“Speak, so that I may see you,” said Socrates, the ancient Greek philosopher. But a person does not have to speak so people can know who he is. He can also write so that people can tell more about his personality. This approach is called handwriting analysis. “Determining the personality of someone from his handwriting is an ancient science. It has been used by intelligence agencies to determine the type of personality a person has,” says professor of educational psychology Rabab Al-Sheshtawi who has organised workshops to help people find out more about themselves as well as the psychological secrets that lie behind their handwriting. She says that the participants in the workshops have included teachers who use them to learn more about their students, as well as police officers who want to be able to analyse signatures and use what they learn in their investigations. “After we finish school, writing becomes a skill,” Al-Sheshtawi says. “Skills come from the subconscious level of the mind, and this is reflected in a person's handwriting. The subconscious stores everything concerning personality traits, feelings and sentiments. So when we analyse a person's handwriting or signature, we can discover some aspects of that person's personality,” she adds. She gives indications of a person's personality that can show up in handwriting on a piece of paper. “If there are letters that are deeply inscribed, we know that this person has a lot of self-confidence as they press their pen hard on the paper while they write. A person who is a good planner always leaves regular margins.” On the other hand, someone who is tired, for example, will not show much organisation and may write letters that do not stay on the same line. This is common at the end of a long day at work, Al-Sheshtawi adds. The right time for measuring the type of personality also depends on that person's inclinations. For example, if he is a morning person who likes to get up early, then it is better to analyse his handwriting in the morning. If the person is an evening person, then it is better to analyse his handwriting in the evening. “Some people are more active in the mornings, while others are more active in the evenings. The most important thing is to analyse their personalities at a time when they are feeling relaxed. This helps us to find out more about their personalities,” she says. “Those who write close to the right-hand margin of the page are nostalgic people, the type who long for the past. They may be afraid of the future. On the other hand, those who leave a large margin on the right and write towards the left do not like to remember the past as there may be bad memories that they don't want to remember and so they are looking forwards to the future,” Al-Sheshtawi says. She lists the main features she looks for when analysing a person's personality from his handwriting. “We look at whether a person maintains regular margins on the two sides and leaves a space at the top and another at the bottom of the page. We look at whether he leaves a space between the letters, leaves a line between each line, or writes in a semi-horizontal way in the middle of the page.” Personality can also be apparent from signatures. “If a person signs the letters of his name above the line, this means he has self-appreciation, like if he writes the Arabic letter ‘mim,' the equivalent of ‘m' in English, above the line. If he draws a closed circle for the letter ‘a' or ‘o' or even the previous Arabic letter, it tells us that this person is stubborn. If the letter ‘lam,' the Arabic equivalent of the English letter ‘l,' is written long from the bottom, this tells us that the person is attached to people. While if a person writes the bottom of the letter shorter than it is, this means the opposite,” she says. She also gives details about the process of handwriting analysis in the sessions she organises. “I ask each participant to write out a passage from a book, any book in a library of their choice. Then I start to look at the handwriting. I keep an eye on how much margin space is left, for example. I look to see the direction a participant writes in and whether it is nearest to the right or to the left.” “The simplest workshops I have organised are the signature workshops, as a signature is one word that gives you a lot of information about a person. For example, if the signature is large and clear, it means that the person has self-confidence and is able to make decisions. If, on the other hand, the signature is small, it tells us that a person is neither able to make decisions nor has self-confidence. If the signature is near the body of the text it accompanies, this means that a person is convinced of the contents of that text. However, if the signature is far from the rest of the text, this means that the person is not convinced of the contents of the text,” Al-Sheshtawi says. If a person's signature is written in wide horizontal letters and is long in form, this means he is feeling happy. If the signature has letters that are in a criss-cross or a perpendicular shape, this means that this person is potentially violent. If a signature has the shape of an upside-down ‘v,' this means that the person has been hurt by someone who has left psychological pain inside him that is still there. It could also mean that this person has an abundance of ideas and is creative,” she says. Al-Sheshtawi will be organising a signature-analysis workshop in Cairo later this month. “In general, to be able to analyse a signature it must have been in some sense designed by its owner, and he must have been using it for a long time. There may be many signatures that are close to each other in form, but in general you should be able to know more about the personality of a person as soon as you see his signature,” she comments.
