Albert Moll (1862-1939), a Berlin physician, was another big promoter of sexology. He was a very conservative man who disliked both Freud and Hirschfeld and tried to counter their research at every opportunity. Moll formed the International Society for Sex Research in 1913 to counter Hirschfeld’s Medical Society of Sexology. He also organized an International Congress of Sex Research in Berlin in 1926.
Moll wrote several books on sexology, including Investigations Concerning the Libido Sexualis in 1897. Unfortunately, it was probably Moll’s disagreements with Freud that caused him to be ignored by the majority of English-speaking sexuality researchers, because Freud’s ideas were so dominant during the first half of the 20th century (V. Bullough, 1994). Moll stayed in Germany and eventually had his memoirs published. He
Timeline: Important Developments in the History of Sex Research
1909 1911 1912 1913 1914 1919 1933
© Bettmann/Corbis
avoided being sent to a concentration camp only by dying of natural causes in September of 1939 (ironically, on the same day Sigmund Freud died).