A head of its time: career counseling's roots in phrenology.(Articles)

It is an indisputable but conveniently overlooked fact that trait-and-factor career counseling was widely practiced in the United States at least 35 years before Frank Parsons provided this service and that the practitioners were phrenologists. This article proposes the reasons why career counseling arose in phrenology at that time and argues that the eminent phrenologist Nelson. Sizer, rather than Frank Parsons, is the real founder of the field.

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In his history of career counseling, Pope (2000) suggested that the field of vocational guidance (subsequently renamed career counseling) began in America in about 1890, primarily in response to the occupational dislocation brought about by the societal forces of industrialization, urbanization, and immigration. Although this explanation is generally accepted in the profession today, it must be noted that these three societal forces had been operating in American society since the end of the Civil War, 25 years before 1890 (Dulles & Dnbofsky, 1984). This article argues that career counseling existed in America as early as the 1870s in response to these societal forces and that the first practitioners of this field were phrenologists. In his History of Vocational Guidance: Origins and Early Development, Brewer (1942) credited Frank Parsons, rather than Lysander Salmon Richards, with founding vocational guidance. One of Brewer's principal reasons for awarding the title to Parsons, despite Richards's book being published before Parsons's book, was that "[Parsons] refrained from the use of phrenology and other false methods, in spite of their popularity during his entire lifetime" (Brewer, 1942, p. 64). For more than 60 years, the field has accepted Brewer's conclusion; however, a reading of both Richards's (1881) and Parsons's (1909) books is enlightening. Although Richards included phrenology as one of a number of sources of vocational assessment data, he clearly recognized its limitations:

 
  The phrenologist attempts too much prophesy in determining a pursuit 
  for one to follow. He asks no questions, but strives to establish 
  his reputation on his powers to describe the various cranial organs, 
  and unassisted by any other source of information, to foretell the 
  latent abilities, especial fitness and success in following a 
  particular' pursuit. ... [P]hrenology ... is ... more or less 
  speculative in its details, and ... is founded and is 
  worked upon a hypothesis. (p. 57) 

On the other hand, in Choosing a Vocation, Parsons unequivocally stated, "While I am questioning the applicant about his probable health, education, reading, experience, etc., I carefully observe the shape of his head, the relative development above, before, and behind the ears, his features and expression, ..." (p. 21). Again, he asserted:

 
  If the applicant's head is largely developed behind the ears, with 
  big neck, low forehead, and small upper head, he is probably of an 
  animal type, and if the other symptoms coincide he should 
  be dealt with on that basis. (Parsons, 1909, p. 22) 

These statements are indistinguishable from Richards's pronouncement, "If the head is large back of the ears, the animal propensities are large" (p. 64). Animal was the term used by phrenologists to indicate the area around and behind the ears, where the organs of destructiveness, secretiveness, and combativeness were located. These characteristics were viewed as shared by animals, as opposed to other uniquely human organs, such as those of benevolence, conscientiousness, and hope, which were located in other parts of the skull (see O. S. Fowler's 1869 diagram of the grouping of organs as reproduced in Colbert, 1998, p. 10). Thus, it seems that by Brewer's criterion, Parsons should also be disqualified from laying claim to the title of founder of the field.