Now here's a real curiosity: a pro-phrenology text from 1970! Author Devi Sonero defends Dr. Franz Josef Gall and his "misunderstood science" with no small amount of passion and quite a lot of quibbling - to whit, right off the bat Sonero tells us that the wonderful, scientific, paradigm shifting practice of phrenology is already FULLY ACCEPTED in forensics and psychology, and that even though phrenology is capable of launching us into a golden age of perfected human specimens, it's also not fair to criticize it ... pobody's nerfect, after all!
Hmmm ...
Sonero marshals more than a few luminaries to phrenology's defense, from Horace Mann and Oliver Wendell Holmes to Mark Twain and William Seward. Phrenology goes hand in hand with eugenics, and as we read on through Sonero's text we can see the tragic arc of pseudoscience through the modern era, promises of understanding curdled by our own limited perspectives, as we grasp for some illumination through the haze of our bigotry and blindspots.
Like any good self help title, there's a section profiling celebrities of the time, with Nixon, Hubert Humphrey, King Hussein of Jordan, Burl Ives, and others being analyzed through phrenology. No women are present, notably, nor does Sonero seem much interested in what any prominent female minds thought of phrenology.
In Ted Kennedy's case, his stolid "motor temperament" doesn't seem related to actual motor ability, sadly.
Tower Books, 1970
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