Panel members:

Dafna Yalon ( Israel ) - Chairperson
Kiyo Tollenaar Fujiki (The Netherlands )
Martha Campos ( Spain ) 

Participants are kindly requested to prepare for the panel by reading these introductory pages and the enclosed articles in advance.

A graphologist's training is generally dependent on a few teachers from his vicinity, on books in a limited number of languages and on experiences with one's own countrymen. The universality of graphology has therefore never been a popular discussion theme in our professional literature. The Associazione Grafologica Italiana (AGI) made pioneering efforts to bring together professionals from different writing cultures (Ancona, 1994; Bologna, 2000). The present panel is intended to bring forth a deeper understanding of the general concepts shared by all “graphologies” and to promote a discussion of this issue. The ultimate goal of this meeting is to establish a clearer picture of the universality of graphology, as a technique to assess the universal human nature. We hope to help colleagues from all over the globe gain “one language… one speech”.

Written language as a cultural creation

Writing is a human achievement, and is a marker of the dawn of human history. Culture was, and will still be transmitted through written language. Aristotle said “Speech is the representation of experiences of the mind, and writing is the representation of speech”.

Even in today's “global village” world, about 400 different writing systems still exist. They all use some marking activity (as drawing, scratching, etching) on a surface, for self-expression, either as a means of communication between the writer and his peers or as private memory–aids.

The writing system is more than just an artificial historical and cultural element in society. In a more sub-conscious manner, it may also depict and even produce the social identity. The school-form writing of a nation can be considered as a guiding-image, serving as a long-term educational means of instilling traits, shaping, often programming “ideal” citizens.

The person behind the writing

a. Universal physical aspects  

Contrary to our oral language ability, the human brain is not designed for spontaneous writing and writing skills can only be mastered as a result of a combination of many maturing cognitive, perceptive, motoric and coordinating abilities.

As a general rule, every person keeps his graphic heritage in his visual memory and often also in his auditory memory, as a result of formal educational instructions.

With growing experience, the motoric memory gains the upper hand, and graphic maturity is achieved. When writing or drawing, one intends to convey one's abstract ideas through concrete strokes and forms, organized on paper. The acquired grapho-motoric skills, including pen-grasp, eye - hand coordination, rhythmic patterns of contraction and release in fine-motricity, are the developmental skills needed so that the hand can move on the writing surface and leave its marks. These skills are obviously universal. The rate and degree of their development may be enhanced by specific training or educational ideals, common in some cultures such as China and Russia .

b. Universal psychological aspects  

The diversity of alphabets and copybook styles can be considered a measure for human diversity and for national and cultural variability, enriching our world and enabling its growth through the transmission of varied messages in writing. However, all nations consist of individuals, who share the same needs and hopes. They all want to be loved and protected, to belong and to individualize, to come to terms with their past and face the future with confidence. Abraham Maslow best described the common notions of mankind in his hierarchical pyramid of needs (Maslow, 1968).

Sharing the same genome but containing different local mutations, the expressions of different nationalities, races and social groups are expected to obey the same general rules with some slight individual variations. The dilemma of belonging or separating, compliance versus individuation is central for every subject. We can therefore assume that while being taught a certain alphabet or norm is merely a matter of fate, accident or luck, being born as a human being and becoming an individual is universal for mankind. Expressing one's individuality in every culture is therefore more than one's right, it is an inner need.

b1. Expression

Klages (1913), in his theory of expressive movements, elaborated on the personal expressive style, revealed in sound and gait, in facial expression and in each and every gesture of the body. Allport came to the same conclusion in the book he co-authored with Vernon , entitled “Studies in Expressive Movement” (1933). Handwriting is but one reflection of a person's all-embracing individual style. Experience has shown that the laws of expression, as in body language, generally apply to all people, although slight peculiarities often occur. For example, the hitch-hiker's friendly thumbs-up sign may be confused in Sardinia with the obscene Thumb Jerk, meaning “sit-on-this” (Morris, 1978, p.200). Such cultural expressive peculiarities are very rare, but may still constitute specific and unexpected pitfalls in the analysis of a foreign writing culture. A thorough knowledge of such small peculiarity is needed when analyzing a foreign writing. For example, the letter deh in the Cyrillic alphabet is written like a Latin g, having a lower-zone loop, but there is a common variation to it, which looks like a “lyrical d”, with an upper extension. The option of choice between those two different forms of the same letter (allographs) or polymorphism (using both forms in the same handwriting) enables identifying writer's preferences and interests.

