Nineteenth-century European psychiatry on same-sex desires
Pathology, abnormality, normality and the blurring of boundaries
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12978282 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Chiara Beccalossi (0000-0002-3398-1410, The University of Queensland, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2010 |
| Volume | 1 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 226-238 |
| Publication date | 2010-08-04 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Psychology and Sexuality (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1941-9902 • E-ISSN: 1941-9899 |
| Publisher | Taylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/19419899.2010.494896 |
| OpenAlex | W2073589902 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
| References cited | 8 |
By interrogating the intellectual foundations of the normal and pathological within nineteenth-century European psychiatry, this article illustrates the extent to which same-sex desires were located on the borderline between the normal and the pathological. First, this article analyses the early-nineteenth-century French and British medical concepts of folie raisonnante, monomania and moral insanity, and their relationship with medical ideas of same-sex desires. It then considers mid-nineteenth century degeneration theory and the introduction of the category of sexual inversion in German psychiatry in the late 1860s. Finally, it deals with the late-nineteenth-century medical discussion about the presence of a latent bisexuality in all human beings at both embryological and psychological levels, and the impact that such debates had on psychiatric discourses about same-sex desires. It is argued that understanding same-sex desires in terms of mutually exclusive categories of the pathological and the normal fails to appreciate the unstable and fluid notions of sexual ‘abnormality’ and ‘pathology’ within the nineteenth-century European psychiatric debates
Abnormality · Aesthetics · German · Insanity · Late 19th century · Michel foucault · Normality · Pathological · Pathology · Period (music · Politics · Psychiatry · Psychoanalysis · Historical and Scientific Studies · Historical Psychiatry and Medical Practices · Historical Studies on Reproduction, Gender, Health, and Societal Changes · History · Law · Medicine · Philosophy · Psychology
| Unique citing works | 2 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,15 |
| Citation span | 2013 - 2023 (11) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 2 |