Critical Introduction - The Meaning of Sexual Health

What is Sexual Health?

Diagnostic Handbooks

The diagnostic handbooks of modern psychiatry have repeatedly been revised over the last years. With regard to sexual problems, they have become ever more self-critical, modest and brief. They have also become more precise.
One hundred years ago, they still contained "rubber diagnoses" like  "degeneration", "sexual psychopathy" or "moral insanity" that could be stretched to cover almost anything any moral busybody might find offensive. In contrast, today the diagnoses are much more specific, and the need for treatment is much more narrowly defined. Many former diagnoses have been removed altogether. This is the result of a critical self-evaluation which is prompted by continuing criticism from the outside.

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association. Left: III. Edition - Revised 1987. Middle: IV. Edition - Text Revision 1994. Right: V. Edition 2013.