Paul Bouts

Who was Paul Bouts?

Paul Bouts was a Belgian phrenologist and pedagogue. Born in the province of Limburg, he was ordained as a Catholic priest in 1926. In the pedagogic environment of the Normal School of Tienen, Belgium, where he taught from 1924, he specialised in characterological studies and devised a new method of characterological analysis, which he coined Psychognomy and which was largely based on phrenology, combined with typology and graphology. This led to his life-work, La Psychognomie, initially published in Paris by the "Librairie philosophique Alcan". It was subsequently translated in Dutch and Portuguese. The theories of Bouts were further developed in specialised institutes which were founded in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and Chicoutimi, Québec. Bouts continued his research in the field with the paleo-anthropological work Les Grandioses Destinées Individuelle et Humaine dans la Lumière de la Caractérologie et de l'Evolution cérébro-cranienne. In this work he developed a teleological and orthogenetical view on a perfecting evolution, from the paleo-encephalical skull shapes of prehistoric man, which he considered still prevalent in criminals and savages, towards future perfection.