Providentia

The Reluctant Hangman

John Radclive never planned to be a hangman.

Born and raised in England, he would later state that he had originally intended to become a clergyman, "but I was no hypocrite and I gave it up".  After years of military service,  he was stationed in various parts of the world before coming to Canada with his wife and four children in 1887.  Sometime between leaving the military and coming to Canada, John Radclive had been apprenticed to William Marwood, the U.K.'s official executioner.  Through his work with Marwood, Radclive became a proficient hangman although he abandoned the trade when he settled in Toronto.  Working as a steward at Toronto's fashionable Sunnyside Boating Club, Radclive quickly realized that the salary was inadequate to support his large family so he decided to engage in a bit of moonlighting.  Advertising his services as a hangman to local sheriffs, he quickly found work (but only on a part-time basis).

While he still worked as a steward, his strange double life cost him that job quickly enough.  One day at the boating club, a powerful member (who also happened to be an inspector with the Northwest Mounted Police) recognized Radclive and told the club's owners that he didn't appreciate having his drinks served by a "common hangman".   Radclive had never kept his sideline secret (and he never wore the traditional hangman's mask when working).  The club owners eventually fired him for his "lack of discretion" and Radclive was forced to carry out the hangman's trade on a more regular basis.  By 1892, he became Canada's first professional hangman.

By all accounts, Radclive existed in a kind of purgatory.  He was never a civil servant and carried out his hangman duties on a fee-for-service basis along with a basic retainer from the Federal Government.  He traveled across much of Canada by train, conducting executions in small jails around the country (executions were always under the jurisdiction of local authorities). The procedure was usually the same for execution: Radclive receiving a telegram informing him where and when he was needed followed by his prompt arrival by second-class coach (he paid his own way).  There was no official licensing or government authority associated with his carrying out the hangings, it was simply an unpleasant duty that only someone of Radclive's reputation could be trusted to do.  Of course, Radclive probably added to his notoriety by often selling pieces of rope as souvenirs after the hangings (they were popular with the crowds that gathered to watch the public executions of the time - especially the high-profile ones).

It's hard to say for sure when Radclive's drinking began.   Alcoholism tended to be an occupational hazard for executioners given the stress associated with the job.  One double hanging that Radclive carried out in Montreal in 1899 (a man and a woman) was followed by a near-riot among the spectators.   Police had to control the crowds until the bodies were cut down and Radclive was so unnerved by the spectacle that he spent the night in the prison with a bottle of brandy for comfort.  He would need that brandy more and more in the following years and often got into drunken brawls at local pubs before and after the planned hangings.  Although the drinking didn't usually interfere with his duties, his absences became more frequent in his later years.

One of the most astonishing executions that Radclive ever had to carry out was on an elderly man at the jail in St. Scholastique, Quebec.  While the condemned man was being taken to the gallows, he suddenly died of a heart attack. To Radclive's astonishment, the sheriff pointed out that the actual hanging still needed to be carried out according to the execution order.  Despite his protests, Radclive was forced to hang a dead man (the corpse was tied to a chair to keep him in position on the gallows).  Suffice it to say that Radclive likely did a lot of drinking that night.

Many who knew him described Radclive as a robust man who seemed to revel in his sinister reputation and the gawking crowds that often gathered to see the notorious "Ratliff" arrive by train to carry out local executions. He always made it a point to stay informed about the details of each case to reassure himself that the person to be hanged was actually guilty.  Although he never refused to carry out an execution, the prospect of bungling a hanging or otherwise prolonging the suffering of the condemned was always with him.  He even experimented with better ways of hanging people although his innovations never really caught on (the traditional gallows was too popular).   As Radclive complained to one journalist, political concerns ensured that he kept on dealing with, "all them long steps which he'd had to drag some poor snivellin' bastard cryin' for his ma".  

By 1911, John Radclive had hit rock bottom.  Suffering from cirrhosis of the liver from his long years of drinking, he was left penniless and alone in his final days.  His wife had long since left him and took their two youngest children back to England (whether due to the drinking or the hanging is still unclear). While his two oldest children still lived in Toronto, he was largely estranged from them.  Shortly before his death on February 26 of that year, he told an interviewer, "My family deserted me and changed their names, but I kept right on with the job, because I argued with myself that if I was doing wrong then the government of the country was wrong.  I held that I was the minister of justice at a hanging and that if I was was a murderer, then he was also a murderer".  He died that same year of cirrhosis of the liver.   

Note:  The last two executions in Canada were carried out on December 11, 1962 at the Don Jail in Toronto.  The actual identity of Canada's last executioner (known only by the pseudonym of "Camille Blanchard") has never been made public.  Capital punishment was formally ended in Canada with the passage of Bill C-84 in 1976.

Does Bilingualism Slow Cognitive Aging?

Research has suggested that using two or more languages on a daily basis helps older adults maintain a heightened functional state and improves neurocomputational efficiency. In a new review published in the Journal of Neurolinguistics, researchers discuss studies that have examined the effect of life-long bilingualism on age-related cognitive and neural decline, with a focus on discrepancies between different sources of evidence. The review outlines and characterizes factors which might explain inconsistencies between studies claiming that bilingualism has neurocognitive benefits and those that failed to find such evidence. The authors argue that individual variation in language proficiency and exposure, especially language switching frequency and daily frequency of use of the two languages, likely account for a significant chunk of the inconsistencies found in the literature and constrain the effectiveness of bilingualism as a cognitive and brain reserve factor. Finally, the reviews discusses studies of cognitive intervention and speculate on the potential of developing language training protocols to increase cognitive and neural resilience in older adults.

