chronological history of handwriting analysis[1]

7/28/2019 Chronological History of Handwriting Analysis[1]

1/4

CHRONOLOGICAL HISTORY OF HANDWRITING ANALYSIS

www.deinspire.com 1

2000 years ago Nero stated that he could not trust anyone who's handwriting hethought to be treacherous. In 120 A.D. Suetonius Tranquillas, a Roman historian who was

part of the 12 Ceasars, said of the Emperor Augustus of Rome, 'He does not seperate hiswords-I do not trust him.' It seems that since graphic writing began, the scientific study ofgraphology has been used to increase awareness of one's personality. Graphology did notappear overnight. It was a cumulative and progressive process which required time,dedication and passion. J ust as handwriting analysis is done by adding several factorstogether into a complete whole, many individuals contributed their part in increasing theknowledge of Graphology to make it become the field it is now.

1619 Alderius Prosper from Bologna, recorded the first book on graphology calledIdeagraphia.

1622 Camillo Baldi, a professor of medicine, recorded a treatise in handwriting analysis.His work, written in Greek, is titled How to Know the Habits and the Character of aPerson From His Letters. Little attention was brought from this book, althoughthere were a few entertainers who traveled from castle to castle giving advice.

1700's-1800's

In the next few hundred years, very little happened in the research of handwritinganalysis. During the 18th century, things started to pick up and the connectionbetween writing and character began to be taken more seriously by devotedfollowers, especially in France.

1830 A group of French churchmen named Archbishop Soudinet of Amiens, CardinalReginier, and Abbe Flandrin (1806-81) researched into the relationship between

handwriting and character by using single letter forms as their central source ofdata.

1871 J ean Hippolyte Michon of Paris, France, was a student of Abbe Flandrin. He gavethe science its name "graphology" and created the Graphical Society in Paris,which was active until World War two. By using his observational skills, hecollected and analyzed thousands of samples and recorded the writing signs thatwere shared by people with similar characteristics. He designed a system of signsand rules, each with a fixed meaning based on his observations. Michon believedthat a signs' absence described the opposite quality. We now know that this is notvalid, but his system worked well. After many years this comprehensive work was

published, and it took the country by storm and was popularly recieved. Althoughhe did not explain why people had different types of styles or the psychologicalimplications of handwriting, his work created a major contribution to later works ofhis student, J ules Crepienx.

As a student of Michon, J ean Crepienx-J amin recognized that the lack of a signdoes not neccesarily denote its opposite quality and rarely does. He also realizedthat handwriting must be analyzed as a whole and not as so many different andsimple characteristics. We are all complex creatures with many characteristics thatwe are a sum total of. When those characteristics are in conflict with each other,they must be compared one versus the other in order to arrive at an accurate

analysis of the handwriting. Crepienx-J amin went to Alfred Binet, a French doctor


2/4


www.deinspire.com 2

and psychologist, (he is the founder of intelligence testing, also known as IQ tests)for support in examining the validity of graphology, by relating it to his ownpsychological methods of testing. The outcome was a success, and increasedfurther interest and research into what other educated men and women called "the science of the future". The French dominated this field until the end of the 19thcentury.

1880-83 Three German scholars named Dr. George Meyer, a psychiatrist, Dr. WilhelmPreyer, a child psychiatrist and professor of physiology, and Dr. Ludwig Klages, aphilosopher and psychologist from Zurich, approached Graphology from apsychological viewpoint. All three conducted extensive research and publishedworks that were validated by psychology establishments.

Dr. Ludwig Klages became the leading force in Germany who establishedprinciples of Graphology that are still in use today. He published five booksincluding Handwriting and Character and The Problem of Graphology. He wascredited for being the first to discover a system of analyzing characteristics calledthe 'form level' which judges the basic rhythm of the writing. It also assesses thequality of very high to very low standards of spacing and writing. Through thissystem he could see the natural rhythm and impulses on the one hand, and themental state on the other. This allowed him to find a way to expose intentional andunintentional disguise in handwriting by observing changing and unchangingsigns. Until now, natural and unnatural writing was not even considered. Klages'slaw of expression states that each bodily movement expressed exposes the

tensions and drives the personality.

Dr. Wilhelm Preyer proved that handwriting is really brainwriting. He examinedworks that were produced by the hand, mouth, and foot. He also discovered thatthe signature could not be ascertained without the text also being analyzed with it.He also did research on the writing mechanics of pen, paper and ink, which alsohave a significant meaning in and of themselves.

Dr. George Meyer discovered the importance of beginning and ending strokes,along with the slope of the line expressing the subconscious. He did experiments

with people while they were in alternating moods of manic happiness anddepression. He believed that a mental condition could not be discerned withoutknowing the personality of the person. He considered factors such as extension,sideways, movement, upwards and downwards, speed and pressure to be thesignificant. He was mainly interested in the working relationship between theemotions (psychomotor functioning) and the way the writing moves.

