Sexology is the scientific study of human sexuality , including human sexual interests, behaviors , and functions. Sexologists apply tools from several academic fields, such as anthropology , biology , medicine , psychology , epidemiology , sociology , and criminology.
It also includes the study of sexuality across the lifespan, including child sexuality , puberty , adolescent sexuality , and sexuality among the elderly. Sexology also spans sexuality among those with mental or physical disabilities. The sexological study of sexual dysfunctions and disorders, including erectile dysfunction and anorgasmia , are also mainstays.
De la prostitution dans la ville de Paris Prostitution in the City of Paris , an early s study on 3, registered prostitutes in Paris , written by Alexander Jean Baptiste Parent-Duchatelet published in , a year after he died , has been called the first work of modern sex research. The scientific study of sexual behavior in human beings began in the 19th century with Heinrich Kaan , whose book Psychopathia Sexualis Michel Foucault describes as marking "the date of birth, or in any case the date of the emergence of sexuality and sexual aberrations in the psychiatric field.
Despite the prevailing social attitude of sexual repression in the Victorian era , the movement towards sexual emancipation began towards the end of the nineteenth century in England and Germany. That work is considered as having established sexology as a scientific discipline. In England, the founding father of sexology was the doctor and sexologist Havelock Ellis who challenged the sexual taboos of his era regarding masturbation and homosexuality and revolutionized the conception of sex in his time.
His seminal work was the Sexual Inversion , which describes the sexual relations of homosexual males, including men with boys. Ellis wrote the first objective study of homosexuality the term was coined by Karl-Maria Kertbeny , as he did not characterize it as a disease, immoral, or a crime. The work assumes that same-sex love transcended age taboos as well as gender taboos. Seven of his twenty-one case studies are of inter-generational relationships.
