Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:03 Welcome, pull up a chair. Feel your mug. Get comfy. Join us at the table for the most unusual tea party. Here's your host and graph ologist Theresa April.
Speaker 1 00:00:18 Welcome. Welcome to the second episode of a most unusual tea party. I'm Teresa apron, a professional handwriting expert with handwriting pie. The second tea party is a little different from the tea parties to follow, as it is meant to educate and elevate your experience of graphology, which means it's just going to be me talking about some of the history, the facts, and the controversy surrounding graphology. Now, if this sort of stuff, isn't for you and you just want to get onto the fun stuff, feel free to skip ahead to episode three, you can always come back to this episode any time you want. And if you were to give me a sample of your handwriting right now, I bet I could accurately predict whether you are going to do exactly that. Skip ahead to an episode that sounds more interesting or keep listening in methodical order.
Speaker 1 00:01:12 Alright, let's get started. Fact graphology has a very checkered past. There is both nobility and controversy, and it starts way back in 330 BC or show when Aristotle knobbly observed spoken words are the symbols of mental experience. Written words are the symbols of spoken words just as all men do not have the same speech sounds neither do they have the same pattern of writing somewhere in handwriting is an expression of the emotions underlying the writer's thoughts, ideas, or desires. Then Confucius said handwriting can infallibly show whether it comes from a person who is noble minded or from one who is vulgar in a less noble fashion. Edgar Allen Poe published a book in 1899, where he analyzed the handwriting of important people at the time, which allowed him to buy his own words, illustrate the mental features that are indicated with certain exceptions by the writing and to indulge in a little literary gossip.
Speaker 1 00:02:27 Then we hit rock bottom on the nobility scale when Hitler outlawed handwriting analysis under the fortune telling act, forcing it to go underground for many years and dispersing the very active German graphology community to various other countries. It is also a notion that has stuck with graphology to the state. The idea that we can tell the future, even though no handwriting expert claims, to be able to tell the future. In fact, we simply see what is present today, but because most humans are creatures of habit and routine. What we do today is what we will do tomorrow. As Richard Rohr said in true self false self, who you are today is who you are tomorrow and who will, you will be on vacation. If you complain today, you'll complain tomorrow and you'll complain on vacation because the hotel bed wasn't comfortable and the beach towel isn't soft enough and the sand is everywhere.
Speaker 1 00:03:25 So in that regard, it can seem like we predict the future, but we really cannot. We can only see what someone is currently experiencing and feeling and doing. So how did graphology, as we know it today, get started the foundation for handwriting analysis. As we know it today started in 1830. When the grandfather of graphology, the Abidjan Mishawn in France, created a classification system for botany and then applied it to handwriting. And he created an inventory of fixed signs later, lewd weak. Clegg's not sure actually how to pronounce his name, propose the gestalt method, which focus less on individual letter traits and more on the overall picture. The writing formed a third pivotal figure in the history of graphology was dr. Max Pulver, who took a claims system and applied it to Young's psychology, creating the three zones. You have the upper zone, middle zone and lower zone and handwriting, which parallel Freud's concept of the ed ego and super ego.
Speaker 1 00:04:35 And that's referred to the personality structure from there. Two branches of handwriting analysis developed one is graphology the study of the overall movement in graphic design of writing, where the sum total is greater than the parts. And the other is graph analysis, which focuses on individual letters and what they mean proponents of the maximum a stroke is a stroke. Wherever you find it. Now for years, the two schools of different thoughts could not be combined. In fact, one group was forbidden from learning anything about the other group, which in my humble opinion, did more damage to the science of graphology than anything else. When you have people within the same field, disparaging one another, it makes it difficult for an outsider to see the good or in this case, the accurate methodology that is really present today, thankfully, that is not the case. A handwriting expert can now look at and use both methods for comparison and analysis.
Speaker 1 00:05:38 And we have discovered an inter rate reliability, meaning that each school of thought often ends up in the same place. Although their methods of getting there are different, there's still much research and work to be done as there isn't any scientific field to understand some of the discrepancies. And there are debates the handwriting field as to the meaning of certain pen movements. I believe this to be healthy and is an integral part of moving the field of graphology forward as a whole. I liken it to what is happening right now with COVID-19. There is no doubt that COVID-19 is a virus and that it is contagious and that it does kill people, but there is much debate about everything else around COVID-19. We have one group of scientists thing, one thing we have another thing, another, we have politicians saying something else. And then we have a whole host of armchair scientists.
Speaker 1 00:06:33 That's claimed the whole thing is a fraud. Fortunately for us, there is a vast amount of resources being poured into finding a vaccine and understanding the virus. So we will know it's secret soon enough, and this controversy will pass. Unfortunately, graphology does not have the benefit of vast resources. And so it will take longer for us to unlock all of the secrets and to quote Aristotle the mysterious expression of the emotions underlying the writer's thoughts, ideas, or desires that are contained in someone's handwriting. The other part of the problem with graphology as a whole is the lack of professionalism in the field. Anyone can pick up a book and immediately start practicing. There is no license, and this hurts the skilled practitioner and the field as a whole much like the armchair scientists who have high school science under their belt and pontificate about the COVID-19 virus.
