Harry Benjamin

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Harry Benjamin (born January 12, 1885 in Berlin , † August 24, 1986 in New York ) was a German-American endocrinologist , sex reformer and pioneer in the field of transsexuality .

Life

Benjamin went to the United States as a young doctor in 1913 to take part in a scientific project on tuberculosis . Due to the outbreak of the First World War , he was sent to a concentration camp as a foreign enemy. He was only released after he agreed not to leave the country and to settle in New York instead.

A year later he opened a private practice there. He began to be interested in hormones and in the 1920s took part in the events of the World League for Sexual Reform and the Institute for Sexology Berlin , where he made the acquaintance of the German sex researcher Magnus Hirschfeld and his colleague Arthur Kronfeld . He later met a patient of Alfred Kinsey who insisted on being considered a woman even though she had male reproductive organs.

His book The Transsexual Phenomenon , published in 1966, made this topic known to a wide audience. In it, he developed a three-part scale that divided into transvestites (I), transsexuals who did not require surgery (II) and transsexuals of higher intensity (III). Only the latter should have sex reassignment surgery. The basis for the classifications is the relationship of the individual types to clothing and sexual orientation. Even if modern research has now heavily modified this scale, it was one of the first serious efforts to differentiate between transsexualism and transvestism.

Benjamin also worked as a gerontologist and looked for ways to extend human lifespan.

Works (selection)

  • Transvestism and transsexualism. Int. J. Sexol. 7, 12-14, 1953
  • Clinical aspects of transsexualism in males and females. At the. J. Psychother. 11, 458-469, 1964
  • The transsexual phenomenon. New York: Julian Press 1966 ( online version ; PDF; 1.0 MB)
  • Newer aspects of the transsexual phenomenon. J. Sex Res. 5, 135-41, 1969

literature

  • Charles Ihlenfeld et al .: A Memorial for Harry Benjamin. Arch. Sex. Behav. 17, 1-31, 1988
  • Joanne J. Meyerowitz: How Sex Changed: A History of Transsexuality in the United States. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press 2002
  • Volkmar Sigusch : History of Sexology. Frankfurt / M., New York: Campus 2008
  • Volkmar Sigusch and Günter Grau (eds.): Personal Lexikon der Sexualforschung, Frankfurt / M., New York: Campus Verlag 2009, pp. 43–47, ISBN 978-3-593-39049-9
personal data
SURNAME Benjamin, Harry
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-American endocrinologist, sex reformer and pioneer in the research field of transsexuality
DATE OF BIRTH January 12, 1885
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH August 24, 1986
Place of death new York