Of course, nobody would pay good hard cash for an analysis which had remained on the level of Edgar Allan Poe’s impressions of people from their autographs. Some kind of systematic basis for the analysis must have evolved for people like DeWitt B. Lucas to make a living among respectable folk. The origins of the analysis of individual strokes lie with a French priest called Michon. In 1875, Michon not only coined the word ‘graphologie’, but assigned systematic features of character to particular variations in the rendering of letters. Michon seems to have been the first student of handwriting to make a methodical collection of samples of handwriting, amounting in the end to thousands of examples. Whether he systematically studied the characters of the authors of these handwritings is not quite so clear. Nevertheless, Michon had no hesitation in declaring that, for instance, ‘all weak-willed people cross their t’s feebly’. Michon’s analysis, going far beyond Poe’s generalized impression and possessing every appearance of a proper analytic science of character, inspired disciples to specify still further. These disciples, whatever the end they had in mind, contributed to a useful analytical sense of what handwriting might be made up of. A Crepieux-Jamin, conducted his analysis according to seven characteristics – slant, pressure, letter size, strength of ligature, speed, letter shapes and organization. Michon’s disciples probably assigned some human characteristics to each of these – at least, that was their declared purpose. But probably nobody had thought of handwriting in these systematic terms before the late-nineteenth century French graphologists. Their work, propagated through idle fashion, might have been of great use to people who had no other intention than improving the elegance of handwriting through teaching. It helped them to understand what handwriting was.
In the first half of the twentieth century, the different components of handwriting had been broken down by graphologists. Each, they believed, could yield a different insight into the individual writer’s personality. At the very beginning of curiosity into the psychological yield of handwriting, Isaac D’Israeli (father of Benjamin) had written that social pressures and schools of writing had suppressed individuality. In an ideal world, D’Israeli thought, ‘Nature would prompt every individual to have a distinct sort of writing, as she has given a peculiar countenance – a voice – and a manner’. He conceded, however, that even in this ideal state, analysis could only go so far. ‘One great truth must however be conceded to the opponents of the physiognomy of writing: general rules only can be laid down.’3
Those general rules, and translating the general impression given by handwriting into a description of character, continued until Michon. As the school of graphology developed, so did the number of ways in which handwriting could be described, going well beyond Crepieux-Jamin’s seven characteristics. A manual of graphology of 19694 lists sixteen separate factors which the graphologist will want to consider: ‘1. Size; 2. General layout; 3. Direction of lines; 4. Degree of connection (we call it connected writing when at least four or five letters in one word are connected); 5. Form of connection of upstrokes and downstrokes; 6. Regularity; 7. Rhythm*; 8. Degree of broadness; 9. Speed of writing; 10. Form of letters; 11. Covering of space; 12. Shading of writing; 13. Angle of writing; 14. Right and left tendencies; 15. Spacing; 16. Degree of attention.’
Some of these are more obviously real factors in creating handwriting than others, but some attempt is being made here to systematically analyse what goes into handwriting. Schools of handwriting, such as Palmer’s or the italic proponents, too, were considering many of these factors, and indeed arguing very strongly over factors like ‘degree of connection’. The graphologists, however, took these factors and tried to match them with psychological properties. Here is Singer’s partial list of characteristics which may be identified in specific features of someone’s handwriting – I don’t think he would have claimed this to be a complete list: ‘natural basis of character; intelligence; general inclination; artificial basis of personality; basic objective qualities; basic subjective qualities; individual perspective; social tendencies; degree of dependency on others; social behaviour; approach to money; temper; personal standard of happiness; special professional abilities, inclinations and talents; working qualities; moral qualities; special tastes; sexual peculiarities; abnormal state of mind.’
