After looking at the significance of general layout, basic elements, and various other signs like the T cross, and partially explaining why special meanings are attached to the particular elements, the theoretical question of whether it is possible to offer a general explanation of the causal link between the individual character and the individual handwriting remains unanswered.
There was little investigation into the reasons in the early days of graphology. Experience led to the discovery of the signs, which were simply accepted. Many signs exist today that are still reliable in practice, despite the fact that there is no explanation for them like there is for other handwriting signs. It is more or less generally accepted that the forming of the small letter r with the first part much higher than the second means curiosity; but none of the usual explanations, as found for other elements, will explain this fact. Simply put, we must either refute or accept it based on our own experiences. However, there could be an explanation for this. The letter r is divided into two watching eyes open to the right, which are a sign of observation, when formed in this way. The inquisitive individual is always a keen observer.
The biological and physical reasons for the movement can explain the other signs in a straightforward manner. On a physical level, a person with high vitality and a heavy hand uses more pressure than a person with low vitality and a light hand. It is also clear that quick movements produce faster writing than slow movements, and that disciplined and inhibited movements produce more disciplined and inhibited writing than free movements. Other tendencies and signs emerge naturally from the writer’s corresponding mental qualities, habits, and gifts. It is self-evident that a clean and neat man writes more cleanly and neatly than an untidy man.
However, the underlying cause of the various indications and expressions of likes and dislikes in the formation of individual handwritings is less clear. Its nature is more pictorial and symbolic. To make this sufficiently clear, we must delve into the nature of symbols, which is sometimes revealed by language itself, sometimes by ideographic writing systems, and sometimes by modern psychological science of expression, dream analysis, folklore and symbols, psycho-analysis, physiognomy, and the psychology of the body and gestures.
In terms of ideographic writing, the alphabet we use is not shared by all nations. Not only primitive races like the Red Indians, but also highly developed civilizations like the Chinese, use a writing system in which words are formed by pictures representing a word rather than alphabetic letters corresponding to certain sounds. In Chinese writing, a house is a sketch of a house, while a man is a drawing of a man. Sometimes the sketch only shows the most important part or feature of the whole—in Chinese writing, a man with a stick denotes father.
It is sometimes a drawing of a thing that is known for a specific quality, and the image represents that quality. As a result, the sun denotes brightness, and mother denotes love. A picture of a situation can sometimes represent the event that usually occurs as a result of that situation. Two men in a house equals a council, while two women equals a quarrel.
Pictures either stand for themselves or another thing of which they are a part or an attribute, or are connected with the situation that relates to the thing for which they stand in our languages, cults, rites, dreams, and unconscious life. When we say “things are looking up,” we mean that things are improving, and so on. You’ll recall that a rising line of writing is also a symbol of hope.
Our gestures, to the extent that they are not simply the result of physical movements, are symbolic in nature and, in a sense, paint our inner thoughts and ideas in the air. When we say someone takes something, the accompanying gesture, if we make one, depicts the taking and may even include a movement as if we were putting the object in our own pocket. The symbolic nature of handwriting works in the same way as it does in the sketches illustrating the T stroke.
Pictures are drawn to represent the actual object the writer has in mind in exceptional cases. In some cases, the object represents the quality or attribute. The faculty of observation is represented by the dot on the i that looks like a watching eye.
Pulver re-created Marat’s blood-stained hangman’s signature, which clearly depicts a rope and dagger during the French Revolution. Talleyrand’s signature resembles a snake in motion. However, symbols with such a strong personality are uncommon. It would be risky and counterproductive to serious graphological research to place too much emphasis on this or look for it where it does not exist. Similarly, many half-educated psychoanalytic followers claim to see sexual symbols everywhere.
Symbols associated with professional experience or preference are more common. They indicate that the writer either enjoys or is interested in the profession or activity in question, or that he is actively participating in it. However, according to Jacoby, who conducted extensive research in this area, only about a fifth of professional men’s handwritings contain these symbols, and these were all men who enjoyed their work.
Notes and musical keys appear in the writing of musicians, paragraph signs appear in the writing of lawyers, shorthand signs appear in the writing of shorthand writers, printed characters appear in the writing of printers, publishers, and commercial artists, pictures of scissors and threads appear in the writing of tailors, and figures appear in the writing of accountants, economists, and so on. Jacoby takes these symbols a step further and applies numerology, mythology, and astrology to them.
Following Freud’s discoveries, the symbolism of sexual imagination, as well as the concealment of its symbols behind ceremonials and dreams, has become commonplace. Sexual symbols are used in Chinese writing, such as a drawing of a female organ as a symbol for the word woman. These symbols can also be found in handwriting, ranging from whips and daggers in masochists’ handwriting to more severe symbols in the handwriting of prostitutes, homosexuals, and others.
All of these extreme pictorial symbols, on the other hand, are extremely rare and, as can’t be stressed enough, are not found in every case. They form a distinct link between graphology and the unconscious and expression psychology. As I previously stated, the lunatic frequently produces a picturesque writing style of his own, the cone-man alphabet, which is unintelligible to those who do not have access to his thoughts.
The symbolic in graphology’s fundamental signs, such as direction, extension, layout, and elaboration, comes from two places: individual experience of space and extension, and individual behavior in occupying this space.
Your experience and perspective of the world and your position in it will always find symbolic expression in your writing, whether you stay put, run or fly, restrict and discipline your movements or move freely, whether you look forward or backward, up or down, whether your gestures are round and open, stiff and angular, or merely conventional. Your personal theory and experience of the simplest and most desirable system for mastering work and life problems will also help.
To summarize, graphological research will begin by comparing the handwritings of people with well-known personalities and determining what characteristics they share as an empirical foundation for new discoveries. It will then be able to reconstruct these movements and gestures by studying the technological, physical, and biological pre-conditions of the movements and gestures fixed by writing. Third, the graphologist will be able to grasp the intellectual and social background of the individual handwriting by studying features that are obviously related to intellectual and educational spheres as well as social habits. Finally, graphology will be able to rely on the writing’s symbolical and ideographical interpretation.
