Experiments with Handwriting
REVIEWS 259 Reviews
- Author:
Robert Saudek. New York:
William Morrow and Company. 1929. lxiii-392 pp.
This work has been published in Great Britain, Germany, Holland and Czechoslovakia, as well as in America. Interestingly the English and American editions appear under the foregoing title, the other editions under the title Experiviental Graphology.
The author rests his work throughout upon an experimental basis, not only his own experiments but those of students of handwriting in all countries including the work of the well known American investigators, Judd and Freeman, are cited. Graphology is reduced from an “art” to an experimental science. The author is equally critical of the drawing room, dilettante type of graphology on the one hand and the metaphysical school on the other. There are numerous experiments suggested which the reader can make for himself, but in addition there is an appendix containing more than ninety facsimiles of handwriting to which frequent reference is made throughout the text. This appendix indeed is one of the most valuable features of the book. The author’s treatment of the problem of honesty and dishonesty will illustrate his method. After formulating certain theories he examined the manuscrips of 141 persons convicted of dishonesty in the law courts. In every case the signs of dishonesty previously formulated were present in the writing. The experiment was checked by the examination of the writing of 73 employees of industrial firms.
This is the result of many years’ work and as is usual in such cases contains some things that are irrelevant but to which the author has become attached. Occasionally he may appear naive in his psychological treatment, but psychologists should not ignore this book just because the terminology is not always conventional.
Particularly interesting to the clinical psychologist is the chapter on the development of what the author calls the “graphic faculty.” This development depends upon the visual memory, powers of graphic expression and manual dexterity. In learning to write all children have to suppress left hand movements just as in walking they must inhibit the simultaneous movement of both feet. We all learn to write by “drawing,” that is the writing is not automatic and does not become so until the attention is directed entirely to the content and the writer is acting under the sentence impulse. Only then is the writing free from the delineative elements. The reading of such writing is partly reading and partly guessing, and the writing of a person graphically mature can be read only by one completely familiar with the language. The illuminated manuscripts of the Middle Ages and the forgeries of today are similar in that both are the products of graphic immaturity, the delineative rather than the automatic element predominates. The science of paleography has no need of psychology because the copyists did not conceive the text. The relation of the central nervous system to the act of writing is shown particularly well in the facsimiles. After the loss of his right arm Horatio Nelson wrote with the left arm and the writing in both cases was so similar as to leave no doubt of its identity. The same principle is shown in the writing of a man who was born without arms and who wrote both with his foot and his mouth. The foot and mouth writing were remarkably similar. After twenty-seven years of blindness the handwriting can be easily identified with that written just before the blindness developed because the graphic forms are derived solely from memory images. Facsimiles are given to show each of these points. The alteration in writing is very great when a disability first appears but as the performance is learned this alteration is lost. In the normal individual there are changes in writing through the years due to changes of character and the imitation of alien models, indeed only the blind are free from the latter influence.
The forensic application of graphology is of course discussed, but the author does not confine himself to this. The detection of spurious expression, the signs of honesty and dishonesty and general characterological analysis are discussed. The symptomatic features in handwriting are adjustment, speed, letter formation, pressure, size, angle, spacing connections. The author discusses the relative ease with which they can be altered. The features which can be analyzed in handwriting are so numerous that it is impossible to alter them all at the same time and attention upon releases it from others and they are executed according to the individual’s automatic writing.
The last chapter illustrates the principles developed in the book by a characterological analysis of the handwriting of Otto Weininger, the author of Sex and Character, Mussolini and Sir Edward Grey on the basis of facsimiles of their handwriting given in the appendix.
This is no series of easy lessons in character reading by the analysis of handwriting. Unless one is willing to perform experiments, refer continually to an appendix, and in short work he is not likely to find the book of interest or value. Mr. Saudek is one of the three living authorities on his subject and his work is significant as a scientific contribution to the study of an item of human behavior which is rapidly becoming universal in civilized countries.
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