Co-creator and popularizer of the basic principles of Pherenology. Born into a Lutheran farming family in Germany, Spurzheim initially intended to enter the ministry and studied Latin, Greek, Hebrew, philosophy, and divinity in his hometown and at the University of Treves. Although many of his later endeavors retained an evangelical sense of mission and optimism, the French invasion of 1799 effectively ended his theological career, and he relocated to Vienna. Here he studied medicine and became the assistant to Franz Joseph Gall, who was beginning to formulate his theories of the cerebral localization of mental and behavioral traits. For the next 13 years, Spurzheim’s career closely paralleled Gall’s. The two collaborated on the systematic mapping of the brain and the nervous system, incurred the wrath of civil and religious authorities who saw their work as promoting materialism and immorality, and lectured to appreciative audiences throughout Europe. Eventually, they settled in Paris where they published their ideas in a work entitled Anatomie et Physiologic du systeme nerveux en general et du cerveau en particular, four volumes (1810-19). This series formed the basis of the pseudo¬ science of phrenology (a term Gall disliked but Spurzheim embraced) and helped make psychology a more biologically oriented discipline. It also fostered a widespread cultural fascination with the brain and its function.
Spurzheim worked on the first two volumes only, split¬ ting with Gall around 1813 over a perceived lack of recognition and larger philosophical differences. Most of the latter stemmed from divergent visions regarding the social bearing of their mental science. Gall was something of a cynic, recognizing limits to human goodness, intellectual capacity, and moral vigor as an extension of innate mental constitution. Spurzheim, however, envisioned phrenology as the foundation of an aggressive program of reform that championed individual and collective improvement. In doing so, he backed away from deterministic interpretations of phrenology and asserted that the size and quality of the brain could be enhanced. For the remainder of his career he would spread the gospel of phrenology, achieving his greatest success in England and the United States. He proved to be particularly adept at facing down the many critics of his ideas and published many books touting the advantages of phrenology for reforms in education, penology, medicine, and the treatment of the insane.