbid, are duly and systematically registered, must become inevitable if we are to have a real guide as to those persons who are most fit, or most unfit to carry on the race." (1912)


Dr. Alfred Charles Kinsey was a professor of entomology and zoology who founded the Institute for Sex Research in 1947 at Indiana University at Bloomington, now called the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction. His research on human sexuality profoundly influenced social and cultural values in the United States especially in the 1960s and was an important cause of the sexual revolution.

Kinsey is generally regarded as the father of sexology, the systematic, scientific study of human sexuality. He became initially interested in variation of sexual practices around 1933 after discussing the topic extensively with a colleague, Robert Kroc. It is likely that his study of the variation of gall wasps led him to wonder how wide the variation of sexual practices among humans were.

In 1935, Kinsey delivered a lecture to a faculty discussion group at Indiana University, his first public discussion of the topic, wherein he attacked the "widespread ignorance of sexual structure and physiology" and promoted his view that "delayed marriage" (that is, delayed sexual experience) was psychologically harmful.

His Kinsey Reports led to a storm of controversy and turned Kinsey into an instant celebrity. Articles about him appeared in magazines such as Time, Life, Look, and McCall's. His reports were regarded by many as a trigger for the sexual revolution of the 1960s. Indiana University's president Herman B Wells defended Kinsey's research in what became a well-known test of academic freedom.

Kinsey's work, although it was to help drive the Sexual Revolution in America in the 1960s, has generated substantial controversy since its publication. Since that time both Kinsey's work and private life have been the subject of an enduring controversy over the study of human sexuality (sometimes called sexology) and the impact of Kinsey's work on sexual morality. Groups which indict Kinsey's work and private life tend to identify with the American Christian Right, deriving their motivation from religious and conservative ideas. Groups which support Kinsey's work and private life tend to identify with the American Left, deriving their motivation from liberal and leftist ideas.

His life is the subject of a 2004 biographical film, Kinsey, starring Liam Neeson as the scientist, and a 2004 novel by T.C. Boyle, The Inner Circle. We at Sex Project regard Alfred Kinsey as the father of modern sexology, and salute his sacrifice as a martyr in the name of knowledge and an enemy of ignorance.


Gynecologist William Howell Masters and psychologist Virginia Eshelman Johnson pioneered research into the nature of human sexual response and the diagnosis and treatment of sexual disorders and dysfunctions from 1957 until the 1990s. Masters and Johnson met in 1957 when William Masters hired Virginia Johnson as a research assistant to undertake a comprehensive study of human sexuality. Masters divorced his first wife to marry Johnson in 1971 (they divorced three decades later, largely bringing their joint research to an end). Their work began in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Washington University in St. Louis and was continued at the independent not-for-profit research institution they founded in St. Louis in 1964, originally called the Reproductive Biology Research Foundation and renamed the Masters & Johnson Institute in 1978. In the initial phase of their studies, from 1957 until 1965, they recorded some of the first laboratory data on the anatomy and physiology of human sexual response based on direct observation of 382 women and 312 men in what they conservatively estimated to be "10,000 complete cycles of sexual response." Their findings, particularly on the nature of female sexual arousal (for example, describing the mechanisms of vaginal lubrication and debunking the earlier widely-held notion that vaginal lubrication originated from the cervix) and orgasm (showing that the physiology of orgasmic response was identical whether stimulation was clitoral or vaginal, and proving that women were capable of being multiorgasmic), dispelled many long standing misconceptions.

They jointly wrote two classic texts in the field, Human Sexual Response and Human Sexual Inadequacy, published in 1966 and 1970 respectively. Both of these books were best-sellers and were translated into more than thirty languages.

As well as recording some of the first physiological data from the human body and sex organs during sexual excitation, they also framed their findings and conclusions in language that espoused sex as a healthy and natural activity that could be enjoyed as a source of pleasure and intimacy.

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