1897-1908

Dr. Klages and Hans Borse created the German Graphological Society. They alsocreated a monthly magazine to help bring all the leading scholars together andexpress their research results.


3/4


www.deinspire.com 3

1904 Dr. Klages did not agree with many former graphologists and caused a rift

between the German school and the French's. The work of Crepieux J amin'ssystem of 'signs' until that time was still considered 'practically' significant. Dr.Klages had stronger opinions than others during his time. He stated that allmovement consists of three phases: spacing, pressure, and speed. The intensityand variation within the writing was found to be significant. He believed that wehave two forces in us; the Mind, which inhibits us, and the Soul, which frees us,and develops our creativity. These two forces, interacting and being at variancedynamically, reveals expressive motion.

Rudoph Pophal, Professor of Neurology at the University of Hamburg, Germany,researched on the physical elements of the writing act to which little attention was

recieved until now. He created a system that classified character types byexamining the stroke quality, whether it was weak, strong, fuzzy, clear,disintegrating, or shaky. This is due to the interplay between muscles and nerves,to the neuromuscular system.

1925 Robert Saudek was a graphologist who came from Czechoslovakia to Englandand established the first British journal of graphology, Character and Personality.This increased the knowledge of the science and brought it to the attention ofmany leading psychologists. He also published The Psychology of Handwriting in1925 and Experiments with Handwriting in 1928. He compared the handwritingstyles of different nationalities and how they diverged from their copybookcharacteristics. He did special research on English handwriting and how it relatedto the speed, which was a very important factor to him.

1927Louise Rice, an American, created the American Graphological Society. ManyAmericans were then exposed to the science of graphology which until then wasnot aware of its existence.

1930At the Harvard Clinic of Psychology, Gordon Allport and Phillip Vernon conductedinvestigations on styles of handwriting based on expressive movements of thebody. Their extensive research was scientifically related to speed, pressure ofmovement, and script size. They believed that external movement was very

significant as an expression of personality. Based on the results of his research,he believed that personality is consistent, that movement expresses personality,and that the actions of the person are consistent with one another. He was thenable to explain a basis for evaluating personality and how it is expressed inhandwriting. Thea Lewinson later continued the work.

1933 Gordon Allport and Phillip Vernon publish Studies in Expressive Movement.

1939 H.J . J acoby, who arrived from Germany to England three years earlier, publishedAnalysis of Handwriting; An Introduction into Scientific Graphology in 1939. Thiswas the first book on graphology that actually contained photographic copies ofother people's handwriting. To show how useful graphology could be in an


4/4


www.deinspire.com 4

everyday context, he showed samples relating to events in industry, marriage,vocational guidance, crime, and child problems.

1942 Thea Lewinson and J oseph Zubin of America extended the general knowledge ofhandwriting elements such as pressure.

1945 The American Rose Wilson participated in the experiment written above andprivately published her work which mainly dealt with the handwriting ofdelinquents.

1947 Alred O. Mendel was an American lecturer and consultant who publishedPersonality in Handwriting. He added a chapter in Alfred Kanfer's work but hismain contributions was detecting the signs of dishonesty. He also did research

into the horizontal stroke and its meanings in various pressures.1948 After twenty years of research, Werner Wolff published Diagrams of the

Unconscious which contributed a method of analysis based on his research of thesignature. He discovered that the signature's movement was a result of naturalexpression rather than accidental expression.

1950 Ulrich Sonneman, a Professor at the New School for Social Research in NewYork, made a serious contribution to the field of clinical psychology. He showedhow graphology could be used as a psychodiagnostic tool by studying thehandwriting of schizophrenics along with other mental states such as anxiety.Handwriting as a Psychodiagnostic Tool was published the same year.

1952 A Hungarian named Klara Roman who also attending the New School publishedHandwriting, a Key to Personality. She studied the muscular tension (mainly) inthe handwriting of children, by using an instrument which she had designedherself to record the changing pressure and speed of the writing. The equipmentwas an improvement from the original model invented in 1931.

1954 Eric Singer was a doctor of law who set up a handwriting analysis practice inLondon. By relating Rudolph Pophal's research on actual strokes, he studied theego symbols such as the symbol "I" and the meaning of guiding images.

1955 Klara Roman and George Staemphli invented a checklist called the Graphological

Psychogram which put certain factors in order and plotted them in the chart.Daniel Anthony of New York refined the psychogram.

1962 Dr. Alred Kanfer, who was born in Chicago in 1901, researched for thirty yearsinto the study of cancer detection. After he left school he analyzed handwritingsfor banks, insurance companies, and the Ministry of J ustice. This lead to theindividual differences in the measurement of their neuromuscular changes., whichhelped detect the absence or non-absence of cancer.1968 Klara Roman publishes Encyclopedia of the Written Word.

chronological history of handwriting analysis[1]

Documents