Psychopathia sexualis: With especial reference to contrary sexual instinct / A medico-legal study

by R. von Krafft-Ebing

The Medical Bulletin Printing House,

1916 Cherry Street.

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.

Very few ever fully appreciate the powerful influence which sexuality exercises over feeling, thought, and conduct, both in the individual and in society. Schiller, in his poem, “Die Weltweisen,” recognizes it with the words:—

“Einstweilen bis den Bau der Welt

Philosophie zusammenhält,

Erhält sie das Getriebe

Durch Hunger und durch Liebe.”[^[1]]

It is remarkable that the sexual life has received but a very subordinate consideration on the part of philosophers.

Schopenhauer (“The World as Will and Idea”) thought it strange that love had been thus far a subject for the poet alone, and that, with the exception of superficial treatment by Plato, Rousseau, and Kant, it had been foreign to philosophers.