Sexologic problems in dermatology

Dermatology is intimately bound to the history of sexology; its twin specialty, venereology, was for years one of the few disciplines through which medicine paid attention to sexuality. In the early decades of the 20th century, sexuality was still not talked about or it was talked about through gross psychiatric pathology, perversions related to legal-medical questions, or venereal disease. These were occasions to speak of sexuality, but only when it created problems with the result that the shameful and reprehensible character of venereal diseases was automatically extended to sexuality.

While venereology is bound to the history of sexual repression, modern dermatology has established a very different bond with sexuality, proposing a very positive view of it as well as just consideration of eroticism for which the skin is an essential instrument. This new viewpoint was made official by the World Health Organization which, in 1974–1975, organized two international seminars in which the concept of sexual health was officially recognized. Scientific interest focused on sexual normality rather than pathology; on physiology rather than anatomy; on the common, frequent, minor sexual dysfunctions rather than the interesting, but rare, gross anomalies.

The World Health Organization¹ also advised that sexology not be an individual medical specialty (like dermatology, urology, endocrinology, etc.) but that basic knowledge about sexuality be a common patrimony of all the medical disciplines. In this perspective, it is important that the dermatologist, in addition to being sensitive to the psychological significance of the skin, also pay attention to the significance of human sexuality, the influence of the skin on eroticism, and the role of dermatologic pathology on human relations (thus, also sexual relations).