Article: History, causality, and sexology.

In 1896, Krafft-Ebing published Psychopathia Sexualis. Popularly defined as hereditary weakness or taintedness in the family pedigree, degeneracy was called upon as a causal explanation for perversions of the sexual innstinct. Although Krafft-Ebing accepted Karl Ulrichs' proposal that homosexuality could be innate and probably located in the brain, he paid little attention to neuropathological sexology. Alfred Binet challenged Krafft-Ebing's orthodoxy by explaining fetishism in terms of associative learning, to which Krafft-Ebing's response was that only those with a hereditary taint would be vulnerable. Thus did the venerable nature-nurture antithesis maintain its ...

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