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Graphology: a brief history
Graphology
references date back to the philosopher Aristotle but the first book
appearing on the subject was published in 1622 in Capri, Italy by Camillo
Baldi, physician, writer and professor of philosophy at the University of
Bologna.
By 1830 in
France there was a school of the interpretation of writing, run by Abbé
Flandrin who spent much of his life in the research of graphology. It is not
until Abbé Jean-Hippolyte Michon(1806-81) got to work that the ball really
started rolling. For over 30 years, Michon collected thousands of examples
of handwriting and signatures, and studied them in minute detail. Every
single element in the handwriting he named a 'sign', corresponding to a
character trait of the writer.
In 1871 Michon
founded the Société Francais de Graphologie ("SFDG") in Paris and in the
same decade he produced two books "Les Mystères de l'Ecriture" and "La
Méthode Practique de Graphologie" as well as starting to publish La
Graphologie, which is published today as the quarterly journal of SFDG.
A few years
after Michon's death, his pupil and successor, Jean Crépieux-Jamin
(1858-1940) revised the whole of his teacher's work, reclassified and
regrouped the signs, and established new laws of classification of the signs
that are still in use today. He wrote ten books on the subject, culminating
in L'ABC de la Graphologie which consolidated 50 years of research and gave
graphology a sound basis.
Towards the end
of the nineteenth century, the Germans began to lead the way in
graphological research. William Thierry Preyer was the first to show that
handwriting is directed by the brain rather than the organ which directs the
writing instrument.
Around 1900 Dr
Ludwig Klages (1872-1956) formed his own school. He kept the observations of
Crépieux-Jamin but introduced the positive and negative interpretation of
the signs according to his concept of Form Level.
The Swiss Max
Pulver (1890-1953) introduced the concept of the symbolism of space in his
book "Symbolik der Handschrift" published in 1931 in Zurich. He was the
first to apply psychoanalysis to graphology.
Ania Teillard
was a disciple of Jung's for over 30 years and she applied his four main
functions: thinking, intuition, sensation and feeling to graphology,
together with the two attitudes: introvert and extrovert, the two
tendencies: animus and anima and the persona. In the 1950s SDFG applied
graphology to some of the most recent developments in psychological
theories, for example Freud, Jung and Adler. In her book "Apprenez la
Graphologie", Madame Gabrielle Beauchataud incorporated characterology, the
temperaments and Jung's typologies.
In 1985, Mrs Renna Nezos established a
firm base for Graphology in the United Kingdom comprising:
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The
British Academy
of Graphology (BAoG) which is the
qualifying body for The Diploma accredited by
ADEG
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The London College of Graphology; and
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Scriptor Books which publishes a
wide range of graphology books.
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