February 11, 2021 • 25 mins
Did you ever think the shape of your head has something to do with your personality? No? Good because it doesn’t, but Phrenologists thought exactly that. Author and historian Dr. John van Wyhe joins Matt and Helen to talk about this odd school of pseudoscience that was at the dawn of understanding the brain.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is jobsolete. I'm Helen Hong and I'm Matt beat
and today we're talking about the phrenologists. So some of
their books show illustrations of dogs and horses where they
thought that the personality of these creatures could be read
(00:22):
from the shape of the heads. Can the bumps on
your head tell you something about your personality? If I
told you that modern psychology shares the same distant past
with nineteenth century quackery, would it hurt your feelings? What
if someone could tell you all about your personality simply
by looking at your head? Well, that's just what a
(00:44):
phrenologist attempted to do. They believe that people's brains shaped
their skulls. By feeling someone's skull, they could determine that
person's psychological attributes. It's a bunch of quacker Still, people
loved it because you know, we love stuff that tells
(01:06):
us more about ourselves. So in this episode, we're examining
the heads of phrenologists and their patients. So, Helen, if
I were to tell you that you are well rounded,
how would you feel about that? Would you like that?
Was that? Is that a compliment? Yeah? If you said
I was well rounded, you I would take that to
mean like, I work, I play, I have a good
(01:27):
balance in life. Isn't that what that means? Yeah? But
did you know that the term well rounded has roots
in phrenology, like meaning my head is literally well rounded. Yes,
I did not know that. I'm gonna I'm gonna tell you,
uh this, I'm this is I'm so glad we're talking
(01:47):
about this because I have a very bumpy skull and
there was a time where I was like, very self
conscious about it. I don't know what my parents were
doing with my head as when I was a kid,
but I have a lot of lumps and bumps, and
there was a period like in college where I was
like very like I thought I was very punk rock
(02:09):
and I was like, I'm gonna shave my head. And
then I was like, no, that would be a horrible idea.
I've got some weird bumps on my head too, so
don't worry. And I mean it, You're well rounded, So
thank you, thank you very much. If I went to
a phrenologist back in the day and he felt all
the weird bumps, especially on the back of my head,
what might they tell me there are different brain organs
(02:31):
that they believed in like you've seen the old diagrams
where they yeah, I've seen I've seen these like old
timey pictures. It's like a side view of a person's head.
And then it's like when you see like a like
a butcher shop and they show you the cuts of
meat that you can get from the body of the cow.
But this is like someone's brain. So part of this
(02:54):
says sense. Sensitiveness is a section, and then self perfecting
is a section, and then there's reflective is a section.
Can you see what that red part is in the
very back. Oh, that's domestic. Oh see, I have a
very like where I have all the bumps on my head.
(03:16):
According to this diagram, it's the domestic part, which makes
a lot of sense because I cannot cook. Well. Yeah,
one of the parts of the brain organs back there
is friendship. So do you maybe you have a friendship
bump because you're very friendly. I am friendly and I
have good friends, so maybe maybe the bump there and
the friendship part is like a good bump. But then
(03:37):
the bad bump is the domestic thing, which is why
I can barely cook an egg. So I can't believe
this was an actual science though, like people believe this,
like as if this was a doctor, like a medical
professional that you would go to and be like, please
tell me about my personality because of the bumps on
my head. Yeah. No, it started out with Dr Gall,
So it was actually in earnest. It began because was
(04:00):
of science that they're just trying to understand the brain.
Dr Joseph Franz Gall, who is some say is the
founder of phrenology, and he published a book and I'm
going to read this entire title of this book because
it's uh, quite something. The name of the book is
the Anatomy and Physiology of the Nervous System in general
and of the Brain in particular, with observations upon the
(04:22):
possibility of asserting the several intellectual and moral dispositions of
man and animal by the configuration of their heads. And
volume one that volume one, and so yeah, it's just
asking for that in the library. Excuse me, do you
have Yeah? So, so we we spoke with Dr John
(04:46):
van Y and he's a historian of science who told
us about how he got involved with all this and
how he studied the brain. Chronology was a supposed science
of the mind, the science of those days was a
bit up in the air about the human mind. People
(05:08):
will open to the idea that science could explain things
about the human personality. Nowadays we are more familiar with this,
it's not such a shocking idea, but back then it
was very brand new that, wow, science could tell you
who you are, what you are, what you can be,
what you can become. And so at the very beginning
(05:31):
of phrenology, it was a scientific way of describing and
understanding humanity. Wow, don't you think that. Dr gall maybe
had like a couple of kids and he noticed one
of them had a really like pointy shaped bump in
the back and was like, Oh, you're the seed this,
(05:55):
you're the destructive one. And then his other kid had
like a bumpy thing the side and was like, oh,
you're the really sensitive one. Like don't you think it
was that random? Dr Franz Joseph Gaul did exactly that,
you were a correct he was. He was fascinated, Yeah, seriously,
Like I read that. He as a kid, he was
fascinated by all these differences in head shapes like his
(06:18):
his friends, and he would just like, look at it,
Why is your head shaped so differently than mine? You know,
and he was, and so yeah, that's He's like, oh
my god, I was just guessing. I'm just just making
a wild guess and I was spot one. See that
is the crazy thing about wild Like when like in
the beginning days of science, people just made stuff up
because there was just no facts about anything. So they're
(06:41):
just like, have these wild theories, and they're like, we're
going with it a childhood's imagination, you know. So Dr
gall really did believe he was doing serious science, and
he was convinced that the brain was divided up into
different pots, and that each pot was dedicated to a
different function. Furthermore, he was convinced that the bigger the
(07:03):
part of the brain was, the more you could see
it from the outside, so that by feeling someone's head
or looking at their head, you could predict things about
their personality, about their abilities, their proclivities, and so on.
