Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Phrenology'

This thesis argues that phrenology shaped the defence argument in the McNaughtan trial. The role of this now-discredited science exemplifies the negotiation of scientific, legal and lay knowledge in the early nineteenth century, at a time when science was challenging the primacy of lay understandings of insanity. Phrenological ideas allowed the defence to privilege medical opinion over lay opinion, and propose a model of the mind that could account for McNaughtan’s insanity. This was possible because the medical and professional communities accepted some elements of the science. They applied these principles when explaining and verifying insanity in a courtroom setting.

The experiments presented in this thesis were designed to examine a number of issues raised by previous experiments employing the dual task paradigm to investigate cerebral organization. Whereas experiment one failed to support previous findings, experiments two and three did reveal that concurrent verbal tasks interfered more with right-hand tapping than with left-hand tapping in right-handed subjects. Secondly left-handed subjects did not show the same pattern of interference as right-handed subjects and, thirdly, visuo-spatial tasks did not interfere in the same way with single finger pressing as verbal ones. Close examination of both previous and present results revealed two important issues that warranted further examination. Firstly the role task difficulty plays in determining the amount and kind of interference observed in motor performance and, secondly the extent to which the locus of interference is motor-motor in nature. The results of experiments four, five, six and seven indicated that the level of task demands may play only a minor role in determining the pattern of interference generated. Furthermore, although interference does not appear to arise solely during responding processes, overt speech is more interfering than covert speech. Experiments eight and nine failed to show that this difference stemmed from the necessity to access the phonological properties of the words. A general discussion of the results concluded that proper evaluation of the theoretical explanations of interference and facilitation effects is not possible until the mechanism of such effects is understood. Furthermore, methodological problems and the assumptions underlying the use of the dual-task paradigm were examined, and it was concluded that it is extremely difficult to relate the results of combined motor and cognitive performance to cerebral organization.

This thesis looks at the criminals of Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist as a criminal type: impoverished, unattractive people who lack family roots. It establishes connections between the criminal characters themselves as well as the real-world conditions which inspired their stereotypes. The conditions of poverty and a lack of family being tied to criminality is founded in reality, while the tendency for criminals to be unattractive is based on social bias and prejudice. It also identifies conflicting ideologies in the prevailing Victorian mindset that begins to emerge as a result of research into the criminal type.

An analysis of the production of the University of New Orleans thesis film, Shape Matters, a period film, written and directed by Thomas Baumgardner. The film is concerned with the practice of Phrenology and follows a nervous preacher who becomes entangled in the bizarre "science" and a local murder. This paper describes the director's experiences and details the challenges encountered, and lessons learned, from attempting to bring the project to fruition.

Thesis advisor: Rosemarie Bodenheimer
By focusing on the predominance of semi-conscious and unconscious states in both nineteenth-century British literature and psychology, this dissertation outlines the recognizable and multi-faceted relation existing between literature and psychology. Besides their obvious prevalence in sensation novels later in the period, these states, which I call ecstatic states, appeared in many of the most prominent, canonical novels of the nineteenth century. Prominent Victorian psychologists, such as Robert MacNish, John Abercrombie, James Cowles Prichard, and Forbes Winslow among others, connected ecstatic states, including fiction reading, to insanity, since these states exhibited an underlying component of self-loss in which the boundaries of the conscious self--time, will, and identity--dissolved. They were a troubling, yet common phenomenon of the mind that preoccupied the entire spectrum of middle class Victorian intellectual life--businessmen, novelists, literary critics, and psychologists--and these states are still fascinating neuroscientists today. This study shows how the Victorian medical practice of moral management sought to control these states by calling for the regulation and often the confinement of the imagination. What began as a method used solely in the insane asylum came to undergird much of Victorian life, including the many hostile reactions to the addictive and class-leveling powers of the novel. My dissertation emphasizes how certain Victorian novelists not only took up the role of psychologists themselves but also resisted and revised accepted psychology within their novels. Charlotte Brontë, Charles Dickens, and George Eliot reacted in distinctive ways against the oppressive tenets of moral management. My readings of the novels Jane Eyre, Villette, Hard Times, Our Mutual Friend, The Mill on the Floss, and Romola show how it is the unrelenting regulation of the imagination that creates the various forms of mania and becomes ultimately devastating to the self. For these novelists, the dismantling of conscious thought and will, so alarming to the advocates of moral management, formed the crux of personal growth, moral choice, and ethical responsiveness
Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2013
Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences
Discipline: English

