(This blog was
originally posted on April 26, 2016)
 |
| Image courtesy of Microsoft |
The April 25, 2016 installment of The Family Circus cartoon strip featured one of the characters,
Billy, working on a homework assignment. When his mom asks why he is pressing
so hard, the little boy explains that he wants his teacher to know that he
means what he is writing. I knew right away that I had the topic for today’s
blog. In addition to addressing what is literally meant in the written word,
this scenario also addressed the (literally) unwritten part of communication
that is so often ignored: what we mean by the words we use and what the reader
understands or infers.
Let’s start with handwriting. As I have explained in my previous blog
titled What
I Look for in an Informal Handwriting Sample, handwriting—a manifestation of what we
consciously think—is motivated by a subconscious ideomotor (automatic physical)
response. In addition to the various characteristics of writing such as
the form of the letters, letter slant, and straightness of the lines of
writing, pressure of the sample is also very important. In fact, this is one of
the first things I consider when I analyze handwriting. The presence or absence of significant
pressure of the writing suggests that the person invested more or less
“feeling” in what he or she wrote. This is identified by checking for the
presence or absence of indentations on the opposite side of the page. These are
comparable to reflections of the writing sample that can be seen and/or felt on
the reverse side. Sometimes you can see the deep formation of the letters or
even pin-holes of light where the pressure was so strong that it actually made
tiny tears in the paper.
The second feature that interested me about this cartoon is about suggestibility.
In the cartoon, Billy tells his mother that he wants the teacher to know (see)
that he means what he has written by the amount of pressure he used to write his
essay. This is a trait of a Physical Suggestible: I mean what I say and I say
what I mean. His apparent emotional investment in writing this assignment is to
appear honest or, at least, that he has completed the assignment to the best of
his understanding when he answered the question. (By the way, all young children possess Physical
Suggestibility.) However, the teacher may not equate the pressure of the pencil
on the paper the way he intends her to do. For example, if she is an Emotional
Suggestible she might infer that the deep indentations in the paper indicate
that Billy was frustrated or even angry about doing the assignment in the first
place. Or, she may interpret that the force of his writing reflects his deep
interest about the essay topic or questions. If Billy’s answers are wrong or if
he misunderstood the question he was supposed to answer in the assignment, the
teacher may believe that her student was expressing frustration about what he
has been asked to do. Then again, she may not even notice or care about this
feature of his writing and grade the assignment simply on the accuracy or
correct interpretation of the boy’s answers.
Finally, when I ask someone to provide a handwriting sample for
analysis, I instruct the person to write about personally meaningful topic to
get a good sense of the ideomotor response being activated. Copying information
off of a document or providing the rhyme used to memorize position of letters
on a keyboard activates only the conscious mind and does not reveal very much
about the person’s subconscious behavior and personality. I don’t know how old
Billy is in this sketch, but he looks very young. Even if he is writing an
essay, the amount of original thought and analysis he puts into what he is
writing, versus stringing related facts into a series of sentences, would
depend on his age. It is more likely that Billy’s writing sample constitutes
parroting back information versus sharing a new idea that would bear more
insight into his subconscious mind. Finally, you can see in that he is writing
on lined paper. Ideally, a handwriting sample is done on plain (unlined) paper
so I can get a good picture of the natural slant of the person’s writing and
width of their margins, etc.
For more information about handwriting analysis, check out the following
blogs: Handwriting
Analysis for Hypnotherapy; And
Your Handwriting Says; And
Your Handwriting Says, Part 2; Handwriting
Analysis: Doodles; and When
Illness Shows Up in Your Handwriting. If you are interested in getting a
formal analysis of your own handwriting, please contact me at (661) 433-9430 or
send an e-mail to me at calminsensehypnosis@yahoo.com.
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