The Phrenological Self: Charting the Mind ’ s Faculties

1. The Phrenological Self: Charting the Mind’s Faculties

2. Zoonomia, or, The Laws of Organic Life (1794-1796) Erasmus Darwin 1792 Portrait by Joseph Wright

3. Franz Joseph Gall (1758-1828) Neuroanatomist and Craniologist

4. Faculty PsychologyThomas Reid (1710-1796) Active Powers: self-esteem, friendship, sexual affection, emulation, duty, veneration, beauty, imagination—35 in all Intellectual/Cognitive Powers: five senses, perception, size and novelty, memory, judgment and reason, abstraction, conception and moral taste.

5. Thomas Reid and Common Sense Philosophy • Professor of Moral Philosophy at Glasgow beginning in 1764. • Succeeded Adam Smith • Called Hume’s skepticism “metaphysical lunacy.” • Wrote, An Inquiry into the Human Mind, on the Principles of Common Sense, 1764

6. Johann Caspar LavaterEssays on Physiognomy, designed to promote the knowledge and the love of mankind Published in German (1789-98)

7. Lavater’s physiognomy of the four temperaments

8. Gall’s Craniology “On the Functions of the Brain and 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 Volumes, Trans. 1835

9. Gall’s Principles • 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. (Gall, Vol. 1, p. 55)

10. Dr. Gall’s Lecture Depicted by Thomas Rowlandson, 1756-1827

11. A Selection of Gall’s 27 Faculties the instinct of generation (sexual instinct) love of offspring (philoprogenitiveness), attachment, self-defense, carnivorous instinct--likened to a disposition to murder, cunning, sense of property, pride, vanity and ambition, cautiousness, memory of things, sense of locality, recognition of persons, verbal memory, color-sense, talent for music, numerical ability, comparative ability, metaphysical abilities, wit, poetry, goodness, religious sensibility, and others.

13. Jean-Marie Pierre Flourens (1794-1867) Contested Gall: conducted experiments to show that the brain acted as a whole

16. Phrenological Head With Illustrated Faculties

17. Phrenology’s Popularizers: Johannes Gaspar Spurzheim Toured England, 1814 Toured America, 1832 Orson and Lorenzo Fowler, Phrenological Cabinet, NYC, 1836

18. ‘Professor’ Orson Squire Fowler b. October 11, 1809d. August 18, 1887 Born to Congregationalist minister and wife in Cohocton, NY Trained for ministry at Amherst College Opened Phrenological Cabinet in Philadelphia (1838) before moving to NYC in 1841 Founded The American Phrenological Journal in 1838 Started Fowlers and Wells publishing firm with brother, Lorenzo, and (later) sister, Charlotte, and brother-in-law Samuel R. Wells . Slide courtesy of V. Meade-Kelly

19. Clinton Hall, NYC Features: Phrenological Cabinet (museum of skulls, death masks, and busts) Phrenological training center Lecture hall “Reading Room” Publishing firm and office Sales center (books, subscriptions, do-it-yourself kits) Headquarters for the Vegetarian Society of America and meeting place for suffragists Patent office Slide courtesy of V. Meade-Kelly

20. Diagram from W. Mattieu Williams, A Vindication of Phrenology. London, 1894. from http://pages.britishlibrary.net/phrenology/images.html

21. Partial List of Fowler’s 37 Faculties Chart of the relative size of organ and table of references. 1846

22. FOWLER’S HEAD Fowler’s Practical Phrenology 1846

23. Intellectual female Well-balanced Head War Chief, Miami Indian Murderer Fowler, 1846

24. Indian Chiefs Engineer Cunning and Roguish Cat Thief and a Liar Hyena

25. Fowler’s Phrenological Head

27. Uses: • Self-Knowledge • Child Development and Education • Marriage Counseling • Vocational Guidance • Intellectual Self-Improvement • Moral Reform • Penal and Asylum Reform Practical Phrenology - “I think there is no class of men – not excepting clergymen, who have so good an opportunity of doing good as a practical phrenologist.” –Charlotte Fowler Wells A system of self-analysis and self-improvement that was based on phrenological science and adapted for use by the masses. Slide courtesy of V. Meade-Kelly

28. Phrenology in 19th Century Popular Culture • Reformers often cited phrenology when championing movements such as abolition, women’s rights, and temperance • Artists of the period sometimes sculpted figures to reflect phrenological ideals • Lectures, including those on phrenology, were considered popular entertainment. Orson Fowler was ranked by one newspaper as one of the top 50 lecturers in the country • ‘Help Wanted’ ads asked for phrenological recommendations; Personal ads called for mates with compatible heads • Modern phrases such as “high brow”, “low brow”, “well-rounded”, and “shrink” are believed to have phrenological roots • Women dressed their hair to emphasize best phrenological features • Slide courtesy of V. Meade-Kelly

29. A Popular Science “To teach learners those organic conditions which indicate character is the first object of this manual. And to render it accessible to all, it… crowds into the fewest words and pages just what learners need to know… ‘Short yet clear,’ is its motto.” –From The New Illustrated Self-Instructor in Phrenology and Physiology by O.S. and L.N. Fowler “How would it not be well to employ, or settle, a practical phrenologist in every town… to give advice to parents respecting the children… If the phrenologist be also a physiologist, as should be the case, he would advise how to keep them well so they would need no physician with his pills, potions and plasters.” -From a lecture by O.S. Fowler Source: The Traveling Phrenologist in the White Mountains, Joseph Becker, Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, September 9, 1882 Slide courtesy of V. Meade-Kelly

30. Herman Melville’s Moby Dick 1851 “It is plain then, that phrenologically the head of this Leviathan, in the creature’s living intact state, is an entire delusion. As for his true brain, you can then see no indications of it, nor feel any. The whale, like all things that are mighty, wears a false brow to the common world.” Chapter 80

32. Honoré Daumier, 1845 The Philanthropy of the Day “Monsieur est trés voleur”

33. Rare Specimens of Comparative Craniology: An old Maid’s Skull Phrenologized

35. Bumpology: “Pores o’er the Cranial map with learned eyes: Each rising hill and bumpy knoll descries, Here secret fires, and there deep mines of sense His touch detects beneath each prominence.”

36. Bless Me, What a Bump! William Heath 1795-1840

38. Localizing Phrenological Organs in Convolutions

39. Jerry Fodor The Modularity of Mind, 1983 Cognitive Psychology