For the abstract

Six Youths Stoned to Death in Nepal Due to Forbidden Love Affair

On May 24, the bodies of  Nawaraj Bishwakarama and Tika Ram Sunar were found on the banks of the banks of the Bheri river in the Jajarkot district of Southern Nepal.   The bodies of three of their friends were found a day later while the body of a sixth man, Govinda Shahi, remains missing.   All six men were members of the low-case Dalit minority and are believed to have been murdered due to the forbidden love affair between Nawaraj Bishwakarama and an upper-caste girl.

While Nepal's caste system closely resembles the traditional Hindu caste system followed in India, the current system is considered to be less restrictive with caste discrimination being outlawed under Article 18 of Nepal's constitution.  Despite these legal protections, the Dalit caste (also known as the "untouchable" caste) to which the dead men belonged  still faces frequent discrimination.  Making up only  12.8 percent of the total population, Dalits have almost no representation in their government and are often treated as second class citizens denied many of the educational and work opportunities available to members of higher castes.  There have also been numerous cases of Dalits being assaulted or killed with little or no punishment for the higher-caste perpetrators as police often fail to investigate reported crimes.   

According to available news sources, Nawaraj, a 21-year-old Dalit who had hoped to become a police officer, fell in love with 17-year-old Sushma Malla.  As a member of an upper caste, Sushma's family had actively opposed the relationship as they were hoping to marry her to someone in her own caste.  They issued repeated warnings to Nawaraj and had even reported him to the police on one occasion.  The murders were apparently triggered by Nawaraj and Sushma making plans to elope.

On the night of May 23, Nawaraj, along with 18 of his friends, went to Sushma's village  in the Rukum district so that the two could elope.  After they arrived, the men were chased, stoned and beaten by a mob led by Sushma's father.   To save themselves, some of men being attacked jumped into the nearby river and managed to escape though Nawaraj and five of his friends were killed in the fall.   Survivors reported that Nawaraj had been particularly targeted and that "All his body parts, including his head, were seriously injured. He wasn't able to move and he was thrown into the river, he was not in a condition to even swim [so he] could survive."  Some of Nawaraj's friends were turned over to police though they were later released.

After the bodies were recovered, police arrested sixteen villagers known to be part of the mob, including Dambar Bahadur Malla, Sushma's father.  Dambar is also ward chair of the local municipality and is believed to have used his authority to recruit the other mob members, as well as members of his own family.

The killings have sparked protests across the country with human rights groups and Dalit leaders calling for immediate action on the case.  Despite the outrage, many are afraid that the latest atrocity will be quickly forgotten like other crimes involving Dalit victims.   The Nepal chapter of Amnesty International is calling for an impartial probe into the murders as well as the recent death of a twelve-year-old Dalit girl who was found hanging from a tree one day after she was forcibly married to an upper-caste man who had raped her. A preliminary police investigationhad found that she had been raped and murdered.

“Given the involvement of local government representatives in both tragedies, and the fears of the victims that justice will not be delivered, it is imperative that there is an independent and effective investigation,” the statement quoted Nirajan Thapaliya, director of Amnesty International Nepal, as saying. “The suspected perpetrators must be held accountable through a process that is credible in the eyes of the victims and their families...The shocking violence highlights the enduring structural problems that reinforce the caste-based discrimination, ostracization, and violence that Dalits in Nepal are subjected to.  The limited progress that has been made in laws and policies to protect Dalits is clearly not enough and must be urgently accelerated.”

The Celebrity Cannibal (Part One of Two)

On June 11, 1981, 25-year-old Renee Hartevelt accepted a dinner invitation from one of her classmates, a 32-year-old Sorbonne doctoral candidate named Issei Sagawa.   As Sagawa would later tell police, Hartelevelt came to his Paris apartment believing that she would help him translate some poetry.  Instead, what followed would be one of the most grotesque crimes in French forensic history, not to mention providing Sagawa with a bizarre sort of media stardom that continues to enthral many crime-watchers even today.

Though Issei Sagawa had an apparently charmed life as the son of wealthy parents as he grew up in Japan's Kobe Prefecture, nobody suspected his long-time fascination with cannibalism, something that reportedly dated back to early childhood.   Not that he appeared particularly dangerous, given his small size and build(likely resulting from being born prematurely as well as medical treatment for enteritis).   Despite later admitting to a bevy of bizarre sexual practices, including bestiality and stalking women whom he wanted to eat, his first real brush with the criminal justice system occurred in Tokyo when he was twenty-four years old. 

Having stalked a German woman to her home, he broke in with the intention of slicing off some of her body parts.  Instead, she managed to awake in time and push him to the ground.   When police caught up with him, he was charged with attempted rape and, due to his lack of prior offenses, was treated leniently.  This was despite one psychiatric assessor who declared Sagawa to be "extremely dangerous", something that wouldn't come out until after his later arrest...

By 1977, however, Sagawa had moved to Paris with the intention of studying for his doctorate at the prestigious Sorbonne.  By all accounts, he was extremely lonely at his new school with no real social life and few, if any friends.   All of this changed when he met the young and beautiful Renee Hartevelt.   For Sagawa, it was "love at first sight" and he admitted afterward that he couldn't keep his eyes off her.   This included following her around the city and arranging for meetings where they would discuss literature.   He also wrote her frequent love letters as well as inviting her to concerts and operas.   But it was dancing with Renee that he most enjoyed as he continually fantasized about her body.  If Renee was intimidated by Sagawa's obsession with her, she didn't say anything to him or any of her friends.   Given that he was only 1.448 m (4 ft 9 in) tall and very slender, he probably didn't seem all that threatening.  