Nos últimos anos, temos nos deparado com a difusão maciça e a popularização crescente de descrições biológicas para aspectos outrora pensados como mentais, sociais, ou relacionais. Visível em diversas arenas leigas e científicas, esta tendência freqüentemente elege o cérebro como o órgão privilegiado da sua atenção. A cada semana é divulgada uma nova localização cerebral correlacionada os mais variados aspectos comportamentais e ou de personalidade. Acompanhando este movimento, é notável o esforço intelectual e financeiro despendido nos últimos anos no campo da saúde mental, no sentido de fazer avançar pesquisas cujo foco central é a descoberta das bases neurobiológicas dos transtornos mentais. Esta tendência apontaria na direção de uma fusão entre a psiquiatria e a neurologia em uma disciplina única, de teor fisicalista, chamada por alguns de cerebrologia. Dentre os acontecimentos que serviram de alicerce para a legitimação e a popularização desta tendência, o desenvolvimento nas últimas décadas de novas técnicas e tecnologias de visualização médica, como a tomografia por emissão de pósitrons (PET scan) e a ressonância magnética funcional (fMRI), foi fundamental. Elas permitiram a construção de imagens das mais diversas categorias nosográficas construídas no campo psiquiátrico, veiculando tacitamente uma série de pressupostos e promessas. Malgrado o imaginário cultural sustentado por estas tecnologias e todo o esforço despendido nas últimas décadas no sentido de se tentar localizar os marcadores biológicos dos transtornos psiquiátricos, não há, até o presente momento, nenhum resultado conclusivo que autorize o diagnóstico por imagem de nosografias como a esquizofrenia, a depressão, e muito menos o jogo patológico. Apesar de todo o alarde midiático e dos montantes milionários direcionados para pesquisas nesta área, os resultados concretos obtidos até agora não estão livres das mais ferozes controvérsias. Entretanto, ainda que estejamos muito longe da construção de mapas precisos para as perturbações mentais é espantoso o poder de convencimento que as neuro-imagens comportam na atualidade. Os scans são exibidos como verdades visuais, ou fatos acerca das pessoas e do mundo, numa proporção muito superior aos dados que apresentam. Alguns críticos chamam este aspecto de neurorealismo, ou de retórica da auto-evidência. A intenção deste trabalho é problematizar o poder persuasivo que as neuro-imagens detém na contemporaneidade, especialmente quando utilizadas com a finalidade diagnóstica no campo da saúde mental. Se estas imagens transmitem uma ideia de neutralidade, transparência imediata e auto-evidência, este trabalho almeja inseri-las num contexto sócio-histórico, a partir do qual puderam adquirir sentido, familiaridade e valor de verdade. O ponto de partida é o de que elas estão localizadas no cruzamento de dois movimentos históricos distintos: o das ilustrações médicas, em sua relação com a produção de conhecimento objetivo; e o das pesquisas acerca da localização no córtex cerebral de comportamentos complexos e traços de personalidade. Além de estabelecer algumas condições históricas de possibilidade para a emergência de um neo-localizacionismo cerebral, mediado pelas novas tecnologias de imageamento, pretende-se enfatizar algumas descontinuidades com projetos anteriores e marcar a influência do contexto cultural da atualidade para o sucesso e poder persuasivo deste tipo de tecnologia.
Lately, we have seen the popularization and massive difusion of biological descriptions to aspects that we used to consider as social or mentaly based. Notable in scientific and lay environments, this tendency frequently chooses the brain as the privileged organ of its attention. Every week, a new cerebral locality, related to behavioral and personality traces, is publicized. Along with this movement, it is remarkable the intellectual and financial efforts undertaken in the last years in the domaine of mental health, to advance the researchs that aim to discover the neurobiological basis of the mental disorders. This tendency points to the fusion between psychiatry and neurology in only one discipline, phisicalistically based, sometimes called brainology. One of the most important events that served as a base to the legitimation and the popularization of this trend was the development, in the last decades, of the new medical imaging techniques and technologies, like the Positron Emission Tomography (PET scan) and the Functional Magnetical Ressonance Imaging (fMRI). These technologies allowed the image construction of almost every nosografic category made up in the psychiatric domaine, transmitting implicitly many assumptions and promises. Notwithstanding the cultural imaginary sustaned by these technologies and the efforts undertaken to localize the biological markers of psychiatric disorders, there isnt, until the present time, any conclusive result that entitle the imaging diagnostic of nosographies like schizophrenia, depression, and the pathogical gambling. In spite of the mediatic attention and the milionaires amounts destined to researchs in this field, the concret results obtained until now arent free from tough controversies. However, even considering we are very far from the construction of accurate maps for the mental disfunctions, its incredible the power of conviction that neuroimages have nowadays. The scans are exhibited as visuable truths, or facts concerning the people and the world, in a proportion much superior to the data they present. Some critics call such an aspect neurorealism, or rhetoric of auto-evidence. The aim of this work is to question the persuasive power acquired by the neuroimages nowadays, especially when addopted to diagnostic aims in the field of mental health. If these images pass the idea of neutrality, immediate transparence and auto-evidence, this work intends to include them in a social-historical context, through wich they have obtained meaning, familiarity, and the status of truth. The point of depart is their localization in the crossing of two different historical movements: that of the medical illustrations, in its relation to the production of objective knowledge; and that of the researches about the localization, in the brain cortex, of complex behaviours and personality traits. Besides the establishment of some historical conditions of possibylity to the emergence of a cerebral neo-localizationism, this work pretends to stress some diferences in relation to preceding localizationist projects, and to emphasize the influence of the contemporary cultural context to the success e persuasive power of this kind of technologie.

