A Person Cannot Be Reduced to a Definition
It is tempting to define people.
He is stubborn. She is emotional. He is arrogant. She is insecure.
Definitions are convenient. They are short, clear and apparently straight to the point. But scientifically, and psychologically, a human personality cannot adequately be reduced to a collection of labels. A person can be described, but rarely satisfactorily defined.
And describing a personality is a much more complex process.
Human behaviour is dynamic. The same characteristic may appear differently according to circumstances, relationships, emotional state, motivation and the other characteristics operating alongside it. A person who is cautious in one situation may be adventurous in another. Someone who is highly controlled professionally may be spontaneous and expressive in his private life.
Personality is therefore not simply a list of independent traits. It is an interaction between them.
This distinction is particularly important when we speak about handwriting and personality.
Description Rather Than Labels
Consider a person who strongly resists changing his mind.
One observer may call him stubborn.
Another may call him determined.
The behaviour being observed may be essentially the same, yet the description changes according to the observer's interpretation of it.
The same applies to many familiar pairs:
- stubbornness or determination;
- stinginess or frugality;
- caution or hesitation;
- self-confidence or arrogance;
- argumentativeness or intellectual independence;
- emotional sensitivity or vulnerability;
- reserve or self-control.
Which description is correct?
Sometimes both may contain an element of truth.
A characteristic that becomes an advantage under one set of circumstances may become a disadvantage under another. Determination can help a person persist when others give up; the same determination, when excessive or inflexible, may become stubbornness. Caution may prevent reckless decisions, but excessive caution may inhibit action.
The professional question, therefore, should not simply be:
“What trait does this person have?”
A more meaningful question is:
“How does this characteristic operate within the personality, how strongly does it operate, what other characteristics influence it, and under what circumstances is it likely to appear?”
That is description rather than definition.
The Observer Is Also Part of the Observation
There is another difficulty in describing personality: human judgement is subjective.
We do not observe another person from an entirely neutral position. We interpret behaviour through our own experience, expectations, values and concepts.
A highly knowledgeable person may be regarded by one individual as arrogant and irritating, while another may actively seek his company because there is much to learn from him.
An opinionated person may be regarded as difficult by someone who values agreement, but as stimulating and independent by someone who enjoys intellectual debate.
The personality has not necessarily changed.
The observer has.
This is one reason why personality assessment should avoid simplistic labels wherever possible.
Handwriting Is Not a Measuring Ruler
Handwriting analysis should therefore not be treated as a measuring ruler that assigns a fixed personality characteristic to every graphic sign.
A handwriting characteristic does not carry a little label attached to it saying stubborn, generous, introverted or confident.
That is precisely where superficial handwriting interpretation becomes misleading.
Handwriting is a complex motor behaviour produced through the interaction of the brain, central nervous system, learned writing habits, physical movement and the individual adaptations developed by the writer over many years.
The written result contains numerous interacting features: movement, rhythm, speed, fluency, line quality, pressure patterns, size, spacing, slant, proportions, organisation, simplification, elaboration and many others.
No meaningful interpretation should depend upon one isolated feature.
A characteristic acquires significance through its relationship with the rest of the handwriting.
The Brain Behind the Writing
Writing may appear to be an activity of the hand, but the hand does not independently decide how to write.
The brain plans and regulates the movement; the nervous system transmits the instructions; the muscles execute them; and continuous sensory feedback allows the movement to be adjusted while it is taking place.
Through years of repetition, much of this enormously complicated process becomes automatic.
This is why an experienced writer does not consciously decide how much pressure to apply to every stroke, exactly how far apart to place every word, what angle every letter should take, or precisely where to accelerate and slow the pen.
These adjustments largely occur automatically.
And because they occur automatically, handwriting contains far more individual variation than the writer consciously intends to produce.
For example, most writers naturally tend to increase pressure during certain downward movements and release some of that pressure during upward movements. But the degree, consistency, rhythm and coordination of these changes differ between writers.
Similarly, slant should not be interpreted mechanically. A right slant cannot simply be translated into “sociable,” any more than a left slant automatically means “introverted.” Its significance depends upon the degree of slant, its consistency, the movement producing it, the rhythm of the writing and the many other characteristics accompanying it.
The professional examiner looks at the interaction, not merely the sign.
Personality Is Dynamic – and So Is Handwriting
This brings us to one of the most important connections between handwriting and personality.
Personality is dynamic, and handwriting is dynamic.
Neither should be understood by isolating individual components.
The personality represents the interaction between impulses, emotions, inhibition, adaptation, experience, habits, self-control and responses to the environment.
Handwriting similarly represents an interaction between movement, control, rhythm, form, organisation and adaptation.
The written page is the final visible product of an extraordinarily complex process that took place before and during the movement of the pen.
This is why two people taught exactly the same handwriting system will gradually develop different handwriting. They began with a learned model, but over time each person adapted that model according to his or her own neuromotor habits and individual manner of movement.
The copybook provides the starting point.
Individuality creates the handwriting.
Beyond the Obvious
The obvious observation may be:
The writing is large.
The writing slopes to the right.
The pressure appears strong.
The letters are narrow.
The handwriting looks controlled.
Those are observations.
The professional task begins afterwards.
Why does the writing behave this way?
Is the characteristic natural or forced? Is it consistent or variable? What happens to it when speed increases? Does another characteristic support it, modify it or contradict it? Is the apparent control produced by confidence and discipline, or by tension and inhibition?
This is where handwriting analysis must go Beyond the Obvious.
The purpose is not to attach personality labels to isolated handwriting signs. It is to examine how the different characteristics interact and to build a coherent description of behavioural tendencies from the pattern as a whole.
Handwriting may be one of the smallest and most refined movements performed by the human hand, yet behind those tiny movements lies an exceptionally complex system of neurological control, learned habit and individual adaptation.
The handwriting is what we see.
The dynamics behind it are what we seek to understand.