All of which led to the invitation to his apartment on June 11 where, after admitting that the poetry assignment was just a pretest, finally confessed his love to her.   Not only did Renee laugh at his declaration, but she also refused to have sex with him.  It was at this point that Sagawa took out  a loaded gun and shot her in the back of the neck.   Since he lived alone, nobody would realize what had happened until much later.

Though there were no witnesses, we still have Issei Sagawa's graphic descriptions of what happened next.  After stripping the corpse, he tried biting into her flesh and, when he realized his jaws weren't strong enough, took a knife out of his kitchen to dismember the body. In the confession he provided his doctors, he reveled at the sensation of "finally eating a beautiful white woman and thinking nothing was so delicious."   When he had eaten all he could, he then cut strips of flesh and wrapped them in plastic before storing them in his refrigerator for later enjoyment. 

Which still left the question of what was to be done with the rest of the body.   After placing the remains in two cardboard suitcases he bought, he searched for different possible hiding spots around the city.   It was only when a couple spotted him trying to toss the suitcases into a nearby pond that things began to unravel.  Panicking at being spotted, Sagawa dumped the suitcases under some nearby trees and fled.   Curious about his behaviour, the couple investigated the suitcases only to discover a human arm protruding from one of them.   After they notified the police, a full investigation was launched.

Once the police managed to identify Renee Hartevelt's body, finding Sagawa wasn't particularly difficult.   Just hours after news of the discovery came out, a taxi driver told police about a suspicious "Asian man" who had hailed his taxi and tried to transport two suitcases on a luggage trolley.   Based on the driver's description, police soon went to Sagawa's apartment where he freely confessed to his crime.   Charged with murder, he was then sent to Le Sante prison to await arraignment and to be examined by psychiatrists.   Throughout his time in Le Sante,  he showed no real remorse for his actions and even told staff that "I know now what to do when killing a girl, how not to be arrested."  

When word about Sagawa's crime reached his parents in Japan, they refused to believe that their son could be capable of such a crime despite arranging for a lawyer for him.   They were also unable to deal with the media storm that followed as news of the "Japanese cannibal" spread quickly,  both in Japan and around the world.  Not only did the Sagawa family become instant pariahs but they were also besieged by requests for media interviews, despite their pleas to be left alone.   

As for Issei Sagawa, all criminal charges were dropped in 1983 when examining judge Jean-Louis Bruguiere ruled that he had been "in a state of dementia" when committing the murder.   This led to Sagawa's transfer to the Paul Guiraud asylum in a Paris suburb and, after one year, his being deported to Japan after Judge Bruguiere  and the hospital doctors decided that he was completely untreatable.  What this basically involved was having Sagawa travel on a regular flight to Tokyo with only a psychiatrist and a police officer to accompany him.

It was once he arrived in Japan that things became even more bizarre...

To be continued next week.

 

 

 

 

 

Trauma and Substance Abuse in Firefighters

Firefighters are vulnerable to developing posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and alcohol use disorder (AUD). Anxiety sensitivity (AS) is a cognitive-affective mechanism with clinical relevance to both PTSD and AUD. A new study in the journal Addictive Behaviors  examined the potential role of AS in the association of PTSD symptomatology with alcohol use severity and alcohol use motives among a large sample of firefighters. Heightened PTSD and high AS were expected to be associated with alcohol use severity and coping-oriented alcohol use motives. Heightened PTSD symptomatology was expected to be indirectly associated with alcohol use severity and coping motives through high AS. Covariates included number of years in the fire service and the number of traumatic event types endorsed. Participants included 652 urban firefighters (93.3% male; M_age = 38.7, SD = 8.57). Firefighters completed an online questionnaire battery. Results showed that PTSD symptomatology was positively associated with alcohol use and coping motives. AS was positively associated with alcohol use coping motives but not alcohol use severity. AS partially explained the association between PTSD symptomatology and coping, conformity, and social motives, but did not significantly account for the relationship between PTSD symptom severity and enhancement motives or alcohol use severity. Conclusions: Among firefighters, the association between PTSD and alcohol use coping, conformity, and social motives is partially accounted for by AS. Clinical and research implications are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved)

For the abstract

Reading the Bumps

One thing you could say about phrenologist and author, Orson Squire Fowler,  he certainly knew how to grab your attention.

Part of my collection of rare psychology books is an 1875 volume by Fowler.  The title certainly leaves little to the imagination: 

"Creative and Sexual Science: or Manhood, Womanhood, and Their Mutual Interrelations;  Love, Its Law, Power, ETC.;  Selection, or Mutual Adaptation; Courtship, Married Life, and PERFECT CHILDREN;  Their Generation, Endowment, Paternity, Maternity, Bearing, Nursing and Rearing; Together with Puberty,, Boyhood, Girlhood, ETC.;  SEXUAL IMPAIRMENTS RESTORED, Male Vigor ad Female Health and Beauty Perpetuated ad Augmented, ETC.,  as Taught By PHRENOLOGY AND PHYSIOLOGY " 

(Fowler was showman enough to make sure that the most important words were carefully capitalized). 

Got all that?  Good.   But more on that later after I provide a little background on the beginnings of phrenology.

