Sexology

Sexology is the systematic study of human sexuality. It encompasses all aspects of sexuality, including:

History of the study of sex

A number of ancient sex manuals exist, including Ovid's Ars Amatoria, the Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana, the Ananga Ranga and The Perfumed Garden for the Soul's Recreation. However, none of these treated sex as the subject of a formal field of scientific or medical research.

One of the earliest sex researchers prior to the 20th century sexology movement was Richard Freiherr von Krafft-Ebing, whose book Psychopathia Sexualis recorded a number of unusual sexual abnormalities.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Sigmund Freud developed a theory of sexuality based on his studies of his clients.

Magnus Hirschfeld founded the Institute for Sexology in Berlin in 1919. When the Nazis took power, one of their first actions, on May 6, 1933, was to destroy the Institute and burn the library.

Sexology in its modern form is largely a 20th century phenomenon.

Sexology relates to a number of other fields of study:

several fields of medicine, including andrology, gynaecology, and the anatomy of the sex organs
the psychology, sociology, and anthropology of sexual behavior
neuroscience can be used to study many basic sexual reflexes, and is increasingly relevant to more complex aspects of sexual behavior
psychiatry studies some of the more extreme disorders of sexual behavior
many aspects of sexual behavior are or have been regulated by law in various jurisdictions, and various classes of sexual offences are studied by criminology
biology studies the sexual behavior of other animals, which can be compared with human sexual behavior
the techniques of evolutionary biology can be brought to bear on the causes of sexual behavior
the epidemiology of sexually transmitted diseases

Sexology also touches on public issues such as the debates over abortion, public health, birth control, sexual abuse and reproductive technology.

This is a list of notable sexologists, sorted by the year of their birth: