What is Phrenology??

Phrenology- Study of the shape of the skull as an indication of mental abilities and character traits. Franz Joseph Gall stated the principle that each of the innate mental faculties is based in a specific brain region ("organ"), whose size reflects the faculty's prominence in a person and is reflected by the skull's surface.

This basically means that different parts of the brain have a different function that deals with personality and intellectual capabilities. Although this belief has been discredited by many scientists there are still many advocates for it. Below I have a list of the sections that make up the brain of phrenology. Every time I post something on my blog, it’s going to be listed below one of the phrenological sections and will have some type of correlation with it.

DOMESTIC PROPENSITIES

1. AMATIVENESS.- Connubial love; attachment of the sexes to each other; adapted to the continuance of the race.
Excess: Licentiousness and obscenity.
Deficiency: The want of affection, and indifference toward, the opposite sex.

A. UNION FOR LIFE.- Desire to pair; to unite for life; and to remain constantly with the loved one.
Excess: The almost impossibility of transferring our affections from one to another.
Deficiency: Want of conjugal affection.

2. PHILOPROGENITIVENESS. - Parental love; fondness for pets, and the young and helpless generally; adapted to the infantile condition.
Excess: Idolizing and spoiling children by caresses and excessive indulgence; a slave to maternal duties.
Deficiency: Neglect of the young.

3. ADHESIVENESS. -- Love of friends; disposition to associate. Adapted to man's requisition for society and concert of action.
Excess: Excessive fondness for company.
Deficiency: Neglect of friends and society; the hermit disposition.

4. INHABITIVENESS. -- Love of home; desire to live permanently in one place; adapted to the necessity of a home.
Excess: Prejudice against other countries.
Deficiency: A roving disposition.

5. CONTINUITY. [or Concentrativeness] -- Ability to chain the thoughts and feelings to one particular subject until it is completed.
Excess: Prolixity; tediously long stories.
Deficiency: Excessive fondness for variety; has several irons in the fire at once; seldom finishes what has been commenced; very transitive and impatient.

SELFISH PROPENSITIES.

E. VITATIVENESS.- Love of life; youthful vigor even in advanced age.
Excess: Extreme tenacity to life; fear of death.
Deficiency: Letting go, and yielding up life, when one might still live.

6. COMBATIVENESS. -- Self-defense; love for discussion - resistance; the energetic go-ahead disposition.
Excess: A quick, fiery, excitable, fault finding, contentious disposition.
Deficiency: Cowardice; want of courage and self-defense.

7. DESTRUCTIVENESS. - Executiveness; propelling power; the exterminating feeling.
Excess: The malicious, retaliating, revengeful, and murderous disposition.
Deficiency: Tameness; inefficiency, and want of resolution.

8. ALIMENITIVENESS, -- Appetite; enjoyment of food and drink. Excess: Gluttony; gormandizing, intemperance.
Deficiency: Daintiness; want of appetite and relish.

9. ACQUISITIVENESS.-- Economy; the disposition to save and accumulate property.
Excess: Miserly avarice: theft; extreme selfishness.
Deficiency: Prodigality; inability to appreciate the true value of property; lavish and wasteful.

10. SECRETIVENESS. -- Policy; management. Acquisitiveness gets, Secretiveness keeps.
Excess: Cunning; disguise; hypocrisy; intrigue.
Deficiency: Want of tact and restraint; openness; bluntness of expression.

11. CAUTIOUSNESS. -- Prudence; carefulness; watchfulness; solicitude. Excess: Fear; timidity; procrastination.
Deficiency: Careless; blundering; heedless: reckless.

ASPIRING AND GOVERNING ORGANS.

12. APPROBATIVENESS. -- Love of praise; affability; ambition to be approved and promoted.
Excess: Vanity; self-praise; and extreme sensitiveness.
Deficiency: Indifference to public opinion, or to praise or blame; and disregard for personal appearance.

13. SELF-ESTEEM. -- Dignity, manliness; love of liberty; nobleness; an aspiring and commanding disposition.
Excess: Extreme pride; an arrogant, domineering spirit.
Deficiency: Clownishness; servitude, and lack of self-respect and personal appreciation.

14. FIRMNESS. -- Decision; stability; perseverance; fortitude; unwillingness to yield.
Excess: Obstinacy; wilfullness.
Deficiency: Fickle-Minded. No dependence can be placed on one without Firmness -- there is no stability or decision of character in such a one.

MORAL SENTIMENTS.

15. CONSCIENTIOUSNESS. -- Justice; integrity; sense of right and duty, and power to resist temptations.
Excess: Censoriousness; scrupulousness; remorse; self-condemnation; unjust censure.
Deficiency: No penitence for sin, or compunction for wrong-doing; self-justification in all things.

16. HOPE. -- Sense of immortality; expectation; looking into the future with confidence of success.
Excess: Extravagant promises; castle building and anticipation of impossibilities.
Deficiency: Despondency; gloom; melancholy; foreboding evil.

17. SPIRITUALITY. -- Intuition.; perception of the spiritual; the prophetic cast of mind.
Excess: Belief in ghosts, hobgoblins, witchcraft, etc.
Deficiency: Lack of faith; extreme incredulity, like the "doubting Thomas;" dark skepticism.

18. VENERATION. -- Devotion; reverence worship adoration; respect for the aged, authority, and for antiquity.
Excess: Idolatry; superstition; worship of images and idols.
Deficiency: Disregard for things sacred and venerable.

19. BENEVOLENCE. -- Kindness; sympathy; desire to do good; philanthropy; disinterestedness.
Excess: Giving alms to the undeserving; too easily overcome by scenes of suffering.
Deficiency: Extreme selfishness; indifference to suffering; no sympathetic regard for the distressed.

