Handwriting

Handwriting, writing in its individual, characteristic features peculiar to a particular person. Along with training and profession, which play a significant role in the formation of handwriting, constitutional components undoubtedly also play a role here. Handwriting is also subject to fluctuations depending on various conditions, such as the physical condition of the writer, their mood, etc.; in addition, handwriting tends to change with age, acquiring certain features in old age, for example. For the analysis of handwriting, one usually takes not calligraphic, but natural, unconstrained writing from people who are fully proficient in writing. In addition to attempts by graphologists (see Graphology) to interpret certain features of handwriting as symbols of individual character traits of a person, other possibilities for analyzing handwriting have also been outlined in recent years. The successful physiological interpretation of writing disorders in patients with severe organic lesions of the central nervous system (Parkinson's disease, cerebellar disorders) has made similar attempts possible also in relation to handwriting. The latter represents a fixed trace of one of the manifestations of human psychomotorics with those constitutional features that have been subjected to physiological interpretation by a number of authors in connection with Kretschmer's doctrine of types (see Human Motorics and Constitution-psychic constitutions). For example, it has been pointed out that the facial expressions, speech, gait, and gestures of schizoid people contain certain features of motor insufficiency, bringing them by analogy with known clinical disorders, including extrapyramidal insufficiency (Gurevich). A similar attempt was made in the analysis of handwriting. It was found (Zhislina, Lipmann) that the handwriting of picnics in most cases represents a relatively closed, definite type, characterized by smoothness, continuity, correctness of writing, without excessive separation of parts, whereas among the writing of asthenics several types can be distinguished: the type of writing split into separate letters or even parts of letters, though correct; the type of childish, incorrect writing; the type of micrographic writing; "petrified" writing, i.e., writing that changes little under the influence of great acceleration or affect. These constitutional features of handwriting have made it possible to apply the same hypothetical physiological interpretations to it as to other manifestations of motoricity. It is not without interest that these types of handwriting were established mainly on male material, whereas the handwriting of women, corresponding to a different structure of the entire female motoricity, gave other, less distinct differences. The studies of Haarer and Enke (Haarer, Enke; collaborators of Kretschmer) using Kraepelin's scales also discovered constitutional differences in handwriting, noting the same, wavy type of curve in picnics and the jaggedness, flatness, or stereotypy of the curve in leptosomics; in addition, in the handwriting of the latter, small, insufficient fluctuations in the pressure of the font were found, which was explained by Enke as the presence of great intrapsychic tension supposedly characteristic of the psyche of the schizoid-leptosomic type. These few works, carried out on insufficient material, nevertheless indicate the possibility of approaching handwriting from the point of view of modern doctrine of constitutions and making it in the future a refined method for studying the typal and constitutional differences of human psychomotor ability.

Zhislina. In addition to the study of constitution, handwriting can be of great assistance in clinical practice for diagnosis, since many diseases are characterized by very characteristic changes in handwriting. A typical illustration of pathography can be the handwriting in progressive paralysis; changes in handwriting in paralytics are caused both by motor disorders - incorrect, unsteady, trembling handwriting, and by disturbances of automatisms and mental changes - transposition of letters, syllables and words, their omission and repetition; very often the omission of letters and syllables, which shows a certain persistence, is an early symptom of the disease Progressive Paralysis. In paranoid forms of personality changes, sometimes the design of letters takes on a peculiar appearance of drawn letters, provided with symbolic decorations corresponding to the meaning of the words; the appearance of the writing in general acquires the character of an intricate pattern, an illustrated text (pictography) (see Graphology, Fig. 1). For the analysis of purely motor disorders of writing, the handwriting test is a simple and convenient method of objective registration, helping in the differential diagnosis of hyperkineses. Thus, in tremulous paralysis, patients try to press on the pen, thereby restraining the swings of the trembling limb, as a result of which their handwriting becomes very small (micrography); in multiple sclerosis, in which a typical feature is intention tremor, the writing consists of a series of sweeping pointed zigzags, increasing in size toward the end of the word; in chorea, the zigzags are arrhythmic, disorderly, rounded; in cerebellar diseases, handwriting reveals clear ataxia of the hand in the irregularities of the letter design, with the overall comprehensibility of the written text preserved. Various stages of tremors in functional weakness of the neuromuscular apparatus in neurasthenics and in overfatigue are also reflected in handwriting, turning straight lines into small waves, without gross violations of the general character of handwriting and with its preservation of readability. It goes without saying that all lesions of the cortico-spino-muscular system, accompanied by incomplete paralysis of the writing limb, are reflected in writing, giving it typical features of changed tonus and impaired coordination.