Albert Moll (German psychiatrist)

Albert Moll (German: [mɔl]; 4 May 1862, Lissa – 23 September 1939, Berlin) was a neurologist, psychologist, sexologist and ethicist. Together with Iwan Bloch and Magnus Hirschfeld he is considered the founder of medical psychology and sexology.[1] Although he was a pioneer in sexology, his contemporaries among them, Magnus Hirshfeld and Sigmund Freud, eclipsed Molls work primarily due to a bitter rivalry between them.[2]

Moll believed sexual nature involved two entirely distinct parts: sexual stimulation and sexual attraction.[3]

Biography

Born in Lissa (Prussia), the son of a Jewish tradesman, Moll went to Catholic school in the Silesian city of Glogau before studying medicine in Breslau, Freiburg, Jena, and Berlin. In 1885, Moll earned an MD with research on the consequences of long-term immobilization of joints in laboratory animals.[4]

On a tour of Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris, Moll observed the now-famous demonstrations of hysteria and hypnosis by Jean-Martin Charcot (1825–93). Returning to Berlin in 1887, Moll opened a private practice for nervous diseases where he used association therapy for patients with nervous complaints and aberrant sexual behavior.[4]

Moll was one of the pioneer members of the Berlin Society for Experimental Psychology. In 1913, he founded the International Society for Sexual Research. He planned an international conference on this theme, but it was ultimately delayed due to WWI.[5]

In 1926, Moll organized and chaired the week-long International Congress for Sexology in Berlin, the first international scientific congress in Germany since the war. In the early 1920s, he founded a private Institute for Practical Psychology, performing psychological tests and rendering career advice.

Moll often served as an expert witness in court, especially in cases concerning sexual offenses. He worked until 1938 when the National Socialist State in Germany revoked his medical license due to his Jewish heritage.[6]

He died, unmarried only one year later, in September 1939.[1]

Rivalry with his contemporaries

Sigmund Freud

Moll's publication Das Sexuallenben des Kindes (1908) enraged Sigmund Freud as it highly criticized psychoanalysis. Moll believed that Freud's definition of infant sexuality lacked precision and adequate foundation. Moll remained unconvinced of the empirical evidence of Freud's case studies, suggesting the theoretical premises and symbolic representations only verified the theory rather than testing its soundness.[7]

Moll believed that Freud influenced distortions in his patients' memories by way of therapist suggestion and that he overstated the influence of sexuality in the etiology of neuroses. Moll added that he tried the therapeutic method of Freud in treating neurotic patients but found that sexuality played no prominent role, as Freud claimed.

Freud disparaged Moll among his colleagues even before Das Sexuallenben appeared. Moll was a prominent physician in Berlin. Freud and his contemporaries were defensive as physicians historically viewed psychoanalysis with skepticism or open hostility. Freud questioned Moll's credentials and defamed his character, even accusing Moll of plagiarism for not crediting Freud in his criticisms of infant sexuality and psychoanalytical technique.[7]

After a visit by Moll, Freud in a letter to Carl Jung, wrote, "In short, he (Moll) is a beast, basically not a doctor; he has the intellectual and moral constitution of a pettifogger…. He has polluted my room like the devil himself, and I have not… put him in his place firmly enough. Now, of course, we have to expect the nastiest attacks from him."[7]

Magnus Hirshfeld

Albert Moll and Magnus Hirshfeld are among the most prominent sexologists and medical psychologists of the 20th century. Neither Moll nor Hirshfeld ever married and neither had, as far as we know, any children. Both published their first sexological work on homosexuality. This is where their similarities end.

Moll regarded himself as a pure scientist free of political interests. Hirschfeld, on the other hand, concerned himself less with the rules of the medical profession and more with his identity as a scientific humanitarian. Hirschfeld is often recognized as the first champion of the homosexual movement. Hirschfeld never wrote about his own sexual orientation but was commonly identified as a homosexual. One can only speculate on Moll's interior life, but note he was a lifelong bachelor. Moll affirmed that Hirschfeld had a 'problematic nature'. He perceived him as effeminate and questioned his objectivity, particularly in the cases of sexual perversion and criminal sexual offences. Hirschfeld, in turn, disputed Moll's skill and expertise as an expert witness in court on such matters. The fact notwithstanding that Moll had published the first modern scientific account of homosexuality.

