Over at the Science museum is a new exhibit on phrenology. It features a set of 60 tiny heads in a presentation case:
“Phrenologists believed that the shape and size of various areas of the brain (and therefore the overlying skull) determined personality. Gall and Spurzheim eventually disagreed and went on to promote rival systems of phrenology. These heads are numbered according to Spurzheim’s classification. The heads may have been used to teach phrenology but were probably made as a general reference collection.”
It is now a defunct field of study, once considered a science, in which the personality traits of a person were determined by “reading” bumps and fissures in the skull. Developed by German physician Franz Joseph Gall in 1796, the discipline was very popular in the 19th century. In 1843, François Magendie referred to phrenology as “a pseudo-science of the present day.” Phrenological thinking was, however, influential in 19th-century psychiatry and modern neuroscience.
In the Victorian age, phrenology as a psychology was taken seriously and permeated the literature and novels of the day. Many prominent public figures such as the Reverend Henry Ward Beecher actively promoted phrenology as a source of psychological insight and personal growth. British Prime Minister Lloyd George was known to have a keen interest in the subject, once contriving a meeting with C.P. Snow after noticing that the author had “an interestingly shaped head.”
Thousands of people consulted phrenologists to get advice in various matters, such as hiring personnel or finding suitable marriage partners. As such, phrenology as a brain science waned but developed into the pop psychology of the 19th century and broadly speaking functioned in society similar to how psychoanalysis permeated social thought and relationships a century later.
Phrenology was practiced by some scientists promoting racist ideologies, including Nazism. They used phrenological claims, among other biological evidence, as a scientific basis for Aryan racial superiority.
Prof. Bouts, a Roman Catholic priest, became the main promoter of renewed 20th-century interest in phrenology and psychognomy in Belgium. He was also active in Brazil and Canada, where he founded institutes for characterology. Bouts developed a teleological and orthogenetical view on a perfecting evolution, from the paleo-encephalical skull shapes of prehistoric man, which he considered still prevalent in criminals and savages, towards a higher form of mankind. Bouts died on March 7, 1999, after which his work has been continued by the Dutch foundation PPP (Per Pulchritudinem in Pulchritudine), operated by Anette Müller, one of Bouts’ students.
Empirical refutation induced most scientists to abandon phrenology as a science by the early 20th century. For example, various cases were observed of clearly aggressive persons displaying a well-developed “benevolent organ”, findings that contradicted the logic of the discipline. With advances in the studies of psychology and psychiatry, many scientists became skeptical of the claim that human character can be determined by simple, external measures.
I was given a crash course in phrenology as part of my fine art course, dealing with cultural identity as depicted in paintings down the ages . We were shown two images, one of which looked like a roman statue with the abnormal aqualine nose that has no indent below the browline, and one which was “prognathus” ie. lower half of the face protrudes such as you would get with a monkey or gorilla. We were told that the former represented the Victorian ideal of nobility, and the second “a wretched guttersnipe, not fit to walk to walk on god’s green earth”. I should add that the lecturer was quote mining from the Victorian physician who supplied the drawings and obviously thought that looking like an alabaster statue with no browline was somehow normal! Funny how these ideas can take root…
Smithers: Uh, Sir? Phrenology was dismissed as quackery 160 years ago.
Mr. Burns: Of course you’d say that… you have the brainpan of a stagecoach tilter!
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I’ve not added that quote for anything other than my own personal reminiscence.
This article is totally lacking what every reader requires of it. A strong conclusion please. To post something so interesting – and not pollish it with “it has been proved to be incorrect by…” is simply going to get Ayn Rand Shooting fire from her grave. And people like me – who are concerned that the shape of my forehead gives me away, are getting upset that we spent such time engaged in reading it. Okay.
The last paragraph kind of says that there just weren’t any real connections between skull shape and personality with you look at the overall picture with empirically analysed data.
I disagree, if you’re the type of person who likes to whack yourself hard on the face with a fryingpan, you’ll have a flat nose and a flat forehead too. And people with cauliflower ears tend to become heavyweight boxers. I think there might be something to this phrenology lark, or don’t custom alterations count?
Phrenology and psychognomy reminds me of the art of psychics, eBook authors, and preachers. They all possess secret knowledge, and they’ll let you dip your baby toe in the waters of their power for a dollar less than the competition.
I don’t think phrenology is a strange idea in the absence of modern psychology. The only reason it’s not popular today is because the founders failed to build their proponents an office with a steeple!
That is a fair point, Flapjack. On the other hand, if you whack yourself with a frying pan you often become dead or comatose and therefore have no personality.
once again flapjack made me giggle lol
I think if you whack your face with a frying pan you’d get one hell of a faceache lol
A bit like palm reading I guess.
Good that it is no longer considered to be science and correct otherwise we’d probably all be forced to shave our heads for job interviews and in the dating business … which .. no need to say .. is not such a good thing for quite a lot of us … in the area of ‘do we look good’ science .. Some look extremely good without hair though. Maybe even better than with hair.