Goal was a bit more serious than his followers. In
later decades, he actually dissected the brains of patients who
(07:27):
died from different problems. So if someone could not speak
and he found a problem that part of the brain,
well he was right. There was something about that part
of the brain that is involved with speech. But he
went on from that to extrapolate that each little part
of the brain was responsible for different things. So, for example,
(07:47):
a lady visited him as a physician and she sort
of fainted and he caught her and felt the back
of her neck was very hot, so he just sided.
Uh huh. Sexual passion is located in the lower part
of the back of the skull. What how did he
(08:10):
get sexual passion from a lady fainting? That's a good question.
I love like she she passed out, Like maybe she
didn't have enough maybe she didn't have enough breakfast, or
like maybe she stood up too fast, or maybe she
just has very low blood pressure like I do, and
she just passed blacked out for a second. He's like, Oh,
(08:32):
she's got the hots for me. Yeah, yeah, I mean,
it's just he was onto something. He really was. Like
it was like he figured out, oh, yeah, this part
of the brain is responsible for speech, and like if
he would have just stopped there, he would have been
taken more seriously in history. But no, I kind of
but that actually makes me more sympathetic towards him, because
(08:54):
back then people nobody knew that, and so he was
right that there is a part of brain that control speech,
and he was like, thus, this part of the brain
must control your horny nous, like, you know, it kind
of makes sense that that you would extropolate like that,
but unfortunately that is not the case. Keep in mind,
(09:17):
this is before psychology became a discipline, and we knew
practically nothing about personality, like even defining what a personality was.
You know, would patients line up to be like, I'm
(09:41):
so depressed, please feel my head. That came a little later,
but yeah, I mean, there was another gentleman by the
name of another Johan Johan spurs Time was an associate
to Dr Gaul. They worked together, but he kind of
they kind of had a falling out and Spursheim kind
(10:01):
of did his own thing that kind of turned phrenology,
you know, more into a spectacle than a science girl.
Never ceased to promote what he thought was his new
signs of the brain, but what it became in the
English speaking world wasn't really his responsibility. Phrenology is only
vaguely connected to his initial teachings. He didn't actually do
(10:26):
phrenology at all. He didn't feel people's bumps and so on.
The man who brought phrenology to the English speaking world.
Was called Joseph Spurzheim. He was a physician and he
gave lectures to very respectable people. He was trying hard
to sell his new revolutionary psychological science based on the head.
(10:48):
There was a huge review of him that utterly demolished
his claims to being respectable, and but it also made
his name because it made him very famous. So this
guy spur Time was like he wanted fame for it, right,
Like he wanted to be like, I want to be
like Freud and come see me and I would tell
(11:08):
you what kind of personality you've got based on the
bumps in your head. Yeah. I went around on tour
all over the world saying, hey, check this out, phrenology.
Would he like, would he go around the world and
and like people would line up to have him feel
their heads. There's no records of that, but I'm sure,
I mean that's plausible for sure. I mean he was
(11:30):
widely criticized. You know, tons of scientists were like, this
guy is wacky, it's nonsense. They didn't care people, They
did not care. They were fascinated by ourselves. This reminds
me of modern day anti vax movement, right, Like, there
was one scientist who published a paper saying, oh, vaccinations
(11:54):
are related to autism and children, and then the entire
scientific community was like no, no, no, no, no, You're
totally whack. But by then it was too late. Like
people this concept that caught on this this one guy
single handedly was like, I am creating phrenology and people
were like, what's phrenology? And he's like, I'll tell you
(12:14):
all about you according to the shape of your head,
and they're like, we like it. They wanted to believe,
just like we want to believe in Bigfoot. It's kind
of like astrology. Like people I think are drawn to
astrology because we want confirmation about things that we already
kind of believe about ourselves. So like, I like reading
my horoscope because I'm like, oh, tell me about the
(12:37):
romantic encounter that I'm going to have on the twenty
two of this month. Like it's exciting and fun, definitely,
but you shouldn't like playing your life around it. Really.
