Albert Moll (German psychiatrist)

Albert Moll, born in 1862 in Lissa in Prussia to a Jewish tradesman, was a neurologist, psychologist, sexologist and ethicist who is counted with Iwan Bloch and Magnus Hirschfeld as a founder of medical psychology and sexology. He studied medicine in Breslau, Freiburg, Jena and Berlin, took his doctorate in 1885, and after seeing Jean-Martin Charcot demonstrate hysteria and hypnosis at the Salpêtrière he opened a Berlin practice for nervous diseases in 1887. He founded the International Society for Sexual Research in 1913, chaired the 1926 International Congress for Sexology in Berlin, and often served as a court expert in sexual offence cases. He was a sharp critic of Sigmund Freud and a bitter rival of Hirschfeld. The Nazi authorities revoked his medical license in 1938 because of his Jewish heritage, and he died unmarried in September 1939.