The origin of these Studies dates from many years back. As a youth I was faced, as others are, by the problem of sex. Living partly in an Australian city where the ways of life were plainly seen, partly in the solitude of the bush, I was free both to contemplate and to meditate many things. A resolve slowly grew up within me: one main part of my life-work should be to make clear the problems of sex. That was more than twenty years ago. Since then I can honestly say that in all that I have done that resolve has never been very far from my thoughts. I have always been slowly working up to this central problem; and in a book published some three years ago—Man and Woman: a Study of Human Secondary Sexual Characters—I put forward what was, in my own eyes, an introduction to the study of the primary questions of sexual psychology. Now that I have at length reached the time for beginning to publish my results, these results scarcely seem to me large. As a youth, I had hoped to settle problems for those who came after; now I am quietly content if I do little more than state them. For even that, I now think, is much; it is at least the half of knowledge. In this particular field the evil of ignorance is magnified by our efforts to suppress that which never can be suppressed, though in the effort of suppression it may become perverted. I have at least tried to find out what are the facts, among normal people as well as among abnormal people; for, while it seems to me that the physician's training is necessary in order to ascertain the facts, the physician for the most part only obtains the abnormal facts, which alone bring little light. I have tried to get at the facts, and, having got at the facts, to look them simply and squarely in the face. If I cannot perhaps turn the lock myself, I bring the key which can alone in the end rightly open the door: the key of sincerity. That is my one panacea: sincerity.

This edition contains three studies which seem to me to be necessary prolegomena to that analysis of the sexual instinct which must form the chief part of an investigation into the psychology of sex. The first sketches the main outlines of a complex emotional state which is of fundamental importance in sexual psychology; the second, by bringing together evidence from widely different regions, suggests a tentative explanation of facts that are still imperfectly known; the third attempts to show that even in fields where we assume our knowledge to be adequate a broader view of the phenomena teaches us to suspend judgment and to adopt a more cautious attitude. So far as they go, these studies are complete in themselves; their special use, as an introduction to a more comprehensive analysis of sexual phenomena, is that they bring before us, under varying aspects, a characteristic which, though often ignored, is of the first importance in obtaining a clear understanding of the facts: the tendency of the sexual impulse to appear in a spontaneous and to some extent periodic manner, affecting women differently from men. This is a tendency which, later, I hope to make still more apparent, for it has practical and social, as well as psychological, implications. Here—and more especially in the study of those spontaneous solitary manifestations which I call auto-erotic—I have attempted to clear the ground, and to indicate the main lines along which the progress of our knowledge in these fields may best be attained._x000D_ _x000D_ _x000D_

The long-awaited Revised Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud (RSE) is founded on the canonical Standard Edition (SE) translation from the German by James Strachey, while adding a new layer of revisions and translations. Conceptual and lexicographic ambiguities are clarified inextensive new annotations. Drawing on established conventions and intellectual traditions, the Revised Standard Edition supplements Freud’s writing with substantial editorial commentaries addressing controversial technical terms and translation issues through the lens of modern scholarship—a living text in dialogue with itself and the reader. The RSE also includes 56 essays and letters which were not included in the SE. In the RSE text and footnotes a subtle underlining distinguishes, in an easy and accessible way, Mark Solms’s revisions and additions, from the historical translation and commentaries of James Strachey’s Standard Edition. Readers can examine what Strachey contributed before the revisions in tandem with Solms’s updates, new translations, annotations, and commentaries, collectively bringing Freud’s text and Strachey’s translation into dialogue with five decades of research, including the most recent developments in the field. Commissioned by the British Psychoanalytical Society and co-published by Rowman & Littlefield, the Revised Standard Edition brings together decades of scholarly deliberation concerning the translation of Freudian technical terms while retaining the best of Strachey’s original English translation.This landmark work will captivate a wide audience, from interested lay readers to practicing clinicians to scientists and scholars in fields related to psychoanalysis.

First published in 1979, Havelock Ellis is a biography of the philosopher of sex. Havelock Ellis trained first as a doctor but soon broke out of conventional medicine to shock Victorian England with his encyclopaedic seven-volume work, Studies in the Psychology of Sex. One of the last representatives of the days when man could attempt to embrace a universal view, he wrote more than fifty books covering such diverse subjects as medicine, eugenics, love, literature, criminal law, and above all, sex. These were strewn with findings on many major problems which still trouble us today and some of his solutions remain highly contemporary. His influence permeated many areas of social thinking, and his works played a considerable part in changing attitudes towards homosexuality, the relation between the sexes and sexual patterns of behaviour. The present biography re-assesses the main themes of Ellis’ work and throws new light on many aspects of his life from a wide variety of published and unpublished sources. It also provides a new account of his relationship with Freud from unpublished sources and an evaluation of their inter-related work. This book will be of interest to students of philosophy and psychology.

When first published in 1948, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male encountered a storm of condemnation and acclaim. By unshackling sex research from flawed founding constraints, Kinsey revolutionized it. In this 75th anniversary edition, featuring a new foreword from Judith A. Allen, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male revisits the work of Alfred C. Kinsey and his fellow researchers as they sought to accumulate an objective body of facts regarding sex. Originally an entomologist, Kinsey applied his fieldwork taxonomy methods to human sexuality. With 5,300 research subjects, his undertaking was the largest sex research project of its time, transforming the field. With scientific exactness, Kinsey describes the methodology, sampling, coding, interviewing, and statistical analyses, and then examines factors and sources of sexual outlet. Told through men's experiences of sexuality and reproduction, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male: Anniversary Edition is a remarkable rumination on American society and science in the early 20th century.

On female sexuality

It is paradoxical that instinct became a central term for late Victorian sexual sciences as they were elaborated in the medicalized spaces of confession and introspection, given that instinct had long been defined in its opposition to self-conscious thought. The Ploy of Instinct ties this paradox to instinct’s deployment in conceptualizing governmentality. Instinct’s domain, Frederickson argues, extended well beyond the women, workers, and “savages” to whom it was so often ascribed. The concept of instinct helped to gloss over contradictions in British liberal ideology made palpable as turn-of-the-century writers grappled with the legacy of Enlightenment humanism. For elite European men, instinct became both an agent of “progress” and a force that, in contrast to desire, offered a plenitude in answer to the alienation of self-consciousness. This shift in instinct’s appeal to privileged European men modified the governmentality of empire, labor, and gender. The book traces these changes through parliamentary papers, pornographic fiction, accounts of Aboriginal Australians, suffragette memoirs, and scientific texts in evolutionary theory, sexology, and early psychoanalysis.