Question

Identify the physiologist whose research you believe to be the most important for the future discipline of psychology. Explain.

2. Why do you think phrenology is covered in the text when it was discredited and is more of a pseudoscience than real science?

Answer 1

Developed by physicist Frank Gall, Phrenology emerged as a popular discipline about the study of the human mind through an assessment of the structural arrangement of the brain. However, phrenology moved beyond the empirical claims of science and was more of what critics called a pseudoscience. Phrenology involved linking bumps on a person's head to certain aspects of the individual's personality and character. Using the measurements of the heads of prisoners, mental asylum and hospital patients,Gall argued that the structural features of the skull corresponded to the overdevelopment of certain areas of the brain in the population of the socially deviants compared to the average population. Thus, even if it happened to make hypothetical and dramatic assumptions about the brain and the mental life, Phrenology marked a historical landmark in Psychology for it paved way for the study of the functional influence of the brain on personality characteristics and complex behaviours which could explain the differences in criminal offences and normal behaviour. An introduction to phrenology in this course is thus helpful in creating awareness about the evolution within physiological psychology of the sophistication of techniques and understanding of the physiological phenomena.