Basic Biographical Information
Joseph Franz Gall was born on March 9th, 1758, in Tiefenbronn, in the German Grand Duchy of Baden, to a family of Catholic immigrants of Italian origin with the family name Gallo.
Gall received a degree in medicine in 1785 in Vienna and produced his first scientific publication in 1791 (Philosophisch-medizinische Untersuchungen über Natur und Kunst, im kranken und gesunden Zustande des Menschen). Between 1796 and 1801 he held private courses in anatomy and craniological demonstrations in Vienna that made him famous, during which he met his future disciple and collaborator Johann Caspar Spurzheim. In 1798 Gall published Neue Teutsche Merkur, an important work in which he presented the fundamental principles of his encephalic-craniological conceptualization, as an open letter to Baron von Retzer who was the imperial officer for censorship and Gall’s mentor. In 1801, Emperor Francesco II of Habsburg condemned Gall’s doctrine, retaining that it induced...
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References
Lanteri-Laura, G. (1970). Histoire de la phrénologie. L’homme et son cerveau selon F.J.Gall [The history of phrenology. Man and his brain according to F.J. Gall]. Paris: PUF.
Lesky, E. (1970). Structure and function in gall. In Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 44, 297–314.
Lombardo, G. P., & Duichin, M. (Eds.). (1997). Frenologia, fisiognomica e psicologia delle differenze individuali in Franz Joseph Gall [Phrenology, pysiognomy, and the psychology of individual differences in Franz Joseph Gall]. Torino: Bollati Boringhieri.
Spoerl, H. D. (1936). Faculties versus traits: Gall’s solution. In Character and Personality, 4, 216–231.
Young, R. M. (1970). Mind, brain and adaptation in the nineteenth century. Cerebral localization and its biological context from Gall to Ferrier. London: Oxford University Press.
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Bartolucci, C., Lombardo, G.P. (2012). Gall, Franz Josef. In: Rieber, R.W. (eds) Encyclopedia of the History of Psychological Theories. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-0463-8_158
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