Have you ever been to one of those psychic reading
places like tarot cards I have I have. I've had
my tarot cards read, I've had my palms read. I
don't particularly believe in any of that stuff. I've been
(13:01):
to one just for the fun of it, you know, Like,
there's Why just a few blocks from where I live.
So we asked Dr Why if you could describe what
would it be like if you just went to a
phrenologist to get your head examined. If you went to
see a phrenologists, they would probably feel your head, put
their hands and feel the bump so whatever, and then
(13:24):
would fill out a printed form with all the different
brain organs listed on it. You know, your proclivity for
being generous or for being a criminal, your your ability
to be a good parent. So they would write all
those numbers down like you you hide this low that.
But really they were spending a few minutes with you
(13:48):
and talking with you, and that's really probably what gave
them the greatest insight. So this is very much like
astrology in that or or any any kind of fortune
telling ing or or psychic reading, because they're spending time
with you, so they're kind of reading your personality and
that makes a lot of sense. It's phrenologists for just
(14:10):
basically the supposed psychics, but of the early eight hundreds,
and they were not legit they were not like WHOOPI
Goldberg and ghost that's legit. Yeah, that's he was like
legit being haunted by Patrick Swayze. But going back to phrenology,
I mean, that's that's kind of it's a little dangerous
(14:30):
because if I take you seriously, then I might actually
make life decisions based on what you told me. If
you felt my head and you're like, oh, your criminal
muscle is really big in your head, and be like
I'm going to be so yeah. This kind of begs
the question why would people go if they knew that
(14:51):
they might get an answer they don't. Like, if you
wanted to be a maid. For example, you might be
sent for a character witness, and we would understand this today,
but if you were sent to a phrenologist, they would
read the bumps on the girl's head and decide whether
or not she was likely to be honest, was she
likely to steal things? And she would then be giving
(15:13):
a certificate showing oh, yes, she's you know, she's a
very honest, tressfully girl, and somebody might then hire her
on that basis. You might also go to phrenologists to
find out things about your future. So so if if
your employer was really into phrenology and made you take
(15:35):
a phrenology test before they employed you. Like, this phrenology
report could really affect your life. It could affect your
livelihood like a drug test. Yeah, Like instead of peeing,
instead of peeing in a cop I'm gonna feel your head.
And so they Oh, the phrenologists had a lot of
power with that certificate. They would get out, Wow, that's
(15:56):
that doesn't seem fair. I mean, as someone with an
extremely bumpy head, I would never like, I would never
want to go to a phrenologist to have them be like, wow,
these bumps man, you are you are like, you're definitely
a shoplifter. I feel you. I mean I really I
don't literally fill your head, but I feel what you're saying.
Another thing I found fascinating about phrenologists is that they
(16:18):
didn't just do this with human skulls. The crazy thing
is that they believed that the study of the shape
of the brain wasn't limited to humans. So some of
their books show illustrations of dogs and horses where they
thought that the personality of these creatures, how aggressive they were,
(16:39):
a good races they were, could be read from the
shape of their heads. So it wasn't just humans. They
thought this was the universal new science of the study
of brains that could show you about the ability of anything.
This is blowing my blowing my brain, my my, Yeah,
while I was going to say my misshapen brain, this
(17:01):
is blowing my lumpy, bumpy brain. Because my dog, Dodger
has a very weirdly shaped head. He's got a pointy
top of his noggin like a cone head, and um, like,
I wonder what they would have said about him back
in the day, because I think he's really sweet, and
(17:21):
I wonder if they would have felt to his cone
shaped had n't been like lazy. Actually, research on the
skulls and brains of animals is what ultimately led to
the demise of phrenology. A French physiologist named John Pierre Florence,
so his his research actually messing tinkering with their brains
(17:45):
while they were still awake. By the way, Oh no,
but but this is actually I mean, sure, he probably
probably exploited these poor animals. Peter was not around back then,
but but regardless, he was able to disprove phrenology. And
this was about the eighteen forties. For the rest of
the eighteen hundreds, phrenology was a job that would become obsolete.
