- School of Literature, Languages and Linguistics
The Australian National University
Acton ACT 2601
Australia
- Weimar Republic, History Of Sexology, History Of Psychoanalysis, Gender and Sexuality, Gender History, Transgender History, and 10 moreGerman History, Twentieth-Century German Cultural Studies, History of Sexuality, Transgender Studies, Sexology, Gender Studies, Peter Rehberg, Gay and Lesbian History, History of Psychiatry, and Queer Theoryedit
Sexuality in Modern German History offers both a detailed survey of this key subject and a new intervention in the history of sexuality in modern Germany. It investigates the diverse and often contradictory ways in which individuals,... more
Sexuality in Modern German History offers both a detailed survey of this key subject and a new intervention in the history of sexuality in modern Germany. It investigates the diverse and often contradictory ways in which individuals, activists, doctors, politicians, artists, church leaders, reform movements and cultural commentators have defined 'normal' or 'natural' sexuality in Germany over the past two centuries. Katie Sutton explores how these definitions have been used to shape identities, behaviours, bodies and practices, from norms of heterosexual, marital, reproductive sex to ideas around the policing and categorisation of 'unnatural' or 'deviant' bodies and practices
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Ideas about human sexuality and sexual development changed dramatically across the first half of the 20th century. As scholars such as Magnus Hirschfeld, Iwan Bloch, Albert Moll, and Karen Horney in Berlin and Sigmund Freud, Wilhelm... more
Ideas about human sexuality and sexual development changed dramatically across the first half of the 20th century. As scholars such as Magnus Hirschfeld, Iwan Bloch, Albert Moll, and Karen Horney in Berlin and Sigmund Freud, Wilhelm Stekel, and Helene Deutsch in Vienna were recognized as leaders in their fields, the German-speaking world quickly became the international center of medical-scientific sex research—and the birthplace of two new and distinct professional disciplines, sexology and psychoanalysis.
This is the first book to closely examine vital encounters among this era’s German-speaking researchers across their emerging professional and disciplinary boundaries. Although psychoanalysis was often considered part of a broader “sexual science,” sexologists increasingly distanced themselves from its mysterious concepts and clinical methods. Instead, they turned to more pragmatic, interventionist therapies—in particular, to the burgeoning field of hormone research, which they saw as crucial to establishing their own professional relevance. As sexology and psychoanalysis diverged, heated debates arose around concerns such as the sexual life of the child, the origins and treatment of homosexuality and transgender phenomena, and female frigidity. This new story of the emergence of two separate approaches to the study of sex demonstrates that the distinctions between them were always part of a dialogic and competitive process. It fundamentally revises our understanding of the production of modern sexual subjects.
This is the first book to closely examine vital encounters among this era’s German-speaking researchers across their emerging professional and disciplinary boundaries. Although psychoanalysis was often considered part of a broader “sexual science,” sexologists increasingly distanced themselves from its mysterious concepts and clinical methods. Instead, they turned to more pragmatic, interventionist therapies—in particular, to the burgeoning field of hormone research, which they saw as crucial to establishing their own professional relevance. As sexology and psychoanalysis diverged, heated debates arose around concerns such as the sexual life of the child, the origins and treatment of homosexuality and transgender phenomena, and female frigidity. This new story of the emergence of two separate approaches to the study of sex demonstrates that the distinctions between them were always part of a dialogic and competitive process. It fundamentally revises our understanding of the production of modern sexual subjects.
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The case study has proved of enduring interest to all Western societies, particularly in relation to questions of subjectivity and the sexed self. This volume interrogates how case studies have been used by doctors, lawyers,... more
The case study has proved of enduring interest to all Western societies, particularly in relation to questions of subjectivity and the sexed self. This volume interrogates how case studies have been used by doctors, lawyers, psychoanalysts, and writers to communicate their findings both within the specialist circles of their academic disciplines, and beyond, to wider publics. At the same time, it questions how case studies have been taken up by a range of audiences to refute and dispute academic knowledge. As such, this book engages with case studies as sites of interdisciplinary negotiation, transnational exchange and influence, exploring the effects of forces such as war, migration, and internationalization.
