Trattato Fisiognomico-Psichiatrico: Homo Psychiatricus, Homo Psychologicus, et Lombroso ipse

Plate VII: Comparative Cranial Morphologies of the Psychical Professions

Description.
The asylum physician, homo psychiatricus, can be spotted at once: a dolichocephalic skull that resembles a badly planed plank, a brow so flat it could serve as a carpenter’s level. His ears, dangling and flapping, recall not merely the simian type but rather the exact expression of a circus chimp forced to wear spectacles. The ear is protuberant, pendulous, recalling the simian type. Such subjects exhibit a passion for classification, restraint, and moral hygiene. Authority oozes from every pore, though it is the petty authority of a night watchman who has misplaced his keys.

The homo psychologicus (that is, the laboratory observer of reaction-times and word-associations) displays in contrast a globular cranium, with a vaulted parietal dome suggesting ceaseless speculation unmoored from practical application. The eyes are set close and gleam with nervous intensity. His physiognomy betrays the experimentalist’s faith in statistics, often accompanied by melancholia occasioned by too much tabulation. Homo psychologicus, forms the psychiatric species’ natural clown. His cranium balloons outward into a globular absurdity, a child’s balloon half-deflated and left in a gutter. The eyes, beady and overbright, dart with the twitch of a rat in perpetual vivisection. In temperament, he is an obsessive scribbler, a tabulator of trivia, capable of measuring everything except the measure of his own insignificance. One detects in his physiognomy the sadness of a man who has spent too long staring at the flicker of a chronoscope and has begun to suspect—correctly—that nobody cares.

Entry on Lombroso Himself.
It would be remiss not to observe the peculiar configuration of the master’s own head. Professor Lombroso, the man who invented criminal anthropology out of little more than his own facial asymmetries and a barrel of skulls filched from cadavers. Lombroso’s own head is a topographical accident: brachycephalic in the manner of a potato pressed under a cartwheel, jutting forward in some places, caved in at others, as if Nature herself grew weary of the project halfway through. His gaze, though “intense,” chiefly reminds one of the stare of an amateur mesmerist. Neither fully psychiatric tyrant nor psychological pedant, he constitutes instead a monstrous hybrid—homo criminologico-psychiatricus—a new type defined above all by his insatiable hunger for calipers, skulls, and self-regard. The left frontal bone juts forward, forming what one assistant described as “a promontory of feeble-mindedness,” while the right temporal shows a curious depression, “mark of pathological originality.” 

Comparative Chart: Stigmata of the Mind-Doctors

Category	Homo Psychiatricus (Asylum)	Homo Psychologicus (Laboratory)	Lombroso Ipse
Cranial Form	Dolichocephalic, flat brow	Globular, vaulted dome	Asymmetrical, hybrid
Ears	Pendulous, simian	Small, compressed	Large, uneven
Temperament	Authoritarian, moralizing	Obsessive, speculative	Pathological originality
Favourite Instrument	Straitjacket, keyring	Chronoscope, word-lists	Calipers, skulls
Pathological Inclination	Monomania of order	Monomania of measurement	Monomania of criminology