(18:09):
In the early days, the people interested in phrenology were
quite mainstream, but as time went on, the phrenologists became
more and more less qualified, I should say, and eventually,
decades later just some itinerant traveling salesman sort of person
(18:32):
in which nobody took it seriously. This is something that
I kind of just went down this rabbit hole. Jumping
ahead to the twentieth century. This is the time of
eugenics and scientific racism, so they used science to back
up their horrible racism, and so related to that was
sort of this They kind of mixed phrenology with other things.
(18:52):
So there was a British phrenologist and he called himself
a phonologist, Bernard Hollander. And there's this Catholic priest from
Belgium named Paul Bouts, and these two lad this revival
of interest into phrenology. So up until now, all this
time we've been talking about phrenology, and I thought it
was just kind of a cute, like whatever, like harmless.
(19:13):
Why I could do little science like astrology back in
the day. But you're saying it had like it has
had some catastrophic effect on on the history of the world. Yeah,
(19:36):
let's bring it back to like okay, so let's bring
it back to the psychics up today. When I was
doing my PhD on the history of phrenology, it was
contacted by a TV program which dealt with psychics and
for some reason they wanted to talk about phrenology. So
they found me and they asked me to go down
(19:58):
to Manchester and appear on their program, and the studio
company provided a head with all the lines on it. Well,
in the green room, the waiting room, these two ladies
saw me sitting next to this head and they were
very curious. They said, oh, what's this about? So I
told them, But as I did so, I could see
(20:19):
in their faces that they were starting to believe. And
then I said, wait, wait, wait, wait wait, sorry, sorry,
this isn't actually real. This is just what people believed
back then. And the expression of their faces I will
never forget. They looked so disappointed, and also they looked
at me as someone rather disagreeable. Why why are you
(20:42):
spoiling the fun like that? And I realized something about phrenology.
If I wanted to, I could tell people this is true,
and it can tell you amazing things about yourself because
people always want to believe these things and they will
pay money for it. Wow, that's deep. It explains so much,
(21:04):
doesn't it. I do believe that, because to know oneself
really is hard work, right, Matt, Like you gotta do
some real soul searching and like searching your your morals.
But it's much easier to be like, well, I am
just the way I am because I have this bumpy
ass head. Well, it's kind of like those personality quizzes
(21:25):
that you see floating around online. Have you ever taken
any of those many? And did you know that they're
all pretty much bull crap? That they actually there's little
scientific basis of the for those as well. I I
appreciate your use of the phrase bull crap. Phrenology was
a stepping sound to modern psychology and so on, but
(21:47):
the practitioners did not take a part in the founding
of modern psychology. Phrenology brought popular interest to the idea
of a scientific way of thinking about the human mind
and personality, but it itself died out. I think you know,
(22:07):
anytime you get to any science, there's gonna be something.
It's gonna be there's gonna be some bumps in the
road of your brain to get to Yeah, to make
that science I respected field where you you actually use
the scientific method. I can see why before psychology, if
(22:29):
phrenology was it, then that you would be you would
be drawn to phrenology. I can totally see that. So
it's probably a good thing that there are no phrenologists now,
or are there? Are there phonologists now? There are no phonologists.
There are plenty of snake oil salesmen, but there are
no phrenologists specifically. So the man who brought phrenology to
(22:50):
the English speaking world was called spurt Time, and he
traveled around Britain lecturing and making converts to his new science.
All it's lea. He traveled in Britain again and then
went to the USA and gave lectures there, made various converts,
and there he tragically died. But the the the Americans
(23:10):
were so impressed. He was very greatly honored there, much
more than he would have been in Britain or Europe,
and his skull was preserved and they founded a phrenological
society in his honor and so on. What So, basically,
(23:30):
you know I'm starting to think this guy started the
science because he had a particularly shaved head, and he
was like, you know what, I'm gonna make this head
the ultimate head. He was insecure about not having bumps.
He was like, you know what, a well rounded head,
that's what you want and I'll prove it to you.
Check out my head. I need to start to my
(23:51):
parents to demand what they were doing with my head
when I Hey, if you want to learn more about
fred ill g our expert today, John Van Why has
written an entire book about it. It's called Phrenology with
a pH Phrenology and the Origins of Victorian Scientific Naturalism,
(24:14):
which sounds like us a little bit of a dry title,
but the book is super cool and John van Why
is a very cool man, So check it out. Tweet
at us at job Salte pod on good old Twitter.
We want to hear all about those jobs today that
are similar to phrenologist. Job Salete is produced for I
Heart Radio by Zealots manufacturing hand Forge Podcast for You.
