Sigusch, Volkmar

Volkmar Sigusch (11 June 1940 – 7 February 2023) was a German sexologist, physician and sociologist. From 1973 to 2006, he was the director of the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft (Institute for Sexual Science) at the clinic of Goethe University Frankfurt. Sigusch was born in Bad Freienwalde. He studied medicine, psychology and philosophy (under Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno) in Frankfurt am Main, Berlin and Hamburg. In 1966 and 1972, Sigusch obtained his German M. D. and PhD at the university in Hamburg. He then worked from 1973 as a professor at Goethe University. In 1972, Sigusch founded the Institute for Sexology at the University Hospital in Frankfurt and was its director until his retirement and the closure of the institute in 2006. Sigusch wrote several books on sociology, psychology and sexual medicine. He was the founder and, from 1988, co-editor of the scientific, peer-reviewed journal Zeitschrift für Sexualforschung (Thieme Verlag Stuttgart and New York) and wrote articles for various magazines. From 1979 to 1986, he edited the cultural magazine Sexualität konkret. In a 1991 publication, Die Transsexuellen und unser nosomorpher Blick ("Transsexuals and our nosomorphic view"), Sigusch coined the term cissexual (zissexuell in German). As an antonym to transsexual, cissexual refers to a person whose gender identity matches their sex.