PERFECTIVE FACULTIES;

20. CONSTRUCTIVENESS. -- Mechanical ingenuity; ability to invent; use tools; construct.
Excess: Attempting perpetual motions, and other impossibilities.
Deficiency: Inability to use tools or understand machinery; lack of skill in planning, contriving, and dexterity in mechanism.

21. IDEALITY. -- Love of the perfect and beautiful in nature and art; refinement; ecstasy; poetry.
Excess: Fastidiousness, and a disgust even for the common duties of life.
Deficiency: Roughness; vulgarity; want of taste or refinement; disregard for the beautiful.

B. SUBLIMITY,--Fondness for the grand and sublime, the magnificent, the wild and romantic, as Niagara Falls, mountain Scenery.
Excess: Extravagant representations; magnified statements; fondness for tragedies.
Deficiency: Indifference to the grandeurs of nature; hears the thunder and views the terrific lightning without emotion.

22. IMITATION. -- Power of imitating; copying; working after a pattern; attitude for different pursuits.
Excess: Mimicry; servile imitation.
Deficiency: The ability to conform to the manners and customs of society.

D. AGREEABLENESS. -- Blandness and persuasiveness of manner, expression, and address; pleasantness; insinuation; the faculty of saying even disagreeable things pleasantly.
Excess: Affectation; blarney.
Deficiency: Want of ease of manner; inability to make one's self agreeable or acceptable when among strangers.

23. MIRTHFULNESS. -- Wit; fun; playfulness; humor; ability to joke, make fun, and enjoy a hearty laugh.
Excess: Ridicule and sport of the infirmities and misfortunes of others.
Deficiency: Extreme gravity and seriousness; indifference to all joyous play, amusements, and hilarity.

PERCEPTIVE FACULTIES.

24. INDIVIDUALITY. -- The desire to see; ability to acquire knowledge by observation; the looking faculty.
Excess: An insatiable desire to see; a tendency to stare; prying curiosity; extreme inquisitiveness.
Deficiency: A want of practical knowledge derived from personal observation; inability to notice external objects.

25. FORM. -- Memory of shapes, forms, faces the configuration of things; aids in spelling, drawing , modeling, etc.; when large, one seldom forgets countenances. Deficiency: A poor memory of faces, shapes, etc.

26. SIZE. -- Ability to judge of size, length, breadth, height, depth, distance, and weight of bodies by their size; of measuring angles, perpendiculars, etc.; ability to judge accurately of the proportion which one body holds to another.
Deficiency: Unable to judge by the eye between small and large; seldom judges correctly the dimensions of an object.

27. WEIGHT. -- Gravity; ability to balance one's self, required by a marksman, sailor, or horseman; also the ability to "carry a steady hand."
Excess: Excessive desire to climb or go aloft unnecessarily.
Deficiency: Inability to keep one's balance; liability to stumble.

28. COLOR. -- Judgment of the different shades, hues, and tints, in paintings; the rainbow, flowers, and all things possessing color, will be objects of interest.
Excess: Extravagant fondness for colors; a desire to dress with many colors.
Deficiency: Color blindness; inability to distinguish or appreciate colors, or their harmony.

29. ORDER -- Method; system; arrangement; neatness and convenience. "A place for things, and everything in place."
Excess: More nice than wise; spends too much time in fixing; greatly annoyed by disorder; old maidish.
Deficiency: Slovenliness; carelessness about the arrangement of books, tools, papers, etc.; seldom knows where to find anything, although recently used.

30. CALCULATION. -- Ability to reckon figures by mental arithmetic; to add, subtract, divide, multiply; cast accounts, etc.
Excess: A disposition to count everything.
Deficiency: Inability to understand the most simple numerical relations.

31. LOCALITY. -- Recollection of places; the geographical faculty; desire to travel and see the world.
Excess: A roving, unsettled disposition.
Deficiency: Inability to remember places; liability to get lost; can not tell the points of the compass.

LITERARY FACULTIES.

32. EVENTUALITY. -- Memory of events; the love of history, anecdotes, facts, items of all sorts; a kind of walking newspaper.
Excess: Constant storytelling to the neglect duties.
Deficiency: Forgetfulness; a poor memory of events.

33. TIME.-- Recollection of the lapse of time; day and date; ability to keep the time in music, march and dancing; to be able to carry the time of day in the memory.
Excess: Drumming with the feet and fingers, much to the annoyance of others.
Deficiency: Inability to remember dates.

34. TUNE. -- Love of music, and perception of harmony; power to compose music.
Excess: A continual singing, humming, or whistling, regardless of propriety.
Deficiency: Inability to comprehend the charms of music, or distinguish one tune from another.

35. LANGUAGE. --Ability to express ideas verbally or in writing, and to use such words as will best express our meaning; memory of words.
Excess: Volubility of expression; great talkativeness; more words than thoughts.
Deficiency: Extreme hesitation in conversation; inability to select appropriate language for the expression of ideas.

REASONING FACULTIES.

36. CAUSALITY. -- Ability to reason and comprehend first principles; the "why and wherefore" faculty; originality.
Excess: Too much theory, without bringing the mind to a practical bearing. Such a mind may be philosophic, but neither practical nor scientific.

37. COMPARISON. -- Inductive reasoning; ability to classify, and apply analogy to the discernment of principles; to compare, discriminate, and illustrate; to draw inferences, etc.
Excess: "Splitting hairs," or unnecessary criticism.
Deficiency: Inability to perceive the relation of things.

C. HUMAN NATURE. -- Intuition, discernment of character; perception of the motives at the first interview. Excess: prying into the character of another to the exclusion of duties, and at the sacrifice of courtesy and politeness. Deficiency: Misplaced confidence; supposing everybody honest.