The Victorian Mind

The study of mind in the Victorian era was essentially an exploration of Terra Incognita: a complex and undulating landscape shrouded in fog, pitted with deep chasms abounding with bewildering mirages and here and there, the odd landmark.
Needless to say it was challenging territory and barely mapped. The explorers of the Victorian mind, like the cartographers of the Age of Magellen, possesed only pieces of the puzzle. Despite the magnitude of the task the Victorian era produced numerous physicians, philosophers and proponents of psychology who considered themselves worthy contenders for the prize of unravelling the minds mysteries.

The fog over the terrain of Mind in the Victorian era was the barrier of the unseen. The brain, although the subject of extensive study could only be observed and experimented upon when the owner of the brain no longer had a use for it: that is, when they were dead.
Charcot one of the great nuerologists of the day was a great observer of the symptoms of disease in his living patients. He once famously demonstrated proof of his observation that patients with Parkinsons disease did not have tremor of the head, as was supposed at the time, but that any involuntary head movement was due to tremor of the torso:

To prove his point, Charcot brought a series of patients to the amphitheatre
each wearing a headband to which Charcot attached a long thin rod with a
feather at the end… As those affected with Parkinsons disease sat or stood, the
feather oscillated like those on the heads of patients with other forms of tremor.
But if the trunk or arm was suddenly supported or moved, the head tremor
promplty ceased.

Goetz, 1987

Drawing of Charcots Parkinsonian patients including one be-feathered woman.

It seems a rather flamboyant way to prove a point. The image comes to mind of a row of pyjama clad, befeathered patients jiggling like some absurd troupe of exotic dancers. Still, the observation of the external manifestations of neurological disease was the best method available to physicians when treating a living patient.
It was only when Charcots treatments were unsuccesful, however, and the patient died that he was able to dissect the brain itself and observe the lesions, swellings and growths that caused the illnesses Even then, when the brain was dissected enlightenment was not certain. Often no visible cause of disease could be found and the doctor remained as ignorant as when he had begun. The brain unveiled still contained mysteries that the eye alone could not discern.
The living, feeling and reasoning brain was an even greater enigma
As well as the difficlulties experienced in seeing the physical brain were the problems of medical perception. The language and systems used by doctors to ‘see’ the body, the brain and the mind were in a process of evolution, much like the perception of biological evolution itself. Physicians had only recently left off speaking in terms of an ‘imbalance of humours’. The catagorisation of mental illness had progressed somewhat; one could diagnose hysteria from aphasia, but before Freud there was still no system subtle enough to define the individual as anything other than ‘sane’ or ‘insane’. Through the eyes of Victorian society sanity and lucidity were the only two discreet states available.

The chasms in the landscape of the Victorian mind were the pitfalls of intellectual inheritance. The legacy of poor methodology of research, the resulting inaccurate assumptions and the quakery that they spawned were a blight on reasoned progression. Phrenology although correct in assuming the brain to be the seat of mental activities, provided a breeding ground for all manner of specious presumptions and opportunistic practitioners.
Franz Joseph Gall presented his doctrine of phrenology between the years 1810 and 1819. Gall believed that mind could be divided into discrete faculties which were located in specific geographic areas of the brain. This is not so far from the modern concept of localisation of brain function.

The main problem with Galls idea was that he took liberty with his own theory and extended his presumptions to include a correlation between the physical shape of the skull and the personality of the subject. The baton of Galls phrenology was taken up by Spurzheim, who enjoyed undeserved renown for his phrenological diagnosis. Spurzheim in turn launched a veritable flotilla of delusory phrenologists. For almost a century after Gall the medical proffesion was rife with readers of lumps and bumps and men of dubious credentials. Even well into Victorias reign the phrenologists still held sway. In a letter from the Queen to the Princess of Prussia Victoria voices her concerns over the health and heredity of her grandaughter Alix:

Galls phrenology was not the only crevasse lying between the traveller and scientific enlightenment.
Lavatar had introduced society earlier that century to the perversly appealing pseudo-science of anthropological physiognomy. Lavatars theory promoted the belief that mans physical and, by extension moral, intellectual, and social development could be determined by his face and body shape. In Victorian times it was embraced with enthusiam. One imagines that eventually one could not go anywhere without some irritating physiosgnomy aficianado demonstrating their prowess in‘reading’ ones chin, ears or eyebrows. Darwin was lucky to sail on the Beagle - the captain, a follower of the fad, thought Darwins nose indicated a disposition unsuited to travel on the seas. Photographic portfolios were compiled of ‘criminal types’. Those unfortunate enough to have been endowed with close-set eyes or a low brow were in danger of being diagnosed as sociopaths.
At its worst physiognomy gave birth to the racist theories of Social Darwinism, a philosophy begun by Herbert Spencer and distorted by John Beddoe in his book The Races of Man ( 1862), which suggested that one could draw inferrences from the physical differences of races about their social, intellectual and moral state.

Skulls of criminals (showing criminal head shape)

Fog…chasms…the path to understanding Mind was a difficult road indeed.
Then, when the weary traveller of the Minds terrain thought he could withstand no more along came the mirage of mesmerism. The Victorians were particularly susceptible to the power of this vision. Trapped between the forces of religious superstition and an increasingly de-humanising industrial revolution, even their Queen could not resist the seduction of the new scientific/spiritual movement.
Mesmer had developed his extraordinary theories in the Eighteenth Century, long before Victorias reign. Inspired by the “spirits” or “fluids” referred to by Newton in his Principia, Mesmer postulated that these same substances existed in the body and were affected by external forces, especially that of magnetism. Mesmer coined the phrase “animal magnetism” and invented a treatment for all manner of nervous disorders that involved staring into the eyes of the patient, touching them or passing a hand over their body. Dr. John Eliotson introduced Mesmerism to England along with Phrenology at the Phrenological Society in 1838 and it proved a hit. Along with hyptotism and the new occult practice of seances, mesmerism was accepted not only by the poor and uneducated. Intellecuals of the day were duped as well. Charles Dickens learned mesmerism and practiced it on his wife.

Still it was not a hopeless situation. There were landmarks on the horizen of the Mind by which to navigate.
In 1820 Thomas Brown had published his Lectures on the Philosophy of Mind which advodated that psychology should be the subject of consideration and speculation as a scientific discipline. Studies in the field of mind up until that point had taken the form of lofty philosophical debate. The suggestion that mind could be considered under scientific conditions and spoken about in scientific terms opened the road to experimentation.
Gall, although responsible for the epidemic of phrenological quakery also had some part in bringing the science of mind to the fore. G.H.Lewes, a proponent of Galls theories said Gall “ rescued the problem of mental function from Metaphysics and made it one of biology”. This is true. Gall was one of the first physicians to try to give the study of mind a scientific basis and bring, as it were, mind to matter.
The matter of mind was took another step closer to scientific study with the work of Alexander Bain ( 1818-1903) who together with James Mill broadened the scope of enquiry to include links between sensation, feeling and action. Bain wrote the seminal work The Senses and The Intellect (1855) followed by its companion volume Emotions and The Will ( 1859). The map of the territory of mind was becoming ever more clear and detailed. The groundwork of Mind was being laid upon which Freud would eventually construct a radical new model that would change forever the way we view ourselves.
It is tempting to summarise the Victorian Mind as beginning on the outside with Gall and ending on the inside with Freud. The true story of course is far more complex: far more complex than I imagined when setting out to write this article. It was foolhardy of me to think, though, that the Vicotorian Age would present any less confusing a picture of the mind than our own. Our understanding of Mind now is still shrouded in mystery, marked by the monuments and assumptions of the past, and beguiled by ideas which at some stage in the future may be exposed as fallacious. One only has to consider the number of ‘cures’ for ailments of the mind that are on offer to us today: psychoanalysis, cognitive behavioural therapy, counselling, medication, meditation, Gestalt therapy, neuro linguistic programming, rebirthing…..
All things considered, we might be inclined to be a little more forgiving of those naïve Victorians who searched for cures with magnets and meaning from the bumps on their skulls.

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