There are things which few graphologists claim to be able to divine – most professional graphologists, before embarking on an analysis, will ask for the age, sex and country of upbringing of the subject. Plenty of them don’t go as far as Singer, and say that they can’t tell about someone’s sexual nature. No wonder, however, in the light of these lists, graphology became a full-time profession in the course of the twentieth century. By hunting through sixteen or more parameters of a subject’s handwriting for indicators relating to personality features ranging from ‘special tastes’ to ‘artificial basis of personality’, an analyst could confidently come up with statements linking psychological insight with the smallest features of a hand. Singer, for instance, says quite confidently that if a downstroke of the h goes under the line to the left, then it means ‘unwilling to talk things over and compromise, believes in fighting things out’.5 How did he come to this conclusion, one of hundreds? Michon collected hundreds, if not thousands, of examples of handwriting and, where he thought people were of similar types, tried to find similarities in their handwriting. Have any such exercises been quietly carried out in recent years? Given the immense change between nineteenth-century French handwriting and twenty-first-century hands, it would seem extraordinary to assert that any difference could only be psychologically superficial, and that nothing of significance had been lost in the characteristic degrees of connection, forms of upstroke and downstroke, and so on. It seems most likely that many of the principles that graphologists work by have been passed on through the generations without being re-tested from time to time.
Just how far graphology can go from a neutral analysis of psychology through handwriting is shown whenever many of the pre-war graphologists get onto the subject of nationality. Now, it seems fairly obvious that your nationality will principally influence your handwriting according to the preferred national styles. A Palmer-style method of writing in an individual doesn’t tell you much about his personality in itself, only that he was taught to write in an American school. Those curious Montessori print letters with loops will not tell you anything other than that the writer was taught in a French or Italian school. Many pre-war graphologists let their xenophobia get the better of them, and the characteristic styles are seen to demonstrate something specific about national characters.
A Rosa Baughan quotes the eighteenth-century physiognomist Lavater: ‘The more I compare different handwritings, the more am I convinced that handwriting is the expression of the character of him who writes. Each nation has its national character of writing, as the physiognomy of each people expresses the most salient points of character in the nation.’ This is about as bad a parallel as one can think of; of course people aren’t taught their face as they are handwriting – they are born with it. Nevertheless, Miss Baughan believes that national characters, as well as individual ones, can be analysed by the graphologist. When she talks about a French style of handwriting, a sense of style, of psychology, and a gruesome national stereotype all muddle together:
The graceful insouciance of the French nation, its dislike of fixed work, and inability to ‘buckle to’ steady labour, are shown in the rounded curves, the long and sloping upstrokes and downstrokes of the most ordinary type of French writing; the vanity and boastfulness of the nation are shown in the liberal amount of flourish in all the capital letters, and in the exaggerated ornamentation of the signatures of almost all French writers, whilst the delicacy of the lines of the letters, the fineness of the upstrokes and downstrokes, are all typical of the grace and refinement for which the nation is celebrated all over the world.6
Other graphologists, much later, seem to believe in national characteristics in the most rig
id and stereotypical ways. It doesn’t seem to occur to this particular graphologist that people might be taught different styles in different educational systems for reasons only tangentially related to something called the ‘national character’. Interestingly, when it comes to her own nation, she refuses to accept that there is any such thing as a national character, for the same reason that when we are complimented on our accent in a foreign place, we tend to have to choke back the suggestion that we have no accent; it is the complimenter who has one.*