The graphologist must also know to what extent deviations from the norm are acceptable in the various nations, states and communities. Therefore, some copybooks are more resistant to change, while others are considered non-committal. This might depend on both the values of the educational systems (School policies, religiosity, authoritative or conservative society, national temperament, etc.). For example: in Israel , having a culture that accepts improvisations and non-conforming ideas, it is very rare to find school-form handwritings, and similarly it is hard to find a driver obeying all traffic regulations. Different degrees of expression may therefore be interpreted differently in regard of the intensity of the relevant trait when appearing in different writing system. For example: A 40 degrees slant will always show traits like increased emotionality, spontaneity or yieldingness. However, the intensity, dominance, score and importance that such traits should receive in the analysis, will be higher when the school-model is vertical, as in Hebrew, than when it is 65 degrees, as in Russian. Similarly, every physical connection of letters or words in a non-connected writing system, such as Japanese or Hebrew, will score higher than connective strokes in cursive scripts, which include connective strokes, such as most roman-letters copybooks. More examples: South American signatures are statistically more elaborated and flourished, while the Chinese culture expects signatures to be simple and legible; The definition of “acceptable elaboration” will therefore slightly vary in these two cultures. Hebrew letters are mainly arcadic, while Arabic letters are mostly garlandic. Therefore the addition of non-copybook arcades will be more significant in Arabic writing, where it is less expected, than in Hebrew writing. These are the different degrees of intensity a graphologist has to adjust to when shifting from one system to the other, and they are easily recognized when characterizing the special features of each writing system (studying the forms, sizes, directions and slant of the copybook).

Moreover, beyond the ethnical expressive peculiarities and intensities, the individual expressivity is what we are looking for. Any individual practicing the expressive manners of his own culture or sub-culture, will manifest specific idiosyncratic characteristics in his handwriting, revealing the personal writing style, called by Prof. Revers (1966) “The Personal Syndrome”. The unique combination of little idiosyncrasies, and especially the range and pattern of fluctuations within the indicators themselves, radiates from a handwriting sample, deviating from the copybook. The “Personal Syndrome” contains those little peculiarities, without which one would not be able to recognize the identity of the writer upon a second encounter with his handwriting. Those identifying factors will most probably show in any writing system used by the same writer, and their interpretative value will always be the same.

Before trying to specialize in the individual writing systems and their peculiarities, let us concentrate on the common denominators of all graphic expressions. These are listed in the table (next page) in two columns. The first column includes items that are identical in their interpretation for all writing systems. The second column includes graphic indicators that have similar qualities in various writing systems, but their quantification (i.e. their intensities) should have a slightly different evaluation, due to the inherent differences of the copybooks.

The table shows that the temperamental and characterological representations in handwriting, which relate to energy levels and their manipulation (movement and stroke qualities), are similar for all human beings. Most differences among cultural groups occur in elements that are strongly influenced by social criteria, mainly in the indicators of form and the margins. Some differences are the result of other directional patterns, the slant and letter-connections, also given in the copybook. Differences in interpretation among the writing systems are generally in quantity and not in quality.

Specific indicators, idiosyncratic to each writing system:

PPI, capital letters, diacritical signs, beginning and end-strokes, letter combinations etc. are language specific components, but the general laws for their interpretation are the same.

b2. Symbolism

Individual symbols (e.g., shapes of hearts, embryos, lassos, etc.), may unconsciously appear in all writing systems due to shared associations of the different writers. The perception of space and its symbolism is also common to all human beings. C. G. Jung considered it among the Archetypical concepts, belonging to the Collective - unconscious. As a result, both the expressive as well as the basic symbolic elements of handwriting are common to all writers.

Symbolic interpretation is used when analyzing the zones of the letters, the four margins, the upward, downward, leftward and rightward motions, and special layout patterns, such as writing only in the center of the page or leaving a gap in the center. Thus, all human beings will most likely show their orientations and preferences when using Roman script, irrespective of their cultural background. Therefore Arabic and Hebrew writers, writing from right to left, and Japanese writers, writing from top to bottom, still have the ability to adapt to the concept of space symbolism, described by Pulver (1949) when they write in a roman script. However, when the progressive direction of writing is altered, as in their mother tongues, the laws of space symbolism have to be changed or even abolished in order to maintain the universality of graphology.

