Phrenology

Phrenology is a pseudoscientific doctrine, without any validity today, which holds that a person's character, mental abilities and tendencies can be determined by measuring and feeling the shape of the skull. The name comes from Greek, combining "phrēn" (mind) and "logos" (knowledge), and originally it referred broadly to the study of the mind and human mental faculties.

The theory was developed around 1796 by the German physician and neuroanatomist Franz Joseph Gall, who proposed that the brain is the organ of the mind and that it is made up of a set of faculties, each located in a specific area. Gall described twenty-seven such "organs", among them the sense of colour, religiosity or a tendency toward combativeness. By his reasoning, the areas used most would grow larger, and that growth would show up as small bumps or depressions on the skull, so that personality could be read by touching the head, sometimes with the help of a tape measure or a craniometer.

The movement enjoyed enormous success in the nineteenth century, especially between about 1810 and 1840. In Victorian Britain it was popularised by the Scottish lawyer George Combe, who founded the Edinburgh Phrenological Society, and it spread through charts, manuals and private consultations. It was never accepted in university circles, however, and its works contained racial and sexist prejudices of the period that are today considered unacceptable.

The core of phrenology was refuted by later research. Pierre Flourens, using ablation experiments, showed that the functions of the brain did not match those the theory assigned to it. Paul Broca, studying patients with lesions, located in the left frontal lobe the area linked to speech production, a finding that did confirm functional localisation but had no connection to the shape of the skull. Today it is recognised that the brain has a real functional division, but one that does not correspond to bumps on the skull.

Despite this, phrenology played a historical role: it encouraged the idea that mental functions are localised in the brain, an antecedent of modern neuropsychology. Today, the study of the inner surface of the skulls of extinct human species is practised with caution, though some critics dismissively call it "paleo-phrenology" because of its methodological similarities to the old doctrine.