The Italian handwriting usually contains flowing capital letters showing much romance and gaiety. French writing generally shows meticulous letter formations . . . This may show cool and logical thinking, and fine sensibilities . . . The Spanish writing usually contains ornate capital letters, signifying a stately pride . . . In the German writing we find more intricate letter forms, which usually show careful and detailed thinking . . . Russian handwriting usually contains long connecting strokes . . . these point to garrulity and outgoing personality traits . . . There is no such thing as ‘an American style’.7
In the work of these early graphologists, the reputation of individuals often seems to precede them, whether for good or not, and is often tied to their nationality. Ms Baughan remarks of the really quite innocuous signature of Louis Philippe, ‘What egotism and pretention in all those twists and flourishes . . . and yet, with all this parade, what a compression, amounting to meanness, there is in the letter – egotism, pretension and vulgarity of mind are here rampant!’8 Spotting psychological tendencies which you knew about anyway in the handwriting of famous people is, I have to say, the occupation of idiots. Everyone knows that Louis Philippe was somewhat vulgar and egotistical; how easy to find that his handwriting bears this out. Of course, if this sample turned out to be taken from a letter by Berlioz, it seems all too likely that the graphologist would find the same twists and flourishes the signs of an idealistic and imaginative nature, somewhat detached from reality, full of dreams. My endeavours to find the most stupid observation made by a graphologist about the handwriting of a well-known person culminated with the graphologist who tells us solemnly that ‘Sometimes, however, the writing leans extremely far to the right . . . One name that stands out in this category of handwriting was Hitler.’ Well, I’ll go to the foot of our stairs. Where else would Hitler’s handwriting lean towards?9
The suspicion that, for some writers, graphology was only a means to be rude about people they disliked anyway, or, mutatis mutandis, suck up to their friends, can’t be dismissed. In one dilettante-ish work by a Russian princess, the pretence at analysing handwriting barely covers the observations she would make anyway about an Italian music teacher – ‘Imagination is denoted by the eccentric form and overweening vanity by the absurd flourish’10 Richard Wagner – ‘Here we have extreme originality, courage, imagination, and a certain doggedness of will in the thick downstrokes which made him stick to his own convictions in spite of the many obstacles put in his way’ – and someone called Countess Sophie Torby: ‘This shows a very sweet, kindly nature; possibly a little impulsive, but her impulses are always good. She is generous and unselfish and a true friend.’*
For other, more serious or more ambitious graphologists, handwriting was a tool of professional psychology, often used to uncover aspects of a life which might remain hidden even to the subject. A truly hardcore study by Nadya Olyanova is actually called Handwriting Tells. Handwriting can uncover the most secret parts of a personality, and lead to a diagnosis. Some of Ms Olyanova’s case studies claim an extraordinarily implausible insight into aspects of the patient’s history:
This handwriting of a so-called hippie shows the child plainly in the very rounded formations, coupled with the weak t-bars that do not (or barely) go through the stem. But there is hope for her making a practical adjustment, since she has a desire to study beauty culture; some day, and with the proper encouragement and help, she could succeed. The circle i-dot tells us that she considers herself different; it also means she could develop manual deftness, as she has a natural bent in this direction. The vertical angle expresses signs of passivity and isolation, forced on her by elements in her environment. Yet she can also be outgoing and responsive when she senses she is on friendly soil. (The unfriendly soil is her home environment in which a stepfather subjected her to physical cruelty and threatened to shoot her in the back!)’11
Another writer still more explicitly links handwriting to the ‘tells’ of Freudian analysis:*
Just as we give something of ourselves away when we say the wrong word, or stutter over a psychologically important name, so the forms of handwriting can be significant. In speech, a slip of the tongue can reveal the speaker’s true intentions; in handwriting, it is the insignificant-looking middle zone, and the initial and end adjustments that may give the writer away. A ‘Yes’ all over the capitals is a mere boast concealing the middle zone’s ‘No’.12 †
There is even a small but mesmerizing body of work by practising psychiatrists which claims to be able to diagnose mental illness, schizophrenia, paranoia, compulsion disorder and drug addiction, to say confidently that ‘studying the boy’s handwriting revealed that his relationship with his foster mother was not entirely felicitous’13, even to judge the sincerity of a threat to commit suicide,* from people’s handwritings.
