Eberhard and Phyllis Kronhausen

Phyllis (born 1929) and Eberhard Kronhausen (1915 - 2009) were a husband-and-wife team of American sexologists, mainly active in the 1960s and 1970s. They wrote a number of books on sexuality and eroticism, and they also amassed a collection of erotic art, which traveled around Europe in 1968 as the "First International Exhibition of Erotic Art" and then found a home in San Francisco as the Museum of Erotic Art (1970-1973).

Eberhard Kronhausen was born on September 12, 1915. He was brought up in Europe and “had firsthand experience of Nazi Germany”. Phyllis was born in 1929 in the USA. The Kronhausens met in 1954 at the University of Minnesota, where Phyllis, then 25, was an undergraduate studying business, and Eberhard, at the relatively late age of 39, was getting a Masters in psychology.

Upon graduating from Minnesota they moved together to New York, where Phyllis enrolled in the program in “Marriage and Family Life Education” at the Teachers’ College of Columbia University, which allowed her to take courses also at other New York universities. Eberhard followed suit two years later, and both graduated with Doctor of Education degrees in that program (Phyllis graduating in 1956 and Eberhard in 1958). They also studied psychoanalysis at the National Psychological Association for Psychoanalysis, founded by Dr. Theodor Reik to provide for analytic training of non-medical students. Upon graduation they moved to San Diego, where they were both licensed to practice psychotherapy.

In 1959, they published their first book, Pornography and the law: The psychology of erotic realism and pornography. This would be the first of a long line of sex-related books. Pornography and the Law made a distinction between "frankly pornographic writings" and "serious" (but not necessarily less erotic) writings, such as the works of Henry Miller or D.H. Lawrence. In 1960 Phyllis Kronhausen testified in a California obscenity case, involving a series of soft core erotic writings. According to the Kronhausens, "her testimony resulted in an acquittal of the defense, saving the author and publisher of these truly harmless books many years in jail."

Pornography and the Law was followed in 1960 by Sex Histories of American College Men, a book based on Phyllis Kronhausen's experience as a lecturer in "health education" at a men's college in the Northeastern U.S. (which is not named). One of Kronhausen's course requirements had been for her students to complete a "personal history" in which they described sexual memories and experiences.

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