Pathognomy

Article summary

Pathognomy is "a semiotik of the transient features of someone's face or body, be it voluntary or involuntary". Examples of this can be laughter and winking to the involuntary such as sneezing or coughing. By studying the features or expressions, there is then an attempt to infer the mental state and emotion felt by the individual. , desire and hope Johann Kaspar Lavater separated pathognomy from physiognomy to limit the so-called power of persons to manipulate the reception of their image in public. Such division is marked by the disassociation of gestural expressions, and volition from the legibility of moral character. Both he and his critic Georg Christoph Lichtenberg branched this term from physiognomy, which strictly focused on the static and fixed features of peoples faces and the attempt to discover the relatively enduring traits from them. Pathognomy is distinguished from physiognomy based on key differences in their features. The latter, which is concerned with the examination of an individual's soul through the analysis of his facial features, is used to predict the overall, long-term character of an individual while pathognomy is used to ascertain clues about one's current character. Physiognomy is based on the shapes of the features, and pathognomy on the motions of the features.…

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