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Weekly UpdatesIt is an indisputable but conveniently overlooked fact that trait-and-factor career counseling was widely practiced in the United States at least 35 years before Frank Parsons provided this service and that the practitioners were phrenologists. This article proposes the reasons why career counseling arose in phrenology at that time and argues that the eminent phrenologist Nelson. Sizer, rather than Frank Parsons, is the real founder of the field.
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In his history of career counseling, Pope (2000) suggested that the field of vocational guidance (subsequently renamed career counseling) began in America in about 1890, primarily in response to the occupational dislocation brought about by the societal forces of industrialization, urbanization, and immigration. Although this explanation is generally accepted in the profession today, it must be noted that these three societal forces had been operating in American society since the end of the Civil War, 25 years before 1890 (Dulles & Dnbofsky, 1984). This article argues that career counseling existed in America as early as the 1870s in response to these societal forces and that the first practitioners of this field were phrenologists. In his History of Vocational Guidance: Origins and Early Development, Brewer (1942) credited Frank Parsons, rather than Lysander Salmon Richards, with founding vocational guidance. One of Brewer's principal reasons for awarding the title to Parsons, despite Richards's book being published before Parsons's book, was that "[Parsons] refrained from the use of phrenology and other false methods, in spite of their popularity during his entire lifetime" (Brewer, 1942, p. 64). For more than 60 years, the field has accepted Brewer's conclusion; however, a reading of both Richards's (1881) and Parsons's (1909) books is enlightening. Although Richards included phrenology as one of a number of sources of vocational assessment data, he clearly recognized its limitations:
On the other hand, in Choosing a Vocation, Parsons unequivocally stated, "While I am questioning the applicant about his probable health, education, reading, experience, etc., I carefully observe the shape of his head, the relative development above, before, and behind the ears, his features and expression, ..." (p. 21). Again, he asserted:
These statements are indistinguishable from Richards's pronouncement, "If the head is large back of the ears, the animal propensities are large" (p. 64). Animal was the term used by phrenologists to indicate the area around and behind the ears, where the organs of destructiveness, secretiveness, and combativeness were located. These characteristics were viewed as shared by animals, as opposed to other uniquely human organs, such as those of benevolence, conscientiousness, and hope, which were located in other parts of the skull (see O. S. Fowler's 1869 diagram of the grouping of organs as reproduced in Colbert, 1998, p. 10). Thus, it seems that by Brewer's criterion, Parsons should also be disqualified from laying claim to the title of founder of the field.
It is the thesis of this article that the roots of career counseling lie within phrenology, and the best candidate for the tide of founder of career counseling is neither Parsons nor Richards but is the eminent phrenologist Nelson Sizer. Moreover, this proposition is something that the field should view with equanimity, rather than as a "dirty little secret." Brewer was clearly aware of Sizer's book because he listed it as the first item of his chronological list of early inspirational vocational success books (Brewer, 1942, p. 299). However, Brewer apparently disqualified it as a contender for the title of first book on vocational guidance on the basis of its use of phrenology. It should be noted that throughout this article, I have not corrected the sexist language used by Sizer, Richards, and Parsons because it reflects the culture of the period.
Phrenology
As Leahey and Leahey (1983) pointed out, the history of science actively excludes events and theories that in retrospect seem improper or embarrassing to the image of science as a steadily progressing endeavor. In some instances, individuals' foibles are merely suppressed. For example, Newton wrote more on alchemy than on physics, and Darwin espoused the doctrine of inheritance of acquired characteristics. Nonetheless, these activities have been conveniently edited out, and both men are regarded as great scientists. In other cases, however, the individual is pilloried for his or her "pseudoscientific" research or theoretical stance. Franz Joseph Gall (1758-1828), despite his rigorous empirical approach to his topic, had until recently been viewed as an embarrassment to the scientific community. Gall, a successful Viennese physician and anatomist, posited that the brain was composed of a number of localized organs that manifested themselves as abilities and dispositions. These organs included such things as amativeness, cautiousness, secretiveness, destructiveness, benevolence, language, and acquisitiveness. The larger a particular organ of the brain was, the stronger it was, and the larger was the cranial prominence above that organ (Leahey & Leahey, 1983). "Character and intellect ... [are] simply the sum of the combined functions of the organs of the brain" (Davies, 1955, p. 7). Thus, by measuring cranial prominences and depressions, one could assess the strengths and weaknesses of an individual's character and its components. This set of concepts was given the name phrenology, which is Greek for "science of the mind," by Gall's student and fellow physician, Johann Gaspar Spurzheim (1776-1832), although Gall thought that giving this area of investigation a formal name was unscientific. For most of the 19th century, debate raged as to the scientific merit of phrenology (and with it, Gall's standing as a reputable scientist). Eventually, the scientific establishment largely repudiated phrenology and came to treat Gall as a pariah. Although Gall's doctrine of the skull has been disconfirmed (thereby ironically fulfilling Popper's, 1959, criterion for a valid science: falsifiability), a number of his other ideas have come to be fully accepted by modern scientists. These include his principles "that the brain is the organ of the mind, that the brain is a collection of specialized centers, and that there must be a correspondence between these centers and mental abilities" (Leahey & Leahey, 1983, p. 111).
