Phrenology - History

History

The first philosopher to locate the mental abilities of the brain was Aristotle. Anatomists and physiologists had studied neither the function of the brain nor how it might be segmented. The German physician Franz Joseph Gall (1758–1828)in 1796 began lecturing on organology, the isolation of mental faculties and later cranioscopy, which was the reading of the bumps on the skull that were supposedly created by the brain organs. It would be Gall's collaborator Johann Gaspar Spurzheim who would popularize the term "phrenology".

In 1809 Gall began writing his greatest work "The Anatomy and Physiology of the Nervous System in General, and of the Brain in Particular, with Observations upon the possibility of ascertaining the several Intellectual and Moral Dispositions of Man and Animal, by the configuration of their Heads. It was not published until 1819. In the introduction to this main work, Gall makes the following statement in regard to his doctrinal principles, which comprise the intellectual basis of phrenology:

• The Brain is the organ of the mind
• The brain is not a homogenous unity, but an aggregate of mental organs with specific functions
• The cerebral organs are topographically localized
• Other things being equal, the relative size of any particular mental organ is indicative of the power or strength of that organ
• Since the skull ossifies over the brain during infant development, external craniological means could be used to diagnose the internal states of the mental characters

Through careful observation and extensive experimentation, Gall believed he had established a relationship between aspects of character, called faculties, to precise organs in the brain.

Johann Spurzheim was Gall's most important collaborator. He worked as Gall's anatomist until 1813 when for unknown reasons they had a permanent falling out. Publishing under his own name Spurzheim successfully disseminated phrenology throughout the United Kingdom during his lecture tours through 1814 and 1815 and the United States in 1832 where he would eventually die of illness.

Gall was more concerned with creating a physical science so it was through Spurzheim that phrenology was first spread throughout Europe and America. Phrenology, while not universally accepted, was hardly a fringe phenomenon of the era. George Combe would become the main promoter of phrenology throughout the English speaking world after he viewed a brain dissection by Spurzheim's, convincing him of phrenology's merits.

The popularization of phrenology in the middle and working class was due to in part to the idea that scientific knowledge was important and an indication of sophistication and modernity. Cheap and plentiful pamphlets as well as the growing popularity of scientific lectures as entertainment also helped spread phrenology to the masses. Combe created a system of philosophy of the human mind that became popular with the masses because of its simplified principles and wide range of social applications that were in harmony with the liberal Victorian world view. George Combe's book On the Constitution of Man and its Relationship to External Objects sold over 200 000 copies through nine editions. Combe also devoted a large portion of his book to reconciling religion and phrenology, which had long been a sticking point of acceptance. Another reason for its popularity was that phrenology stood balanced between free will and determinism. A person's inherent faculties were clear, and no faculty was viewed as evil, but the abuse of a faculty was. Phrenology allowed for self-improvement and upward mobility, while providing fodder for attacks on aristocratic privilege. Phrenology also had wide appeal because of being a reformist philosophy not a radical one. Phrenology was not limited to the common people and both Queen Victoria and Prince Albert invited George Combe to read the heads of their children.

Phrenology came about at a time when scientific procedures and standards for acceptable evidence were still being codified. In the context of Victorian society phrenology was a respectable scientific theory. The Phrenological Society of Edinburgh founded by George and Andrew Combe was an example of the credibility of phrenology at the time, and included a number of extremely influential social reformers and intellectuals, including the publisher Robert Chambers, the astronomer John Pringle Nichol, the evolutionary environmentalist Hewett Cottrell Watson and asylum reformer William A.F. Browne. As well in 1826, out of the 120 members of the Edinburgh society an estimated one third were from a medical background and by the 1840s there were over twenty-eight phrenological societies in London with over 1000 members. Another important scholar was Luigi Ferrarese, the leading Italian phrenologist. He advocated for a government embrace of phrenology as a scientific means of conquering many social ills and his Memorie Risguardanti La Dottrina Frenologica (1836), is considered "one of the fundamental 19th century works in the field".

Traditionally the mind had been studied through introspection. Phrenology provided an attractive, biological alternative that attempted to unite all mental phenomena and treat them with consistent biological terms. Ironically Gall's approach provided a way to studying the mind that would lead to the downfall of his theories. Phrenology also contributed to development of physical anthropology, forensic medicine, understanding of brain, nervous system and brain anatomy as well as contributing to applied psychology.

John Elliotson was a brilliant but erratic heart specialist became a phrenologist in the 1840s, he was also a mesmerist and combined the two into something he called phrenomesmerism or phrenomegnatism. The prospect of changing behaviour with mesmerism eventually won out in Elliotson's mesmeric hospital, putting phrenology in a subordinate role. Others amalgamated phrenology and mesmerism as well, such as the practical phrenologists Collyer and Joseph R. Buchanan. The benefits of combining mesmerism and phrenology was that the trance that the mesmeric trance a patient was placed in was supposed to allow for the manipulation of penchants and qualities. For example if the organ of self-esteem was touched the subject would take on a haughty expression.

Phrenology had been mostly discredited as a scientific theory by the 1840s. This was only in part due to a growing amount of evidence against phrenology. Phrenologists had never been able to agree on the most basic underpinnings with mental organ numbers going from 27 to over 40, and had also never been able to locate the mental organs. Instead phrenologists relied on cranioscopic readings of the skull to find organ locations. Jean Pierre Flourens experiments on the brains of pigeons indicated that the loss of parts of the brain either caused no loss of function, or the loss of a completely different function than what had been attributed to it by phrenology. Flourens experiment, while not perfect seemed to indicated that Gall's supposed organs were imaginary. Scientists had also become disillusioned with phrenology since its popularization with the middle and working classes by entrepreneurs. The popularization had resulted in the simplification of phrenology and the mixing of principles with physiognomy, which had from the start been rejected by Gall as an indicator of personality. Phrenology from its inception had never stopped being followed by accusations of promoting materialism, atheism and being destructive of morality were also factors that led to the downfall of phrenology.

During the early 20th century, a revival of interest in phrenology occurred on the fringe, partly because of studies of evolution, criminology and anthropology (as pursued by Cesare Lombroso). The most famous British phrenologist of the 20th century was the London psychiatrist Bernard Hollander (1864–1934). His main works, The Mental Function of the Brain (1901) and Scientific Phrenology (1902) are an appraisal of Gall's teachings. Hollander introduced a quantitative approach to the phrenological diagnosis, defining a method for measuring the skull, and comparing the measurements with statistical averages.

In Belgium, Paul Bouts (1900–1999) began studying phrenology from a pedagogical background, using the phrenological analysis to define an individual pedagogy. Combining phrenology with typology and graphology, he coined a global approach known as psychognomy.

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. His works Psychognomie and Les Grandioses Destinées individuelle et humaine dans la lumière de la Caractérologie et de l'Evolution cérébro-cranienne are considered standard works in the field. In the latter work, which examines the subject of paleoanthropology, 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, thus perpetuating phrenology's problematic racializing of the human frame. 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.

During the 1930s Belgian colonial authorities in Rwanda used phrenology to explain the so-called superiority of Tutsis over Hutus.

In 2007 the US State of Michigan included phrenology in a list of personal services subject to sales tax.