This article analyses the slippery notions of the normal and normality in select works of Richard von Krafft-Ebing (1840–1902) and Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) and argues that homosexuality became a ‘boundary object’ between the normal and the abnormal in their works. Constructing homosexuality as ‘normal enough’ provided these two key thinkers of the fin de siècle with an opportunity to challenge societal and medical norms: Krafft-Ebing did this through mapping perversions; Freud, by challenging perceived norms about sexual development more broadly. The article submits that the scientific logic presented in Krafft-Ebing’s seminal case study compilation Psychopathia Sexualis and Freud’s early theoretical writings and cases, including Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905), was itself haunted by notions of norms and the normal that were not always easy to resolve, and sometimes involved a certain amount of inspired conjecture on the part of both thinkers in order to develop and validate their differing tripartite models of normality. Krafft-Ebing imagined homosexuality as a variation of the normal by generalizing a gay male experience. He also recorded the obstreperous cases of homosexual women based largely inside the clinic but by and large ignored this evidence. Freud inextricably bound homosexuality to normality (and vice versa) by redefining homosexuals as a group to include individuals with unconscious same-sex desire. Doing so allowed him to conceptualize the fear of homosexuality as crucial in the formation of neurosis and psychosis, and at the same time put him at odds with relevant early identity politics.
...MoreArticle Peter Cryle; Elizabeth Stephens (2021) Normality: A Collection of Essays. History of the Human Sciences (pp. 3-8).
Similar Citations
Article
Savoia, Paolo;
(2010)
Sexual Science and Self-Narrative: Epistemology and Narrative Technologies of the Self between Krafft-Ebing and Freud
(/isis/citation/CBB001035640/)
Article
Crozier, I. D.;
(2000)
Taking prisoners: Havelock Ellis, Sigmund Freud, and the construction of homosexuality, 1897-1951
(/isis/citation/CBB000111204/)
Article
Fenneke Sysling;
(2021)
Phrenology and the Average Person, 1840–1940
(/isis/citation/CBB219761273/)
Article
Donna Tafreshi;
(2022)
Adolphe Quetelet and the legacy of the “average man” in psychology
(/isis/citation/CBB333634470/)
Thesis
Rothe, Johanna;
(2014)
Psychoanalysis, Sexuality, and Nationality in Late Habsburg Austria
(/isis/citation/CBB001567601/)
Article
Kate Fisher;
Jana Funke;
(2019)
The Age of Attraction: Age, Gender and the History of Modern Male Homosexuality
(/isis/citation/CBB998120412/)
Book
Birgit Lang;
Joy Damousi;
Alison Lewis;
(2017)
A History of the Case Study: Sexology, Psychoanalysis, Literature
(/isis/citation/CBB880652137/)
Article
Leng, Kirsten;
(2015)
The Personal is Scientific: Women, Gender, and the Production of Sexological Knowledge in Germany and Austria, 1900--1931
(/isis/citation/CBB001552611/)
Essay Review
Rosario, Vernon A.;
(2002)
Science and Sexual Identity: An Essay Review
(/isis/citation/CBB000200370/)
Book
Salvetti, Markus Ernst;
(1984)
Gefässpsychopathologie bei Richard von Krafft-Ebing (1840-1902)
(/isis/citation/CBB000008700/)
Book
Oosterhuis, Harry;
(2000)
Stepchildren of Nature: Krafft-Ebing, Psychiatry, and the Making of Sexual Identity
(/isis/citation/CBB000111212/)
Article
James W. E. Lowe;
(2016)
Normal development and experimental embryology: Edmund Beecher Wilson and Amphioxus
(/isis/citation/CBB114945953/)
Article
Sabine Arnaud;
(2021)
Le sauvage, le sourd-muet et l’enfant ordinaire
(/isis/citation/CBB607441423/)
Chapter
Lunbeck, Elizabeth;
(2012)
The Narcissistic Homosexual: Genealogy of a Myth
(/isis/citation/CBB001201489/)
Article
Carola Ossmer;
(2020)
Normal Development: The Photographic Dome and the Children of the Yale Psycho-Clinic
(/isis/citation/CBB658328024/)
Book
Furst, Lilian R.;
(2008)
Before Freud: Hysteria and Hypnosis in Later Nineteenth-Century Psychiatric Cases
(/isis/citation/CBB000951561/)
Thesis
Hauser, R.;
()
Sexuality, neurosthenia and the law: Richard von Krafft-Ebing (1840-1902)
(/isis/citation/CBB000052244/)
Article
Oosterhuis, Harry;
(2012)
Sexual Modernity in the Works of Richard von Krafft-Ebing and Albert Moll
(/isis/citation/CBB001250952/)
Article
Oosterhuis, Harry;
(1998)
“Plato war doch gewiss kein Schweinehund”: Richard von Krafft-Ebing und die homosexuelle Identität
(/isis/citation/CBB000082651/)
Essay Review
Bunzl, Matti;
(2002)
Sexual Modernity as Subject and Object
(/isis/citation/CBB001566252/)
Be the first to comment!