Case Studies and the Dissemination of Knowledge challenges the limits of disciplinary-based research in the humanities. The cases examined serve as a means of passage between disciplines, genres, and publics, from law to psychoanalysis, and from auto/biography to modernist fiction. Its chapters scrutinize the case study in order to sharpen understanding of the genre’s dynamic role in the construction and dissemination of knowledge within and across disciplinary, temporal, and national boundaries. In doing so, they position the case at the center of cultural and social understandings of the emergence of modern subjectivities.
Case Studies and the Dissemination of Knowledge challenges the limits of disciplinary-based research in the humanities. The cases examined serve as a means of passage between disciplines, genres, and publics, from law to psychoanalysis, and from auto/biography to modernist fiction. Its chapters scrutinize the case study in order to sharpen understanding of the genre’s dynamic role in the construction and dissemination of knowledge within and across disciplinary, temporal, and national boundaries. In doing so, they position the case at the center of cultural and social understandings of the emergence of modern subjectivities.
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Throughout the Weimar period the so-called “masculinization of woman” was much more than merely an outsider or subcultural phenomenon; it was central to representations of the changing female ideal, and fed into wider debates concerning... more
Throughout the Weimar period the so-called “masculinization of woman” was much more than merely an outsider or subcultural phenomenon; it was central to representations of the changing female ideal, and fed into wider debates concerning the health and fertility of the German “race” following the rupture of war. Drawing on recent developments within the history of sexuality, this book sheds new light on representations and discussions of the masculine woman within the Weimar print media from 1918–1933. It traces the connotations and controversies surrounding this figure from her rise to media prominence in the early 1920s until the beginning of the Nazi period, considering questions of race, class, sexuality, and geography. By focusing on styles, bodies and identities that did not conform to societal norms of binary gender or heterosexuality, this book contributes to our understanding of gendered lives and experiences at this pivotal juncture in German history.
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Photographic portraits of queer subjects from the early 20th century—shaped by early medical-scientific and legal practices—have often been identified with hegemonic ways of seeing, even when they are restaged in the present. In this... more
Photographic portraits of queer subjects from the early 20th century—shaped by early medical-scientific and legal practices—have often been identified with hegemonic ways of seeing, even when they are restaged in the present. In this article we argue that bringing an ethics of attentiveness to the analysis of such photographs reveals not only how embodied subjectivities were captured by the photographer’s lens, but also how our own feelings and sense of self shape our investments in “touching” the queer past. Attending to such “quiet frequencies” (Campt) of the queer photographic archive allows us to embrace a wide range of emotions, from shame, desire, and grief to desire, exhibitionism, and self-assurance. We argue that through their portraits, the queer subjects examined in our article lay claim to a form of “deviant dwelling” that incorporates a tension between pragmatism, conformity, and refusal. This tension resonates into the present, as curators and artists recirculate and cite archival genres of queer portraiture. In doing so, they create moments of transtemporal queer touch between today’s audiences and historical subjects, albeit in ways that do not always sit comfortably with contemporary attempts at queer world-making. (BL/KS)
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This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters in this book. The book engages with case studies as sites of interdisciplinary negotiation, transnational exchange, and influence, exploring... more
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters in this book. The book engages with case studies as sites of interdisciplinary negotiation, transnational exchange, and influence, exploring the effects of larger historical and geopolitical forces such as war, migration, and internationalization on a genre pivotal to so many disciplinary and knowledge cultures. It discusses the influence of Freudian ideas and psychoanalytic practice and focuses on the dynamic interactions between cases, and knowledge about human subjects for a range of publics. The book presents the human subject into focus, analyzing the complex bond between the case study genre and the knowledge of modern subjects and subjectivities. Just as psychoanalysis has been highly influential in shaping the structure, interpretive possibilities, and dissemination of the case study genre in the context of twentieth-century modernity, so too has the discourse at the heart of psyc...
