Female Sexual Inversion [electronic resource] : Same-Sex Desires in Italian and British Sexology, c. 1870-1920 /
Beccalossi, Chiara.author.
An examination of how female same-sex desires were represented in a wide range of Italian and British medical writings, 1870-1920. It shows how the psychiatric category of sexual inversion was positioned alongside other medical ideas of same-sex desires, such as the virago, tribade-prostitute, fiamma and gynaecological explanations.
Description based upon print version of record.
Cover; Contents; Acknowledgements; Note on Terminology; Abbreviations; Part I; 1 Introduction: Female Sexual Inversion and other Medical Embodiments of Female Same-Sex Desires in Italy and Britain, circa 1870-1920; The emergence of the medical category of sexual inversion: continuities and variations; National traditions and competing medical fields; The hero/villain dichotomy; The (in)visibility of female same-sex desires; 2 Sexuality in Post-Risorgimento Italy and Victorian Britain Historical contexts; Historical contexts; Regularisation of sexual behaviours; Part II
3 Italy: The Fashionable Psychiatric Disorder of Sexual Inversion and other Medical Embodiments of Same-Sex DesiresTowards an Italian psychiatry; 'Inversion of sexual instinct': towards a new and fashionable psychiatric pathology; The establishment of sexual inversion as a mental illness in psychiatric manuals; Asylums as laboratories for tracking female homosexuality; Figures of female same-sex desires; 4 Britain: Oblique Discourses Surrounding 'Lesbic Love'; British psychiatry in the nineteenth century; Psychiatry and same-sex desires; Female sexual excess: nymphomania and prostitution
Gynaecology: sexual excess in the female bodyYoung females do not sleep in the same bed: masturbation and adolescence; Part III Case-Studies; 5 Cesare Lombroso and Italian Criminal Anthropology; The Criminal Man, pederasty, and sexual inversion; Popularising sexology; Tribadism; Stigmatising feminism?; 6 Pasquale Penta, 'First Class Sexologist'; Following Lombroso's path: the Verzeni case; Archivio delle psicopatie sessuali; 'Natura non facit saltus': pursuing the study of sexuality; Female sexual inversion; 7 Havelock Ellis and Sex Psychology; Writing Sexual Inversion; The Bedborough case
Psychology of sex: female sexual inversion8 William Blair-Bell and Gynaecology; The normal woman and her internal secretions; The abnormal woman type; 9 Concluding Remarks; Notes; Bibliography; Index
Includes bibliographical references and index.
An examination of how female same-sex desires were represented in a wide range of Italian and British medical writings, 1870-1920. It shows how the psychiatric category of sexual inversion was positioned alongside other medical ideas of same-sex desires, such as the virago, tribade-prostitute, fiamma and gynaecological explanations.
Italy—History.
Europe—History.
History, Modern.
Clinical psychology.
History.
Sociology.
History of Italy.
European History.
Modern History.
Clinical Psychology.
History of Science.
Gender Studies.