The concept of perversion in dynamic psychiatry

Abstract

The works of Richard von Kraft-Ebing Psychpathologia Sexualis (1893) and of Henry Havelock Ellis Studies in the Psychology of Sex (1897) represent a synthesis view the findings in the field of alterations of sexuality as of the second half of the nineteenth century. The breakthrough and rupture vis a vis the old concept developed by positivism is not achieved until Sigmund Freud. Through the introduction of new concepts, such as the sexual «object» (Objekt) and sexual aim (Ziel), and demonstrating that perversions remain linked to the eventual course taken by developmentally conditioned child sexuality, psychoanalysis paved the way for the appearance of a new gnosography which, as of 1905, inspires all research on the subject.