I am currently researching the shifting diagnostic status of nymphomania or, women's excessive sexual impulse, over the late nineteenth and early twentieth century - concentrating on British medical sources. I am concerned with the shift from its somatic causes to a more 'psychological' origin (and thus the shifts in conceptions of sexual desire). I am trying to obtain more detailed information about the impact ofThomas Clouston's work on States of Defective inhibition (impulsive insanity) on medical thinking at this time. I would also be very interested in any other suggestions people may have. Clair Scrine

-- Clair Scrine (cscrine@laurel.ocs.mq.edu), September 11, 2002

Answers

Have you checked Carl Groneman's Nymphomania: A History (Norton, 2000)? There should also be discussions in the literature on the creation of DSM IV, which dropped nymphomania as a separate disorder.

-- Hendrika Vande Kemp (hendrika@earthlink.net), September 16, 2002.