Dictionary:

phrenology

  (frĭ-nŏl'ə-jē)

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The study of the shape and protuberances of the skull, based on the now discredited belief that they reveal character and mental capacity.

As the first biological science of mind, phrenology became an ubiquitous feature of nineteenth-century medical and natural philosopical thought, and of popular culture. Breaking down the distinction between mind and body, phrenology exemplified the shift from the speculative means of studying the human psyche as a metaphysical entity, which characterized Enlightenment thought, to the empirical methods introduced by the new scientific naturalism. Condemned in establishment social and scientific circles as an atheistic, materialist pseudo-science, phrenology was consistently accorded marginal status, a position reflected in historiographies aiming to document science as a story of progress. Recently, however, historians connecting science, medicine, and culture have begun to recognize phrenology's significance as a medium through which a number of naturalistic and functionalist concepts reached a wide and popular audience.

Phrenology's innovative principles were first enunciated in Vienna and Paris, around the turn of the nineteenth century, by the physician, Franz Joseph Gall (1758-1828). Significant variations were later introduced by Gall's assistant, J. G. Spurzheim (1776-1832), who applied the neologism, ‘phrenology’, to the doctrine, and by the prolific Edinburgh phrenologist, George Combe (1788-1858). Gall established that the brain was the organ of mind — then a contestable view — and that it was composed of all the faculties that made up the human character. Using the analogy of the anatomical constitution of the body, he argued that the faculties were embodied in discrete cerebral ‘organs’, which were innate and inheritable, and that individual differences derived from variations in the physical organization of the brain. The principles underlying these hypotheses later became widely accepted. Two additional ‘craniological’ hypotheses, however, rendered the science empirically vulnerable, at the same time as they formed the basis of its popularity. Gall contended that the power of each faculty depended upon the size of the ‘organ’ which embodied it; and that the cranium reflected the form of the underlying cerebrum. Accordingly, character could be ‘read’ from the shape of the head. A primary task for craniology (Gall retained this term, along with ‘cranioscopy’ and ‘organology’) and phrenology was the ‘discovery’ and systematization of the faculties. Although Gall was a renowned cerebral anatomist, he insisted that the quasi-physiognomical method of correlating observed behaviour with variations in head shape was more revealing than dissection. Indeed, phrenologists consistently repudiated animal experimentation involving surgical trauma, for ethical as well as scientific reasons.

As the prototype for a normalizing physical anthropology, however, phrenology, with its value-laden stereotyping psycho-techniques, introduced new ethical problems. Gall's curiosity had initially been aroused by the differences he had noticed amongst individuals, but he subsequently began to compare criminals, lunatics, non-European ‘races’, and other ‘deviant’ groups with the gendered and Eurocentric norms that his craniological discourse was designed to construct. Indeed, the definition of normality was one of phrenology's major projects. As Spurzheim argued, this was a specifically medical project, for physicians had to understand the normal before they could recognize and cure the pathological. Spurzheim's phrenological modifications supplied people with new techniques both to construct normality and to achieve it in their own lives. Invoking the analogy of the great chain of being, he grouped the faculties into separate lobes of the brain, placing the ‘higher’ intellectual organs in the forehead, the sentiments — including ‘veneration’ — at the summit, and the ‘lower’ animal faculties (for example, sexuality and mothering) at the base of the brain. Henceforth, human types could be constructed according to the predominance of various groups of cerebral organs. With their Baconian faith in generalization from an accumulation of facts, phrenologists collected large numbers of representative skulls and busts. They established societies and museums, and entered educational institutions, where these reified racial, sexual, and class stereotypes were exhibited for all to absorb, where people could learn the art of head-reading for themselves, and whence phrenological character analysis would begin to enter the domain of popular culture.

