The History and Legitimacy of Graphology as a Psychodiagnost
The History and Legitimacy of Graphology as a Psychodiagnostic Tool The Greek words graphein-, meaning 'to write,' and -ology meaning 'the study of' come together to form the modern-day term, graphology (Victor 3). The definition of graphology simply stated, the study of handwriting, tells one very little about the true meaning of graphology. Graphology: the science of estimating character by studying the handwriting. This definition delivers a much more precise and clear picture of what is involved with graphology. This paper will explore the history of graphology, and, more importantly, its needful inclusion to the battery of currently used psychodiagnostic tests. Handwriting analysis, although considered to be a contemporary idea, has a lengthy history, dating as far back as the third century B.C., when Aristotle wrote, "Just as all men do not have the same speech sounds, neither do they all have the same writing." Fourteen hundred years later, in the eleventh century, the Chinese philosopher Kuo Jo-hsu wrote, "Handwriting infallibility can show whether it comes from a person who is noble-minded or one who is vulgar." In Italy, at the beginning of the seventeenth cent
The concept of "brain writing" comes from William Preyer, who conducted experiments in which he had paraplegics write with their mouths instead of the customary hand or foot. There are six main objections to handwriting analysis. Objection number three: handwriting is the result of school teaching and therefore children write similarly without possessing similar characteristics. Another reason for graphology to be considered a valid tool for psychoanalysis is that all human factors can be eliminated from the evaluation. Jamin requested that Binet research the subject and, after Binet's research found graphology to be a legitimate science, graphology received much favor and respect, and was then regarded as "the science of the future" (Sara 17). Jamin made the comparison that "the study of the elements (of handwriting) is to graphology what the study of the alphabet is to reading of prose" (Sara 16). The conclusions drawn and the study published by the group received widespread recognition for their efforts. Studies of thousands of persons who have lost the use of their hands and have had to learn to write with a pen in their mouths or between their toes eventually produce their own unique handwriting, the same handwriting they had when they could use their hands. For, just as psychoanalysis and the Rorschach protocol have broken the barriers of professional conservatism, so eventually will graphology earn its place as a unique method of assessing man's conscious and unconscious expressive behavior" (Anthony 77). Finding that the same graphological traits, associated with specific personality traits in the subjects, appeared when the subject wrote with their mouths led Preyer to the notion that our handwriting is merely an extension of our brain and our unconscious. They are an x-ray of our mind, and, like fingerprints, they remain uniquely our own forever as no two people have exactly the same handwriting (McNichol 23-4). Obviously, all of the students in your kindergarten class did not write identically. , there is something more fundamental than the specific muscle contractions which seems to predominate.
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