Although the idea that mental abilities were linked to specific locations in the brain dates back to Aristotle, true scientific work into the nature of brain functioning didn't begin until the late 18th century.   While early visionaries such as Emmanuel Swedenborg made some inspired guesses about how the brain worked, it was German neuroanatomist Franz Joseph Gall who can properly be considered the father of phrenology (not that he ever used that term).   After establishing his reputation as one of Austria's most prominent physicians, Gall turned his research interests to the human brain and developed the first true theory of cerebral localization.  By 1792, he began lecturing on his idea that the human cerebral cortex was actually a mosaic made up of different specialized organs.  Although many of his ideas were actually correct, including his observations on the significance of cerebral hemispheres and the importance of the frontal lobes in complex thinking, the pseudosciene linked to Gall's name has largely overshadowed his reputation as a medical pioneer.    The premises that Gall laid out in his lectures were that:

1. the brain is the organ of the mind,
2.  the mind is made up of seperate annd discrete faculties,
3. each faculty must have its own "seat" or organ in the brain,
4.   the size of each organ is a direct measure of its relative importance in the mind,
5.   the shape of the brain is determined by how each organ developed,
6. since the skull is formed from the shape of the brain, measuring the skull can provide an accurate assessment of individual aptitudes and tendencies.    

Gall identified nineteen mental faculties which he considered to be essentially animal in nature, these included "reproductive instinct," "love of one's offspring," "affection," "destructiveness or tendency to murder," and "desire to possess things."   In contrast, he also identified a series of exclusively human qualities such as "wisdom", "satire and wit", "sense of metaphysics",  "religious sentiment", and firmness of purpose".  

Public reaction to Gall's lectures were decidedly mixed.   Despite the lectures being popular, conservative Catholic authorities and even some of his medical colleagues accused him of subversion for daring to suggest that the brain was the centre of intellect rather than the soul (the Austrian empire was still Catholic at that time). Although Gall defended himself and his theories as much as he could, he was ordered to stop lecturing in 1801.   Realizing that he would never be allowed to teach freely in Austria, Gall went into exile to could teach and continue his brain research.  

Along with giving lectures and public demonstrations of dissections in Denmark, Holland, Switzerland, and France, he took a keen interest in the brains of convicted criminals and gathered further material for his writings on brain functioning.    Settling in Paris in 1807, Gall began writing his masterpiece, ,  The Anatomy and Physiology of the Nervous System in General, and of the Brain in Particular, with Observations upon the possibility of ascertaining the several Intellectual and Moral Dispositions of Man and Animal, by the configuration of their Heads,  which was eventually published in 1819. 

It was Gall's chief supporter, Johann Spurzheim, who helped Gall develop many of his theories after they first met in 1800.   Although he wasn't the first to coin the term "phrenology", Spurzheim  quickly adopted it for the brain science that he and Gall developed.  Their relatively productive relationship end in 1813 over disagreements on how the brain should be classified.    While Gall's research on criminal brains led to his arguing that there were "evil" tendencies in those brains that needed to be suppressed (such as regions of the brain controlling "murder" and "theft"), Spurzheim rejected this completely and argued that criminal behaviour was caused by underdeveloped moral faculties.   He also changed Gall's classification system by adding new organs such as "hope" and "moral sense" to Gall's list.   The total number of organs in Spurzheim's revised list rose to thirty-three from Gall's original twenty-seven.    Spurzheim also rejected Gall's gloomy pessimism over changing human nature and argued that proper upbringing could help overcome criminal tendencies.     After their split, Gall publicly condemned many of Spurzheim's "innovations" in his own books and often denounced him as a plagiarist and a quack. 

And with good reason perhaps.  While Gall tried to link his conclusions to actual brain research, Spurzheim development of "practical phrenology" became extremely popular in England and Scotland (and eventually in the United States as well).   Gall was, well, galled by Spurzheim's success and, despite his refusal to use the term phrenology himself (he preferred to call his own science "organology" or "zoonomy"),  it was Spurzheim's term that won out.  Various critics had no problem linking their names together and one reviewer in 1815 denounced their theories as "a collection of mere absurdities, without truth, connexion, or consistency".   Despite some recognition for his original contributions to brain research, Gall remained bitter over never receiving the eminence he felt he deserved.  He died in 1828 after requesting that his own skull be added to the large collection of skulls that are still on display in the Rollet Museum in Baden bei Wien, Austria.

As fpr Spurzhim and his own chief supporter, George Combe, the practical phrenology that they both advocated had less and less to do with any actual brain science as time went on.   While Spurzheim still had some actual medical credentials and gave public demonstrations of brain dissections, his death in 1832 left George Combe as the chief spokesman for phrenology.  Since Combe had no actual medical training (he was a lawyer),  that also meant that phrenology's tenuous claim to science was weaker than ever.  

Still, as phrenology shifted away from brain science towards more"personality-oriented" applications, social reformers, innovators, and criminologists became attracted by its appeal.  Cesare Lombroso incorporated many aspects of Gall and Spurzheim's ideas into his own system of identifying "born criminals".     Educators saw phrenology as a way of classifying students according to their ability to learn while psychiatrists began studying patient skulls to find better ways of dealing with asylum inmates. 

