Ms Kathleen's Review

Screen 4 of 9

The book “Psychopathia Sexualis” had 238 case histories. This left Brent Wood with the unenviable task of choosing a dozen or so for his movie version of the book. He chooses to include the sort of sexually deviant material that made Krafft-Ebing's book well-read and notorious. There’s the case of the French sex killer Emile Fourquet (Patrick Parker). There's the tale of Jonathan (Daniel May), a proper young man of some means who develops a blood fixation and abuses the family maid女仆 — a woman servant until his mother (Jane Bass) has him committed.

There is the case of a famous episode of necrophilia (a sexual fetish恋物 — a strong sexual focus on one thing characterized by a sexual attraction to corpses) from Krafft-Ebing's book. It is recalled by puppeteer Caglios (Rob Nixon) in a command performance staged for a rich baron (Greg Thompson).

There's the story of a young gay man (Daniel Pettrow) whom Krafft-Ebing tries to “cure” of his homosexual desires with hypnosis.

So what are we to think about a highly regarded psychiatrist who believed that women did not enjoy sex? Time, education and the advancements in the field of psychiatry has proven Krafft-Ebing wrong in many of his diagnosis, including homosexuality and the male desire for female domination.