Anton Nyström's Defense of Homosexuality

In 1919 Anton Nyström became the first person in Sweden to publish a comprehensive defense of homosexuality. He believed that its classification as a mental illness was erroneous and that Sweden's law against homosexual sex was both irrational and cruel. Nyström was a physician whose work in the medical area dealt primarily with dermatology, psychiatry and human sexuality; however he was also a prolific historian, who took a staunchly anti-Christian view in his analysis of how Christianity affected European culture, especially in the area of sexual morality. In fact, much of Nyström's medical texts dealing with human sexuality consisted of anti-Christian cultural and historical commentary. The object of this "C-uppsats" is to analyze Nyström's pamphlet, Om Homosexualitet och Hermafroditi: Belysning af Missförstådda Existenser and illustrate how its defensive structure was consistent with the pattern used by the author in his other books and articles on human sexuality. Specifically, that irrational and neurotic Christian beliefs caused both mental and physical suffering and were the source of deleterious forms of morality. Additionally, this paper will also show that the solution Nyström had for the problem of negative and erroneous attitudes towards homosexuality was to replace the sodomitic view of homosexuality with one based upon a more rational and naturalistic belief system, the basis of which could be found in the pre-Christian cultures of Europe, most especially in Greece. This new conception was to be constructed primarily out of historical example and cultural analyses. For Nyström, history writing was used both as a weapon to fight the source of negative attitudes towards homosexuality, as well as a tool that could be used to build a positive cultural model which would be beneficial for homosexuals.

Historical Consciousness, Historical Media, and History Education

This thesis by publication contains an introductory summary chapter and three papers. The first paper presents a study of how the concept of historical consciousness has been defined, applied, and justified in Swedish history didactical research. It finds that there is consensus regarding the definition of what a historical consciousness is, but that there is variation in how the concept is applied. It is suggested that this variation makes historical con­sciousness a complex and vague concept.      The second paper uses the results presented in the first paper as a point of departure and from thence argues for a broadened understanding of the concept of historical consciousness that incorporates its definition, applica­tion, development, and significance. The study includes research about his­torical consciousness primarily from Sweden, the UK, the USA and Canada. The paper presents a typology of historical consciousness and argues that level of contextualisation is what distinguishes different types of historical consciousnesses and that an ability to contextualise is also what makes his­torical consciousness an important concept for identity constitution and morality.      The third paper proposes a methodological framework of historical con­sciousness based on the theory of historical consciosusness presented in the second paper. It presents arguments for why the framework of historical consciousness proposed can be useful for the analysis of historical media and it discusses how aspects of the framework can be applied in analysis. It then presents a textbook analysis that has been performed according to the stipulated framework and discusses its results regarding how textbooks can be used to analyse historical consciousness and its development.