Havelock Ellis

Henry Havelock Ellis (1859 to 1939) was an English physician, eugenicist, writer, progressive intellectual and social reformer who studied human sexuality. He returned from Australia to England in 1879 intending to study sex and qualified as a physician at St Thomas's Hospital Medical School, though he never had a regular medical practice. In 1897 he co-wrote the first medical textbook in English on homosexuality and also published on other sexual practices and inclinations and on transgender psychology. He developed the notions of narcissism and autoeroticism, later adopted by psychoanalysis, and was among the pioneering investigators of psychedelic drugs, writing one of the first public reports of an experience with mescaline, taken on himself in 1896. He supported eugenics and served as a vice-president of the Eugenics Society from 1909 to 1912. This entry records what he held and what is now disputed; it is not medical advice.