Graphology at Home - Lesson 11 - Your Social Life

When the expression form of connection is used, it means how the upstrokes and the downstrokes are connected-usually somewhere in the middle zone. Should the connections occur in another zone, the writer in all that this particular zone represents is showing particular emphasis. Since the connecting strokes by nature meet in the middle zone and the middle zone is indicative of the writer's social relationships, it gives the graphologist strong insight into the writer's social life.

There are four major types of connections: arcade, garland, angular, and thready. Often the graphologist finds more than one form of connection in the same writing. If one form is used more frequently than the others, the writer probably has the qualities reflected by that particular form of connection. However, although one form may be the dominant one in the writer's personality, the characteristics of the other forms do exist and play a role in his personality also. When we have two connecting forms (or even more, though it is not frequent) used approximately equally, we say that the writer possesses the personality traits of the two forms in equal proportion.

Arcade Connection:

Picture curved writing with the ends down and the middle up, like an arch... This is arcade writing. There is reserve in the personality, someone who would rather be with nature than with people. Arcade writers are often secretive, have a strong interest in architecture, and are frequently artists. The arcade writer prefers to shut the world out and often puts on a facade. With the arcade connection to protect him, he can make believe that he is someone he really is not.

The arcade writer is usually slower in his reactions than most people, especially those who write in garland connections. In writing the arcade, the subject must use an up-down direction, employing extensor muscles-muscles used in extending a limb. The garland writer, on the other hand, uses a down-up direction, employing flexor muscles- muscles used in bending or clenching a limb. The flexors are stronger than the extensors, and hence it is easier and quicker to write the garland than the arcade.

Garland Connection:

Imagine curved writing with the ends up and the middle down. The major personality trait of the garland writer is a love of peace. Garland writers are fond of pleasure, will always try to find the easy way out, and try to avoid conflicts. They usually have a great deal of charm. Their receptive personalities and willingness to be exposed to whatever may come can be seen by the openness at the top of their letters. They are warm, loving, patient persons and are often found in positions where it is necessary to deal directly with people. They get along well with others and know how to use their charm when it is needed.

Angular Connection:

The writer of the angular connection has a lively, vibrant personality and is alert and competitive. He has a critical mind, and when he starts a job, he finishes it. He is hard and aggressive and can be difficult to get along with-as shown by the angles, which indicate rigidity. He is quick, both physically and mentally. He will often clash with the person writing the arcade form of connection, since the arcade writer tends to be slower coming to decisions. The writer of the angular connection often loses patience with the arcade writer for his procrastination. The arcade writer, in turn, feels persecuted and badgered for acting in ways that are natural to him.

Thready Connection

The thready connection speaks for itself. It looks as though the connections were being held together by pieces of thread. This is very quick writing. The thready writer is unsure of both the world and himself, with emphasis on the latter. It is difficult for him to make up his mind, and he would prefer not to be pressed for decisions. This writing often shows hysteria.

When Richard Nixon was Vice-President of the United States, his writing showed

strength and clarity. His writing connections became thready during the Watergate affair, a most sensitive period.

Here the middle zone starts at a certain height and dwindles to about the size of a thread as it ends. This shows powerful intuition, always wiggling out of difficult situations (notice how the form resembles that of a snake). This writer definitely prefers not to commit himself to any definite course of action. Many diplomats write in this threadlike form.

As the understanding of the thready connection writer speaks for itself, the following clarification of the other forms should be noted.

Really deep, calixlike garlands seem better suited to a deeply rooted impressionability and sentimental conservatism than to dancing and quick progress.

But the platter or cup or calix necessarily has a bottom. We must therefore ask how deeply do those new ideas and suggestions sink into the writer's mind? Does he permit his unconscious to emerge, does he allow "the imponderables" to enter his consciousness? Obviously, the garland writer's world is the visible, tangible, measurable world; he shuns the mystical, the deep, the abstract. And because he avoids the "depths of life," we can understand why the garland writer remains young, naive, or as some call it, "immature," all his life. One who habitually cuts himself off from his unconscious, who never draws upon his intuition, may not suffer but he can never experience life fully.

Certain letters, such as a's, u's, d's, and b's, have a garlandlike bottom. If this bottom has an unexpected and irregular opening, we should be on our guard against criminal tendencies in the writer. We have seen such writing "against the rules" in the hands of murderers and very dangerous swindlers. To them, this opening, where it is not expected or permitted, seems a proud symbol of their lawlessness; at the same time, they provide themselves with "direct access" to the lower zone, the zone of instinctual drives and the unconscious which, if there is no inner check, can be supposed to be "at the bottom" of many criminal activities. (Graphological ethics does not permit one to mention criminal tendencies unless there are in the script other indications of similar import.)

Warning: Pressureless (indicative of instability), the good-natured garland (mobility, superficiality), if coincident with right slant (restlessness) and sizeable script (exaggerated self-confidence), or excessive width (lack of inhibition) betrays those undisciplined and indomitable persons who are capable even of crimes because of their lack of discipline, their restlessness and inability to foresee the consequences of their actions.

It may be noted in passing that the wide, shallow garland (platter) is a first cousin of the thread.