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Sexuality in Modern German History offers both a detailed survey of this key subject and a new intervention in the history of sexuality in modern Germany. It investigates the diverse and often contradictory ways in which individuals,... more
Sexuality in Modern German History offers both a detailed survey of this key subject and a new intervention in the history of sexuality in modern Germany. It investigates the diverse and often contradictory ways in which individuals, activists, doctors, politicians, artists, church leaders, reform movements and cultural commentators have defined 'normal' or 'natural' sexuality in Germany over the past two centuries. Katie Sutton explores how these definitions have been used to shape identities, behaviours, bodies and practices, from norms of heterosexual, marital, reproductive sex to ideas around the policing and categorisation of 'unnatural' or 'deviant' bodies and practices
Research Interests:
Photographic portraits of queer subjects from the early 20th century—shaped by early medical-scientific and legal practices—have often been identified with hegemonic ways of seeing, even when they are restaged in the present. In this... more
Photographic portraits of queer subjects from the early 20th century—shaped by early medical-scientific and legal practices—have often been identified with hegemonic ways of seeing, even when they are restaged in the present. In this article we argue that bringing an ethics of attentiveness to the analysis of such photographs reveals not only how embodied subjectivities were captured by the photographer’s lens, but also how our own feelings and sense of self shape our investments in “touching” the queer past. Attending to such “quiet frequencies” (Campt) of the queer photographic archive allows us to embrace a wide range of emotions, from shame, desire, and grief to desire, exhibitionism, and self-assurance. We argue that through their portraits, the queer subjects examined in our article lay claim to a form of “deviant dwelling” that incorporates a tension between pragmatism, conformity, and refusal. This tension resonates into the present, as curators and artists recirculate and cite archival genres of queer portraiture. In doing so, they create moments of transtemporal queer touch between today’s audiences and historical subjects, albeit in ways that do not always sit comfortably with contemporary attempts at queer world-making. (BL/KS)
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turned and faces in alert, Judith exposing her naked neck and décolleté while the maid wears an elaborate turban headdress. Curiously enough, the same cover had been chosen to illustrate another important collection of essays published in... more
turned and faces in alert, Judith exposing her naked neck and décolleté while the maid wears an elaborate turban headdress. Curiously enough, the same cover had been chosen to illustrate another important collection of essays published in 2005: The Artemisia Files: Artemisia Gentileschi for Feminists and Other Thinking People edited by Mieke Bal. As the art historian Elena Ciletti wrote in her contribution to the book, the canvas is ‘an inventive amalgam of strength and tenderness’; it admirably represents how ‘the dichotomy between vulnerability and aggression is in a sense fused in the heroine Judith, the executioner who exposes her own neck to the blade’ (p. 91) These words also seem appropriate to describing the provocations raised by Scott’s book.
Research Interests: Art and Photography
[Extract] The case study has proved of enduring interest to all Western societies, particularly in relation to questions of subjectivity and the sexed self. This volume investigates the means by which the case study genre disseminates... more
[Extract] The case study has proved of enduring interest to all Western societies, particularly in relation to questions of subjectivity and the sexed self. This volume investigates the means by which the case study genre disseminates knowledge through different publics and audiences, from patients to social reformers, from moral crusaders to literary audiences. More specifically, it interrogates how case studies have been used by doctors, lawyers, psychoanalysts, and writers to communicate their findings both within the specialist circles of their academic disciplines, and beyond, to a wider public. Such an interrogation simultaneously involves asking how case studies have been taken up by a range of audiences to refute and dispute academic knowledge. As such, this book engages with case studies as sites of interdisciplinary negotiation, transnational exchange, and influence, exploring the effects of larger historical and geopolitical forces such as war, migration, and internationalization on a genre pivotal to so many disciplinary and knowledge cultures
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Increased access to visual archives and the proliferation of digitized images related to sexuality have led a growing number of scholars in recent years to place images and visual practices at the center of critical historical inquiries... more
Increased access to visual archives and the proliferation of digitized images related to sexuality have led a growing number of scholars in recent years to place images and visual practices at the center of critical historical inquiries of sexual desire, subjectivity, and embodiment. At the same time, new critical histories of sexual science serve both to expand the temporal and geographical frames for investigating the historical relationships of sex and visual production, and to generate new lines of inquiry and reshape visual studies more broadly. The contributors to this issue invite us to ask: What new questions and challenges for the study of sex and sexual science are posed by critical studies of the visual? How are new visual methodologies that focus on archives changing the contours of historical knowledge about sex and sexuality? What—and where—are new methodologies still needed? “Visual Archives of Sex” aims to illuminate current research that centers visual media in the ...