Moll would later ferociously denounce Hirschfeld with regard to matters of homosexuality. Moll eviscerated Hirschfeld's Scientific-Humanitarian Committee's position on homosexuality as a "poison" for each homosexual seeking a "cure." He felt the committee emphasized agitation and manipulated science to glorify deviant sexual behavior. Moll went as far as threatening to publish evidence of Hirschfeld's "problematic nature".

In the end, Moll never published this "evidence" but did something far worse. Hirschfeld had moved to Paris, exiled by the Nazis. In January 1934, Moll sent a letter to the dean of medical faculty in Paris, including a copy to the German foreign secretary. In his letter, Moll claimed that Hirschfeld's reputation as a physician and scientist was marred by his politics and personal convictions. Moll went on to describe Hirshfeld as a "duplicitous opportunist", portraying himself as a militarist until his political associations were unveiled on the day of the revolution in Berlin. As a result, Hirschfeld was banned from practising medicine in France. One year later he died in exile.[8]

Views on Homosexuality and German Penal Code 175

In the 1920s, a shift in German public opinion led to harsher adjudication of sex crimes despite no changes in the laws themselves. Imperial Penal Code 175 stated, "An unnatural sex act committed between persons of male sex or by humans with animals is punishable by imprisonment; the loss of civil rights might also be imposed." At this time, courts broadly interpreted this code to punish all perceived sexual deviancy harshly. German sexologists and medical psychologists, often called to serve as expert witnesses in cases of perversion, responded with a petition endorsing the legal equivalence of homo and heterosexual acts among consenting adults. Moll was one of the first to sign this petition drafted by Hirschfeld's Wissenschaftlich-humanitäres Komitee [Scientific–Humanitarian Committee] to the German parliament.

However, Moll later argued against the Committee, stating that moral objectivity is rare to regard one's own behavior as pathological or disordered. Moll saw other advocates of ending Act 175 as exalting homosexuality. Moll argued that guilt or abhorrence were equally negligible from a medical point of view, as was the question of homosexual heredity. Moll endorsed treatment for homosexuality, comparing it to physical deformities such as the cleft palate. In conclusion, Moll advised 'the decently thinking homosexual' to ignore any vestiges of pride in homosexuality should he expect sympathy from heterosexual society. Moll opposed harsh legal penalties for consensual homosexual acts while also grandfathering conversion therapy, a practice now determined harmful by all reputable psychologists.[6]

Sexual theories
From the book Handbuch der Sexualwissenschaften: an 18th-century picture of Origen castrating himself

Moll's analysis of infant sexuality emphasized the boundary between normal and abnormal sexual development.  In his case histories, he found that healthy and 'perverted' individuals varied little in their reports of childhood sexual conflicts. Numerous sexual drives and actions, including masturbation, attraction to those of the same sex or different ages, and other fetishistic inclinations, were not uncommon in childhood and did not necessarily indicate the development of perversion in adulthood. Moll's assertions leaned on his experience of participating in mutual masturbation at his all boy's boarding school. Moll described such activities as characteristic sexual development between age 8–10 and the end of puberty at 20. He stated that the maturation of the sex organs would expose distinct sexual drives, mental associations, and habits. While most adults will develop heterosexual drives and urges, a minority will display homosexual or bisexual tendencies. Sexually deviancy can emerge in both hetero and homosexual individuals. Moll argued that psychological and environmental triggers preventing the natural transformation of infantile sexual urges are the determinants of perversion.[9]   

On The Four Phases of Sexual Response

Moll divided the sexual response into four phases:[10]

  1. The onset
  2. The equable voluptuous sensation
  3. The voluptuous acme
  4. The sudden diminution and cessation of the voluptuous sensation

In The Sexual Life of the Child, he encouraged parents to provide sex education to their children.[11]

Hypnotism

Moll was a leading researcher on subject of hypnotism.[12]

