Sexology, beginning with Heinrich Kaan’s Psychopathia Sexualis in 1844, has presented itself as a rigorous and objective science while simultaneously addressing medical and health concerns, often seeking to apply findings for clinical and therapeutic ends. Tensions over whether sexology has been descriptive or therapeutic, neutral or activist, and normalizing or pathologizing partly reflect these tensions between scientific origins and medical applications.
This disciplinary duality has also shaped the historiography of sexology. This history has developed largely through science and technology studies (STS), the history of sexuality, and the history of science. While these approaches have been fruitful, the contributions of historians of medicine to the history of sexology have been less clearly defined. Given the medical backgrounds of many sexologists, medical questions and applications, and the significance of sex therapy and sexual medicine, medical histories of the discipline are necessary. Some recent histories of transgender medicine, psychiatry, and fertility have shown possibilities of medical histories of sexology, but there is much more to be explored.
This roundtable brings together historians engaged in research into the history of sexology and the sexual sciences to think through the benefits and limitations of a “history of medicine” approach to sexology. Sophia DeLeonibus considers how intersections between sexology, psychoanalysis, and psychiatry informed the making of the category of “gender identity” in the mid-20th century US. Donna Drucker considers the role of technology in defining sexology as medical practice. Kirsten Leng examines the role of female sexologists in early-20th century Germany, and the ways in which their work entangled medical and scientific knowledge with desires for social change. Ezra Gerard’s research investigates how medicalized understandings of childhood development were central to sexologists’ constructions of homosexuality. Rachel Louise Moran (speaker/moderator) examines “female sexual dysfunction” in the mid-20th century US, and tensions between psychiatric and physiological solutions. Sohini Mukhopadhyay explores the great diversity of the “unruly appropriations” of Euro-American sexology in turn-of-the-century Bengal, including the role of doctors.
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