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In the passport photograph on his Weimar-era Transvestitenschein, a besuited Gerd Katter gazes out past the camera's lens, refusing to fully expose himself to either the authorities on whom his ID application relied, or to viewers... more
In the passport photograph on his Weimar-era Transvestitenschein, a besuited Gerd Katter gazes out past the camera's lens, refusing to fully expose himself to either the authorities on whom his ID application relied, or to viewers across the century since. Starting with a series of such early 20th-century legal, medical, and subcultural photographs, this paper engages with theories of identity, visibility, and affect to articulate some cornerstones for an ethics of looking and being seen in queer and trans German history and cultural studies. What is at stake in designating photographs of historical individuals as "objects" for queer and trans studies? Which "objects" do we include? How have feelings such as shame and desire (Evans, Love, Probyn) shaped the conditions under which queer and trans bodies were placed on display? The ways in which we respond to such ethical conundrums, I suggest, can also shed light on current debates in German LGBTQ studies, including the relationship between media visibility and transphobia, Holocaust memorialization, and "free speech" justifications of anti-Islamic discourses. By cultivating a queer and trans ethics of "attentiveness" (Berlant, Breger) that insists on careful looking and attending to feelings, we might find productive new ways for thinking with and beyond identity.
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The interwar period in Germany saw some of the earliest periodicals by and for members of sex/gender minorities anywhere in the world, including a range of media aimed at individuals who were beginning to identify with and organize around... more
The interwar period in Germany saw some of the earliest periodicals by and for members of sex/gender minorities anywhere in the world, including a range of media aimed at individuals who were beginning to identify with and organize around the new sexological category of the "transvestite." Focusing on autobiographical and fictional "cases" of transvestite identity—genres that continue to play an important role in contemporary transgender scholarship—this chapter examines these publications, which bore titles such as Der Transvestit (The Transvestite) or Welt der Transvestiten (Transvestites' World). A central feature of these cases of transvestite life writing—the structure of which drew explicitly on medical models—is the confessional trope of "sich bekennen"—to "confess" to being something—which bears strong parallels to the late-twentieth-century LGBT political strategy of "coming out." This chapter argues that through adherence to the "coming out" trope and other key elements in the transvestite life story, these narratives helped to foster a sense of shared identity among readers, providing a basis for community organization and political activism that can be usefully conceptualized in terms of a "transvestite public."
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Cross-dressing took on new political meanings in Germany’s Weimar Republic, with the emergence of organizations and periodicals aimed at promoting the interests of self-identified “transvestites.” This new sexological category, developed... more
Cross-dressing took on new political meanings in Germany’s Weimar Republic, with the emergence of organizations and periodicals aimed at promoting the interests of self-identified “transvestites.” This new sexological category, developed by Magnus Hirschfeld in 1910, formed the basis for a shared sense of identity and belonging among individuals who identified as members of the “opposite” sex. Drawing on the experiences of the homosexual emancipation movement and discourses of bourgeois respectability, middle-class transvestites came together to demand legal and social recognition, including acknowledgement of “transsexual” desires. Their efforts represent a critical but forgotten moment in the history of transgender political activism.