(24:38):
It's hosted by us Helen Hong That's Me and Matt
beat That's Me. The show was conceived and produced by
Steve'sa Markey Anthony Savini and Jason Elliott. Our editor is
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(25:01):
by Nikki Etour, Katrina Norvell, Alley Kantor, Mangesh Hatti Kadoor,
Will Pearson, Connell, Byrne and Bob Pittman
This is jobsolete. I'm Helen Hong and I'm Matt beat
and today we're talking about the phrenologists. So some of
their books show illustrations of dogs and horses where they
thought that the personality of these creatures could be read
(00:22):
from the shape of the heads. Can the bumps on
your head tell you something about your personality? If I
told you that modern psychology shares the same distant past
with nineteenth century quackery, would it hurt your feelings? What
if someone could tell you all about your personality simply
by looking at your head? Well, that's just what a
(00:44):
phrenologist attempted to do. They believe that people's brains shaped
their skulls. By feeling someone's skull, they could determine that
person's psychological attributes. It's a bunch of quacker Still, people
loved it because you know, we love stuff that tells
(01:06):
us more about ourselves. So in this episode, we're examining
the heads of phrenologists and their patients. So, Helen, if
I were to tell you that you are well rounded,
how would you feel about that? Would you like that?
Was that? Is that a compliment? Yeah? If you said
I was well rounded, you I would take that to
mean like, I work, I play, I have a good
(01:27):
balance in life. Isn't that what that means? Yeah? But
did you know that the term well rounded has roots
in phrenology, like meaning my head is literally well rounded. Yes,
I did not know that. I'm gonna I'm gonna tell you,
uh this, I'm this is I'm so glad we're talking
(01:47):
about this because I have a very bumpy skull and
there was a time where I was like, very self
conscious about it. I don't know what my parents were
doing with my head as when I was a kid,
but I have a lot of lumps and bumps, and
there was a period like in college where I was
like very like I thought I was very punk rock
(02:09):
and I was like, I'm gonna shave my head. And
then I was like, no, that would be a horrible idea.
I've got some weird bumps on my head too, so
don't worry. And I mean it, You're well rounded, So
thank you, thank you very much. If I went to
a phrenologist back in the day and he felt all
the weird bumps, especially on the back of my head,
what might they tell me there are different brain organs
(02:31):
that they believed in like you've seen the old diagrams
where they yeah, I've seen I've seen these like old
timey pictures. It's like a side view of a person's head.
And then it's like when you see like a like
a butcher shop and they show you the cuts of
meat that you can get from the body of the cow.
But this is like someone's brain. So part of this
(02:54):
says sense. Sensitiveness is a section, and then self perfecting
is a section, and then there's reflective is a section.
Can you see what that red part is in the
very back. Oh, that's domestic. Oh see, I have a
very like where I have all the bumps on my head.
(03:16):
According to this diagram, it's the domestic part, which makes
a lot of sense because I cannot cook. Well. Yeah,
one of the parts of the brain organs back there
is friendship. So do you maybe you have a friendship
bump because you're very friendly. I am friendly and I
have good friends, so maybe maybe the bump there and
the friendship part is like a good bump. But then
(03:37):
the bad bump is the domestic thing, which is why
I can barely cook an egg. So I can't believe
this was an actual science though, like people believe this,
like as if this was a doctor, like a medical
professional that you would go to and be like, please
tell me about my personality because of the bumps on
my head. Yeah. No, it started out with Dr Gall,
So it was actually in earnest. It began because was
(04:00):
of science that they're just trying to understand the brain.
Dr Joseph Franz Gall, who is some say is the
founder of phrenology, and he published a book and I'm
going to read this entire title of this book because
it's uh, quite something. The name of the book is
the Anatomy and Physiology of the Nervous System in general
and of the Brain in particular, with observations upon the
(04:22):
possibility of asserting the several intellectual and moral dispositions of
man and animal by the configuration of their heads. And
volume one that volume one, and so yeah, it's just
asking for that in the library. Excuse me, do you
have Yeah? So, so we we spoke with Dr John
(04:46):
van Y and he's a historian of science who told
us about how he got involved with all this and
how he studied the brain. Chronology was a supposed science
of the mind, the science of those days was a
bit up in the air about the human mind. People
(05:08):
will open to the idea that science could explain things
about the human personality. Nowadays we are more familiar with this,
it's not such a shocking idea, but back then it
was very brand new that, wow, science could tell you
who you are, what you are, what you can be,
what you can become. And so at the very beginning
(05:31):
of phrenology, it was a scientific way of describing and
understanding humanity. Wow, don't you think that. Dr gall maybe
had like a couple of kids and he noticed one
of them had a really like pointy shaped bump in
the back and was like, Oh, you're the seed this,
(05:55):
you're the destructive one. And then his other kid had
like a bumpy thing the side and was like, oh,
you're the really sensitive one. Like don't you think it
was that random? Dr Franz Joseph Gaul did exactly that,
you were a correct he was. He was fascinated, Yeah, seriously,
Like I read that. He as a kid, he was
fascinated by all these differences in head shapes like his
(06:18):
his friends, and he would just like, look at it,
Why is your head shaped so differently than mine? You know,
and he was, and so yeah, that's He's like, oh
my god, I was just guessing. I'm just just making
a wild guess and I was spot one. See that
is the crazy thing about wild Like when like in
the beginning days of science, people just made stuff up
because there was just no facts about anything. So they're
(06:41):
just like, have these wild theories, and they're like, we're
going with it a childhood's imagination, you know. So Dr
gall really did believe he was doing serious science, and
he was convinced that the brain was divided up into
different pots, and that each pot was dedicated to a
different function. Furthermore, he was convinced that the bigger the
(07:03):
part of the brain was, the more you could see
it from the outside, so that by feeling someone's head
or looking at their head, you could predict things about
their personality, about their abilities, their proclivities, and so on.