Phrenology was given an additional impetus when Spurzheim and George Combe, invoking the Laws of Nature, effected its transformation into a moral and meritocratic science of self improvement and social reform. Spurzheim introduced the element of cerebral functionalism with his theory of the complex interaction of the faculties. Opposing Gall's deterministic conception of each faculty as either good or bad, Spurzheim argued that all of them were intrinsically good, abnormal behaviour resulting from imbalance, when the superior intellectual and moral organs had failed sufficiently to direct the ‘inferior’ organs. Although natural endowment was determined by heredity, appropriate ‘exercise’ — that is, behaviour — could strengthen the good faculties and weaken the bad: hence phrenology's application to criminal and lunacy reform. Moreover, the health and well-being of both the individual and the race could be improved by eugenic manipulation. For Spurzheim, the latter meant selective breeding, through the choice of marriage partners with propitious cerebral and physical constitutions. George Combe, however, later extended the eugenic theme with his addition of the Lamarckian theory of inheritance. In his best-selling tract, The Constitution of Man (1828), Combe popularized these hereditarian theories, providing a comprehensive explanation of the working of the ‘organic laws’, along with advice on how to obey them by applying phrenology to ‘the practical arrangements of life’.

Although phrenology never lacked vociferous opposition, its impact remains indisputable. Its vocabulary infiltrated the language, and its naturalistic character analysis and positivistic conceptual framework, employed by novelists and poets (including Honoré de Balzac, Charlotte Brontë, George Eliot, and Walt Whitman) entered the popular imagination. If by the 1840s neurophysiological experimentation had fatally undermined the specific details of its cranial cartography, phrenology's underlying principles had been absorbed by many of the progenitors of the human sciences, and incorporated into the new disciplines of functional sociology, differential psychology, neurophysiology, physical anthropology, and evolutionary theory. As the comparative anatomist, J. F. P. Blumenbach, once declared in relation to phrenology, these disciplines thus contained ‘much which is new and much which is true, but the new is not true and the true is not new’.

— Jan Wilson

Bibliography

• Cooter, R. (1984). The cultural meaning of popular science. Phrenology and the organization of consent in nineteenth-century Britain. Cambridge University Press.
• Young, R. M. (1970). Mind, brain and adaptation in the nineteenth century. Cerebral localization and its biological context from Gall to Ferrier. Clarendon Press, Oxford

See also craniometry; skull.

For more information on phrenology, visit Britannica.com.

Phrenology in antebellum America became a significant influence on the thought of major reformers and literary figures. Perhaps more importantly, it also served as a practical system of psychological diagnosis, prognosis, and counseling that had a major impact on the lives of many individuals. Its roots lay in the late-eighteenth-century claims of the Germans Franz Josef Gall (1758–1828) and Johann Christoph Spurzheim (1776–1832), who argued that the brain is the organ of the mind and that specific mental faculties are located in specific parts of the brain. Many contemporaneous philosophers and physiologists made similar assertions. The phrenologists went further, however, and argued that the strength of each faculty determines the physical size and shape of the specific part of the brain in which it is localized and that the shape of the brain itself determines the shape of the skull that surrounds it.

European phrenological discourse largely revolved around further claims for the broad philosophical and social import of the science, and early American interest in phrenology developed similarly. Although the first American to advance phrenology was, apparently, the Kentuckian Charles Caldwell (1772–1853) of Transylvania University, Americans responded more fully to lecture tours of Spurzheim himself in 1832 and of the Scottish phrenologist George Combe (1788–1858) in the late 1830s. Many were impressed by phrenology's congruence with the "faculty psychology" of Scottish commonsense realism, the prevalent mental philosophy of the period, which emphasized an individual's specific psychological traits. Such considerations excited political and social reformers, including the Protestant clergyman Henry Ward Beecher, the newspaper editor Horace Greeley, the abolitionist and suffragist Sarah M. Grimké, Samuel Gridley Howe (who advocated for the blind and the "feebleminded"), and the educator Horace Mann. They were attracted to phrenology's concern for "self-knowledge" and "self-improvement" and grew to believe that they could use phrenological insights to promote their causes. Scholars have argued that these beliefs helped shape such individually focused reform movements as care for the insane, convict rehabilitation, sex education, temperance, vegetarianism, and women's rights. Literary figures also looked to phrenological insights about character and temperament, and critics have found phrenological influences in the works of such dissimilar authors as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Edgar Allan Poe, Mark Twain, and Walt Whitman.

