Sex between Body and Mind: Psychoanalysis and Sexology in the German-Speaking World, 1890s–1930s by Katie Sutton

Abstract

Reviewed by: Sex between Body and Mind: Psychoanalysis and Sexology in the German-Speaking World, 1890s–1930s by Katie Sutton Amy Lynne Hill Katie Sutton. Sex between Body and Mind: Psychoanalysis and Sexology in the German-Speaking World, 1890s–1930s. U of Michigan P, 2019. 364 pp. Cloth, $90.00. Audio download, $9.99. In Sex between Body and Mind, Katie Sutton identifies a critical gap in the historiography of human sexuality: in the study of sexology and psychoanalysis in modern Germany, attention is paid almost exclusively to moments of divergence as each became a professional and institutionalized field of knowledge in the forty years leading to the rise of National Socialism. Sutton argues instead that we turn to moments of encounter between sexologists and psychoanalysis, because of the "crucial impact [they had] not only on modern understandings of human sexuality, but on modern understandings of the self" (2). As she writes in her introduction, Sutton emphasizes the productive and emancipatory potential of Foucauldian thought and, as a result, recuperates the dynamic interdisciplinary history of human sexuality and brings to the fore vital encounters among doctors, scientists, theorists, therapists, and their patients. [End Page 129] Sutton frames her study as a comparative cultural history, and her central premise revolves around debates on nature versus nurture and the core tenet that "matters were always more complex than sexologists coming down on the side of biology and psychoanalysts focusing purely on the workings of the mind" (9). Rather, she emphasizes the importance of "interpenetration," meaning a newly created "knowledge product" previously inaccessible to either discipline, in the production of new sexual knowledge (21). She thus meticulously traces the interpersonal relationships of the most notable representatives from each field—namely, Magnus Hirschfeld on the side of sexology, and Sigmund Freud for psychoanalysis—while richly illustrating how they and their adherents reacted to and critiqued each other in personal correspondence and published scholarship alike. The result is a lively account of how both disciplines vied for credibility and respectability as they reacted to the cultural rupture of the Great War as well as innovative research into the endocrine system. After a thorough yet accessible survey of existing scholarship, Sutton begins by examining the impact of research on early childhood sexuality on modern ideas of the so-called normal subject. She assigns this as the first "trading zone" or "moment of reciprocal dialogue" between sexology and psychoanalysis, as well as a major paradigm shift that acknowledged sexuality before puberty (21); however, it also marked the first significant tension between the two fields in response to Freud's theory of the Oedipus complex. She then traces the increasingly important binary of normal versus perverse that developed during World War I with the case of homosexuality, wherein sexology and psychoanalysis took differing stances on whether sexuality was congenital or acquired. In another paradigm shift, while earlier psychiatric thought believed homosexuality to be a degenerative condition, now psychoanalysis largely conceived of same-sex attraction to be a pathological variation of the norm and therefore capable of being cured in therapy. This positioned psychoanalysis to gain cultural and professional standing in the treatment of so-called war neurotics, and Sutton argues that while this fact is widely acknowledged, the overly simplified narrative of the state of sexology during this time is that it was suffering a setback. She posits that this was a pivotal point of interpenetration as sexologists revised their own beliefs to include more psychoanalytic approaches in response to the trauma of war. Moreover, this marks the beginning of the hormone research that would prove to be a boon to sexologists, as it not [End Page 130] only supported their understanding of congenital factors in human sexuality, but the physiological nature of this research granted sexology new levels of professional and public credibility. This, writes Sutton, was a key moment in reconciling the connection between body and mind when it came to sex, but it ultimately proved to be anything but harmonizing for these two new disciplines. In the final third of her monograph, Sutton highlights the contributions of female theorists and therapists, as well as of members of what would today be considered the trans community...