By the time of Johann Spurzheim's death, there were at least twenty-nine different phrenological societies in Great Britain alone (George Combe personally founded the Edinburgh Phrenological Society in 1820).  George Combe's books became international best-sellers and his best-known book, The Constitution of Man, sold more than seventy thousand copies by 1838 alone (and would eventually go on to sell more than three hundred thousand copies).   Even the British royal family consulted Conde since Prince Albert had been worried that one of his sons was a slow learner.   Conde also evaluated Queen Victoria (from a distance) and concluded that her broad and high forehead reflected her "firmness of purpose, great self-control, and awareness of moral principles".   

Despite the controvery over phrenology and increasingly successful attacks by eminent scientists,  phrenology spread across the Atlantic and American phrenological societies sprang up as well.  Still,  phrenology didn't last particularly long as a serious movement in the United States.   Eminent American surgeon John Collins Warren attended many of Spurzheim's lectures and recognized its significance although he never became a member of a phrenological society himself.  He also carried out the autopsy on Johann Spurzheim after his death in Boston during an American tour (leading to Spurzheim's skull being added to the growing Harvard medical collection).    Other eminent medical researchers such as Charles Caldwell and John Bell also attended Spurzheim's lectures and founded Pennsylvania's first phrenological society (Caldwell went to write the first American textbook on phrenology).    Although George Combe visited the United States on lecture tours (and met several American presidents in the process), the movement began fading after 1840 and largely became relegated to a pseudoscience before the decade was out.

Which brings us back to Orson Fowler and his brother...

Born in Steuben Country, New York in 1809, Orson Fowler attended Amherst College in Massachusetts.  While attending school there, he developed a keen interest in phrenology which he shared with his best friend, Henry Ward Beecher.   While Beecher went into ministry work after their graduation in  1834, Fowler had other ideas.  He and his brother, Lorenzo Fowler opened a phrenology office in New York City and launched a series of public lectures on phrenology, physiology,  psychology, and social reform.   Orson Fowler also became a popular writer and editor of the American Phrenological Journal and placed his own stamp on American phrenology by launching one of the largest mail-order firms in New York City.  

At the height of the phrenology craze, Fowler's New York offices attracted as many visitors as the nearby museum run by P.T. Barnum.    Along with phrenology, the Fowlers also promoted a new "scientific" system of shorthand called phonography (they called it scientific since it was based on a specific set of rules).   Not that the Fowler family believed in limiting themselves in any way.   Orson's wife Lydia and sister, Charlotte, were both active suffragettes and the Fowler offices in New York became a gathering place where people could discuss anything from abolishing slavery (pre-Civil War) to the crusade against alcohol (did I forget to mention that they were also temperance movement supporters?). 

Although the American Phrenological Journal that Fowler edited folded up by 1842,  his company did brisk business with a range of other products.  Along with books and pamphlets (mostly written by Orson Fowler),  the company also sold phrenological charts, measuring tapes, craniometers, and the classic china Phrenology Heads which are still collectors' items today.     The Fowler brothers also took their show across the country as part of a regular lecture circuit although they often faced attacks by skeptics denouncing phrenology as "quackery".  

While both Fowlers defended the science behind their work, that claim became harder to defend as mainstream medical researchers withdrew support.  Still, the Fowler brothers carried on their crusade and insisted that phrenology had just as much right to be labelled a science as mathematics, astronomy, or natural history.   Orson Fowler also stressed the theological importance of phrenology, which revealed "the hand-writing of God" since its principles, like all scientific truths as far as he was concerned,  were "of divine origin".    Lorenzo Fowler even argued that phrenologists were completing the work that Jesus Christ started in reforming human behaviour.

As for the Orson Fowler book in my collection, it seems fairly typical of the phrenological literature that he sold through his company.   The book's introduction begins with:  "Reproduction is Nature's paramount work;  because to all else what foundation is to house- its sine qua non.  It has its SCIENCE, or natural laws, prescribed modus operandi and, and instrumentalities.  GENDER IS ITS MASTER WORKMAN, and Nature's "male and female" arrangement, with its governing law, her chose "ways and means" or originating all life: which growth completes."   Covering nine sections in all, the book includes sections such as "Gender and Sexuality", "Love", "Sexual Selection", "Married Life",  "Generation" (the polite Victorian euphemism for sexual intercourse), "Maternity",  and "Sexual Restoration".    Despite these being taboo topics during the Victorian era in which Fowler was writing, his tenuous claim to medical expertise enabled him to present his phrenological advice in the form of a marriage manual for concerned adults trying to deal with different aspects of human sexuality.  

While Orson Fowler proudly inserted the word "science" into his book as much as he could (usually in capital letters), there was very little, if any, empirical testing of the elaborate claims that he made in his book.  He certainly didn't believe in referencing his "facts" and, despite abundant illustrations, there doesn't seem to be any citations (aside from his own works).   The book also contains surprising little phrenology and mostly deals with Victorian ideals about the proper age for teaching children about sexual matters and the need for a "scientific" approach to sex and love.   The book seems to say more about Fowler's personal biases than any attempt at scientific objectivity.   As well, his insistence that producing children was the ultimate purpose for any sexual act marked him very much as a man of his time. 

Whenever critics  accused him of being more interested in making money than actually promoting phrenology, Orson Fowler simply defended himself by saying that he worked so hard because "I loved the science!".     Still,  the decline had begun setting in after 1860 and Lorenzo Fowler, sensing that the market was drying up, moved to Great Britain in 1863 to continue his phrenology crusade there.  Although Charlotte Fowler took over running the company and a new generation of Fowlers came on board to help with the mail-order business, phrenology's day was definitely past.  By the time Orson Fowler died in 1887, phrenology was just one of many different "sciences" being promoted by travelling hucksters giving lectures across the country.    As the phrenology market dried up, the ex-phrenologists drifted on to more profitable ventures, including spiritualist research and more evolutionary explanations for human behaviour.  

