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CHRONOLOGICAL HISTORY OF HANDWRITING ANALYSIS

2000 years ago Nero stated that he could not trust anyone who's handwriting he thought 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 his words-I do not trust him.' It seems that since graphic writing began, the scientific study of graphology has been used to increase awareness of one's personality. Graphology did not appear overnight. It was a cumulative and progressive process which required time, dedication and passion. Just as handwriting analysis is done by adding several factors together into a complete whole, many individuals contributed their part in increasing the knowledge of Graphology to make it become the field it is now. 1619 1622 Alderius Prosper from Bologna, recorded the first book on graphology called Ideagraphia. 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 a Person From His Letters. Little attention was brought from this book, although there were a few entertainers who traveled from castle to castle giving advice. In the next few hundred years, very little happened in the research of handwriting analysis. During the 18th century, things started to pick up and the connection between writing and character began to be taken more seriously by devoted followers, especially in France. A group of French churchmen named Archbishop Soudinet of Amiens, Cardinal Reginier, and Abbe Flandrin (1806-81) researched into the relationship between handwriting and character by using single letter forms as their central source of data. Jean Hippolyte Michon of Paris, France, was a student of Abbe Flandrin. He gave the science its name "graphology" and created the Graphical Society in Paris, which was active until World War two. By using his observational skills, he collected and analyzed thousands of samples and recorded the writing signs that were shared by people with similar characteristics. He designed a system of signs and rules, each with a fixed meaning based on his observations. Michon believed that a signs' absence described the opposite quality. We now know that this is not valid, but his system worked well. After many years this comprehensive work was published, and it took the country by storm and was popularly recieved. Although he did not explain why people had different types of styles or the psychological implications of handwriting, his work created a major contribution to later works of his student, Jules Crepienx. As a student of Michon, Jean Crepienx-Jamin recognized that the lack of a sign does not neccesarily denote its opposite quality and rarely does. He also realized that handwriting must be analyzed as a whole and not as so many different and simple characteristics. We are all complex creatures with many characteristics that we 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-Jamin went to Alfred Binet, a French doctor
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CHRONOLOGICAL HISTORY OF HANDWRITING ANALYSIS


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 own psychological methods of testing. The outcome was a success, and increased further 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 19th century. 1880-83 Three German scholars named Dr. George Meyer, a psychiatrist, Dr. Wilhelm Preyer, a child psychiatrist and professor of physiology, and Dr. Ludwig Klages, a philosopher and psychologist from Zurich, approached Graphology from a psychological viewpoint. All three conducted extensive research and published works that were validated by psychology establishments. Dr. Ludwig Klages became the leading force in Germany who established principles of Graphology that are still in use today. He published five books including Handwriting and Character and The Problem of Graphology. He was credited for being the first to discover a system of analyzing characteristics called the 'form level' which judges the basic rhythm of the writing. It also assesses the quality of very high to very low standards of spacing and writing. Through this system he could see the natural rhythm and impulses on the one hand, and the mental state on the other. This allowed him to find a way to expose intentional and unintentional disguise in handwriting by observing changing and unchanging signs. Until now, natural and unnatural writing was not even considered. Klages's law 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 examined works that were produced by the hand, mouth, and foot. He also discovered that the 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 also have 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 and depression. He believed that a mental condition could not be discerned without knowing the personality of the person. He considered factors such as extension, sideways, movement, upwards and downwards, speed and pressure to be the significant. He was mainly interested in the working relationship between the emotions (psychomotor functioning) and the way the writing moves. 18971908 Dr. Klages and Hans Borse created the German Graphological Society. They also created a monthly magazine to help bring all the leading scholars together and express their research results.

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CHRONOLOGICAL HISTORY OF HANDWRITING ANALYSIS


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 Jamin's system of 'signs' until that time was still considered 'practically' significant. Dr. Klages had stronger opinions than others during his time. He stated that all movement consists of three phases: spacing, pressure, and speed. The intensity and variation within the writing was found to be significant. He believed that we have 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 variance dynamically, 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 by examining 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 England and established the first British journal of graphology, Character and Personality. This increased the knowledge of the science and brought it to the attention of many leading psychologists. He also published The Psychology of Handwriting in 1925 and Experiments with Handwriting in 1928. He compared the handwriting styles of different nationalities and how they diverged from their copybook characteristics. He did special research on English handwriting and how it related to the speed, which was a very important factor to him. Louise Rice, an American, created the American Graphological Society. Many Americans were then exposed to the science of graphology which until then was not aware of its existence. At the Harvard Clinic of Psychology, Gordon Allport and Phillip Vernon conducted investigations on styles of handwriting based on expressive movements of the body. Their extensive research was scientifically related to speed, pressure of movement, 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 then able to explain a basis for evaluating personality and how it is expressed in handwriting. Thea Lewinson later continued the work. 1933 1939 Gordon Allport and Phillip Vernon publish Studies in Expressive Movement. H.J. Jacoby, who arrived from Germany to England three years earlier, published Analysis of Handwriting; An Introduction into Scientific Graphology in 1939. This was the first book on graphology that actually contained photographic copies of other people's handwriting. To show how useful graphology could be in an
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CHRONOLOGICAL HISTORY OF HANDWRITING ANALYSIS


everyday context, he showed samples relating to events in industry, marriage, vocational guidance, crime, and child problems. 1942 1945 Thea Lewinson and Joseph Zubin of America extended the general knowledge of handwriting elements such as pressure. The American Rose Wilson participated in the experiment written above and privately published her work which mainly dealt with the handwriting of delinquents. Alred O. Mendel was an American lecturer and consultant who published Personality in Handwriting. He added a chapter in Alfred Kanfer's work but his main contributions was detecting the signs of dishonesty. He also did research into the horizontal stroke and its meanings in various pressures. After twenty years of research, Werner Wolff published Diagrams of the Unconscious which contributed a method of analysis based on his research of the signature. He discovered that the signature's movement was a result of natural expression rather than accidental expression. Ulrich Sonneman, a Professor at the New School for Social Research in New York, made a serious contribution to the field of clinical psychology. He showed how graphology could be used as a psychodiagnostic tool by studying the handwriting of schizophrenics along with other mental states such as anxiety. Handwriting as a Psychodiagnostic Tool was published the same year. A Hungarian named Klara Roman who also attending the New School published Handwriting, a Key to Personality. She studied the muscular tension (mainly) in the handwriting of children, by using an instrument which she had designed herself to record the changing pressure and speed of the writing. The equipment was an improvement from the original model invented in 1931. Eric Singer was a doctor of law who set up a handwriting analysis practice in London. By relating Rudolph Pophal's research on actual strokes, he studied the ego symbols such as the symbol "I" and the meaning of guiding images. 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. Dr. Alred Kanfer, who was born in Chicago in 1901, researched for thirty years into the study of cancer detection. After he left school he analyzed handwritings for banks, insurance companies, and the Ministry of Justice. This lead to the individual differences in the measurement of their neuromuscular changes., which helped detect the absence or non-absence of cancer. 1968 Klara Roman publishes Encyclopedia of the Written Word.

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