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This article charts the development of psychoanalytic cases of homosexuality in the early twentieth century against the backdrop of seemingly stable sexological understandings of congenital homosexual identity and behaviour. It argues... more
This article charts the development of psychoanalytic cases of homosexuality in the early twentieth century against the backdrop of seemingly stable sexological understandings of congenital homosexual identity and behaviour. It argues that psychoanalysts offered alternative models to the taxonomies of sexology, which had remained intellectually tied to discourses of pathology and difference. It contrasts Freud’s approach to homosexuality in several famous early cases, such as ‘Dora’ and Daniel Paul Schreber, with rarely considered cases and writings by Isidor Sadger and others. This analysis reveals nuanced distinctions between early psychoanalytic positions: whereas Freud’s approach created the potential for greater equality between homosexual and heterosexual subjectivities by abolishing straightforward categories of the ‘normal’ and the ‘pathological’, and by arguing for a universal bisexuality and polyvalent sexuality, Sadger and others remained focused on the question of a cure, and continued to prioritize a heterosexual norm. From this early psychoanalytic focus on male homosexual cases, the article traces a shift towards female homosexuality in the interwar period, including consideration of wider environmental and social factors in homosexual development and identification. Throughout, this article considers how the search for authenticity led psychoanalysts to scrutinize the evidentiary status of patient statements rather than take these at face value, opening up new possibilities and frameworks for the representation of queer subjectivities. Keywords: psychoanalysis, sexology, homosexuality, Freud, queer
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Abstract From its fin-de-siècle inception against the backdrop of Wilhelmine-era body culture and Lebensreform movements, the liberal German periodical Geschlecht und Gesellschaft consistently worked to push the boundaries of sexual... more
Abstract From its fin-de-siècle inception against the backdrop of Wilhelmine-era body culture and Lebensreform movements, the liberal German periodical Geschlecht und Gesellschaft consistently worked to push the boundaries of sexual discourse within a framework of bourgeois respectability. Until the end of World War I, it did so by prioritizing aesthetic discourse, with contributors undertaking progressive, sexually explicit readings of the Western canon, challenging controversial censorship decisions — using ‘high’ culture to appeal to an educated Bildungsbürgertum readership — and exploring a new Darwinian-inspired sexual ethics. While the institutional and intellectual history of the furor sexualis as a paradigm of modernity has largely been mapped since Foucault, with historians charting the ‘scientification’, ‘biologization’ and ‘medicalization’ of German society in early twentieth-century modernity, this article positions aesthetic discourse as a key aspect of the pursuit of the truth of sex. It also shows how this cultural paradigm largely disappeared in the Weimar era, when shifts in middle-class demographics led to an increasing focus on science in discussions of sex. [Es scheint] mir angebracht, sich klar zu werden, was die Erotik in der Kunst, wie sie in unserm Buch zum Ausdruck kommt, bezweckt. Sie dient als Ausflußbett für alle Regungen im Menschen, die sexuellen Timbre haben und sich im Liebesleben nicht erschöpfen. Ihr Maß ist ein erhebliches, wird aber immer noch so völlig unterschätzt, daß man nicht klar und laut genug von ihrem Dasein sprechen kann. Emil Schultze-Malkowsky, ‘Die Erotik in der Kunst’ (1908)
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The novels of Antje Rávic Strubel, one of Germany's most prolific and acclaimed writers, explore ideas about post-Wende identity and agency, from the legacy of the Stasi to the social challenges posed by incestuous or homosexual... more
The novels of Antje Rávic Strubel, one of Germany's most prolific and acclaimed writers, explore ideas about post-Wende identity and agency, from the legacy of the Stasi to the social challenges posed by incestuous or homosexual relationships. Meanwhile, her two nonfiction "user manuals" to Sweden and Potsdam/Brandenburg offer affectionate yet critical insights into her Scandinavian Sehnsuchtsland (land of longing), her place of birth, and her current residence. Strubel's many prizes and achievements include the Klagenfurt Ernst Willner Prize, received for her debut novel Offene Blende in 2001, and a recent long-listing for the German Book Prize for her latest novel, Sturz der Tage in die Nacht (2011).
