Graphology: An Interface Between Biology, Psychology and Neuroscience

Abstract

Handwriting analysis dates back to many centuries ago. Graphology is a discipline that investigates personality and intellect of the individual through writing, indeed handwriting of the human being is an expression of his or her essence. Graphology examines a writing in order to extract unfiltered information about innate temperament and subconscious nature of who has traced the letters. The present paper highlights the historical and methodological approaches of graphology and its usefulness in human knowledge in order to give a glimpse of the complexity of this discipline. We have gradually focused on the description of the various fields with which, over time until today, the graphologists have dealt according to experimental and epistemological methodologies along a spectrum that ranges from studies on the character, the neuronal and biological correlates, the use in the forensic field, until to the contributions to career counseling and personnel selection. This manuscript aims to provide a quantitative picture of the handwriting analysis trying to combine insights from different sources and exploring conditions, limits and possibilities of its subject matter and methods involved. Handwriting analysis draws reliable conclusions about the spirit personality of a writer. We suppose that graphology and psychology could complement each other, and in this perspective, we explore the hypothesis of the existence of a bidirectional relationship between psychology, graphology and neuroscience which allows to gain insight into ourselves and others.