These Freudian analyses ultimately result from the work of a Swiss graphologist called Max Pulver. In his Symbolik der Handschrift of 1930, Pulver elaborated a theory of ‘zones’ of handwriting which corresponded to a key element of Freudian theory. Handwriting, according to Pulver, operated in three horizontal zones. The top one, where the upper strokes of the letters b, d, f, h, k, l and t were to be found; the lower one, where the downstrokes of f, g, j, p, q, y and possibly z were located; and the middle one, for everything else. Pulver believed that lively activity and movement in the top zone corresponded to imaginative, philosophical, intellectual, aesthetic aspects of the brain – so a capital T with squiggles at either end might indicate a poet or a mystic. The lower zone corresponds to base urges and appetites, sexual desire, the subconscious mind, so the highly libidinous might produce swirls at the bottom of their lower-case y’s. The middle zone, where lower-case a, e, i, m and so on are written, relates to the facts of everyday life. The three zones corresponded loosely to Freud’s idea of the super-ego, the ego and the id, as immortalized in that great classic remake of The Tempest, Forbidden Planet.*
Looking at a particular hand, one disciple of Pulver observes that ‘The lower zone may be sadly neglected, with very short loops to the letters y, g, etc. Here we have a writer who shows a certain lack of realistic outlook, a lack of sense for material necessities. There will probably be sexual immaturity, sexual fear or trauma. Doctors have also found this writing trait in the script of patients with damaged or incapacitated legs or feet.’14
He was doing so well until that last bit.
Pulver, on closer examination, seems a weird mix of the plausible and the utterly fantastic. My generalized sense that people with abruptly shortened downstrokes don’t have much of a sex life accords in a detailed way with Pulver’s theory of zones. On the other hand, there is this belief, which underlies the whole exercise:
The point along a line of writing at which the moving pen of a writer arrives becomes a symbol of his own position in the world around him; to the left of this point lies the past, origin, mother and childhood, to the right lies the work to be done, the future, the writer’s fellow men and the social world. Movement upwards . . . symbolizes gravitation towards spiritual and intellectual spheres; movement below symbolizes a dive into the material, sub-human and subconscious world.’15
If by now, you are raising an eyebrow, you may be right to do so. Apart from anything else, this seems weirdly culturally specific. What can graphologists do with a script like Arabic which moves from right to left, or with bilingual writers in English and Arabic who write from time in different directions, and may therefore h
ave two different concepts of the direction on the page in which the future, the work to be done, lies? What should they do with Indian scripts which are experienced by their writers not as rising from the line towards spiritual and intellectual spheres, but as hanging from a line like washing?
It is perhaps worth noting at this point that most of the books I have been quoting from were published between the First World War and the very early 1970s. There is a reason for this, and it is that professional mental-health associations worldwide, such as the British Psychological Society, have declared graphology to be of ‘zero validity’. One recent study has demonstrated that graphologists are no better than random choosers at identifying the occupation of individuals from their handwriting.16 Two hundred objective studies have failed to establish reliable connections between personality and handwriting.17 You would be about as likely to meet a proponent of bibliomancy, palm-reading or haruspication among psychiatrists these days as someone prepared to write the sort of handwriting-analysis case study that Irene Marcuse did as recently as 1969:
The light-pressured and loose script, in addition to the ever-changing slant, shows the inconsistency of her personality. She clearly was mentally disturbed. Her exaggerated sexual desire, which remained unfulfilled, is shown by the inflated lower loops, some turned back to self. Since she had neither physical nor mental resilience, no one was ever able to help her, and she eventually committed suicide.18
So what could graphology do? The graphologists, whether professional or popularizing, make several suggestions. A lot of them view handwriting as a diagnostic tool in mental health, though only very rarely as any kind of cure. As we have seen, Spencer thought that improved handwriting could improve a moral character, and keep potential drunkards out of the ale house. Few of his twentieth-century successors thought that you could cure sexual obsession by advising a patient to make his lower loops more restrained. A lot of them, from the beginning of commercial graphology, thought of the tool as a way of advising whether an engaged couple were compatible. A good many of them, probably with their eye on the main chance, recommended graphology as a business tool. One graphologist, Dorothy Sara, cites the question, ‘We are a credit house. Will this customer, according to his handwriting, be a good risk and will he repay a loan?’ as an example of what graphology might usefully address. The author, however, probably considering the consequences of getting it badly wrong, somewhat hedges her bets. ‘While the credit house may be wise in having the client’s character analysed, that firm cannot be promised that the loan will be repaid.’19
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