Speaker 1 00:07:30 These one book wonders are not to be confused with a professional handwriting expert who has studied countless books. Countless examples has taken courses and has practiced, practiced, practiced. My personal story with graphology is that I've always known about it. At least from the time when I was 12, it was simply part of what was talked about in my family. Looking to see if the slant was left or right, is something I can't remember ever not doing it's as natural to me as saying, please, and thank you looking to see whether writing was naturally going upwards or downwards is a personal check that I have always done to see what my internal mood is really telling me. When I went back to my maiden name, I practiced and played around with my signature until I found one that felt good, looked good was quick and easy to do and did not contain any negative strokes.
Speaker 1 00:08:27 In fact, when I looked at it, it kind of looked like a star and that appealed to my inner Rachel Berry. Yeah. Shout out to any other glee fans. When people find out that I'm a handwriting analyst, there are three responses. The first response is my handwriting is so messy. You would never be able to read it. I can relate to this. I have never been a neat writer. In fact, I used to be dr. Marks in school because of my writing. And I think every teacher I had would say something along the lines of great ideas, but hard to read because of your handwriting. Fortunately for you, I don't need to be able to read the words. I am looking at the graphic formations on the page. I do not look at specific words. The only time I do is if there is something unusual about them, say for example, they have a tail end that loops back to cross it out.
Speaker 1 00:09:20 Or it's the only word that does not follow an otherwise flat baseline in my methodology for performing a complete personality profile. Reading the words from start to finish for comprehension is the last thing I do. So legibility is not a requirement. The second response that I get is this. I never hand write anything anymore. I only print when my electronic devices aren't available. Printing is a form of handwriting. It just isn't cursive printing can be analyzed and it still reveals information about the writer. It just reveals a bit less, which in and of itself tells me something about the writer. This is another area where handwriting experts did not do ourselves any favors because for years, many graphologists would not analyze printing. Believing that only cursive writing was worthy of analysis. And this has now been proven false people's printing is just as unique as their cursive and it still conveys movement and zones and pressure and speed and form and baseline and spacing and extremes and red flags.
Speaker 1 00:10:30 So we can still analyze printing just as well as cursive, as far as the electronic devices go and voice to text apps, we will always have at least I hope the need for some form of penmanship, whether it is to write a thank you note, write a shopping list, leave a note for a coworker, write a personal journal entry. I believe there will always, always, always be situations where we will write with pen and paper. It's one of those skills that separates humans from other mammals. It's a Mark of civilization education intelligence, and to downplay this skill is to downplay the advances that humans have made over the last millennium to make it so that ideas and information can be shared and expressed universally amongst men and women. I shutter to think that we could be willing to go back to a time when only a select echelon of society can read and write for themselves while the rest of us rely on a computer or someone else to accurately translate and write for them. Maybe it's because I'm female and my gender was denied the right of education for so long, but I have no desire to rely on anyone or anything else to do my communications for me, the third response that I get when people find out I'm a handwriting analyst is this, and it's my favorite. They say, Oh, here's mine. Please tell me what you see you. My friend are my kind of people. Let's talk.
Speaker 1 00:12:03 Now research in the field of graphology is ongoing. And in the past it's often been conducted with criminals in jail and support groups such as AA. So when it comes to spotting addictions, criminal behaviors and lies, handwriting analysis is incredibly accurate and reliable. And you know, that makes sense, not just from, you know, the vast amount of research and samples available in that area. But because handwriting is ultimately a form of body language and as Desmond Morris, he's a zoologist who decided to study the human animal and made remarkable contributions to the study of body language. So as does Ben Moore said, most of us are bad liars because we cannot control our facial expressions. And I'd add to that and say, most of us are bad liars because we cannot control our facial expressions or our handwritten formations. My personal ongoing research project relates to the differences between male and female entrepreneurs.
Speaker 1 00:13:09 If you wish to be a part of that, please send me a note and we can set you up. I am passionate about handwriting analysis and the value it has in deepening our understanding of each other and improving relationships because there are no courses or standardized tests in Canada. I am self-taught through a lifelong consumption of books, online courses, distance courses, and practice, practice practice. I am also a member of the American handwriting analysis foundation, which is one of the few organizations dedicated to establishing a consistent level of competency. I am also a highly trained wellness coach with four years of experience in helping people move forward and create new habits, as well as an ex general manager of a home building company. I'm also a mom of two beautiful children who have grown into two beautiful adults and have been a sales manager, a legal assistant, a school administrator, assistant postal clerk, counting clerk, receptionist, cocktail, waitress, telephone solicitor, and an international baccalaureate graduate.
Speaker 1 00:14:17 My varied past has exposed me to many different job situations and many different people with many different ideas and beliefs. I started handwriting pie because I saw and experienced the difficulties that companies face in hiring team players that help build and grow their businesses as opposed to simply hiring warm bodies with a skill that fill a seat, but are not aligned with the company vision. It is undeniable that if you have a clear vision of the kind of person you want to surround yourself with a handwriting analysis combined with other hiring processes, reduces the chances of you ending up with people who drag you down. Well, I think that's enough of that. My mug of strong coffee is empty. So join me for the next tea party, where I analyze the tea of Chelsea Joffrey, founder of the career studio. And we talk about how important it is to not get stuck in the muck that failure can create. Thanks for listening. If you like, what you heard, feel free to share and subscribe
Speaker 0 00:15:19 <inaudible> thanks for listening. If you're wanting to hear more from Theresa and her guests, be sure to subscribe on the platform of your choice and follow her on Instagram at handwriting underscore pie.
