Renegade Sexologists
This lecture will consider the life and work of two renegade sexologists: Richard von Krafft-Ebing, and J. Paul de River. The aristocratic Krafft-Ebing was a German psychiatrist and author of the seminal Psychopathia Sexualis. J. Paul de River was the chief psychiatrist of the Los Angeles Sex Offense Bureau during the 1940s and author of The Sexual Criminal: A Psychoanalytic Study. The work of these two eccentric, obsessive, and sometimes deluded psychiatrists provide compelling time-capsules into the dark underbelly of 19th century Vienna, and the sordid backstreets of mid-century Los Angeles. Lectures will be illustrated and enhanced by vivid clinical case studies of what the authors deem “sexual psychopaths.”
Speaker Bio
Mikita Brottman, PhD, NCPsyA, is an Oxford-educated scholar, true crime author, psychoanalyst, and professor of literature and psychology at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore. She performs forensic evaluations for the National Institute for the Study, Prevention, and Treatment of Sexual Trauma. She was formerly the Chair of Engaged Humanities at the Pacifica Graduate Institute in California, and has taught at various universities in Europe and the USA. She has also worked in the Maryland prison system and forensic psychiatric facilities. She is the author of 16 books. Her latest, Guilty Creatures: Sex, Death and Murder in Tallahassee, Florida, was published by Simon & Schuster in 2025.
Don’t worry if you can’t make the live event on the night – we will send you a recording valid for two weeks the next day.