Beginning in the 1870s,  Social Darwinist theories based (loosely) on Darwin's theory of evolution grew in popularity and social reformers shifted away from phrenology-based social reform towards improving human behaviour through "good breeding".  As phrenology societies faded, eugenics societies formed on both sides of the Atlantic with credible scientists using their research to boost the idea of improving society through genetics  (especially Charles Darwin's cousin, Francis Galton).   But that's another story.

While phrenologists tried every marketing strategy that they could, including the developing of mechanical phrenology devices (which I once tried myself at an American Psychological Association convention),  American phrenology never survived Orson Fowler's death.  Despite phrenology fading in the United States, the movement staggered on in parts of Europe despite most scientists denouncing its validity.   Several early 20th scientists, such as Bernard Hollander in the United Kingdom and Paul Bouts in Belgium, tried repackaging phrenology to make it more acceptable but their efforts are largely forgotten today. 

Although phrenology has long since been relegated to obscurity, the legacy that Gall, Spurzheim, and Fowler left behind still lingers.   Various pseudoscientific schemes for classifying people still enjoy some popularity, whether through classifying people by blood-type,  graphology (handwriting), or astrology, although none of them seem to have ever enjoyed the scientific respectability that phrenology could claim (at first).    

Unfortunately, while pseudoscientific movements can be easily dismissed, more scientifically validated methods of personality classification using psychometric testing are prone to misuse as well (and often are).   Various media psychologists selling unscientific advice to the public through self-help books, radio, and television appearances often rely on the same selling strategies that worked for Orson Fowler,  however briefly.    Failing to acknowledge the very real scientific limits of psychology will almost certainly catch up to them in time however.   Whether the current pundits can learn from Orson Fowler's example remains to be seen.

When Children Learn to Think Critically

In  new study published in the Journal of Experimental Child Psychology,  children aged 4.75–8.50 years (n = 127) listened to  testimony about improbable or impossible events—referencing either spoken hearsay, a book, or the internet—and judged whether the events could occur in reality. A separate baseline group (n = 48) judged the events without hearing testimony. Relative to baseline, younger children (4 and 5 years) reported greater belief that improbable events could occur when testimony referenced hearsay and less belief when testimony referenced the internet. In contrast, older children (8 years) were less likely to believe improbable events could occur when testimony referenced hearsay and believed testimony that referenced a text-based source (a book or the internet) at rates similar to baseline. Beliefs about the occurrence of impossible events were similar (and low) across ages and testimony conditions. Implications for children’s learning from spoken and text-based sources are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved)

For the abstract

Memoir Describes Harrowing Postpartum Psychosis Ordeal

When her son Cato was two months old, London-based literary agent Catherine Cho and her husband took an extended trip to the United States in 2018 to see friends and family.   Nobody expected the ordeal that would follow that would  lead to an eight-day psychiatric hospital stay and Cho fighting to return to her husband and infant son.  

While staying with her husband's parents in New Jersey, the normal stress of caring for an infant soon gave way to something much darker.   As she describes in her new memoir, Inferno, she began seeing the Devil's eyes in her son's face while a voice told her that he had to die.   Her condition quickly deteriorated and her husband took her to a local hospital where she was placed in the hospital psychiatric ward.  Not only did she need  to be restrained by nurses,. but she was stripping off her clothes, singing in French, and insisting that she was the character Beatrice in Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy.  She also insisted that she needed to sacrifice herself to escort her husband through Hell.  S

Diagnosed with a rare form of postpartum psychosis, she was moved to another facility for people without health insurance (as she and her husband were not U.S. residents).   At this new hospital, she was forcibly sedated and kept from seeing her husband and son.  In her memoir, which was based on the notes she kept while in hospital, she described herself as feeling unmoored in time and feeling completely incapable of recognizing what was real and what wasn't.   

"I always assumed I knew about psychosis, and I always assumed I knew about postpartum depression," she said in a recent media interview, "But I never really took the time to think about them. I hope the book portrays the experience in a way that you can imagine how it would feel and why it might happen."   While in hospital, she was unable to recognize her son from pictures, frequently forgot about visits from her husband and family, and even forgot who she was at times.  

While postpartum depression is relatively common with up to 15 percent of new mothers experiencing symptoms to some extent, postpartum psychosis only occurs in about one in every thousand pregnancies.   About half of all women with this form of psychosis have no prior risk factors though a family history of bipolar disorder or other mental illness may increase the likelihood of it developing.  Often requiring hospitalization, symptoms of postpartum psychosis may last anywhere from two to twelve weeks and can often require months before a full recovery occurs. 

In Catherine Cho's case,  recovery was extremely gradual, including regaining her love for her son.   "That was something I worried about," she says. "But we have a really good bond now. We're very close."  Still living in London with her family, she decided to write the book as a form of therapy to help her exorcise the lingering trauma resulting from her hospitalization as well as the memory of a previous abusive relationship in Hong Kong.  She also saw the book as an opportunity to talk about her upbringing in a traditional Korean household, including the folk tales her mother shared with  her growing up.  

"I do think that there are definitely things in the past that come up in the psychosis. I think it's up to the reader to decide how much of a correlation there is."    As a result, she has asked her parents not to read her book as she felt it might be too hard for them.