Goal was a bit more serious than his followers. In
later decades, he actually dissected the brains of patients who
(07:27):
died from different problems. So if someone could not speak
and he found a problem that part of the brain,
well he was right. There was something about that part
of the brain that is involved with speech. But he
went on from that to extrapolate that each little part
of the brain was responsible for different things. So, for example,
(07:47):
a lady visited him as a physician and she sort
of fainted and he caught her and felt the back
of her neck was very hot, so he just sided.
Uh huh. Sexual passion is located in the lower part
of the back of the skull. What how did he
(08:10):
get sexual passion from a lady fainting? That's a good question.
I love like she she passed out, Like maybe she
didn't have enough maybe she didn't have enough breakfast, or
like maybe she stood up too fast, or maybe she
just has very low blood pressure like I do, and
she just passed blacked out for a second. He's like, Oh,
(08:32):
she's got the hots for me. Yeah, yeah, I mean,
it's just he was onto something. He really was. Like
it was like he figured out, oh, yeah, this part
of the brain is responsible for speech, and like if
he would have just stopped there, he would have been
taken more seriously in history. But no, I kind of
but that actually makes me more sympathetic towards him, because
(08:54):
back then people nobody knew that, and so he was
right that there is a part of brain that control speech,
and he was like, thus, this part of the brain
must control your horny nous, like, you know, it kind
of makes sense that that you would extropolate like that,
but unfortunately that is not the case. Keep in mind,
(09:17):
this is before psychology became a discipline, and we knew
practically nothing about personality, like even defining what a personality was.
You know, would patients line up to be like, I'm
(09:41):
so depressed, please feel my head. That came a little later,
but yeah, I mean, there was another gentleman by the
name of another Johan Johan spurs Time was an associate
to Dr Gaul. They worked together, but he kind of
they kind of had a falling out and Spursheim kind
(10:01):
of did his own thing that kind of turned phrenology,
you know, more into a spectacle than a science girl.
Never ceased to promote what he thought was his new
signs of the brain, but what it became in the
English speaking world wasn't really his responsibility. Phrenology is only
vaguely connected to his initial teachings. He didn't actually do
(10:26):
phrenology at all. He didn't feel people's bumps and so on.
The man who brought phrenology to the English speaking world.
Was called Joseph Spurzheim. He was a physician and he
gave lectures to very respectable people. He was trying hard
to sell his new revolutionary psychological science based on the head.
(10:48):
There was a huge review of him that utterly demolished
his claims to being respectable, and but it also made
his name because it made him very famous. So this
guy spur Time was like he wanted fame for it, right,
Like he wanted to be like, I want to be
like Freud and come see me and I would tell
(11:08):
you what kind of personality you've got based on the
bumps in your head. Yeah. I went around on tour
all over the world saying, hey, check this out, phrenology.
Would he like, would he go around the world and
and like people would line up to have him feel
their heads. There's no records of that, but I'm sure,
I mean that's plausible for sure. I mean he was
(11:30):
widely criticized. You know, tons of scientists were like, this
guy is wacky, it's nonsense. They didn't care people, They
did not care. They were fascinated by ourselves. This reminds
me of modern day anti vax movement, right, Like, there
was one scientist who published a paper saying, oh, vaccinations
(11:54):
are related to autism and children, and then the entire
scientific community was like no, no, no, no, no, You're
totally whack. But by then it was too late. Like
people this concept that caught on this this one guy
single handedly was like, I am creating phrenology and people
were like, what's phrenology? And he's like, I'll tell you
(12:14):
all about you according to the shape of your head,
and they're like, we like it. They wanted to believe,
just like we want to believe in Bigfoot. It's kind
of like astrology. Like people I think are drawn to
astrology because we want confirmation about things that we already
kind of believe about ourselves. So like, I like reading
my horoscope because I'm like, oh, tell me about the
(12:37):
romantic encounter that I'm going to have on the twenty
two of this month. Like it's exciting and fun, definitely,
but you shouldn't like playing your life around it. Really.