Other antebellum Americans—especially economically and socially striving white middle-class men and women—took phrenology's implications for the individual more personally. Many thus came to believe that an informed phrenological examination by a skilled observer of a person's skull could reveal much about his or her character and mental abilities, and could serve as the basis of expert guidance about an individual's prospects and behavior. As early as 1836, practical phrenologists—most notably the Fowler brothers, Orson Squire (1809–1887) and Lorenzo Niles (1811–1896); their sister, Charlotte Fowler Wells (1814–1901); and her husband, Samuel Robert Wells (1820–1875)—established thriving consulting practices in major American cities that offered pre-marital, career, and other forms of advice. The New York–based firm of Fowler and Wells also sold phrenological publications and plaster casts of phrenological skulls, and published (in addition to dozens of books and pamphlets) the American Phrenological Journal and Miscellany from 1838 through 1911.

Itinerant phrenologists provided similar psychological services for rural America, and residents of many smaller cities and towns looked forward to their regular visits. Such stopovers often included free (or low-cost) public lectures to illustrate their science's value. But they emphasized private appointments for phrenological character readings. One especially active itinerant phrenologist was Nelson Sizer (1812–1897), who alternately worked with the Fowlers in New York and traveled through New England and the Middle Atlantic states. His memoir, Forty Years in Phrenology (1882), provides many significant insights into the science and its practice.

Many reformers' and literary figures' interest in phrenology began to wane by the 1850s. Although some observers claim this decline can be traced to growing mainstream medical and scientific criticisms of phrenology, it more likely stems from the reorienting of reform efforts away from the use of moral suasion to promote individual "self-enlightenment" (about which phrenology claimed to have something to say) to attempts to pass laws prohibiting or requiring specific behaviors. (Archetypically, temperance yielded to prohibition.) This decline had (at least initially) little impact on the Fowlers or the itinerant phrenologists, who continued through the 1880s and after to provide individual psychological guidance. After all, many scholars agree that the phrenologists derived their character readings less from their studies of their clients' skull shapes than from their sensitivity to all aspects of an individual's behavior, language, dress, and "body language" during their examinations. (In this way, Author Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes later emulated their practice.) The phrenologists hinted as much in private and emphasized the positive "spin" they gave to their readings to enhance their impact. Phrenological advice remained sought after by Americans for many years; a phrenological vocational guidance bureau operated in Minneapolis during the 1930s. Historians of psychology even argue that phrenology's emphasis upon the practical helped shape the scientific interests of the first academically trained American psychologists. These men and women abandoned their German teachers' overriding interests with "the mind" to emphasize mental function and ability and life in the world—just the concerns that the phrenologists stressed—and these concerns have dominated American psychology since the 1880s.

Bibliography

Davies, John D. Phrenology: Fad and Science: A Nineteenth-Century American Crusade. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1955.

Fowler, Orson S. The Practical Phrenologist: A Compendium of Phreno-Organic Science. Boston: O. S. Fowler, 1869.

Sizer, Nelson. Forty Years in Phrenology; Embracing Recollections of History, Anecdote, and Experience. New York: Fowler and Wells, 1882.

Sokal, Michael M. "Practical Phrenology as Psychological Counseling in the 19th-Century United States." In The Transformation of Psychology: Influences of 19th-Century Philosophy, Technology, and Natural Science. Edited by Christopher D. Green, Marlene Shore, and Thomas Teo. Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association, 2001.

Stern, Madeleine B. Heads and Headlines: The Phrenological Fowlers. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1971.

A nineteenth-century proto-science claiming that character and personality could be ascertained by the shape and size of various areas or "bumps" on the skull, resulting from development of the brain centers. It derives from the traditional belief that character traits are reflected in physical appearance, and was associated with physiognomy, the study of outward aspects of the individual.

Phrenology was first systematically developed by Franz Joseph Gall (1758-1828) at the end of the eighteenth century. He made observations on hundreds of heads and skulls, and in 1796 lectured in Vienna on the anatomy of the brain and the elements of phrenology. His pupil J. K. Spurzheim continued his work in England and America, where phrenology vied with mesmerism and spiritualist phenomena as a popular subject of study during the nineteenth century. Initially, Gall and Spurzheim encountered opposition from some church leaders because their system appeared to imply that personality characteristics were inborn instead of being subject to modification by leading a good life.

Gall was an accredited physician with a detailed knowledge of the brain and nervous system, and he proposed phrenology to his colleagues for their serious scientific consideration. Phrenology became the province of many original thinkers of the day. However, phrenology also was popularized and practiced by non-medical individuals and even fairground charlatans.

