Richard Freiherr von Krafft-Ebing (full name Richard Fridolin Joseph Freiherr Krafft von Festenberg auf Frohnberg, genannt von Ebing; 14 August 1840 – 22 December 1902) was a German psychiatrist and author of the foundational work Psychopathia Sexualis (1886).
Richard von Krafft-Ebing was born as the eldest of five children to Friedrich Karl Konrad Christoph von Krafft-Ebing, a high-ranking official in the Grand Duchy of Baden.
His mother Klara Antonia Carolina was a daughter of the renowned Heidelberg legal scholar and defense attorney Carl Joseph Anton Mittermaier. His paternal lineage was ennobled in the year 1770 by Empress Maria Theresia and elevated to the Baronial status in 1805 by Emperor Franz II (as Franz I, Emperor of Austria).
Due to his father's professional relocation, the family moved initially to various locations in Baden and eventually to Heidelberg. In Heidelberg, Richard von Krafft-Ebing, after passing his university entrance exam at the University of Heidelberg, where his grandfather taught law, turned to the study of medicine. He passed the state examination in 1863 "summa cum laude" with his work on "Sensory Delusions" and earned his Doctorate in Medicine. During his studies, he became a member of Burschenschaft Frankonia Heidelberg in the winter semester of 1858/59.
Recovery from a bout of typhoid led him to spend a summer in Zürich, where he became acquainted with Wilhelm Griesinger's brain anatomical studies. He observed practices in Vienna, Prague, and Berlin.
In the subsequent years from 1864 to 1868, he worked as an assistant at the Baden mental hospital Illenau—chiefly under Christian Roller and Karl Hergt—gaining practical experience in the extensive field of treating and caring for the mentally ill and those suffering from neurological disorders. Since that time, he maintained a lifelong friendship with his colleague Heinrich Schüle (1840–1916), who later became the director of this institution (from 1890).
In 1868, von Krafft-Ebing set up his own practice as a neurologist in Baden-Baden. At the beginning of his career, he looked after his younger, severely ill brother Friedrich for several months. After losing the battle for his brother's life, who was just 24, a restorative and art-focused journey, coupled with visits to psychiatric and neurological institutions, took him several weeks through southern Europe. During the Franco-Prussian War (1870/71), he first served as a field doctor with the rank of captain in the Baden Division and was then transferred as a hospital doctor to the Fortress Rastatt. His observations, especially regarding patients suffering from typhus, were compiled in a special treatise. After the end of the war, he was put in charge of the electrotherapeutic station in Baden-Baden, mainly for the neurological follow-up treatment of wounded soldiers.
Professor of psychiatry in Strasbourg and Graz
Already boasting an impressive number of scientific publications, von Krafft-Ebing was eager to pursue an academic career. After a trial lecture in Leipzig under the Dean of the Faculty of Medicine, Wunderlich, a decision on his habilitation was expected soon. However, on 13 May 1872, von Krafft-Ebing was able to inaugurate his psychiatric clinic in Strasbourg.
After a one-year stint at the newly established Psychiatric Clinic of the University of Strasbourg—the university clinic consisted of two beds in a room for men, another two-bed room for women, and two rooms for clinic management—the now 32-year-old university professor had to tolerate these limitations only for a short time.
Through the mediation of his teacher Roller, he was appointed in 1873 as the director of the newly established Styrian State Asylum Feldhof near Graz, and simultaneously awarded the Chair of Psychiatry at the University of Graz.
The following year, his wife Maria Luise Kißling (1846–1903), who was originally from Baden-Baden, joined him there.
On 22 May 1874, he opened the clinic in Graz and led it until 1880. After years of effort, he was finally relieved from the burdens of his dual role in such a way that he could give up the administration of the Feldhof institution. With appropriate modifications to the clinic and his appointment to a full professorship in 1885, he was solely a Professor of Psychiatry.
A part of his research was focused on examining the relationships between psychiatry and criminal law. Already during his time in Strasbourg, he published his Fundamentals of Criminal Psychology, followed in 1875 by his first major work, Textbook of Forensic Psychopathology. Of the many publications he released, some of which saw multiple editions and became widely known, notable are his Textbook of Psychiatry (1st ed. 1879) and his most famous work Psychopathia Sexualis (1st ed. 1886), which through numerous, constantly expanded new editions, became the standard textbook on sexual pathology (see also: Sexology) of the 19th century.
Krafft-Ebing spent thirteen years in the Styrian capital. He was aware that separating psychiatry from neurology would be incompatible with fruitful effectiveness in both fields, and following constant efforts in this direction, his professorship was expanded to include both psychiatry and neurology. During his work at Feldhof and in the Graz clinic, Krafft-Ebing laid the foundation for his global fame. Within a few years, his name spread across the entire world. Patients came to him from many countries. For the increasing number of patients from wealthy families, he built a state-of-the-art Private clinic in Mariagrün for the time.
His book Psychopathia Sexualis later became a widely published standard work. In the same year, 1886, he was elected a member of the Leopoldina.
Given the reputation that Richard von Krafft-Ebing had meanwhile established in the professional world—as he was also frequently consulted abroad (Italy, France, Russia, etc.)—it was inevitable that he was first appointed in 1889 to Vienna at the I. Psychiatric Clinic of the Lower Austrian State Asylum following Maximilian Leidesdorf, and he became a professor of psychiatry at the University of Vienna. In 1892, after the death of Theodor Meynert, he was called to the psychiatric university clinic of the Vienna General Hospital. Several professional publications appeared from his pen, including his well-known 1894 monograph Die progressive allgemeine Paralyse on progressive paralysis—a disease he also highlighted in 1897 at the International Medical Congress in Moscow in a highly regarded lecture.
According to Volkmar Sigusch, he adopted the degeneration theories of his French research colleagues and borrowed the term Sadism used in France since 1834 (Dictionnaire universel de Boiste, eighth edition) as the name for a pathology. The now well-known technical term "Masochism" was coined by him. He also dealt extensively with Hypnotism and was one of the first to apply it clinically. Increasingly, he was called in as a forensic expert.