Practical Phrenology As Psychological Counselling In The 19th Century

"Practical" phrenology? What was there a clinical vs. applied phrenological war going on? Heh, heh. Ah, phrenology... dismissed as quakery not as long ago as you'd think.

My history of psychology course focuses on the mid-nineteenth to mid-twentieth centuries, and so we get to see how parapscychology has run parallel to and plagued scientific psychology from this time. It's hard to believe that once-upon-a-time, people who called themselves psychologists were actively engaged in the pursuit of helping people contact dead relatives and helping them find suitable jobs and spouses based on skull bumps or facial features alone.

Scientific psychologists have had a really rough go of it, it seems. Getting people to take you seriously as a science is rather difficult when your colleagues are making a case that we can see your future by consulting some chicken bones.

One might think that society is wise to this snake oil solicited by the pop parapsychologists of today. But is that really true? If you think that the general public is too smart to be taken in by such blatent BS, you might want to consider:

Psychology Today - a popular magazine that reports on issues of general interest in psychology. You could say that this magazine is an ambassador for the science to the general population. It's articles are mostly superficial takes on a few recent or classic studies, thinned out with a lot of opinion pieces. It is written mostly by journalists as opposed to psychologists, but cites reputable sources. Check out the back section of the magazine however, to find countless ads for instant weight loss and, yup, PSYCHICS. Sigh... Foks, just because it has the same root word, doesn't mean it's a science.

Also consider, if you will, how many people you know who believe, and I mean genuinely BELIEVE in astrology, palm reading (not too far off from measuring one's skull), or some version of ghosts/angels.

I'm afraid I won't be forming a terribly cogent thought about all of this this week. I don'dt have any huge reveal for you all here. Just that I thought this was interesting. And as I spend my week delving into the socio-historical context of phrenology, I'm interested in considering its modern-day equivelents.

And, I'm mindful, though many of these "sciences" were proven utter hocus-pocus... there is one that wasn't: hypnosis. Something that has actually been proven effective as a magical answer to pain and other problems. Who knows? If we can genuinely split our pain channels so that a person can have an appendix removed with no anesthetic other than a talented hypnotherpist... well, who knows? Maybe there are clues to personality, fate and free will, compatibility, and even the spirit hidden in the folds of our skin, or between our toes. Maybe we are more likely to find them in the folds of the cortex? The only thing I know for sure is that we don't know enough to know yet.

Exciting times ahead.