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The article investigates the culture- and socialhistorical background of the origin and early development of sexual pathology in Germany. In its first part it shows how sexual pathology, first known as Psychopathia sexualis, came into being as a special field of psychiatry. Its most important founder, Richard von Krafft-Ebing, constructed a system of sexual perverts. After 1869, together with colleagues he developed wholly new concepts of deviant sexuality and how to deal with it. In the second part it is shown which points of Krafft-Ebing's concept of perversity were taken over by his medical successors and which points were modified or even rejected as a result of sharp criticism. Finally the long-term effects of the pathologization of deviant sexual behaviour are depicted, the medicalization of social deviance, the change in understanding of sexuality and other developments.