Page 1. THE MASCULLME WOMAN IN WEIMAR GERMANY RATI E SUTTON Page 2. Page 3. The Masculine Woman in Weimar Germany Page 4. Monographs in German History Volume 1 Osthandel and Ostpolitik: German ...
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In this roundtable, four curators of exhibitions showcasing sexual archives and histories—with a particular focus on queer and trans experiences—were asked to reflect on their experiences working as scholars and artists across a range of... more
In this roundtable, four curators of exhibitions showcasing sexual archives and histories—with a particular focus on queer and trans experiences—were asked to reflect on their experiences working as scholars and artists across a range of museum and gallery formats. The exhibitions referred to below were Bring Your Own Body: Transgender between Archives and Aesthetics, curated by Jeanne Vaccaro (discussant) with Stamatina Gregory at The Cooper Union, New York, in 2015 and Haverford College, Pennsylvania, in 2016; Odarodle: An imaginary their_story of naturepeoples, 1535–2017, curated by Ashkan Sepahvand (discussant) at the Schwules Museum (Gay Museum) in Berlin, Germany, in 2017; Queer, curated by Ted Gott, Angela Hesson, Myles Russell-Cook, Meg Slater (discussant), and Pip Wallis at the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia, in 2022; and TransTrans: Transatlantic Transgender Histories, curated by Alex Bakker, Rainer Herrn, Michael Thomas Taylor, and Annette F. Timm (dis...
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The historiography of sexology is young. It is also expanding at a remarkable pace, both in terms of the volume of publications and, more notably, in terms of its geographical, disciplinary, and intersectional reach. This special issue... more
The historiography of sexology is young. It is also expanding at a remarkable pace, both in terms of the volume of publications and, more notably, in terms of its geographical, disciplinary, and intersectional reach. This special issue takes stock of these new directions, while offering new research contributions that expand our understanding of the interdisciplinary and transnational formation of this field from the late 19th through to the mid 20th century. The five articles that make up this special issue stage historiographical interventions by challenging the tendency within sexological history to focus on the medical, the homosexual, the human, and the Western European at the expense of other disciplines, diagnoses, non-human subjects, and geographical locations. A particular strength of these contributions is their focus on mapping conversations among and between sexologists on both sides of the Atlantic in the early to mid 20th century – particularly in Germany, Britain, and...
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The historical forces of war and migration impacted heavily on the disciplinary locations, practitioners, and structures of sexology and psychoanalysis that had developed in the first decades of the 20th century. By the late 1940s, the US... more
The historical forces of war and migration impacted heavily on the disciplinary locations, practitioners, and structures of sexology and psychoanalysis that had developed in the first decades of the 20th century. By the late 1940s, the US was fast becoming the world centre of each of these prominent fields within the modern human sciences. During these years, the work of Alfred C. Kinsey and his team became synonymous with a distinctly North American brand of empirical sex research. This article offers the most nuanced account to date of the shifting relationship between these two fields in the late 1940s to mid 1950s. It argues that this was more collaborative and mutually influential than previous historians have assumed, even as, following the publication of the first ‘Kinsey report’, tensions grew between the Indiana team and the conservative brand of psychoanalysis that by this stage dominated 1950s North American psychiatry. A keen sense of professional competitiveness acceler...
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Scholars have identified the central importance of patient case histories in the professionalization of medicine in modernity, but to date relatively little attention has been directed towards the role of visual technologies in providing... more
Scholars have identified the central importance of patient case histories in the professionalization of medicine in modernity, but to date relatively little attention has been directed towards the role of visual technologies in providing embodied representations of new medical categories, or in shaping relationships between sexologists, their patients, and both medical and non-medical readers of sexual scientific texts. This essay examines photographic representations of “transvestism” in works by prominent early twentieth-century German sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld, and compares these with photographs of transvestites published in the interwar subcultural trans magazine Das 3. Geschlecht (The 3rd Sex). It argues that photographic evidence not only played a crucial role in sexologists’ attempts to establish their discipline as “legitimate knowledge” (Foucault), but that subcultural citations of medical images can shed light on a “queer critical history” (Doan) of trans experience and identity politics in the early twentieth century, queering the representational dynamics of anonymity and agency between sexologists and their patients.
