Phrenology

This chapter talks about mental testing in America. James Cattell and Galton believed that intelligence is hereditary. Henry Herbert Goddard shared a similar view to James Cattell and Galton. He conducted a study in the heredity of feeblemindedness and wrote a book called “Kallikak Family.” Ligthner Witmer was an environmentalist and he believed that hereditary was an excuse for an action. One of the research psychiatrists in this area was Alfred Binet. Theodor Simone joined Binet’s team and…

The nineteenth century is associated with the rise of the West where unprecedented power came to be concentrated in Britain and France. Considering that in 1800 Western powers held approximately 35 percent of the earth’s surface which had risen to 67 percent by 1878 and a staggering 85 percent by 1914 illustrates how the world, like never before, was united into a single interacting whole by the Western imperial powers (Said 6). The use of the term ‘interacting whole’ to describe the world in…

because the social causes are not being investigated. The question is, are humans genetically predisposed at birth with the characteristics that make them act deviantly, or do the people around them influence them to act this way. The early studies of Phrenology was used by experimenters to determine if an area of the brain had the properties to predispose a person the deviant behavior. They had more severe deviant behavior in mind such as sex crimes, rape, theft,…

It was transported from western, middleclass culture with its corresponding values, and applied mostly out of the context in which it was developed. Plainly this was misuse of the tests and constituted abuse. Psychological tests applied in South Africa were standardized for the white population, and applied without any adaptation to the very different context in the country; Factors, such as culture, language, socio-economic status, education and levels of acculturation of the South African…