Classical Physiognomy. 3rd Edition

In determining or recognizing a person's mental state, and in psychological analysis in general, significant emphasis should be placed on a comprehensive study of outward appearance, as expressed in facial expressions, gestures, bodily movements, and postures. This investigation can resolve not only specific and particular questions but often also general scientific propositions related to the classification and properties of mental processes.

The proposed work differs from conventional treatises on psychology, and yet in this encyclopedic presentation, it may be more accessible not only to specialists—psychologists—but also to educated readers: artists, judges, educators, psychiatrists, and curious individuals.

Illustration is today an inevitable companion of our reasoning, which refuses to be "pure" and "abstract," but wishes to be clothed in the flesh and blood of real facts of physiological reality. In light of this requirement, stemming from mental evolution, the proposed psychological work is equipped with numerous illustrations that depict and clarify the underpinnings of psychological facts. For the same purpose—of lively illustrative explanation—a number of excerpts from poetic works are included in the book.

Perhaps physiognomy, more than any other scientific discipline, will be able to connect and unify such a diverse psychological material, as that provided by poetry, visual creativity, physiology, biology, psychiatry. For this reason alone, physiognomy should earn its place and position as a component of psychology.

3rd Edition.