Not all of the existing copybook styles of the individual writing systems respect the “occidental” symbolism of space to the same degree. The zonal ratios may vary (e.g.: in the American Palmer system the upper and longer extensions are relatively long, while in the German Normalschrift they are very short). Some languages are bi-zonal or even uni-zonal (Chinese) and the division into three zones, representing Freud's structures or the body parts cannot be applied to them. Even so, non-copybook extensions and specific patterns of pressure may occur to compensate for this deficit. In such cases it is possible to find Chinese characters, which are vertically extended, protruding with some of their strokes upwards and/or downwards. Such individual additions, pressure displacements and exaggerations, scattered dots and decorations can reveal that the writer is putting extra stress on the upper- or lower-parts of the letters, and may therefore be considered as equivalent compensations for the missing zones.

The four directions cannot be similarly assessed in languages having a different directionality from the roman left-to-right progression. Hence, languages like Hebrew, Farsi and Japanese (that will be discussed in this panel) might need special rules for the interpretation of the symbolism of space. Yalon (1997, and in her attached article), suggests that in order to maintain both the universal nature of graphology, as well as the Archetypal nature of space symbolism, a revision of the role attributed to the symbolic ideas in general (roman) handwriting interpretation is urgently needed. Right-to-left writing systems may suggest that left / right symbolism may have but a slight effect, if any, in directional graphic processes.

Since most of the expressive movements and some of the symbolic projections are universal, their combined effect on handwriting of various ethnic groups is expected to create general similarity, especially in all sub-conscious elements of the script. Only specific conscious handwriting indicators, which are culturally induced, are expected to differ among cultures and sub-cultures. Therefore the deepest and most authentic elements of handwriting, such as movement and the stroke qualities, are probably universal, while the directions in which different cultures write, the form taught (garlands, arcades, etc.) and the peculiarities of particular scripts might also have some cultural elements.

Analyzing foreign writing systems

Writing is the most complex and conscious graphic product, revealing the socialized and cultural aspects of the personality (Corman, 1973). It should be noted, however, that all graphological concepts can be similarly applied even to pre-linguistic graphic products, such as doodles, scribbles, free drawings, graphic tests and works of art.

We may presume that the psychological interpretation of the whole scale, from the unconscious scribbling to conscious writing, follows the same rules, in a growing order of complexity. Contrary to the spontaneous scribbles and doodles, which are the direct roots of later writing, all writing systems, whether pictorial or alphabetic, contain conventional sets of graphic signs, which have to be adhered to and arranged in certain spatial relations. Thus, the pictures of form and organization receive additional importance, on top of the more primitive and profound pictures of movement and stroke.

Similar considerations are applicable in the assessment of writers using foreign writing systems. Since we are analyzing living people, whose fate is often in our hand, a serious and cautious attitude is called for. The graphologist has to first familiarize himself with the immanent idiosyncratic features of the written language. For example, he has to learn that Japanese and Chinese characters represent a word and not a letter, and that the end of a Chinese sentence is marked with a circle rather than with a dot. He has to be aware of the fact that Hebrew and Arabic are written from right to left, that in German capital letters are used for every noun, that the Cyrillic alphabet has two different lengths of the lower zone.

The graphologist ought to learn more about political, cultural and sub-cultural factors, which may, at times, influence handwritings. For example, high-cost or even lack of paper in some societies, as was frequently the situation in the former Soviet Union, in some prisons but also in ancient cultures, may result in smaller letter-size, absence of margins and very compact organization. These habits often linger on when more paper is available. Another example: In Israel people generally sign their names at the end of the line, but in the last few years many managers and scholars educated in the United States or dealing with American businessmen have adapted the modern trend of signing in the beginning of the line, on the right side.

The usual graphological education is generally inadequate to address such specific considerations. While on the one hand, we have to be careful to learn the copybook, customs, etc. of foreign cultures, on the other hand, I do not share Hans Jacoby's opinion “that the graphologist is unable to analyze handwriting in foreign writing systems…. A British graphologist, for instance, even if he wants to interpret the handwriting of an American… must study several thousand writings of men and women of various ages and class in order to get to know the average types of handwriting….” (Jacoby, 1948, p.51).