Moll published his account of the history of hypnotism and his own experiments in Hypnotism, 1889, in preparation of which he was assisted by support from Prof. Auguste Forel and Dr. Max Dessoir.[12]

Psychical research

Moll was strong critic of mysticism, occultism and spiritualism. Even though he studied parapsychical research he was critical of it and offered naturalistic psychological explanations for paranormal phenomena. He frequently indulged in the unmasking of mediums and séances.[13]

His book Christian Science, Medicine, and Occultism (1902) is an early text on anomalistic psychology. In the book, Moll criticized practices such as Christian Science, spiritualism and occultism and wrote they were the result of fraud and hypnotic suggestion. He argued that suggestion explained the cures of Christian Science, as well as the apparently supernatural rapport between magnetisers and their somnambulists. He wrote that fraud and hypnotism could explain mediumistic phenomena. According to (Wolffram, 2012) "[Moll] argued that the hypnotic atmosphere of the darkened séance room and the suggestive effect of the experimenters' social and scientific prestige could be used to explain why seemingly rational people vouchsafed occult phenomena."[13]

In 1903, Moll tested Clever Hans and was the first to suggest the horse was not psychically gifted but was reacting to unconscious signs.[14]

Moll was involved in a legal dispute with the spiritualist medium Maria Vollhardt who he considered to be fraudulent.[13]

Publications

References
  1. Maehle, Andreas-Holger; Sauerteig, Lutz (April 2012). "Introduction". Medical History. 56 (2): 123–132. doi:10.1017/mdh.2011.29. ISSN 2048-8343. PMC 3381527. PMID 23166977.
  2. Oosterhuis, Harry (2020-09-01). "Freud and Albert Moll: how kindred spirits became bitter foes". History of Psychiatry. 31 (3): 294–310. doi:10.1177/0957154X20922130. ISSN 0957-154X.
  3. Albert, Moll (1929). The sexual life of the child. Macmillan. OCLC 881361086.
  4. Revival: Ethics: An Investigation of the Facts and Laws of the Moral Life. 1908. doi:10.4324/9781315123646.
  5. Maehle, Andreas-Holger; Sauerteig, Lutz (April 2012). "Introduction". Medical History. 56 (2): 123–132. doi:10.1017/mdh.2011.29. ISSN 0025-7273.
  6. Conn, Matthew (April 2012). "Sexual Science and Sexual Forensics in 1920s Germany: Albert Moll as (S)Expert". Medical History. 56 (2): 201–216. doi:10.1017/mdh.2011.33. ISSN 0025-7273. PMC 3381526.
  7. Oosterhuis, Harry (2020-05-23). "Freud and Albert Moll: how kindred spirits became bitter foes". History of Psychiatry. 31 (3): 294–310. doi:10.1177/0957154x20922130. ISSN 0957-154X.
  8. Volkmar, Sigusch. The Sexologist Albert Moll – between Sigmund Freud and Magnus Hirschfeld. Cambridge University Press. OCLC 808758678.
  9. Sigusch, Volkmar (April 2012). "The Sexologist Albert Moll – between Sigmund Freud and Magnus Hirschfeld". Medical History. 56 (2): 184–200. doi:10.1017/mdh.2011.32. ISSN 0025-7273. PMC 3381530.
  10. Moll, Albert. (1912). The Sexual life of the Child Macmillan, New York, (pp. 22–23) (original in German 1908).
  11. W. C. B. (1913). "The sexual life of the child". Journal of Educational Psychology (Review). 4 (2): 102–103. doi:10.1037/h0069060.
  12. Maehle, Andreas-Holger. (2014). The Powers of Suggestion: Albert Moll and the Debate on Hypnosis. History of Psychiatry 25 (1): 3-19.
  13. Wolffram, Heather (2012). "'Trick', 'Manipulation' and 'Farce': Albert Moll's Critique of Occultism". Medical History. 56 (2): 277–295. doi:10.1017/mdh.2011.37. PMC 3381525. PMID 23002297.
  14. Mello, Antônio da Silva. (1960). Mysteries and Realities of This World and the Next. Weidenfeld & Nicolson. p. 41

Further reading
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