Anatomist Franz Joseph Gall Phrenology Essay

Anatomist Franz Joseph Gall piggybacked off the idea of physiognomy and came up with phrenology which is the science of the mind. The main thought of phrenology was that just like with the idea of physiognomy Gall believed that a certain area of your brain function deals with a certain physical feature. The main assumptions of phrenology that were made were that the skull was able to tell us something about the brain. In terms of measuring the skull Gall was able to claim that the bigger the skulls was the more likely that subject was to having a higher mental fuction.Another assumption of phrenology was that the brain has a limited number of functions. Although we now know that through neural plasticity certain areas of the brain are capable of forming other functions that it would normally not it was thought that brain only had a specific amount. Lastly there is the assumption that these functions were located in different places within the brain. The assumption that by measuring the skull Gall could proclaim the shape of the brain proved to be inaccurate but during this time his theory proved to
be popular. The reason for Gall’s idea of Phrenology becoming so popular during his time was due to the fact that Gall’s reasoning behind phrenology made sense.
He made people believe traits were measurable by the shape of the head and by localization within the brain of a certain mental function. Also people were more attracted to the idea of having traits that were thought to be innate. If people with similar features have similar traits within that group then they were more likely to believe this idea behind phrenology. As psychology evolved Pierre Flourens was able to discredit Gall’s idea of how phrenology works and through this psychology as a whole was able to progress through methods such as ablation to better understand the mental function of the brain and what certain areas of the brain are responsible for specific behaviors and functions that subjects are able to
display. Although phrenology is now known to be a pseudoscience it has helped make a lot of important contributions in the field of psychology. Even though Gall was not entirely correct with claiming that physical features have a connection with different mental functions he did open the door to researchers being able to use scientific tools like PE scans to learn about the localization of the mental function. Because of phrenology researchers have dug deeper into the concept of localization in the brain and the idea that within certain regions of the brain there are different mental functions that can be localized. Phrenology has influence and contributed to the field of psychology by giving us information about the brain that might not have been known for years later or even at all. The link of Gall measuring the skull to shape the brain suggesting that the bigger the skull of the subject the high mental functioning that subject has allowed researchers to delve deep into that concept and focus more on the complexity of the brain as a whole.