Essentially, phrenology defined more than thirty areas of the skull related to such instincts as amativeness, philogeniture, habitativeness, affection, combativeness, destructiveness, alimentiveness, secretiveness, acquisitiveness, and constructiveness, and to such moral faculties as self-esteem, approbativeness, circumspection, benevolence, veneration, firmness, conscientiousness, hope, admiration, idealism, cheerfulness, and imitativeness.

The size and development of these areas implied strong or weak aspects of these instincts and faculties. The areas were measured by calipers and marked off on a chart, so that a complete character reading could be made.

Early exponents of animal magnetism (a precursor of hypnotism, but allied with psychic faculties) developed a new approach named "phreno-magnetism" or "phrenomesmerism." Operators claimed that when any phrenological area of the subject was touched during a trance, the subject acted out the particular faculty associated with that area. Thus, when the operator touched the bump of "combativeness," the entranced subject would exhibit belligerent behavior.

Although now discarded as a failed scientific option, phrenology flourished side by side with mesmerism and Spiritualism during the nineteenth century. Noted scientists were sympathetic, and additional supporters could be found among the literary elite such as Walt Whitman and Edgar Allan Poe.

Interest in phrenology continued in America well into the twentieth century, and the British Phrenological Society, founded in 1886 by Lorenzo J. Fowler, was still in existence in the 1960s, though it had long ceased to affect the culture that surrounded it.

Sources:

Chambers, Howard V. Phrenology. Sherbourne, 1968. Davies, John D. Phrenology, Fad and Science: A Nineteenth Century American Crusade. Archon, 1955. Reprint, Shoe String, 1971.

De Giustino, David. Conquest of Mind: Phrenology and Victorian Social Thought. London: Croom Helm; Totowa, N.J.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1975.

Gall, Franz J. On the Functions of the Brain and of Each of Its Parts: with Observations on the Possibility of Determining the Instincts, Propensities and Talents, or the Moral and Intellectual Dispositions of Men and Animals, by the Configuration of the Brain and Head. 6 vols. Boston, 1835.

Stern, Madeleine B. Heads and Headlines: The Phrenological Fowlers. Norman, Okla.: University of Oklahoma Press, 1971.

Wells, Samuel R. How to Read Character: A New Illustrated Handbook of Phrenology and Physiognomy. New York: Samuel R. Wells, 1871. Reprint, Rutland, Conn.: C. E. Tuttle, 1971.

n.

The science of picking the pocket through the scalp. It consists in locating and exploiting the organ that one is a dupe with.

Phrenology (from Greek: φρήν, phrēn, "mind"; and λόγος, logos, "knowledge") is a theory which claims to be able to determine character, personality traits and criminality on the basis of the shape of the head (i.e., by reading "bumps" and "fissures"). Developed by German physician Franz Joseph Gall around 1800, the discipline was very popular in the 19th century. In 1843, François Magendie referred to phrenology as "a pseudo-science of the present day"^[1] Phrenology thinking was, however, influential in 19th century psychiatry and modern neuroscience.^[2] Phrenology is based on the concept that the brain is the organ of the mind, and that certain brain areas have localized, specific functions (see in particular, Brodmann's areas) or modules (see modularity of mind).^[3] In other words, phrenologists believed that the mind has a set of different mental faculties, with each particular faculty represented in a different portion (or organ) of the brain. These areas were said to be proportional to a given individual's propensities and the importance of a given mental faculty, as well as the overall conformation of the cranial bone to reflect differences among individuals.

Phrenology, which focuses on personality and character, should be distinguished from craniometry, which is the study of skull size, weight and shape, and physiognomy, the study of facial features. However, these disciplines have claimed the ability to predict personality traits or intelligence (in fields such as anthropology/ethnology), and were sometimes posed to "scientifically" justify racism.

A 19th century phrenology chart. The inscription on the neck reads, "Know yourself."

History

A definition of phrenology with chart from Webster's Academic Dictionary, circa 1895

The attempt to locate faculties of personality within the head can be compared to the attempt of philosopher Aristotle of ancient Greece to localize anger in the liver. However, the first attempts to scientifically measure skull shape and its alleged relation to character were performed by the German physician Franz Joseph Gall (1758-1828), who is considered the founding father of phrenology. Gall was one of the first to consider the brain to be the source of all mental activity.