Have you ever been to one of those psychic reading
places like tarot cards I have I have. I've had
my tarot cards read, I've had my palms read. I
don't particularly believe in any of that stuff. I've been
(13:01):
to one just for the fun of it, you know, Like,
there's Why just a few blocks from where I live.
So we asked Dr Why if you could describe what
would it be like if you just went to a
phrenologist to get your head examined. If you went to
see a phrenologists, they would probably feel your head, put
their hands and feel the bump so whatever, and then
(13:24):
would fill out a printed form with all the different
brain organs listed on it. You know, your proclivity for
being generous or for being a criminal, your your ability
to be a good parent. So they would write all
those numbers down like you you hide this low that.
But really they were spending a few minutes with you
(13:48):
and talking with you, and that's really probably what gave
them the greatest insight. So this is very much like
astrology in that or or any any kind of fortune
telling ing or or psychic reading, because they're spending time
with you, so they're kind of reading your personality and
that makes a lot of sense. It's phrenologists for just
(14:10):
basically the supposed psychics, but of the early eight hundreds,
and they were not legit they were not like WHOOPI
Goldberg and ghost that's legit. Yeah, that's he was like
legit being haunted by Patrick Swayze. But going back to phrenology,
I mean, that's that's kind of it's a little dangerous
(14:30):
because if I take you seriously, then I might actually
make life decisions based on what you told me. If
you felt my head and you're like, oh, your criminal
muscle is really big in your head, and be like
I'm going to be so yeah. This kind of begs
the question why would people go if they knew that
(14:51):
they might get an answer they don't. Like, if you
wanted to be a maid. For example, you might be
sent for a character witness, and we would understand this today,
but if you were sent to a phrenologist, they would
read the bumps on the girl's head and decide whether
or not she was likely to be honest, was she
likely to steal things? And she would then be giving
(15:13):
a certificate showing oh, yes, she's you know, she's a
very honest, tressfully girl, and somebody might then hire her
on that basis. You might also go to phrenologists to
find out things about your future. So so if if
your employer was really into phrenology and made you take
(15:35):
a phrenology test before they employed you. Like, this phrenology
report could really affect your life. It could affect your
livelihood like a drug test. Yeah, Like instead of peeing,
instead of peeing in a cop I'm gonna feel your head.
And so they Oh, the phrenologists had a lot of
power with that certificate. They would get out, Wow, that's
(15:56):
that doesn't seem fair. I mean, as someone with an
extremely bumpy head, I would never like, I would never
want to go to a phrenologist to have them be like, wow,
these bumps man, you are you are like, you're definitely
a shoplifter. I feel you. I mean I really I
don't literally fill your head, but I feel what you're saying.
Another thing I found fascinating about phrenologists is that they
(16:18):
didn't just do this with human skulls. The crazy thing
is that they believed that the study of the shape
of the brain wasn't limited to humans. So some of
their books show illustrations of dogs and horses where they
thought that the personality of these creatures, how aggressive they were,
(16:39):
a good races they were, could be read from the
shape of their heads. So it wasn't just humans. They
thought this was the universal new science of the study
of brains that could show you about the ability of anything.
This is blowing my blowing my brain, my my, Yeah,
while I was going to say my misshapen brain, this
(17:01):
is blowing my lumpy, bumpy brain. Because my dog, Dodger
has a very weirdly shaped head. He's got a pointy
top of his noggin like a cone head, and um, like,
I wonder what they would have said about him back
in the day, because I think he's really sweet, and
(17:21):
I wonder if they would have felt to his cone
shaped had n't been like lazy. Actually, research on the
skulls and brains of animals is what ultimately led to
the demise of phrenology. A French physiologist named John Pierre Florence,
so his his research actually messing tinkering with their brains
(17:45):
while they were still awake. By the way, Oh no,
but but this is actually I mean, sure, he probably
probably exploited these poor animals. Peter was not around back then,
but but regardless, he was able to disprove phrenology. And
this was about the eighteen forties. For the rest of
the eighteen hundreds, phrenology was a job that would become obsolete.
(18:09):
In the early days, the people interested in phrenology were
quite mainstream, but as time went on, the phrenologists became
more and more less qualified, I should say, and eventually,
decades later just some itinerant traveling salesman sort of person
(18:32):
in which nobody took it seriously. This is something that
I kind of just went down this rabbit hole. Jumping
ahead to the twentieth century. This is the time of
eugenics and scientific racism, so they used science to back
up their horrible racism, and so related to that was
sort of this They kind of mixed phrenology with other things.
