Swiss psychiatrist and entomologist, author of The Sexual Question and one of the first presidents of the World League for Sexual Reform
His Die sexuelle Frage (1905) treated human sexuality for the first time as a whole, on scientific and psychological grounds.
A Swiss psychiatrist and brain researcher from Morges. As professor at Zurich and director of the Burghölzli asylum he established hypnotic therapy and helped lay the foundations of the neuron doctrine. He led the temperance movement, and his Die sexuelle Frage (1905) treated human sexuality as a whole on scientific and psychological grounds. He joined the Swiss Social Democratic Party in 1916 and advocated both pacifism and eugenics. He became one of the first presidents of the World League for Sexual Reform in 1928 and died in 1931.
Activities and affiliations
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1873–1931
Science and technology
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1916–1931
Social Democratic Party of Switzerland
Science and technology
Related historical events
Psychiatry and social reform
Born in Morges on Lake Geneva, he studied medicine in Zurich and, as assistant to Bernhard von Gudden in Munich, did brain anatomy that helped lay the foundations of the neuron doctrine. As professor of psychiatry at Zurich and director of the Burghölzli asylum from 1879 to 1898 he brought hypnotic therapy into medicine. To treat alcoholism he opened an abstinence clinic at Ellikon in 1889 and led the temperance movement. His Die sexuelle Frage (1905) caused a sensation. He joined the Swiss Social Democratic Party in 1916 and was active as a socialist, supported pacifism and Esperanto, and became a Bahá’í in 1920. Like other sex reformers of his time he advocated eugenics. In 1928 he was elected one of the first presidents of the World League for Sexual Reform, stepping back to honorary president in 1930, and he died in Yvorne in 1931.