In the introduction to his main work The Anatomy and Physiology of the Nervous System in General, and of the Brain in Particular, Gall makes the following statement in regard to his doctrinal principles, which comprise the intellectual foundation of phrenology:

• That moral and intellectual faculties are innate
• That their exercise or manifestation depends on organization
• That the brain is the organ of all the propensities, sentiments and faculties
• That the brain is composed of as many particular organs as there are propensities, sentiments and faculties which differ essentially from each other.
• That the form of the head or cranium represents the form of the brain, and thus reflects the relative development of the brain organs.

Through careful observation and extensive experimentation, Gall believed he had linked aspects of character, called faculties, to precise organs in the brain. Gall's most important collaborator was Johann Spurzheim (1776-1832), who successfully disseminated phrenology in the United Kingdom and the United States. He popularized the term phrenology.

Other significant authors on the subject include the Scottish brothers George Combe (1788-1858) and Andrew Combe (1797-1847). George Combe was the author of some of the most popular works on phrenology and mental hygiene, e.g., The Constitution of Man and Elements of Phrenology.

The American brothers Lorenzo Niles Fowler (1811-1896) and Orson Squire Fowler (1809-1887) were leading phrenologists of their time. Orson, together with associates Samuel Wells and Nelson Sizer, ran the phrenological firm and publishing house Fowlers & Wells in New York City. Lorenzo spent much of his life in England where he set up the famous phrenological publishing house, L.N Fowler & Co., where he gained considerable fame with his phrenology head (a china head showing the phrenological faculties), which has become a symbol of the discipline.

1848 edition of American Phrenological Journal published by Fowlers & Wells, New York City.

In the Victorian age, phrenology was often taken quite seriously. Many prominent public figures such as the Reverend Henry Ward Beecher (a college classmate and initial partner of Orson Fowler) 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. However, phrenology was rejected by mainstream academia, and was excluded from the British Association for the Advancement of Science. The popularity of phrenology fluctuated throughout the 19th century, with some researchers comparing the field to astrology, chiromancy, or merely a fairground attraction, while others wrote serious scientific articles on the subject.

Phrenology was also very popular in the United States, where automatic devices for phrenological analysis were devised. One such Automatic Electric Phrenometer is displayed in the Collection of Questionable Medical Devices in the Science Museum of Minnesota in Saint Paul.

In the early 20th century, phrenology benefitted from revived interest, partly fueled by the studies of evolutionism, criminology and anthropology (as pursued by Cesare Lombroso). The most prominent British phrenologist of the 20th century was the famous London psychiatrist Bernard Hollander (1864-1934). His main works, The Mental Function of the Brain (1901) and Scientific Phrenology (1902) are an appraisal of the Gall's teachings. Hollander introduced a quantitative approach to the phrenological diagnosis, defining a methodology for measuring the skull, and comparing the measurements with statistical averages.

Phrenology was practiced by some scientists promoting racist ideologies, including Nazism. They used (often self-contradictory) phrenological claims, among other "biological evidence", as a "scientific" basis for Aryan racial superiority.

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.

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. 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. 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.

On Monday, October 1, 2007 the State of Michigan began to impose a tax on phrenology services.

Methodology

Phrenology was a complex process that involved feeling the bumps in the skull to determine an individual's psychological attributes. Franz Joseph Gall first believed that the brain was made up of 27 individual 'organs' that created one's personality, with the first 19 of these 'organs' believed to exist in other animal species. Phrenologists would run their fingertips and palms over the skulls of their patients to feel for enlargements or indentations. The phrenologist would usually take measurements of the overall head size using a caliper. With this information, the phrenologist would assess the character and temperament of the patient and address each of the 27 "brain organs". This type of analysis was used to predict the kinds of relationships and behaviors to which the patient was prone. In its heyday during the 1820s-1840s, phrenology was often used to predict a child's future life, to assess prospective marriage partners and to provide background checks for job applicants.

Gall's list of the "brain organs" was lengthy and specific, as he believed that each bump or indentation in a patient's skull corresponded to his "brain map". An enlarged bump meant that the patient utilized that particular "organ" extensively. The 27 areas were highly varied in function, from sense of color, to the likelihood of religiosity, to the potential to commit murder. Each of the 27 "brain organs" was found in a specific area of the skull. As the phrenologist felt the skull, he could refer to a numbered diagram showing where each functional area was believed to be located.