(18:52):
So there was a British phrenologist and he called himself
a phonologist, Bernard Hollander. And there's this Catholic priest from
Belgium named Paul Bouts, and these two lad this revival
of interest into phrenology. So up until now, all this
time we've been talking about phrenology, and I thought it
was just kind of a cute, like whatever, like harmless.
(19:13):
Why I could do little science like astrology back in
the day. But you're saying it had like it has
had some catastrophic effect on on the history of the world. Yeah,
(19:36):
let's bring it back to like okay, so let's bring
it back to the psychics up today. When I was
doing my PhD on the history of phrenology, it was
contacted by a TV program which dealt with psychics and
for some reason they wanted to talk about phrenology. So
they found me and they asked me to go down
(19:58):
to Manchester and appear on their program, and the studio
company provided a head with all the lines on it. Well,
in the green room, the waiting room, these two ladies
saw me sitting next to this head and they were
very curious. They said, oh, what's this about? So I
told them, But as I did so, I could see
(20:19):
in their faces that they were starting to believe. And
then I said, wait, wait, wait, wait wait, sorry, sorry,
this isn't actually real. This is just what people believed
back then. And the expression of their faces I will
never forget. They looked so disappointed, and also they looked
at me as someone rather disagreeable. Why why are you
(20:42):
spoiling the fun like that? And I realized something about phrenology.
If I wanted to, I could tell people this is true,
and it can tell you amazing things about yourself because
people always want to believe these things and they will
pay money for it. Wow, that's deep. It explains so much,
(21:04):
doesn't it. I do believe that, because to know oneself
really is hard work, right, Matt, Like you gotta do
some real soul searching and like searching your your morals.
But it's much easier to be like, well, I am
just the way I am because I have this bumpy
ass head. Well, it's kind of like those personality quizzes
(21:25):
that you see floating around online. Have you ever taken
any of those many? And did you know that they're
all pretty much bull crap? That they actually there's little
scientific basis of the for those as well. I I
appreciate your use of the phrase bull crap. Phrenology was
a stepping sound to modern psychology and so on, but
(21:47):
the practitioners did not take a part in the founding
of modern psychology. Phrenology brought popular interest to the idea
of a scientific way of thinking about the human mind
and personality, but it itself died out. I think you know,
(22:07):
anytime you get to any science, there's gonna be something.
It's gonna be there's gonna be some bumps in the
road of your brain to get to Yeah, to make
that science I respected field where you you actually use
the scientific method. I can see why before psychology, if
(22:29):
phrenology was it, then that you would be you would
be drawn to phrenology. I can totally see that. So
it's probably a good thing that there are no phrenologists now,
or are there? Are there phonologists now? There are no phonologists.
There are plenty of snake oil salesmen, but there are
no phrenologists specifically. So the man who brought phrenology to
(22:50):
the English speaking world was called spurt Time, and he
traveled around Britain lecturing and making converts to his new science.
All it's lea. He traveled in Britain again and then
went to the USA and gave lectures there, made various converts,
and there he tragically died. But the the the Americans
(23:10):
were so impressed. He was very greatly honored there, much
more than he would have been in Britain or Europe,
and his skull was preserved and they founded a phrenological
society in his honor and so on. What So, basically,
(23:30):
you know I'm starting to think this guy started the
science because he had a particularly shaved head, and he
was like, you know what, I'm gonna make this head
the ultimate head. He was insecure about not having bumps.
He was like, you know what, a well rounded head,
that's what you want and I'll prove it to you.
Check out my head. I need to start to my
(23:51):
parents to demand what they were doing with my head
when I Hey, if you want to learn more about
fred ill g our expert today, John Van Why has
written an entire book about it. It's called Phrenology with
a pH Phrenology and the Origins of Victorian Scientific Naturalism,
(24:14):
which sounds like us a little bit of a dry title,
but the book is super cool and John van Why
is a very cool man, So check it out. Tweet
at us at job Salte pod on good old Twitter.
We want to hear all about those jobs today that
are similar to phrenologist. Job Salete is produced for I
Heart Radio by Zealots manufacturing hand Forge Podcast for You.
(24:38):
It's hosted by us Helen Hong That's Me and Matt
beat That's Me. The show was conceived and produced by
Steve'sa Markey Anthony Savini and Jason Elliott. Our editor is
Tommy nicol, our researcher is Amelia Paulka, our production coordinator
is Angie Hymes, and theme music is by the mysterious
Breakmaster Cylinder. Special thanks to our Heart Radio team led
(25:01):
by Nikki Etour, Katrina Norvell, Alley Kantor, Mangesh Hatti Kadoor,
Will Pearson, Connell, Byrne and Bob Pittman
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