Saturday, October 6, 2007

Psychology of handwriting

I would like to begin with saying, that psychology is trying to deepen knowledge about person not only through verbal communication but also through body language, the style of how we behave. That's why it should not be strange that even psychology of handwriting exist. So, what can handwriting show? As psychologists interested in nonverbal behavior suggest, it can say a lot about personality's traits, interpersonal communication, characters and so on. This idea can be explained by structure of personality which is composed not only of traits, minds but also different style of behavior. By the way, one of the pioneers of psychology Binet thought that one of the ways to determine characters is to analyze writing. After a lot of experiments he found correlations between handwriting and gender. Binet stated that male writing is always more original than female. Graphologists suggest that it is possible to interpret characters from such a graphic signs: 1) ascending handwriting which is associated with self-love and pride; 2) handwriting composed of a thin lines, saying that it is very shy person; 3) personality's strength is associated with a thick letter "t"; 4) long "t's" stem means toughness 5) writing letters "a" and "o" roundly shows reserve, reticence. But on the contrary to these findings I would like to mention research done by psychologists Mongomery and Hull to support or deny this idea. Firstly, they grouped sample of seventeen students, for example, by pride. After that, they were asked to write some paragraph. Than all students exchanged their sheets and had to group colleague's by the level of pride, which should be seen through ascending lines. Unfortunately, there wasn't any correlations between handwriting and real traits of students characters'. Still, it goes without saying, that we all behave,and also write, differently. Calm person writes without hurry, legibly, in the contrary, A behavior type people write illegible, fast, impatiently. So, after all, it would be too brave stating that handwriting is not important field of psychology. Besides, a lot of psychologists, like A. Adler, C. Horney and many others, state that wanting to be better, taking control under others, showing strength by using psychological abuse means nothing else but inferiority complex. So, people want compensation for their selves weakness, problems, fears through abusing others. Also, I would like to press the point, that C. Horney was the firs psychologist who begin speaking about women psychology.She argued that male, who used to were completely dependent on their mothers envy their virtues that are impossible for men ( like breastfeeding, pregnancy. If we believe in C. Horney, men in all over the world abuse their colleagues women, wives or just unknown women because of envy and inferiority. But it's a pity, all these findings do not change situation because to overcome psychological abuse ( not only female, but all kind of abuse ) we need changes in all civilization's point of view, more serious consideration about it in governments that can help creating help-centers and spreading information about it.

2 comments:

ieinoryte said...

It was very interesting to read about handwriting,because my writing is a little bit strange,so I read new information about myself and what my letters may mean.In my view, the text was really useful.

linguist22 said...

I object the statement 'all men abuse the women collegues' not because women are majority looked upon in world society as being the weaker vessel, but the fact in which culture they were possibly brought up in. In can go either way, a woman who is very independt may end up with an insecure man who is always looking to her for answers, to lead the relationship, etc. And vice-versa.

But good discussion, thumbs up!
I also liked the fact you pointed out certain peoples inferiorities may lead them to try and dominate others. So very true.