‘In the Victorian age, phrenology as a psychology was taken seriously and permeated the literature and novels of the day.’
I liked reading this:
Charles Bray took Marian Evans (George Eliot) to London in 1844, when she had a cast made of her head by James Deville of The Strand. The cast was taken by the country’s leading phrenolgist, George Combe of Edinburgh, for a mans. When Combe subsequently met Marian…he studied her head in the flesh, noting its unusual size and drawing on his conversation with her as well as his experience of feeling her head to report that she was ‘the most extraordinary person of the party’, gathered at Rosehill. ‘She has a very large brain, the enterior lobe is remarkable for length, breadth, and height, the coronal region is large, the front rather predominating.’
~ Taken from George Eliot ~ A Life by Rosemary Ashton
Why do psychologists adorn their offices with the Phrenological head/bust?
At least the bone structure behind the face can tell us something perhaps? Remember Paul Ekman’s website?
Find ‘The Facial Action Coding System (FACS)’ on Paul’s site and click on the link, which takes you to face-and-emotion.com
Following this path ~ face-and-emotion.com > Facets > The Face in Health & Disease and read on. Interesting?
‘Some medical text books teach medical students how to recognize signs in the face that indicate particular diseases. These facial signs of disease can be changes in the features of the face or alterations of the movements and expressions that the face produces. Facial signs of disease can both predict what diseases the person might develop and reflect symptomatically the disease process.’……………
[...] Derren Brown Blog ? Blog Archive ? Pseudo-Science: Phrenology By phillis As such, phrenology as a brain science waned but developed into the pop psychology of the 19th century and broadly speaking functioned in society similar to how psychoanalysis permeated social thought and relationships a century later. … Derren Brown Blog – http://derrenbrownart.com/blog/ [...]
One year I got that big white head in the picture as a birthday present from my parents. Without looking closely enough, they probably thought it had something to do with cognitive science, which I like reading about.
Embarassing though it was, I had to explain what it really was.
Any ideas what the thing could be useful for?
I’m sorry to make a mockery of the conversation but I would be too tempted to play “dollies” with those little heads. Each of them would be a little character in my home made card box theatre.
Head 1: Hello, how’s it goin?
Head2: Oh not so good, I’ve got an awful headache. Got any aspirin?
Driveby rec for “The Mismeasure of Man” by Stephen Jay Gould- all your phrenology/craniometry knowledge are belonging to him. This book has such a great explanation of 19th century race-based evolutionary sciences and it ends with a really cool extrapolation to modern IQ theories and evopsych. Read it, read it, read it.
Diana – I hate to admit it, but I’m totally with you on this, though I’d like to make them into stop-motion puppets with replacement mouths and eyes, as the end result is a lot more pleasing:
Head 1 [continued] – I’m not surprised you have a headache… with that flat forehead and squished nose, you have the look of the type of person who spends their leisure time beating themselves about the face with a frying pan! Asprin won’t shift that, you need therapy!
And so on…
This is why you should never leave me in charge of a medical museum and a rostrum camera!
@ Rebecca – Funnily enough, as soon as I saw the title of this story, I walked over to my bookshelf and picked up my dusty copy of ‘the mismeasure of man’ to flip though today.
I would love to read more arguments against evopsych because I keep running into people who defend it like crazy, and I dont know that much about it.
Any references you (or anyone else) might have re: evopsych would be much appreciated.
LMAO @ Flapjack!
I think this is the start of something rather interesting….fancy writing a sketch show together? Ha Ha!
Mary- I’m so sorry for the late response- I’ve been busy filling my taxes/seceeding from the Union.
I’ve heard Paul Ehrlich’s “Human Natures” is good as is David Bueller’s “Adapting Minds”, but I haven’t read either. I HAVE read “Same Difference: How Gender Myths Are Hurting Our Relationships, Our Children, and Our Jobs” (it’s more science-y than you would think from the title) and I’d recommend that when talking about evo psych from a feminist perspective. (Echinde of the Snakes at http://echidneofthesnakes.blogspot.com/ has a blog that often criticizes evolutionary psycology studies from a feminist point of view as well.)
Also, I think anti-evo psych is one of Gould’s soapboxes so he writes about it in other books.
***Rebecca says:
April 14, 2009 at 10:40 pm
Driveby rec for “The Mismeasure of Man” by Stephen Jay Gould- all your phrenology/craniometry knowledge are belonging to him. This book has such a great explanation of 19th century race-based evolutionary sciences and it ends with a really cool extrapolation to modern IQ theories and evopsych. Read it, read it, read it.***
Unfortunately, Gould was found to have made incorrect measurements himself and omitted a number of studies that contradicted his views. Contemporary neuroscience is actually identifying the neurological basis for intelligence and finding it is significantly heritable.
IJ Deary, L Penke, W Johnson – Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 2010 -http://www.larspenke.eu/pdfs/Deary_Penke_Johnson_2010_-_Neuroscience_of_intelligence_