The Arcade is a platter or cup or calix turned upside down, a vault or arch. Therefore, the garland writer and the arcade writer are opposites. The following are some of the "confessions," elicited by the tests, as to the arcade writer's nature: "I feel like resisting;" "It is an unkind feeling, not as flexible as garlands;" "To me it is like a cramp;" "I cannot help thinking of a locomotive pushing before her heavy masses of snow;" "I feel stymied, like fighting against some resistance;" "To me it is like hide and seek, and like lying in wait for somebody, perhaps also like pride and haughtiness;" "I feel like disguising myself;" "Like a veil;" "A hide-out;" "Faithful to myself;" "Much more serious than garlands;" "Defense rather than attack;" I could write garlands in my sleep, arcades only when very much awake."

As a form of movement, the arcade is slower than the garland, and it presupposes a writer who keeps his eyes open, has a good, perhaps even an artistic sense of proportion, who knows instinctively what to aim at and where to land.

Indeed, the "reversed cup or platter" has been interpreted most contradictorily: as a trap or a fortress, as a gesture of inner independence or haughty reserve, as a gesture of plotters or stalwart defenders, as indicative of the most trustworthy or plainly treacherous, of the deep or the inscrutable. Further, as a gesture, the arcade seems to serve two evident purposes: to hide something or to protect it; to shut out light and strangers, or to retire and contemplate and search within oneself; to erect a structure or edifice, such as a dome, or barricades for defense and a trap for the unsuspecting.

As a letter connection the arcade writer's way of thinking and acting (as may be seen from such almost inconsistent statements as, "lying in wait for somebody" and "faithful to myself") cannot be gauged by ordinary means. Closed above and wide open below, the arcade writer relies upon his instinct and intuition rather than reason. He may be a sinister plotter or an artist who goes his own way. For in itself the fact that a person tries to hide something does not mean anything.

The liar hides the truth, the plotter his scheme, the assassin his dagger, but the conscientious official hides important documents that are entrusted to his care, and shy, inhibited people hide themselves because they fear to be hurt and imposed on. Or take the builder; his arcade (vault, arch) is no hideout, but a symbol of his technical constructions. Zeppelin, the inventor of the dirigible, used arcades to connect letters, but was not known to have hidden anything reprehensible.

In the interpretation of the arcade, the style evaluation becomes of prime importance. Through it, we need never have any doubt whether a script belongs to a plotter or to an architect, to a thief or a technical genius, to a confidence man or a persevering founder of great enterprises who develops his plans quietly and privately. The more arched the arcade, the more prominent become its artistic qualities; the flatter it is, the more it reminds us of a lid to cover up something.

Flat arcades have been identified in the script of hypocrites and intriguers; they are very easily overlooked or mistaken for garlands--a serious error.

As for the angle connective link, for instance, in German script, tests brought forth the following statements: "To me the most unnatural and brutal gesture;" "You have to be well on your toes;" "Like steel girders;" "A feeling of safety and certainty;" "Of stability;" "A military, cool feeling;" "Capable of overcoming any resistance;" "I feel as though I have a task and must not fail;" "Attack and aggression': "Hardy, curt, precise, like a saber." These are highly contradictory statements, and indeed, angle writers have to reconcile within themselves very contradictory tendencies.

Unlike the garland or arcade, the angle is not one but two movements, and the abrupt gestures that alone produce an angle are without grace, flexibility, or the spirit of reconciliation; rather, the angle reminds us of a "hard task in which we must not fail," and "attack and aggression" at least against the beauty and freedom of movement.

The movements that produce an angle are of necessity slow, pedantic (thorough, clumsy, difficult, and definitely unspontaneous). To illustrate, a garland or arcade i may be made with two movements; to write an angle

we need three movements: we start with an upward stroke and stop abruptly; the next move is downward until another abrupt stop; then we move up again. The comparison with a military march or a precision watch is inescapable.

The resemblance to a military march brings "discipline" to mind. We therefore conceive of angle writers as people who are willing to submit themselves to a rigid discipline, and who are prepared to impose such a discipline on their environment. They are reliable, firm, steadfast, and imperturbable, but they are also dull, heavy, brutal, not to be stopped. "Hardy, curt, precise . . ." interprets the angle writer also as unyielding, uncompromising, intolerant, cold, pitilessly logical. Principles are more important to him than individual considerations, the method often more important than the result; his aim is reason, not 'humaneness,' not practicality or feasibility.

As a letter connection the angle is circumstantial, a geometrical drawing or technical structure, rather than a connecting link. It reaches "heights" and "depths." An angle can rarely be "microscopic"; a certain minimum height is indispensable to produce an angle, whereas a garland and even an arcade may be "stretched and flattened" almost to a thread. We therefore conceive the angle writer as capable of abstract thinking,

(Albert Einstein) technologic discoveries, philosophic interpretation, but also of sophistry and cunning. The angle writer cannot relax, unbend; he must be active to feel well; without the right occupation, he becomes querulous. Small wonder that some angle writers are considered cranky, unconciliatory and even humorless, awkward, and restless.

