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SUMMARY:Hair-Raising Observations: Darwin and Crichton Browne on Piloerect
 ion and Insanity - Dr Pieter Adriaens\, University of Leuven
DTSTART:20151202T170000Z
DTEND:20151202T183000Z
UID:TALK62680@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Francis Smallwood
DESCRIPTION:One of the main aims of Darwin's _Expression of the Emotions_ 
 was to document and to detail the many commonalities between humans and ot
 her animals in expressing emotions. Examples of such commonalities include
  the raising of the eyebrows in surprise\, the baring of the teeth in rage
 \, and the erection of the hair (piloerection) in fear and anger. In this 
 paper I trace back Darwin's ideas on piloerection to his correspondence wi
 th the young psychiatrist James Crichton Browne. More particularly\, I rev
 eal how Darwin's initial doubts about the analogy between erection of the 
 hair in animals and in psychiatric patients were eased when studying a pho
 tograph of one of Crichton Browne's patients\, Ruth Lockwood\, whose menta
 l condition was supposed to reveal itself in the bristling of her hair. Re
 markably\, very few commentators have challenged the analogy in question\,
  even though a) Darwin's evidence for it was at best anecdotal\, and b) hi
 s correspondence shows that he lost his belief in the documentary value of
  psychiatric photography soon after the publication of _Expression_. I con
 clude with some general observations about the role of psychiatric photogr
 aphy in the early development of evolutionary theory.
LOCATION:Room 5\, Mill Lane Lecture Rooms\, Mill Lane
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