Fin vs History Wearing Your Dad’s Suit To Chat Up Your Mum | Sigmund Freud & The Birth of Psychology (Part 1)
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Feb 23, 2026 Surreal sketches and Rorschach bits lead into a madcap tour of early psychology. They trace humours, phrenology and physiognomy’s slide into racial pseudoscience. Mesmer, hypnosis and wild hysteria treatments get lampooned. Freud’s ideas, psychosexual stages and the Oedipus drama are unpacked with dark comedy.
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Four Humours Shaped Personality For Centuries
- The four humours framework dominated Western ideas of temperament for over a millennium.
- They mapped bodily fluids to personality: blood (sanguine), yellow bile (choleric), black bile (melancholic), phlegm (phlegmatic), shaping treatments like bloodletting.
Face Science Fueled Racial Hierarchies
- 19th-century physiognomy and phrenology claimed facial and skull features revealed character and intelligence.
- Fin links these to racist science and later Nazi racial hierarchy that measured noses, skulls and lips to justify oppression.
Duchenne Smile Served As Early Emotion Science
- Early work like Duchenne's studied facial muscle actions to distinguish genuine from fake smiles.
- The Duchenne smile became shorthand for authentic joy via eyebrow and eye-muscle involvement.