The world has become much smaller since Jacoby's times, through television and Internet we are much more familiar and in closer contact with far-away cultures. Professionals may receive advice and help from colleagues in discussion groups, and have immediate access to materials through fax and e-mail. The Wittlich system is proposed as a convenient and relatively safe aid to evaluate unfamiliar writing systems (Yalon, 1994). Due to the relatively little importance of every single indicator in the complex graphic syndromes, mistakes do not cause a serious effect on the overall analysis results.

In this panel, we hope to remain very humble, concentrating on very specific issues and idiosyncrasies only, and respect every language and writing system as a unique culture. Following my lecture in London about the motoric and symbolic difficulties a Hebrew writer has to face while progressing from right to left, a renowned European graphologist suggested that the directionality of Hebrew should be changed by transforming it into the roman alphabet, the way it was done in Turkey. This, to my opinion is an offensive and devaluating remark, showing disrespect for a whole culture with an ancient tradition and heritage.

When Turkey transformed from the Arabic writing to a variant of the Latin alphabet in 1928, it was a declaration of casting off the Muslim identity and a declaration of opening to the secular west. In the last decade, upon the abolishment of the Russification act, most of the past Soviet Republics quickly gave up the enforced Cyrillic writing and re-introduced their traditional writing systems, as symbols of national and ethnical independence, (Lester, 1997). History teaches that no writing reform should even be considered just to avoid some slight technicalities, and certainly not suggested by outsiders. Participants are therefore encouraged to use this encounter with the different systems as an opportunity for self-questioning, to clarify whether some prejudices and patronizing attitudes may contaminate their well-established occidental graphological thinking.

We shall discuss a number of non-roman writing systems, as legitimate and important means of expressing human diversity, national and ethnical identity and pluralistic cultures. Beyond the small peculiarities we shall find the common human spirit that we all share, and as everybody's own experience with their familiar copybooks has shown, “In so complex a thing as human nature, we must consider it is hard to find rules without exceptions “ (George Eliot).

Bibliography

Corman, Louis. (1973). Le Test du Gribouillis . Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.
Jacoby, Hans J. (1948). Analysis of Handwriting (2 nd ed.). London : George Allen and Unwin.
Lester, Toby. (1997). New-Alphabet Disease?. The Atlantic Monthly , 280, pp. 20-27.
Maslow, Abraham. (1968). Towards a Psychology of Being . Van Nostrand Reinhold.
Morris, Desmond. (1978). Manwatching – a Field Guide to Human Behaviour . London : Triad Granada
Pulver, Max. (1949, 5 th ed). Symbolik der Handschrift . Zurich : Orell F u ssli Verlag.
Revers, Wilhelm, J. (1966). Deutungswege der Graphologie . Salzburg: Otto M u ller Verlag, pp. 10-11.
Yalon, Dafna. (1997). Writing in the wrong direction? The problematic Left-Right Symbolism in Hebrew writing. Graphology , 40, pp.4-17.
Yalon, Dafna. (1994). L'Applicazione del Diagramma di Wittlich a Diversi Sistemi di Scrittura (The Application of the Wittlich Method to Various Writing Systems). In: Orientamenti della Graphologia Contemporanea . Ancona : Associazione Grafologica Italiana. pp. 187-192.

Acknowledgements

In this panel, experts of various writing systems have attempted to fill the inter-cultural gap. We have tried to present strikingly different writing systems, and enjoyed our collaboration and exchange of ideas. Each of us was fortunate to gain his specific expertise through the accidental place of birth, marriage partners or special interests and opportunities. It was a good opportunity for us, members of the panel, to reconsider our specific social identity in light of the universal human spirit.

Special thanks go to Ted Barnett, initiating and propelling this project, as part of his great devotion and generous spirit in bringing professionals from all over the world together, to share and combine their knowledge.

This modest panel was the trigger for an even larger project which is in progress. A book on many non-roman writing systems, including more articles on the Hebrew, Arabic, Amhari, Chinese, Thai, Cyrillic, Greek and Indian writing systems will be published within the next year. Nigel Bradley's initiatives and thorough knowledge of the professional community were of indispensable help.

Thanks are also due to the Board of the International Graphological Colloquium, enabling us to make this dream come true and to present and discuss our ideas to its distinguished members.