The 27 "brain organs" were:

1. The instinct of reproduction (located in the cerebellum).
2. The love of one's offspring.
3. Affection and friendship.
4. The instinct of self-defense and courage; the tendency to get into fights.
5. The carnivorous instinct; the tendency to murder.
6. Guile; acuteness; cleverness.
7. The feeling of property; the instinct of stocking up on food (in animals); covetousness; the tendency to steal.
8. Pride; arrogance; haughtiness; love of authority; loftiness.
9. Vanity; ambition; love of glory (a quality "beneficent for the individual and for society").
10. Circumspection; forethought.
11. The memory of things; the memory of facts; educability; perfectibility.
12. The sense of places; of space proportions.
13. The memory of people; the sense of people.
14. The memory of words.
15. The sense of language; of speech.
16. The sense of colors.
17. The sense of sounds; the gift of music.
18. The sense of connectedness between numbers.
19. The sense of mechanics, of construction; the talent for architecture.
20. Comparative sagacity.
21. The sense of metaphysics.
22. The sense of satire; the sense of witticism.
23. The poetical talent.
24. Kindness; benevolence; gentleness; compassion; sensitivity; moral sense.
25. The faculty to imitate; the mimic.
26. The organ of religion.
27. The firmness of purpose; constancy; perseverance; obstinacy.

Phrenology as a pseudoscience

Phrenology has long been dismissed as a pseudoscience, in the wake of neurological advances. During the discipline's heyday, phrenologists including Gall committed many errors in the name of science. In the book, The Beginner's Guide to Scientific Method by Stephen S. Carey, it is explained that pseudoscience can be defined as "fallacious applications of the scientific method" by today's standards. Phrenologists inferred dubious inferences between bumps in people's skulls and their personalities, claiming that the bumps were the determinant of personality. Some of the more valid assumptions of phrenology (e.g., that mental processes can be localized in the brain) remain in modern neuroimaging techniques and modularity of mind theory. Through advancements in modern medicine and neuroscience, the scientific community has generally concluded that feeling conformations of the outer skull is not an accurate predictor of behavior.

Popular culture

• Charlotte Brontë, as well as her two famous Bronte sisters, display the belief in phrenology in their works.

• The television personality Stephen Colbert, played by the comedian of the same name, claims to be a proponent of phrenology. In the February 8, 2007 episode of The Colbert Report, Colbert waved off "speculation" about a presidential bid, claiming that he must first sit down with his family, and his phrenologist. "I know these lumps are trying to tell me something." He said, adding, "Phrenology is the study of lumps on your head. It'd be another good campaign slogan." [1]

• Popular Indian-English writer Amitav Ghosh's first novel The Circle of Reason (1986) has one of the main characters, Balaram practice phrenology obsessively.

• The QI Book, The Book of General Ignorance, has a "phrenology bust" pictured on the dust jacket.

• On the popular television sitcom The Simpsons, the character Mr. Burns practiced phrenology in the episode "Mother Simpson", prompting his assistant Smithers to inform him that it was "dismissed as quackery 160 years ago."

• Terry Pratchett, in his Discworld series of books, describes the practice of Retro-phrenology as the practice of altering someone's character by giving them bumps on the head. You can go into a shop in Ankh-Morpork and order an artistic temperament with a tendency to introspection. What you actually get is hit on the head with a large hammer, but it keeps the money in circulation and gives people something to do. This was first described in Mr Midshipman Easy, where a vacuum pump was used to enlarge organs.

• The comedy-musical play Heid (pronounced 'Heed', a Scottish inflection of the word 'Head') by Forbes Masson alluded to the phrenology work of George Combe, citing the pseudoscience's influence on a young Charles Darwin as an inspiration for writers.

• The hip-hop group The Roots released an album in 2002 called Phrenology, using the term to discuss race.

• The film Pi depicts the main character, Max, outlining a portion of his skull according to a phrenology chart and proceeding to drill into that section to destroy a part of his brain that contained important information of a mathematical sequence that he thought nobody should know.

• The film Men at Work contains a joke about a phrenology bust.

• Several literary critics have noted the influence of phrenology^[4] (and physiognomy) in Edgar Allan Poe's fiction.^[5]

• In the episode "Duh Bomb" in the TV show Kenan & Kel, a woman practices phrenology on Kel's head.

