The lively scientific activity which now animates the department of sexual problems is a matter for rejoicing, since it indicates the advance of knowledge in one of the most important of all vital problems. Whereas earlier none but alienists and neurologists concerned themselves with sexual questions, an interest in these questions is now very generally displayed by the circles of other medical men, of anthropologists, folk-lorists, psychologists, æsthetics, and historians of civilization. One good result of this wide diffusion of interest is, as I have already remarked ([pp. 455] et seq.), that a one-sided consideration of the problems under investigation will thereby be prevented. Every earnest investigator, to whatever discipline he may personally belong, can here contribute something new, something which will advance knowledge; but most helpful, unquestionably, can the physician be who, as von Schrenck-Notzing[813] declared, is competent to consider the question in relation to various other departments—those of biology, anthropology, history, belles-lettres, psychology, and forensic medicine.
It would subserve no useful purpose to enumerate once more in this place the works of all the recent authors who have dealt with the subject of the sexual life. In the text of the present book they have for the most part received sufficient mention.[814]
Of larger monographs upon homosexuality, there still remain to be mentioned those of Havelock Ellis and J. A. Symonds,[815] A. Moll,[816] J. Chevalier,[817] and Laupts.[818] In these works we find extensive reports of cases; and more especially in the two first mentioned do we find a record of all the historical and critical data of homosexuality up to the time of the first publication of the “Annual for Sexual Intermediate Stages” (1899 et seq.).
A new work by Havelock Ellis[819] recently reached me, the fifth volume of the American edition of his “Studies in the Psychology of Sex,”[820] giving an account of “Erotic Symbolism” (fetichism, exhibitionism, etc.), the “Mechanism of Detumescence,” and the “Psychical Condition during Pregnancy,” with an appendix giving an analysis of the sexual development of various individuals. This book, full of interesting details, will doubtless, like the earlier volumes of his “Studies,” soon appear in a German translation.
The fundamental work of A. Marro on “Puberty in Man and Woman” also deserves especial mention. It can most usefully be consulted in the French edition, “La Puberté chez l’Homme et chez la Femme. Etudiée dans ses Rapports avec l’Anthropologie, la Psychiatrie, la Pedagogie, et la Sociologie” (Paris, 1902; 536 pp.).
Special studies on the subject of the sexual impulse have been published by Moll[821] and Féré.[822] In Moll’s work, of which hitherto the first part only has appeared, the sexual impulse is divided into two components, the “detumescence impulse”—that is, the impulse towards the evacuation of the reproductive products—and the “contrectation impulse”—that is, the impulse towards the other individual; and from these two components the various manifestations of sexuality are explained. Féré, more especially, has made an exhaustive study of the instinctive element of the sexual impulse; and, apart from this, he appears to be the most extreme advocate of the atavistic theory of sexual perversions.
An interesting study of sexual psychology, based upon the doctrine of Freud, has been published by Otto Rank.[823] The tendency of this work also is in opposition to the degeneration-phobia.
The work of the Italian psychiatrist Pasquale Penta, “I pervertimenti sessuali nell’ uomo e Vincenzo Verzeni strangolatore di donne” (“The Sexual Perversions observed in Vincenzo Verzeni, the Strangler of Women”), Naples, 1893, contains numerous interesting details. In the first chapter the author gives contributions to a history of psychopathia sexualis; the second chapter contains a detailed report of Verzeni and an account of his lust-murders; in the third chapter Penta discusses the similarities and differences between the sexual impulse in man and in the lower animals; in the fourth chapter he deals with the biological foundations of lust-murder; in the fifth chapter he reviews the different sexual perversions; in the sixth chapter he considers rape; and in the seventh and last chapter he discusses the forensic importance of rape and of sexual perversions.
The recently published work on “Sexual Biology,” by Robert Müller (Berlin, 1907), is written from the standpoint of veterinary medicine, and the sub-title of the book, “Comparative and Evolutionary Studies in the Sexual Life of Man and the Higher Mammals,” indicates the author’s intention to elucidate the general biological roots of sexual phenomena. This comparative consideration of the sexual life of man and of the higher mammals throws a new light on many matters, and enables us to understand a number of phenomena of the sexual life which have hitherto seemed obscure.
A comprehensive, general, popular work upon the sexual life is now in course of publication—“Man and Woman.” It is issued by R. Kossmann and J. Weiss, with the collaboration of a number of leading specialists (Stuttgart, 1907). A number of illustrated sections have already been issued.