Sexual anomalies : the origins, nature and treatment of sexual disorders. A summary of the works of Magnus Hirschfeld, comp. as a humble memorial by his pupils. A textbook for the medical and legal professions, ministers, educators, psychologists, biologists, sociologists and social workers, criminologists and students in these fields.

  • Hirschfeld, Magnus, 1868-1935.
Date:
[1948]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Sexual anomalies : the origins, nature and treatment of sexual disorders. A summary of the works of Magnus Hirschfeld, comp. as a humble memorial by his pupils. A textbook for the medical and legal professions, ministers, educators, psychologists, biologists, sociologists and social workers, criminologists and students in these fields. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    physiological processes rather than in the erratic nature of the moral consciousness. But although Magnus Hirschfeld’s early training seemed to predestine him for the medical profession, he took a wide detour before entering it. He began by studying philosophy and philol¬ ogy, though not in any Freudian spirit of revolt against his father’s authority and profession. The explanation is far simpler. Magnus, like every talented young man during the years of puberty, had a literary urge and wanted to become an author, like Heyse or Sudermann, the demigods of the time. That he was not entirely mistaken will be clear to anyone who has read his books, which apart from mere precision of style afford aesthetic enjoyment and are sometimes brilliantly written. In the end, however, Magnus Hirschfeld became a doctor, se¬ curing his diploma in the year 1893. But he could not bring him¬ self to start a practice and settle down and, rationalizing his rest¬ lessness, he started to travel. Fie came to America and visited the model scientific institutes founded and maintained by wealthy men; but while he admired the gigantic dimensions and the rapid pace of the New World, he realized that the apparently iron- nerved big business men were in reality neurotic. He also visited Africa, where the hedonistic outlook and loose morality of the more primitive races definitely convinced him that the sexual prejudices of the civilized world were only social conventions, and implanted in his mind the idea that the persecution of people who satisfied their sexual impulse in a certain manner, such as homosexuals, was contrary to justice and humanity. Then he traveled to most of the big cities on the Continent, and established personal contact with the greatest authorities of his time on sexual pathology. Finally, in the year 1910, he started a practice in Magdeburg. However, soon after he moved to Charlottenburg, with the firm resolve to specialize in the treatment of sexual aberrations, not only because his interest was centered in this group of pathogenic phenomena, but mainly because he realized that people so afflicted