Recently, I’ve been looking at the “art” of graphology. That is, looking at a sample of somebody’s handwriting and using that to deduce all sorts of secrets of the person’s personality. Note that this is significantly different from forensic or questioned document examination (QDE). With QDE, a consultant might be expected to determine if a certain person did write a certain document, or if a document could be from a certain time or place. A graphologist, on the other hand, would be expected to tell if the person who wrote a certain document has an outgoing personality, if he is a team player, if he’s secretly a sadist, and so on. . .all from the person’s writing technique, not from the contents of the writing itself. If a hundred different people each wrote their own copy of T.S. Eliot’s The Hollow Men, then even though the contents of the documents are all the same, a graphologist is supposed to be able to look at how they space their letters and cross their t’s and dot their i’s and determine all sorts of hidden details of each person’s personality, such as are they the type of person to have an affair or to be loyal.
Here is the BBC looking into graphology practice in Britain a few years ago. And here is an example of a graphology service’s webpage.
