Albert Moll (German psychiatrist)

German psychiatrist (1862–1939)
Albert Moll (; 4 May 1862, Lissa – 23 September 1939, Berlin) was a neurologist, psychologist, sexologist, and ethicist. Alongside Iwan Bloch and Magnus Hirschfeld, he is considered the founder of medical psychology and sexology. Although Moll was a pioneer of sexology, his contemporaries such as Magnus Hirschfeld and Sigmund Freud eclipsed his work, primarily due to the bitter rivalry between them. Moll accused Freud of selection bias, and Freud claimed Moll could not handle constructive criticism after their first meeting. Moll believed human sexual nature involved two entirely distinct parts: sexual stimulation and sexual attraction.

Born in Lissa (then part of Prussia) to a Jewish tradesman, Moll attended Catholic school in the Silesian city of Glogau before studying medicine in Breslau, Freiburg, Jena, and Berlin. In 1885, Moll completed his doctorate, having researched the consequences of the long term immobilization of joints in laboratory animals. On a tour of Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris, Moll observed the now famous demonstrations of hysteria and hypnosis by Jean Martin Charcot. Returning to Berlin in 1887, Moll opened a private practice for nervous diseases where he used association therapy for patients with nervous complaints and aberrant sexual behavior. In 1926, Moll organized and chaired the week long International Congress for Sexology in Berlin, the first international scientific congress in Germany since the war. In the early 1920s, he founded a private Institute for Practical Psychology, performing psychological tests and rendering career advice. Moll often served as an expert witness in court, especially in cases concerning sexual offenses. Moll believed that psychologists should not be used as forensic experts in court, but rather courts should consult with psychiatrists with training in psychology, as they would have a medical expert's opinion to add to a case. He worked until 1938 when the Nazi administration revoked his medical license due to his Jewish heritage. He died unmarried only one year later, in September 1939. Moll believed that Freud influenced his patients' memories through therapist suggestion and that he overstated the influence of sexuality in the etiology of neuroses. Moll added that he attempted to use Freud's therapeutic method to treat neurotic patients but found that sexuality played no prominent role, in opposition to Freud's claims. Freud disparaged Moll among his colleagues even before Das Sexualleben appeared. Moll was a prominent physician in Berlin. Freud and his contemporaries were defensive as physicians historically viewed psychoanalysis with skepticism or open hostility. Freud questioned Moll's credentials and defamed his character, even accusing Moll of plagiarism for not crediting Freud in his criticisms of infant sexuality and psychoanalytical technique.

Moll was a leading researcher on subject of hypnotism. Moll was a member of a group of doctors in West Berlin that treated different psychological illnesses using hypnotism, focusing on addiction and sexual ailments—including homosexuality, which was considered a perversion at the time. His book Christian Science, Medicine, and Occultism (1902) is an early text on anomalistic psychology. In the book, Moll criticized practices such as Christian Science, spiritualism, and occultism, claiming they were the result of fraud and hypnotic suggestion. He argued that suggestion explained the cures of Christian Science and the apparently supernatural rapport between magnetisers and their somnambulists. He wrote that fraud and hypnotism could explain mediums. According Heather Wolffram, "[Moll] argued that the hypnotic atmosphere of the darkened séance room and the suggestive effect of the experimenters' social and scientific prestige could be used to explain why seemingly rational people vouchsafed occult phenomena." Moll was involved in a legal dispute with the spiritualist medium Maria Vollhardt who he considered a fraud.