In the beginning of this chapter, it was stated that connecting strokes give great insight into the writer's social life. The 'space' the writer uses equally sheds light in this area.

The space between words is non-deliberate. Even very sensitive writers have no idea whether or not they leave space between the words they write, or whether this space is large or small. When someone drew a well-known musician's attention to the wide spaces he left between words, he was astonished for he had never before 'seen' them.

(Tchaikovsky)

The words on paper follow one after the other as they do in speech. A person who speaks with pauses may do so because he is accustomed to pondering, considering and reconsidering before he acts; or because he wants to stress each word of his well-calculated speech and let it sink into his audience's consciousness; or because he does not know what to say, or is overcome with emotion. In short, he may pause after his every word because he is cautious and calculating, or because of a wealth of thought or a lack of it, or because of his depth of feeling. But if the pauses outweigh the importance of the speech, we must conclude that the speaker is conceited, affected, and probably inhibited. The same conclusions must be drawn from wide spaces between written words.

If, on the other hand, there is little or no pause between the writer's words, he may be a man of not accustomed to pondering or even loathe doing so; or he may be impulsive and garrulous; or rather superficial and incapable of any introspection. But he is natural, self-confident, and therefore uncritical.

Sometimes the space between words may grow to such an extent that it gives the impression of excessive emptiness, whereas well-spaced words reveal the aesthete, the poet, and the musician. Those excessively spaced are indicative rather of the spendthrift and the empty head assuming the pretense of mental profundity.

There are those who waste paper and our time quite recklessly: three or four words per line on good-sized letter paper are the best they can do. Pulver calls such writers, prodigals, egotists, and semi-gods; he is convinced that they also are little concerned with other people's rights, that they are very inconsiderate.

All the interpretations in the preceding paragraphs are based on the assumption that the unusual spaces between words, wide or narrow, occur regularly. But just as there are writers who space their lines sometimes widely, sometimes narrowly, so there are writers whose words are sometimes widely, sometimes narrowly, spaced. The only conclusion is that such a writer is rather unstable both in his thinking and in his emotions; that he presents sometimes the one, sometimes the other, picture and impression.

A clarifying overview:

Spaces between words directly represent the psychic and physical space the writer maintains between himself and others-the willingness to be close or the need to maintain distance. They can be wide and even, extremely wide, narrow and even and narrow and uneven.

The Palmer method teaches a specific amount of writing 'space.' When one overwrites 'space that is allotted to him', he is hiding something.

A note concerning concealment:

It is characteristic of the concealing stroke that it is not seen at first glance. The unsuspecting reader is very likely to overlook it. Suppose we make a pen stroke, and then another that conceals it; in such a case, the least we must admit is that we have taken time out of a continuous process (writing), for without arresting the writing movement, we could never have placed the second stroke directly or almost directly on top of the first (see letters u, l, e, and d). And then we must admit that the second stroke conceals or covers the first.

So, as was to be expected, there are two permissible interpretations of the concealing stroke: either the writer is beset by an anxiety to hold back, to retard the movement forward toward his 'neighbor;' to avoid facing the facts, the future; or he wants to hide something. Indeed, inhibition and insincerity are the basic meanings of concealing strokes, and it is difficult to state where the one leaves off and the other begins.

Examination for Lesson 11

1. Name the four major forms of connection.2. Which form of connection shows reserve?3. Fond of pleasure, tries to find the easy way out and avoiding conflict are among the traits exhibited by a particular form of connection. Which?4. Criticism, aggressiveness and rigidity are to be found in which form of connection?5. When letters, such as a, d, o, have irregular openings at the bottom, should one be cautious of such writers, or is it exemplary?A. Be cautious___ B. It is exemplary___6. The arcade or garland writer typifies "I feel like disguising myself?"A. Arcade___ B. Garland___7. Do two or three movements form the angle?A. Two___ B. Three___8. Uncompromising is more associated with which type of writing?9. Which type of writer cannot relax?10. Is the space between words deliberate or non-deliberate?A. Deliberate___ B. Non-deliberate___11. Wide spaces between words are more likely to be formed by one who considers before acting, or one not accustomed to pondering before acting?A. Considers before acting___ B. Not accustomed to pondering before acting___12. When the lower zone descends into the next line's upper zone, which of the following may be applied to him, he is over-occupied with his instinctual life, or he loses his head in an emergency?A. Over-occupied with his instinctual life___ B. Loses head in an emergency___13. Narrow, even spaces between words show a desire to reach out and a sociable, outgoing nature or the opposite?14. Inhibition and insincerity are basic meanings of which stroke?15. In the following sample, do the strokes reveal or conceal?A. Reveal___ B. Conceal___16. When concealing strokes reveal secretiveness about facts in the writer's instinctual life where are these strokes located?

Answers for Lesson 11

1. Arcade, garland, angular and thready2. The arcade3. The garland4. The angle5. Be cautious6. The arcade 7. Two8. The angle9. The angle writer10. Non-deliberate11. Considers before acting 12. Over-occupied with his instinctual life13. A desire to reach out and a sociable, outgoing nature.14. The concealing stroke15. Conceal16. In the lower zone.

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