Preface To In One's Head: Phrenology

(Image from here.)

Phrenology is/was (do people still believe it? I bet there are some) "a pseudomedicine primarily focused on measurements of the human skull, based on the concept that the brain is the organ of the mind, & that certain brain areas have localized, specific functions or modules."  That's from the Wikipedia.  It's a testimony to how silly it is that I've never met anyone who believes it or has even shown an interest in it.

This is in sharp contrast to both tarot card reading & astrology, two things I came across casually in my adolescence that I found mildly interesting but discovered, in college, that people really, really believed in.  I happened upon a tarot deck in my first year away from home, memorized what the cards were supposed to mean, & would do readings for my roommates.  I wouldn't say I got good at it, but I did notice that they took my "predictions" very seriously, to the point that one of them got anxious because it seemed like something bad was going to happen to him.  I stopped doing it soon after that - I quickly saw that I was using the information I knew about them to craft their future.  I never believed I was harnessing some kind of mystical power.

Astrology has a stronger pull (that's an astrology pun) on people, especially a couple women I was very fond of in my post-college days in Austin.  One of them runs an astrology business these days I think, & would probably be offended that I am lumping it in (that's a phrenology pun) with phrenology.  I remain unconvinced by it, & never really took it all that seriously, & I am surprised that people are still into it, but I do appreciate that if you really, really get into astrology, you get to learn fascinating skill which betray its astronomical roots, like using precision measurements of planetary positions to make charts.

There's another observation I often make about astrology, which is that it seems to me especially attractive to women for some reason.  Whenever I've met a man who is really into it, a little prodding leads him to confess it was a woman he knew (often one he had a relationship with) who indoctrinated him.  I should look to see if my own experience is something that others have noted.

Anyway, I do wonder why no one I came across ever really, really got into phrenology.  I think it would have been fun, or perhaps just creepy, had I known about it, to be the guy at the party that put his hands all over people's heads & told them that the part of their head that controls, say, their mastery of language, had weird bumps that told me they'd be good at Romance languages.  In those impressionistic days of college, I'm sure I would've convinced some folks there was something to it, & I wouldn't have had to really memorize what a card did or what Jupiter being in a constellation meant.

& yeah, I know phrenology was about what was on one's head, not in one's head.  But it was in my head just now so I thought I'd write about it.