O presente trabalho se dedica a realizar uma incursão na história do pensamento criminológico a fim de contribuir para um mapeamento das justificativas do surgimento de certas normas penais, algumas ainda em vigor, e o mapeamento das razões da edificação de muitas instituições jurídicas e administrativas, algumas ainda em funcionamento. A análise tradicional da biografia da Criminologia costuma, todavia, omitir certas ideias que deveriam ser integradas ao percurso da sua vertente científica. Vários são os autores que apontam para a origem da trajetória cientificista criminológica na Europa do fim do século XIX. No entanto, quando se aprofunda na identificação das raízes das referências positivistas na implicação Medicina-Pessoa-Sociedade da era moderna e sua influência na seara criminológica, percebesse que uma tímida Criminologia já estava nascendo no início do século XIX com os estudos sobre a fisiologia cerebral. Em meio a um processo político amplo de fortalecimento do Estado e da burguesia, dá-se a formação de um aparato médico-jurídico, pelo qual se demonstra a tentativa de reconhecimento da autoridade médica para além dos limites legítimos da atividade. Preocupa-se, portanto, em chamar a atenção para o movimento de medicalização do criminoso por uma leitura histórica do impacto do cientificismo cerebral na esfera criminal. O material desenvolvido pela Frenologia e, depois, pela Antropologia Criminal, é emblemático dessa onda cientificista do século XIX, na qual as pesquisas cerebrais imprimem a visão sobre a etiologia do crime a partir de seus marcadores biológicos. Mais particularmente, atenta-se para a recepção das teorias de Franz Joseph Gall e de Cesare Lombroso sobre o cérebro (do) criminoso na criminologia do século XIX, através da discussão da noção de livre arbítrio, do debate sobre retribuição versus tratamento, bem como das propostas de medidas preventivas em caso de tendências à violência e das políticas públicas voltadas para o cerceamento de direitos em nome de uma suposta defesa social.
The current work aims at performing an analysis of the history of criminological reasoning in order to contribute to an overview that justifies the appearance of certain criminal rules, some of them still ongoing, together with the mapping of the reasons for the building of many juridical and administrative institutions, some of which are still functioning. Traditional analysis of the genesis of Criminology is accustomed to, nevertheless, omitting certain ideas, which ought to be integrated into the current scientific scope. There are several authors who point to the origin of the scientificist trajectory in Europe, at the end of the 19th- century. However, when we go deeper into the identification as to the roots of the positivist references in the implication Medicine-Person-Society of modern times and its influence on the criminological domain, we realize that a timid Criminology was about to be born at the beginning of the 19th -century, following the studies on brain physiology. Amidst the vast political process of the strengthening of the State and the bourgeoisie, a medical-juridical apparatus is originated, through which the attempt of recognition of the medical authority is demonstrated, beyond the legitimate limits of the activity. It is concerned, therefore, in drawing attention to the criminals medicalisation movement by means of a historical reading of the impact of brain scientificism in the criminal sphere. The material developed by Phrenology and, afterwards, by Criminal Anthropology, is a significant sign of such a scientificist trend in the 19th-century, in which brain researchers put forward their vision on the etiology of the crime from its biologic markers. More particularly, there is an emphasis on the reception of the theories of Franz Joseph Gall and Cesare Lombroso about the criminal brain in 19th-century Criminology, through discussion of the notion of free will, the debate on retribution versus treatment, as well as the proposition of preventive measures in cases of tendencies to violence and public policies towards controlling rights in the name of a socalled social defense.

