Ms Kathleen's Review

Screen 3 of 9

Krafft-Ebing coined the word "masochist" from the sexual desires of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, a well-known novelist of the time who was said to enjoy being humiliated by women. In 1869, Sacher-Masoch wrote "Venus in Furs", a novel about a man with strong masochistic desires, including the desire to be whipped by a woman while her body is adorned in fur.

Many of Krafft-Ebing’s ideas were shadowed for years after Freud shifted the view of homosexuality to be defined as a psychological problem. The Catholic church was also disturbed by Krafft’s attempts to draw a connection between sanctity and martyrdom with masochism and many found his research morally offensive at the time. Despite the controversial nature of his work, Krafft-Ebing pioneered an approach to exploring and classifying sexuality that was accepting and sympathetic.

So what does all of this have to do with a movie review? Writer and Film Director Bret Wood has attempted to bring to life Krafft-Ebing's notorious and groundbreaking taxonomy of sexual variation. In his 2006 movie “Psychopathia Sexualis” Wood depicts sadomasochistic rituals, vampirism, same-sex attraction, lust murder and fetishism through a series of dramatizations. Krafft-Ebing is played by Ted Manson and we see him interviewing patients, dissecting corpses and attempting to diagnose what he believes are mental and sexual disorders.