Graphology

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Graphology: A Brief History

"Beware of the man whose writing sways like a reed in the wind."
Confusius

References to handwriting analysis can be traced to ancient times but, the first full-bodied work on the science of graphology did not appear until 1622. The Italian physician and university professor, Camillo Baldi wrote his treatise on A Method to Recognize the Nature and Quality of a Writer from his Letters. Baldi stated, “It is obvious that all persons write in their own peculiar way . . . Characteristic forms . . . cannot be truly imitated by anybody else.” Since its origin and throughout the centuries of scientific studies, in fact, there have never been two handwriting specimens that proved to be exactly like.

The studies of handwriting analysis continued into the next centuries while spreading into France and Germany. Jean Hippolyte Michon established the method of “fixed signs” and his student, Jean Crépieux-Jamin published L'ecriture et le caractere (Handwriting and Character, 1888) in which he emphasized that handwriting must be analyzed as a totality, and thus laid the groundwork for the Gestalt approach to graphological interpretations. His work credited him as the discoverer of the theory of resultants, which enable the graphologist to deduce secondary qualities from the combination of known primary characteristics. Crépieux-Jamin wrote, “The study of elements is to graphology as the study of the alphabet is to the reading of prose.”

Hans Busse, editor of the graphological periodical, Monthly Journal, translated the work into German and helped Germany become the leader in theoretical and experimental graphology. In 1985, William Preyer, another German, established that handwriting was actually brain writing (On the Physiology of Writing). His experiments included having writers perform with their opposite hand, their foot and even their mouth and results of his studies conclusively established crucial similarities, indicating that writing was centrally organized. In the early 1900's, Ludwig Klages, founder of the Graphological Society in Germany, stirred the movement into scientific theory of expressive behavior. Other notable proponents of this line of investigation include Robert Saudek, Thea Stein Lewinson, Gordon Allport, Werner Wolff and Klara Roman. It was Saudek who introduced the graphological studies to the English speaking part of the world.

Interestingly, it took from the 1600's to the 1900's for graphology to spread through the languages of Italian, French, German and finally English and that a good number of studies in German only recently (1980's) have been translated to English by Dr. Erika Karohs, despite the list of graphologists driven out of the country under the reign of the Third Reich. Nevertheless, those graphologists made outstanding contributions to the field in the United States. Klara Roman (1931), in addition to her work seeking to objectify graphological research by inventing the graphodyne, a mechanical device that recorded “quantitative and qualitative measurements of the dynamic components of the writing movement such as pressure and speed, interruptions of flow and variations of emphasis (all of which) constituted parts of the supposedly intangible phenomena labeled rhythm”, established an accredited college course at New School of Social Research in New York City. Werner Wolf, author Diagrams of the Unconscious and teacher at Bard College. Wolff's work stated that conscious and preconscious (habitual or automatized) movements are learned, the form and quality of our movements are unconscious. Felix Klein founded the National Society for Graphology in New York City and Alfred Kanfer made his largest contribution in the field of cancer research. In a study for the American Cancer Society (1950), involving 935 handwriting specimens, 88 with cancer, Kanfer was 84% correct in detecting the cancer cases and 79% accurate in distinguishing non-cancer writings (Hartford, 1973, pp 196-218).

While the most popular use of graphology is for individual personal insight, it is used in the psychological community to provide counseling guidance and by employers around the world to determine candidate suitability for employment. In the United States, it is an accepted nondiscriminatory tool and, therefore, meets the requirements of the EEOC. The insights available with handwriting analysis are invaluable to parents and teachers and in any situation where better understanding of human nature is required.