She also described the opposition she received from her parents and in-laws over her plan to write the book as mental illness was not something they wanted to talk about.   Even while she was hospitalized, her family told friends and neighbours that she was suffering from "exhaustion" and have had difficulty talking about her time in hospital since then.  

In publicising her book, Cho also said that she was heartened by the support she received from other women who had gone through similar experiences after giving birth.   "Almost every woman who's a mother that I've spoken to has said they've experienced some form of mental dissociation," she says.  "By sharing it, they feel like it's okay to talk about it, when before, it might have been something they just felt they had to keep private."

She also added: "I want to show that it is a huge mental and physical transformation. As much as it's a very common experience, that doesn't make it less difficult.  "By showing that this is what can happen, maybe it would erase some of the self-blame that a lot of mothers feel for not living up to a certain standard."

Exploding the Myths About Aging

We don't stop playing because we grow old, we grow old because we stop playing - George Bernard Shaw

For all that we are regularly besieged with slogans such as "60 is the new 40",  many people continue to view growing older with a sense of dread.  Despite decades of research into human aging, not to mention the fact that people are living longer and more productive lives, there still seems to be a popular belief that older adults have nothing to look forward to but worsening health problems and becoming a burden on society.

A new opinion piece published in the journal American Psychologist explores some of the common misconceptions about aging that help reinforce this pessimism about growing older.  As Manfred Diehl of Colorado State University, Michael A. Smyer of Bucknell University, and Chandra M. Mehrotra of the College of St. Scholastica point out in their article, not only has life expectancy risen steadily in the United States over the past 100 years, but advances in medicine have ensured that those extra years remain disability-free for most people.  In fact, never before in human history have adults had so many years of active life available to them, something that gerontologists refer to as the "longevity dividend" 

To read more, check out my new Psychology Today blog post.

 

The Problem with Robert Schumann

On March 6 1854, when Robert Schumann first became a patient at a private sanatorium located in Endenich (now part of Bonn), he assumed that entering as a voluntary patient would count in his favour when he eventually decided to leave.  Instead, he would spend the rest of his life there.

Already famous for his prowess as a pianist and a composer, Schumann's seemingly idyllic life, including his marriage to Clara and the eight children they had together, was marred by his lifelong problems with depression.   By late 1853, he began developing new and even more worrisome symptoms, including auditory hallucinations of angelic voices (which may have been linked to problems with tinnitus).   This soon progressed to his experiencing visions of angels and, as his condition deteriorated, of demons as well.   The demonic voices continually told him he was a sinner and that they would be throwing him into Hell.   He also screamed at times due to the belief that he was being savagely attacked by wild animals. 

In the first months of 1854, he began worrying about the possibility of harming himself or his family and he warned Clara that he posed a danger to her.n On February 27, he eluded the family members keeping watch on him and proceeded to a bridge overlooking the Rhine river near his Dusseldorf home.   Then, after throwing his wedding ring into the river, he jumped in himself.  Fortunately, two fisherman witnessed his jump and managed to reach him in their boat and bring him to safety (despite his attempting to throw himself into the river a second time).  

When the fishermen brought Schumann home, he was placed under the constant care of two physicians (Clara didn't learn about the suicide attempt until some time later).   After being kept in isolation for several days, he asked his doctors to arrange his transfer to a mental institution "because only there would he recover."    Since the Schumanns were relatively well-off, the decision was made to send him to the private sanatorium at Endenich where he would receive far better treatment than in a public hospital.    Though Clara was distraught by her husband's condition, she was helped by her mother, children, and family friend, Johannes Brahms, all of whom were present when he was transferred to Edenich with only one physician to accompany him.

The asylum at Edenich certainly had a good reputation and its director, Dr. Franz Richarz, was considered one of the top experts in his field.  Located on a seven-acre estate which had originally been built as a summer residence, it had been purchased just two years before by Dr. Richarz who had then converted it to a hospital.   Retaining much of its original splendor, including extensive gardens, the hospital seemed like an ideal setting for recovering patients.  Certainly its policies were unusually progressive for that era with patients being allowed to walk on and off the grounds for exercise (though Schumann was constantly supervised due to his suicidal history).    Unfortunately, treatment was also extremely expensive and, despite offers of help from Brahms and other friends, was a major financial concern for Clara Schumann.

She was also concerned about the weekly reports she received from the hospital about her husband.   The doctors had asked her not to visit or communicate with her husband directly since they thought this would help him recover faster.   Even the few visitors he received weren't allowed to talk to him, only to observe from a distance.   Whether or not this made good medical sense, it certainly contributed to his feeling of isolation, especially from Clara and his beloved children.   

While the doctors continued to report on his progress, any hope for a speedy recovery was dashed by Robert's frequent relapses, not to mention his constant guilt over something that happened prior to his marriage to Clara (historians are divided over what exactly this was).   Despite his relapses, he definitely improved over time and often went on walks through the hospital's gardens.   Though he was eventually allowed visitors, his improvement was still rocky.   

The hallucinations slowly subsided but he was still prone to paranoid delusions, including the belief that his wine was poisoned.  He was also distressed over not hearing from Clara at all and he apparently didn't realize that the doctors had instructed her not to write to him directly.   After a few months, the doctors relented and asked Clara to write to him but she was still asked not to discuss any topics that might distress him.

