Comparison Handwriting - Handwriting As A Personal Tool

Thirty years ago the very idea that analyzing handwriting was anything else but an adjunct to fortune telling was not even thought of. Books on psychology scoffed at the idea of a handwriting specimen revealing anything about a writer, other than whether he or she could write legibly.

So the going was rough, and if there had not been actual accomplishment on the part of students here and there it would certainly have been so discouraging that I might have given it up. It was not profitable financially. And it was a heart-breaking undertaking to handle the multiple details of organization, teaching, writing and financing.

The latter was really the greatest problem, and yet because editors were kind, it was solved by long hours at my typewriter. Editors paid well, not for material on graphoanalysis especially, but for almost everything I could grind out of my machine.

There were only a few students in the early days, but an amazing thing happened. One woman in a neighborhood who found she could actually tell the truth about an individual from a handwriting specimen told others. A businessman, who possibly scoffed at the start, found that graphoanalysis gave him information about credit applications, or personnel applicants, and he told other business men.

So the technique and science of graphoanalysis has grown until today it is a profession. Recently a busy housewife called me late at night. She was vexed, and her first complaint was that she had banked only $25 that day. In other words, she had spent time with only one client. But when she explained that she had done her week's baking, and that she had called on a neighbor for an hour, the twenty-five dollars did not seem so insignificant.

This housewife did not make $25 just by talking. She did not perform blind magic or indulge in hocus pocus. She actually helped a woman with a vexatious family problem that was leading to divorce. This woman was helped to understand something of her husband's disposition, and of how he annoyed her because she was possibly a bit too meticulous. Also, she was annoying him by nagging at him for not always picking up his magazines or his trousers, or shirts.

That housewife graphoanalyst actually rendered a valuable service. It was a simple service but because she did not know either the woman who was her client, or the woman's husband, her findings took on great value.

They were objective, not fault finding. She looked at a handwriting, found the answers and told her client what she had found.

A credit manager told me an interesting story about his experience that will show you how the part time graphoanalyst renders a service, although he may have studied solely for his own use. This particular man, who passes on thousands of applicants for credit, had added public talks on graphoanalysis, as a matter of public relations between his company and the area in which they worked. After one particular talk, for which he received a handsome fee, a man took him aside, and explained that he and his wife were considering sending a young son to a military school or turning him over to the state to be sent to an institution supported at public expense.

The credit manager looked at the kids' handwriting and both of his parents' handwriting and found that the child was acting out because his parents weren't paying enough attention to him. As a result of handwriting examination, this broken family was put back together.