The life of Elisha P. Hurlbut (1807-1889) has been mostly forgotten since his death. This examination of his personal journal, which he wrote from 1858 to 1887, brings back to the forefront an influential figure that lived most of his life in and around Albany, New York. Prior to beginning the journal, Hurlbut was a lawyer and then a Supreme Court justice in New York. Seven years after retiring from public life in 1851, he commenced work on the journal that provided a detailed social and political commentary on New York, the United States, and the world as a whole. While the journal offers detailed insight into many specific subjects, this thesis focuses on Hurlbut’s views and expertise in civil rights, religion, and phrenology. This body of work will demonstrate how he shaped arguments for equality for all people, despised the influence of organized religion, and was a leader in phrenological studies.

Between the mid-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, the cranial science of phrenology shone as a popular practice in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand, mediating between bodies. Phrenologists offered private readings and staged chaotic performances for diverse audiences in what ultimately constituted commentary on the malleability of identity in the colonies.

The first half of the nineteenth century saw the introduction of phrenology to the United States. First developed in Europe by Franz Joseph Gall and Johann Spurzheim, phrenology was the theory that the mental characteristics of an individual were reflected in the shape of their brain and skull. Phrenologists believed that the brain was divided into numerous organs which were each responsible for a different mental faculty, roughly two-thirds of which were controlled what would today be regarded as emotions. By mid-century it had become a popular science within the United States, with numerous supporters and a vast array of publications on the topic. Despite this, phrenology has been largely absent in histories of emotion of this period, and histories of phrenology have rarely explicitly addressed how emotion was understood within the framework of the science. This thesis analyses how emotions were conceptualised within phrenology, and through this the role phrenologists believed emotion played in individual life and nineteenth-century American society. The early nineteenth century saw widespread socio-political change in the United States. The expansion of suffrage to all white men meant the ability to participate in formal political processes became more explicitly drawn along the lines of race and gender, and the question of what role women and non-whites were to play in American society became a pressing concern. As a professedly empirical science, phrenology had the potential to both reinforce and dispute these boundaries by making comparisons between white and non-white, and male and female brains. Examining phrenological books, periodicals and lectures shows that these comparisons often highlighted the prevalence or lack of certain emotions across race and gender lines, focusing particularly on the sentiments—the group of organs seen by phrenologists to be responsible for higher, moral emotions. Phrenological texts make clear the central role emotion was seen to play in maintaining the American republic, and the potential for emotions to act as a marker for inclusion or exclusion from it.
Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Adelaide, School of Humanities, 2021

In this essay, I examine how the nineteenth-century cultural phenomenon of phrenology is made apparent in the abolitionist arguments of Rebecca Harding Davis’s “Blind Tom” (1862), a nonfiction character sketch of the popular blind slave and idiot savant-musician. The first portion of my argument constructs a probable reality that allows for the influence of Davis’s exposure to phrenology first as a student, then later as a writer. I then perform a critical assessment of “Blind Tom,” revealing how Davis relies upon phrenological terminology, such as that employed by famous phrenologist Orson Squire Fowler, in her descriptions of the musician’s physical appearance in order to call for his freedom, from not only slavery on the Georgian planation he called home, but also, from being paraded as an sideshow and a spectacle before audiences across America.

This dissertation examines the cultural role of three controversial yet popular heterodox sciences of nineteenth century Spain: phrenology; animal magnetism and hypnosis; and spiritualism or spiritism. It assesses the relationship between the development of phrenology and early Catalanism, the connection of animal magnetism and hypnosis to both Catholicism and emergent medical discourse, and the flourishing of spiritism in the context of the production of a national genealogy. The project draws on myriad sources like literary works, daily newspapers, specialized journals, dissemination pamphlets, and case histories, to argue that these heterodox sciences were an integral part of the social and cultural history of the nineteenth century. It rethinks not just the relationship between science and cultural production that scholars like James Secord, Gillian Beer, and others have studied but also what we understand as nineteenth-century scientific heterodoxies, seeking to understand them as a broad socio-cultural phenomenon in the way they helped construct cultural practices of the time. Alternative Presence contends that phrenology, animal magnetism and hypnosis, and spiritism expanded rhizomatically away from the confines of canonical institutions and yet contributed to early political regionalism, practices of medical and religious healing, and national historiography. To study such mediations, I look both at these sciences’ main actors — heterogeneous individuals and groups who disseminated them — and at a series of narrative and expressive strategies visible in the discourse through which they flourished. As the term “science” evolved and gained social authority through the appearance of increasingly demarcated fields of expertise, heterodox sciences’ tessellated networks lost ground and were ultimately relegated to the sphere of pseudoscience or popular belief. However, during their lifetime they served to generate alternative ideas of the subject and the nation. Their crucial role in the nineteenth-century Spanish cultural field has been ripe for rediscovery, and this dissertation probes their imbrication with mainstream ways of imagining the paths to modernity.