While Clara tried to write as often as possible, her own life was going through a profound change.   While she had largely been overshadowed by her husband before his hospitalization, raising her children alone allowed her to establish herself as one of Europe's finest pianists.   As a result, she was kept busy going on frequent musical tours to help pay for Robert's care as well as to support herself and her children.   Despite her worries about Robert's condition, she definitely enjoyed all the public attention she was receiving and, ironically enough, her success as a pianist allowed her to earn far more money than Robert would likely have earned at his regular music position in Dusseldorf.  

As for Robert himself, he continued to recover and, while his letters to Clara were sporadic, he also wrote to many of his other friends, including Brahms.   In these letters, along with what he told friends during visits, Robert seemed apprehensive about his doctors and the treatment he was receiving at Endenich.    When one of his close friends, Joseph Joachim, visited Schumann December, 1844,  Robert told him that he wanted to leave Edenich because "the doctors there completely misunderstood him".   There was no evidence that Joachim told Clara about this but Robert later sent her a letter in which he wrote, "My Clara, ” he wrote, “I feel as if something dreadful lies before me. What sorrow—if I never see you and the children again!”  Though his doctors took this to mean that he was considering suicide, it seems more likely that he was afraid that he would never be allowed to rejoin his family. 

Though Clara herself didn't visit Edenich, she arranged for several friends to see her husband and investigate other possible clinics.  One friend, Bettina von Arnim, visited Robert and later told Clara that she would do everything she could "to free poor Schumann as soon as possible from his imprisonment."   She was also extremely critical of the hospital and the doctors themselves, many of whom she thought were even more disturbed than their patients.

Despite Bettina's urging, Clara was reluctant to take her husband out of the hospital and, instead, met with Dr. Richarz who assured her that everything was fine and that Robert should not be moved.   This was apparently enough for Clara and she agreed to keep him at Edenich for at least another year.  Unfortunately, Robert had apparently regarded Bettina as being his last hope and his condition quickly deteriorated when nothing changed.   

By 1856, he had become much worse as Brahms noted in his two visits that year.  After one of these visits, Brahms reported that Robert was largely incoherent and that "often he only babbled, something like bababa—dadada" and that he showed little sign of understanding his friend when he tried to talk.   

In June of that year, Clara received a telegram from Edenich while she was touring in England.   The telegram said that Robert was "totally debilitated" though he was still apparently conscious.   She finally went to Edenich herself on July 27 after receiving word that her husband was dying.    Even though Brahms and the doctors had tried to stop the visit (to spare her the shock), Clara was still stunned by what she saw.    As she would later report, "He smiled at me and, with great exertion placed his arm around me. I will never forget it...He spoke with spirits, so it seemed, and would not permit anyone around him for long, or he would become restless.   It was nearly impossible to understand him any longer."  

Robert Schumann died in his sleep on July 29 at 4 pm.   Clara came to his bedside a half-hour later to see her husband one last time.  "I stood by the corpse of my dearly  beloved husband and was at peace; all feelings went in thanks to God that he was finally free."  The funeral was held just four days later and the general consensus among everyone present was a sense of relief that his "miserable existence" was over.   Clara Schumann never remarried and spent the rest of her life as a concert pianist who helped to popularize Schumann's work worldwide.

As for the exact cause of  Schumann's death, that continues to be a mystery even today.   While h was only forty-six when he died, the autopsy report itself was largely inconclusive.  In an article Doctor Richarz wrote on Schuman in 1873, he claimed that Robert suffered from "incomplete general paralysis" resulting from a "slow,  but irreversible and progressive deterioration in organization and strength of the entire nervous system."   Along with his "melancholic depression",  Richarz attributed Schumann's early death to his refusal to eat and the emaciated state of his body when he died.  

Other medical historians have also suggested that Schumann suffered from schizophrenia or bipolar depression based on the bizarre symptoms he often displayed.  In recent years, another explanation that seems more widely accepted was that he suffered from tertiary syphilis (also called general paresis in those days).   Certainly he had numerous symptoms linked to advanced syphilis, including hallucinations, speech and movement difficulties, and an eventual mental collapse.   Schumann himself apparently believed that he had syphilis due to a previous affair (which contributed to his delusios of being sent to Hell due to his "wickedness").   Still, no traces of the brain degeneration commonly seen in tertiary syphilis turned up in his autopsy, something that would have been evident if he really had the disease.   Certainly there was no indication that he passed it on to Clara or that any of his children developed congenital syphilis afterward (though one son was committed to a psychiatric asylum years later).   

Ironically, it may well have been the treatment received at Edenich that truly led to Schumann's death.   In his own article, Doctor Richarz displayed a total lack of empathy towards his patient that reflects Schumann's own sense of despair at not being allowed to leave the hospital and rejoining his beloved wife and children.   Though he had recovered significantly between 1854 and 1855, his plea that he be allowed to return home was largely ignored by his friends and family.  Though his hopes were raised by visits from friends such as Bettina von Arnim, his condition only deteriorated when he felt abandoned and he began starving himself as a result.   As it happens, other patients also engaged in hunger strikes, largely in protest to the treatment they were receiving at Edenich, though little is known about what later happened to them. 

So,  was Robert Schumann's death due due to despair at being abandoned or because of a still-undiagnosed medical condition?   We may never know for sure.  Despite the mystery surrounding Schumann's death, the love affair between Clara and Robert, as well as their friendship with Brahms continues to be commemorated.  With numerous books and movies written about the three of them, not to mention the musical works that Johannes Brahms and Robert Schumann completed between them, has become the stuff of legend.