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The History of Sexuality in Context: National Sexological Traditions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Robert A. Nye
Robert A. Nye
Affiliation:
Department of HistoryUniversity of Oklahoma
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Abstract

I argue here that in its historical development, sexology developed differently in France than elsewhere in Europe. Though I concur that the modern notion of “sexuality” arose some time in the last half of the nineteenth century, the older notion of ”sex” persisted in French science and medicine for a far longer time than elsewhere because of a fear that nonreproductive sexual behavior would deepen the country's population crisis. I argue that the scientific and medical concepts of the sexual perversions, particularly homosexuality, were considered by French sexologists to be abnormal deviations from heterosexuality, whereas some English, German, and Austrian sexologists — including Freud — viewed the perversions more tolerantly as natural variations of the norm. I also address here the inadequacies of historical accounts of these developments that favor discursive ruptures in the Foucauldian manner, and stress the advantages of social history and causal historical explanation.

Type
Article
Information
Science in Context , Volume 4 , Issue 2 , Autumn 1991 , pp. 387 - 406
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1991

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