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This article charts the development of psychoanalytic cases of homosexuality in the early twentieth century against the backdrop of seemingly stable sexological understandings of congenital homosexual identity and behaviour. It argues... more
This article charts the development of psychoanalytic cases of homosexuality in the early twentieth century against the backdrop of seemingly stable sexological understandings of congenital homosexual identity and behaviour. It argues that psychoanalysts offered alternative models to the taxonomies of sexology, which had remained intellectually tied to discourses of pathology and difference. It contrasts Freud’s approach to homosexuality in several famous early cases, such as ‘Dora’ and Daniel Paul Schreber, with rarely considered cases and writings by Isidor Sadger and others. This analysis reveals nuanced distinctions between early psychoanalytic positions: whereas Freud’s approach created the potential for greater equality between homosexual and heterosexual subjectivities by abolishing straightforward categories of the ‘normal’ and the ‘pathological’, and by arguing for a universal bisexuality and polyvalent sexuality, Sadger and others remained focused on the question of a cure, and continued to prioritize a heterosexual norm. From this early psychoanalytic focus on male homosexual cases, the article traces a shift towards female homosexuality in the interwar period, including consideration of wider environmental and social factors in homosexual development and identification. Throughout, this article considers how the search for authenticity led psychoanalysts to scrutinize the evidentiary status of patient statements rather than take these at face value, opening up new possibilities and frameworks for the representation of queer subjectivities.
Keywords: psychoanalysis, sexology, homosexuality, Freud, queer
Keywords: psychoanalysis, sexology, homosexuality, Freud, queer
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The interwar period in Germany saw some of the earliest periodicals by and for members of sex/gender minorities anywhere in the world, including a range of media aimed at individuals who were beginning to identify with and organize around... more
The interwar period in Germany saw some of the earliest periodicals by and for members of sex/gender minorities anywhere in the world, including a range of media aimed at individuals who were beginning to identify with and organize around the new sexological category of the "transvestite." Focusing on autobiographical and fictional "cases" of transvestite identity—genres that continue to play an important role in contemporary transgender scholarship—this chapter examines these publications, which bore titles such as Der Transvestit (The Transvestite) or Welt der Transvestiten (Transvestites' World). A central feature of these cases of transvestite life writing—the structure of which drew explicitly on medical models—is the confessional trope of "sich bekennen"—to "confess" to being something—which bears strong parallels to the late-twentieth-century LGBT political strategy of "coming out." This chapter argues that through adherence to the "coming out" trope and other key elements in the transvestite life story, these narratives helped to foster a sense of shared identity among readers, providing a basis for community organization and political activism that can be usefully conceptualized in terms of a "transvestite public."
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The widespread emergence of “war neurosis” and sexual disturbances such as impotence among German soldiers during World War I led some branches of the medical profession to reconceptualize the impact of violent trauma on sexuality.... more
The widespread emergence of “war neurosis” and sexual disturbances such as impotence among German soldiers during World War I led some branches of the medical profession to reconceptualize the impact of violent trauma on sexuality. Psychoanalysts argued that explanations of traumatic war neurosis needed to focus above all on psychogenic causes, including underlying sexual factors. Meanwhile, sexologists sought to tread a middle path between psychology and biology, arguing for a more precise classification of sexual dysfunctions according to types of violent trauma, and emphasizing the impact of shellshock on the so-called internal secretions. In both disciplines, this article argues, the experience of treating soldiers traumatized by trench warfare led to important theoretical revisions: in the case of psychoanalysis, to an expansion of older traumatic neurosis explanations based in sexual aetiology, and in the case of sexology, to an increased recognition of psychic factors in the development of sexual pathologies.