Phrenology (Source:  The Skeptics Dictionary)

Phrenology is the study of the structure of the skull to determine a person's character and mental capacity.

This pseudoscience is based on the false assumption that mental faculties are located in brain "organs" on the surface of the brain and can be detected by visible inspection of the skull.

 

The Viennese physician Franz-Joseph Gall (1758-1828) claimed there are some 26 "organs" on the surface of the brain which affect the contour of the skull, including a "murder organ" present in murderers. Gall was an advocate of the "use it or lose it" school of thought. Brain organs which were used got bigger and those which were not used shrunk, causing the skull to rise and fall with organ development.

 

These bumps and indentations on the skull, according to Gall, reflect specific areas of the brain that determine a person's emotional and intellectual functions.

​Johann Kaspar Spurzheim (1776-1832)  spread the word about phrenology in America and

George Combe (1788-1858 founded the Edinburgh Phrenological Society.

In 1815, Thomas Foster called the work of Gall and Spurzheim "phrenology" (phrenos is Greek for mind).

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Phrenology advanced the correct notions that

• the human brain is the seat of character, emotions, perception, intellect, etc., and

• that different parts of the brain are responsible for different mental functions.

 

However, in Gall's time it was only possible to study the brains of the dead; thus, phrenologists could only associate the different structures in the brain with supposed mental functions that were in turn associated with the contour of the skull.Little was done to study the brains or the behavior of persons known to have had neurological problems, which might have helped in the process of locating parts of the brain responsible for specific neurological functioning.

 

Instead, mental faculty localization was arbitrarily selected.

Gall's early work was with criminals and the insane and his brain "organs" reflected this interest. Spurzheim got rid of "theft organs" and "murder organs," but he mapped out areas for "benevolence," "self-esteem," and "conjugal love."

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Although Phrenology has been thoroughly discredited and has been recognized as having no scientific merit, it still has its advocates. It remained popular, especially in the United States, throughout the 19th century and it gave rise to several other pseudoscientific characterologies, e.g., craniometry and anthropometry.

 

Phrenology was highly praised by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Horace Mann, Thomas Edison, and Alfred Russell Wallace. The Boston Medical Society welcomed Spurzheim as a heroic figure when he arrived in 1832 for The American Tour. The Fowler Brothers and Samuel Wells published the American Phrenological Journal and Life Illustrated, which lasted from 1838 until 1911. In Edinburgh, Combe's Phrenological Journal was published from 1823 until 1847. Another indication of the popularity of phrenology in the 19th century is that Combe's The Constitution of Man sold more than 300,000 copies between 1828 and 1868.

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It is difficult to explain the early popularity of phrenology among scientists, since the empirical evidence for a direct relationship between the brain and character was scant. An unplanned experiment provided some solid evidence for such a relationship in 1848 when Phineas Gage's moral character changed dramatically after an explosion blew a tamping iron through his head (Damasio).

 

Gage was leading a railroad construction crew near Cavendish, Vermont, when the accident occurred. "Before the accident he had been a most capable and efficient foreman, one with a well-balanced mind, and who was looked on as a shrewd smart business man." After the accident, he became "fitful, irreverent, and grossly profane, showing little deference for his fellows. He was also impatient and obstinate, yet capricious and vacillating, unable to settle on any of the plans he devised for future action."* On the other hand, one might conclude that the Gage incident blew a hole through the theory that bumps on the head were the keys to the functions of the brain beneath.

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Phrenology gave rise to the invention of the psycograph by Lavery and White, a machine which could do a phrenological reading complete with printout. It is said that this device netted its owners about $200,000 at the 1934 Century of Progress Exposition in Chicago.

 

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Could an examination of the lumps and valleys on your head guide you to the right lover, give clues to the kind of parent you'd be or help determine your career path? Phrenologists in the 19th century thought so, and they convinced hordes of people to pay to have their heads examined.

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Phrenology, as the practice became known, was a movement during the Victorian era, popularized and sensationalized to the point that phrenology parlors and "automated phrenology machines" popped up across Europe and America. Live events were considered both educational and entertaining, with speakers often conducting onstage head examinations.

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Phrenology intrigued people from all walks of life. The middle and working classes were consumed with the idea of that this kind of scientific knowledge was power. Even Queen Victoria and Prince Albert were curious enough to have the heads of their children read.

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But as popular and entertaining as phrenology was, its heyday was short-lived. By the early 1900s, the so-called science behind phrenology was debunked. Today, it is considered a pseudoscience barely mentioned in "Intro to Psychology" classes.

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Phrenology was effectively debunked in the early- to mid-1800s by renowned French physician Marie Jean Pierre Flourens, who rejected that there was a correlation between lumps on the skull and the underlying shape of the brain. He also found that the brain worked as whole unit rather than parts — if one part of the brain was damaged, another part of the brain might take over that function. Still, phrenology lingered into the early 1900s, although it was misapplied to other fields like psychology and even used by eugenicists and Nazis to promote their racist views.

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Phrenology is something DeYoung calls "interesting from a historical perspective," but in practice, it's riddled with problems. "First, the idea that the shape of the outside of the skull has anything to do with the shape of the brain, well it doesn't," he says. "Beyond that, their map of what the different parts of the brain are doing, that's all made up. There's nothing meaningful to it."

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Where Gall was on the right track was his assumption that character, thoughts and emotions are related to specific regions of the brain.

 

Today, researchers, like DeYoung, are using modern technology to better understand the functions of the different parts of the brain and how they relate to one's personality.

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Instead of phrenology charts, DeYoung's research in the emerging field of "personality neuroscience" uses neuroimaging and molecular genetics to map personality traits onto functions the brain. By doing this, he aims to understand how these individual differences in brain function produce individual differences in personality.

While this information may not help someone find their life partner as phrenology promised, it could one day be used to help treat people with mental health problems, he says.

Now that's Interesting!

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Thomas Edison claimed he had a life-changing revelation after one of the "phrenological Fowlers" felt of his head bumps. "I never knew I had an inventive talent until Professor O.S. Fowler examined my head and told me so," he was quoted as saying in the September 1904 issue of The Phrenology Journal and Science of Health. "I was a stranger to myself until then."

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https://science.howstuffworks.com/life/inside-the-mind/human-brain/phrenology.htm

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