Probably in no small part motivated by the violent rejection that Gall received from the religious establishment, who viewed his ideas as too materialistic and had him exiled from Vienna, Spurzheim made a number of modifications to Gall's theory. Most important, Spurzheim moved phrenology away from Gall's conception of it as a strictly value-neutral biological science and toward a conception of it as a moral social philosophy (Leahey & Leahey, 1983). Spurzheim posited that humanity was inherently good, and the role of phrenology was to identify ways that individuals could realize their potential. Thus, he redrew Gall's map of the skull, adding more areas and underlying functions while eliminating Gall's antisocial organs of theft and murder.
In 1832, Spurzheim visited New Haven and Boston, gave a series of lectures on phrenology that were very well received by the scientific community, and was an honored guest at both the Yale and Harvard commencements (Davies, 1955). Phrenology had gained a foothold in America before Spurzheim's visit; in 1824, the journal of the Edinburgh, Scotland, phrenological society reported that phrenology "had been well received in medical, legal, and scientific circles of the United States" (Colbert, 1998, p. 11). While on this triumphal tour, Spurzheim suddenly died. Befitting his stature, he was given a public autopsy at Harvard at which Dr. John Warren, a renowned professor of medicine, first gave a lecture on Spurzheim's teachings and James Audubon made sketches of the body (Davies, 1955). At this autopsy, it was found that Spurzheim had an extremely large brain, 284 grams larger than average (Hothersall, 1995). It may be that Spurzheim's spectacular postmortem did more to increase Americans' appreciation of phrenology than his lectures ever would have. As stated by Professor Charles Pollen in his 1832 funeral oration for Spurzheim, "The great aim of all his inquiries into human nature, was to search out the will of God in the creation of man. Obedience to His laws he considered as the highest wisdom and most expansive freedom" (as cited in Davies, 1955, p. 9).
Despite the attacks on phrenology made by some of its critics, it found widespread popular acceptance in America. Within a short time, 40 to 50 phrenological societies were founded across the country. The Boston society had 144 members, including many physicians and academics; and the secretary of the Washington society was the surgeon general of the United States. Many eminent Americans, including Presidents Ulysses S. Grant, John Tyler, and James A. Garfield, Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story, Walt Whitman, and G. Stanley Hall, had phrenological examinations. Horace Greeley wrote in the New York Tribune that trainmen should be hired on the basis of the shape of their head to eliminate railroad accidents, and many job advertisements asked applicants to submit a phrenological report along with their letter of reference (Davies, 1955). In the view of Leahey and Leahey (1983), phrenology gained such ready acceptance in the United States because it "admirably suited the American temper: it was atheoretical, rested more on external observation than on introspection, urged the improvement of humanity, and sought practical results" (pp. 15-16).
The last of these points played out in an "only in America" scenario. One family recognized the commercial potential of practical phrenology and largely cornered the market. Within a couple of years after Spurzheim's death, Orson Squire Fowler, a student minister, and his younger brother Lorenzo Niles Fowler became itinerant lecturer-practitioners of phrenology. In 1835, they established an office in New York City and, in 1844, were joined by their brother-in-law, Samuel R. Wells, to form the firm of Fowlers and Wells. By 1853, the firm had opened branch offices in Boston and Philadelphia. After a time, L. N. Fowler went to England to establish a phrenological publishing house and was replaced in the New York operation by Nelson Sizer, the manager of the firm's Philadelphia office. The firm booked lectures and published skull charts, books, and periodicals on phrenology. They sponsored the monthly American Phrenological Journal and operated a very popular phrenological museum that contained thousands of skulls, casts, and paintings illustrating phrenological principles. At the museum, they conducted character readings on the basis of their "manipulation" (i.e., feeling by hand) of the customer's skull ($1 for a signed, individually annotated printed booklet report or S3 for a longer, handwritten analysis). Character readings on the basis of photographs were available for $4 (possibly the forerunner of online assessments). The firm also sold training materials on phrenology for use by itinerant lecturers and established a Phrenological College to train practitioners. L. N. Fowler and Sizer were the professors at the college (Davies, 1955). The fact that the Fowlers, Wells, and Sizer profited from practical phrenology does not at all imply that they viewed it as a scam. They and many other phrenologists viewed themselves as conscientious, ethical professionals and fought against phrenology's misuse by scam artists and by untrained opportunists.
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