“Handwriting is the writing of the brain.” Graphologists explain that the brain is the director of our physical and mental activity. Just as our writing reflects our personality, it also reflects certain aberrations in our physiology.
It is widely accepted in medicine that certain neuromuscular coordination disorders occur with the development of cancer. Since handwriting constitutes the monitoring of neuromuscular coordination, the microscopic characteristics of handwriting strokes become an important method for examining human neuromuscular development.
Alfred Kanfer, born in Austria and later imprisoned in the Dachau concentration camp together with his wife, is considered the pioneer of the graphological neuromuscular test for the determination of groups at high risk of cancer. It had an impressive 84 percent accuracy rate in detecting disease by handwriting.
What the Kanfer test does is apply a neuromuscular tool to determine the presence or absence of such characteristic neuromuscular disorders. The Kanfer test alone does not determine the presence or absence of cancer; determines a factor associated with cancer.
Alfred Kanfer was released from Dachau; emigrated to the United States. He was an outsider in the medical field, with a method for identifying cancer-prone individuals that was so unorthodox, that he had an uphill battle to test his method and find acceptance for it.
What is surprising is the cooperation he received, throughout his more than thirty-five years of work, from many prominent doctors and hospitals.
The Hospital for Joint Diseases in New York, the Preventive Medicine Institute-Strang Clinic in New York, Equitable Life Assurance Society, Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, and the American Cancer Society provided financial and material support for Kanfer’s work. The deeds of his patients were sent to him for analysis.
The “tic of the heart”
Graphologists have determined that certain interruptions in writing, slight interruptions in the up and down stroke, especially in looped letters, can indicate heart disease. They call this break a “tic of the heart” and find it particularly in the lowercase h
Another sign is abnormal points in the course of the writing “trail”.
In the act of writing, a person with heart problems, which is often accompanied by shortness of breath, instinctively supports the pencil on the paper, as he would with a cane when walking.
Dr. Ulrich Sonnemann, a major contributor to the early development of professional graphology in the USA, whose book Handwriting Analysis as a Psychodiagnostic Tool (Grune & Stratton, 1950) is highly respected in the field, confirms that a pattern of Interrupted strokes can be indicative of heart disease. Sonnemann adds that specific weaknesses and incomplete ataxias (the inability to coordinate voluntary muscle movements), which are marked by partial points in the course of strokes, have been discovered very early and clinically undetected.
Variations of normal writing
The most important principle in graphology is to analyze the difference between a person’s handwriting and how they were taught to write. There are many nuances of instructional technique in writing, all of which would be classified as “variations of normal writing.” When the writing differs to the extent that the writer was certainly not taught in this way, that difference is analyzed. The “normal” writing sample is provided as a basis for comparison.
1. Marked difference between downstroke and upstroke pressure in a regular sequence over a given writing sample.
Features: Down strokes are wider and show higher ink density than up strokes.
All descending strokes in a given script are roughly the same width, as are all ascending strokes.
2. Elasticity of the lines.
The breadth of the downward strokes gradually increases towards the baseline, where they connect with the upward strokes, and at the same time the upward strokes taper slightly along their course.
3. Uninterrupted flow of motion through downward and upward strokes.
Features: Even and uniform ink density along the descending and ascending strokes (1 and 2). Continuous, uninterrupted and unbreakable delineations of descending and ascending strokes (1 and 2).
4. Uninterrupted flow of movement through the transition zone
The characteristics are the above.
Of particular importance is the uninterrupted union of descending and ascending blows, which requires a maximum degree of neuromuscular coordination and is therefore of the utmost importance.
Find cancer in its early stages
A striking example of the accuracy of diagnosing cancer by handwriting analysis is the case of Ms B. By medical standards, Ms B. was found to be healthy from the date of her first handwriting sample to the date of the third. One year after the date of his third sample, at the age of 41, advanced cancer was found and he died at 42.
The following samples are photomicrographs of Ms. B.
The first was written at age twenty-eight, the second at thirty-three, and the third at forty.
The first sample shows the typical criteria of normality, that is, a mature neuromuscular condition with a normal range of coordination. Normality manifests itself in the smooth, continuous flow of movement, both in descending and ascending strokes (uniform flow of ink along the strokes and sharp, continuous outlines on both sides of each stroke). The strokes are oval in shape; turns from downward to upward strokes are narrow, curved, and show continuity of motion at all times.
A regular pattern of heavier down strokes (wider and darker) and lighter up strokes prevails throughout the sample.
The second sample shows a marked change. Although the general pattern of heavier downward strokes and lighter upward strokes is still preserved, the narrow turns have disappeared, the writing spreads widely, the strokes are much weaker and highly unstable, and in most of the upward strokes , you can see clear segmentations. .
(Segmentation means that the continuity of movement is interrupted and that the direction of the trace is seen on microscopic examination as fluctuating.) Clear breaks between the descending and ascending strokes are also visible.
The third sample shows a breakdown of each phase of the writing process.
The strokes are rigid or shapeless. The pressure is uneven, sometimes too strong and in other strokes too light. There are clear breaks between the descending and ascending traces, and both types of traces show sharp, low-amplitude, high-frequency segmentations.
“With these (and many other) findings, it was demonstrated for the first time with statistical significance that handwriting manifestations of cancer precede cancer manifestations by clinical signs.” (Hospital for Joint Diseases Bulletin, April 1, 1958)
Setbacks
Although Kanfer’s handwriting test was remarkable, he made a few mistakes along the way, which had to be corrected. While he was able to clearly separate healthy writings from those indicating cancer or heart disease, he misdiagnosed a considerable number of heart cases as cancer-positive. In later studies, with the sharpening of the cancer criteria, this cause of error was practically eliminated.
A second mistake involved the inappropriate use of materials and appeared when three tests were conducted under the auspices of the American Cancer Society. The first and third tests ranged from 84 to 98.4 percent in cancer detection accuracy.
The second study was the only one that failed. It was carried out with samples collected at a Detroit cancer screening center. The reason for this failure, as later established, was faulty technical fixes. The patients were forced to write with a hard glass plate as a writing support and had to use a stiff, fine-tipped ballpoint pen, a combination that made the finer segmentations in the line practically invisible, even to microscopic equipment available in that moment.
When this error was recognized, some changes were made to the microscopic technique and some of the samples were re-examined. Kanfer’s results were then considered “very good” by the Cancer Society. However, this failure set his work back many years and demonstrated the importance of technical considerations in research.
Unresolved questions
Many questions remain unsolved. What about the problem of a writing that “tests positive” when there is no medical diagnosis? What effects does this information have? What psychological damage can it cause when there is no detectable cancer to treat?
This problem affected Kanfer himself. He went to the doctors at the Strang Clinic to tell them that he saw positive cancer indicators in his own handwriting. They couldn’t find the cancer until three weeks before he died.
Although the strength of graphology lies mainly in the assessment of personality, in which it reaches up to 98 percent accuracy, the statistical importance attributed to the Kanfer test remains excellent. The need for more research is vital.
Author’s Note: Do not attempt to diagnose yourself or others using this technique. It takes a professional to recognize the nuances of change in a handwriting sample.