• The Online store "Inner Coma Clothing Co.[2]." Refers to the section of the site that sells hats as its "Phrenology" section.

• The cover art of the Bob Schneider album Lonelyland depicts a phrenology chart.

• In the computer game American McGee's Alice, a phrenology chart appears on the wall of the initial room in the level Skool Daze. A portion on the back of the neck is labeled "fear" (in place of "sublimity" on the original chart).

• In the They Might Be Giants album The Else, the song "Contrecoup" mentions phrenology at numerous points throughout the song.

• Pearl Jam's 1994 album Vitalogy displays a phrenology chart in the booklet.

• Phrenology and other 19th century medicinal practices are humorously parodied in the game manual for Freddy Pharkas: Frontier Pharmacist. You can read the manual here.

Related disciplines

• Physiognomy
• Pathognomy
• Characterology
• Personology
• Psychognomy

See also

• Body proportions
• Modularity of mind

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:

Phrenology

• Readings in Phrenology, selections from texts by Johan Gaspar Spurzheim and George Combe.
• Phrenology Heads for Illustration, Large and small head.
• History of Phrenology on the Web by John van Wyhe, PhD. The most extensive source of phrenological texts available on the web.
• The Phrenology Pages, a Belgian site advocating phrenology.
• Phrenology. The History of Cerebral Localization. Article by Renato M.E. Sabbatini, PhD in Brain & Mind online article.
• Phrenology Today! Russian portal, advocating phrenology. Articles on so-called modern phrenology.
• Examples of phrenological tools can be seen in The Museum of Questionable Medical Devices, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S..
• Joseph Vimont: Traité de phrénologie humaine et comparée. (Paris, 1832-1835). Selected pages scanned from the original work. Historical Anatomies on the Web. US National Library of Medicine.
• Phrenology: History of a Classic Pseudoscience - by Steven Novella MD
• Historical Deadwood Newspaper accounts of C. R. Broadbent well known speaker on Phrenology and Physiology visit Deadwood SD 1878
• The Skeptic's Dictionary by Robert Todd Carroll
• Who Named It? Franz Joseph Gall Biography of Franz Joseph Gall and his creation: Phrenology.
• Phrenology by George Burgess (1829-1905) George Burgess, Phrenologist in Bristol, England 1861-1901.
• Corrective Phrenology
• Chart of the Phrenological Organs of the Brain

References

• Debby Applegate, The Most Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher. Doubleday, 2006.
• Picture of Fowler Phrenology Head: Fowler Phrenology Head
• Stephen S. Carey, "The Beginner's Guide to Scientific Method." Thomson, 2004.

Notes

1. ^ Magendie, F (1843) An Elementary Treatise on Human Physiology. 5th Ed. Tr. John Revere. New York: Harper, p 150. (note the hyphen).
2. ^ Simpson, D. (2005) Phrenology and the neurosciences: contributions of F. J. Gall and J. G. Spurzheim ANZ Journal of Surgery. Oxford. Vol.75.6; p.475
3. ^ Fodor, JA. (1983) The Modularity of Mind. MIT Press. See also, Modularity of mind p.14, 23, 131
4. ^ Edward Hungerford. "Poe and Phrenology", American Literature 1(1930): 209-31.
5. ^ Erik Grayson. "Weird Science, Weirder Unity: Phrenology and Physiognomy in Edgar Allan Poe" Mode 1 (2005): 56-77. Also online.

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Dansk (Danish)
n. - frenologi

Nederlands (Dutch)
studie van schedelvorm als persoonlijk- heidsleer, frenologie

Français (French)
n. - phrénologie

Deutsch (German)
n. - Phrenologie

Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - (ιατρ.) φρενολογία

Italiano (Italian)
frenologia

Português (Portuguese)
n. - frenologia (f)

Русский (Russian)
френология

Español (Spanish)
n. - frenología

Svenska (Swedish)
n. - frenologi

中文（简体） (Chinese (Simplified))
颅相学

中文（繁體） (Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 顱相學

한국어 (Korean)
n. - 골상학

日本語 (Japanese)
n. - 骨相学

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(الاسم) علم فراسه الدماغ ومعرفه قوى الإنسان العقليه‏

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮חקר צורת הגולגות וגודלה כמצביעים על אופי ותכונות שכליות, פרנולוגיה‬

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