In April 1841, Graham Magazine published Murders of the Rue Morgue, the famous detective story by Edgar Allan Poe. The introduction to the tale contained passages adapted from Poe's work on "autography" or handwriting analysis, which first appeared in the Southern Literary Messenger:

The analyst ... glories ... in that moral activity which disentangles. He derives pleasure from even the most trivial occupations bringing his talents into play. He is fond of enigmas, of conundrums, of hieroglyphics; exhibiting in his solutions of each a degree of acumen which appears to the ordinary apprehension preternatural. His results, brought about by the very soul and essence of method, have in truth, the whole aim of intuition.

Poe makes it clear that there are systemized procedures to "autography." The true handwriting analyst must be able to distinguish the differences between calculation and analysis by a "host of observations and inferences. ... It is in matters beyond the limits of mere rule that the skill of the analyst is evinced" (164).

Although questioned document experts assure us that "handwriting exhibits identifying characteristics ... which enable it to be identified beyond a reasonable doubt" (Harrison, 288–291), mainstream psychologists have rarely studied graphology in America.

European Heritage

Graphology is a required or available course for graduate studies in a number of European psychology curriculums. Centers of learning that have offered or still offer courses in graphology include universities in England, Spain, France, Germany, Switzerland, and Italy. Consequently, most of the major developments in the field are European in origin. Trained handwriting analysts with advanced degrees in Europe can testify in court, although this practice was more prevalent before World War II. Klara Roman, a research associate to psychologist Kurt Lewin, had written her doctorate on graphology in 1928. Soon after, she became the authorized handwriting expert to the Royal Hungarian Criminal Court (Wolfson, in Roman, xiii). In the 1930s and 1940s, Rhoda Weiser, authority on the handwriting of criminals, became the "handwriting expert to the courts and police of Austria," and Max Pulver, who taught handwriting at the University of Zurich, worked in a similar capacity in Switzerland (Roman, 1962, 446). During this same era, Dr. Hans Schneikert held the chair in criminalistic graphology at Berlin University, and Captain Arthur J. Quirke, who was both graphologist and questioned documents examiner, was the handwriting expert to the Department of Justice in Ireland (Quirke, xi).

Today, important centers for graphology include the Moretti Graphology Institute at Urbino University in Italy, Leipzig University in Germany, the University of Barcelona in Spain, and graphology institutes in Zurich and Paris. Dr. Helmut Ploog, editor of Angewandte Graphologie und Personlichkeits Diagnostik, teaches graphology at the University of Munich. Ursula Avé-Lallemant, creator of the Star Wave test, has developed a grapho-diagnostic technique for children and adolescents that she has implemented in Switzerland, England, Norway, and Germany having been supported with a grant from the Bavarian Ministry of Education (1999, 120). Pierre Faideau, president of Groupement des graphologues-conseils de France, has edited the comprehensive textbook called La Graphologie. In England, Nigel Bradley has played a key role organizing conferences, editing proceedings, reprinting out-of-print classics, and helping to translate other works into English. In America, Patricia Siegel, president of the American Society of Professional Graphologists has brought many European graphologists to America to lecture, and Carole Schuler of the National Society for Graphology has condensed and transcribed every lecture given at that society for more than a quarter century.

The term graphology was coined by French clergyman Abbé Jean Hippolyte Michon, student of Abbé Louis J.E. Flandrin, who in the 1830s founded a school of handwriting interpretations with the Archbishop of Cambrai; this school became the source of modern graphology. After 30 years of empirical study comparing hundreds of known characteristics with various graphological signs, Michon wrote System de Graphologie, which is considered to be the first modern major treatise on the subject. Arthur Quirke once said of Michon:

Michon owes his status as the pioneer of graphology to the fact that he had an insatiable penchant for research. As a result, the amount of material amassed by him [has provided ample data ...] for a generation of subsequent investigators.

Each specific "element of the handwriting" or "sign" corresponded to a specific character trait, "and the absence of a specific sign indicated the lack of its matching trait." It was Michon who coined the word graphology from the Greek grapho meaning "to write" or "draw," and logos, which stands for "word" or "reason" (Saudek, 13). Paul de St. Colombe stated:

Ancient Egyptians held handwriting sacred, that as early as 1,000 B.C. in China and Japan, a rudimentary handwriting analysis was practiced. Japanese scholars of the time judged that character conformed to the way a man traced his bars according to thickness, length, rigidity or suppleness.

The science of handwriting analysis can trace its roots to antiquity. In ancient China, Confucius (551–479 BC) warned, "Beware of a man whose writing sways like a reed in the wind" (Rockwell, 4). "King Jo-Hau (1060–1180 AD) a philosopher and painter of the Sung Period declared that 'handwriting infallibly shows whether the scribe comes from a vulgar or a noble-minded person'" (Hatfield Holmes, 2006; Dolch, 2006). The Greeks also had graphologists. C. Suetonius Tranquillus wrote of Caesar in 120 AD, "He does not hyphen words and continue on to the following line ... but simply squeezes them in and curves the end of the line downward" (Jacoby, 17). Nevertheless, a full-bodied work on the science did not appear until 1622, when the Italian physician and professor of Theoretical Medicine from the University of...