The Science Behind Valerie Berenyi's Graphology (There Isn't Any)

June 13, 2010 - PRLog -- Just when you think things are over and done with, lost to the past of forgotten myths, the Calgary Herald finds a way to resurrect them. Is there anyone left that believes personality can be divined through an analysis of handwriting? Well apparently so. Valerie Berenyi tells us it's a science in an article entitled The Science Behind Your John Hancock in the Sunday June 13, 2010 edition of the Calgary Herald.

The opening sentence gives some indication of the quality of thought involved: Every time you put your pen to paper, you open a window into your unconscious mind. Ugh, no you don't Valerie, but writing an article does provide a window into your conscious one. To quote Mark Twain: It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.

Valerie's piece is done in advance of a visit to Calgary by Annette Poizner, author of  as yet unpublished book, Reading from the Soul: Handwriting Analysis and the Tree of Life. Unpublished you say? I can't imagine why. Annette is continuing her mission to promote graphology as a highly useful tool for the psychotherapist's tool kit. To test graphology, Valerie volunteered  to have her handwriting analyzed. Here, in an extended quote, is the testing process and Valerie's conclusions.

In advance of her upcoming talks in Calgary on June 17, Annette Poizner invited me to find out "what your handwriting says about you".  She asked me to provide reams of handwriting: 10 early childhood memories, two drawings, the description of a dream, a page long essay describing my day and several examples of my signature.

Although we've never met in person, what she gleaned about my personality, strengths and weaknesses from those pages of squiggles left me speechless.

This left her speechless? To bad it didn't leave her with the inability to write. Forget cold reading, with that much information in hand and a few well placed phone calls, anyone could impersonate Valerie well enough to participate in wholesale identity theft, walk away with her credit and bank card access or even arrange to pick up her children at school (if she has young children at school, I really don't know). The point being, Valerie would never provide a stranger with this information because she is smart enough to know that by providing it, a stranger could easily do the things just described.  Yet the same person is so naive as to express astonishment when a graphologist (as if there is such a thing) armed with all this information is able to pull off a semi-competent warm reading.

Semi-competent warm reading, that sounds so judgmental. Judge for yourself, here are some of the findings that left Valerie speechless:

My big sprawling handwriting reveals me to be 'a vibrant, imaginative, nurturing, sensual person'.

My forward-driving penmanship shows I'm 'thrusting' myself with too much male energy into the outer world, neglecting the female energies of reflection and introspection back on the left side of the page.

Poizner detected a 'schoolmarmish' side in my handwriting that seeks to repress my undisciplined loops, the hastily unclosed 'ss' and the inconsistent  squishing or flattening of some middle letter zones.

I know, this leaves me speechless too, although, I'll wager for different reasons. I am speechless that there is a person on this earth so gullible as to be rendered speechless by this drivel. Then again, maybe there really is a sucker born every minute. If this describes you, Annette Poizner is speaking on the psychology of handwriting June 17 at 8 p.m. at Temple B'nai Tikvah in Calgary. The talk is entitled: 'Kabbalah and the Psychology of Handwriting' and it will examine celebrities' handwriting to demonstrate how graphology expresses personality using principles that seemingly derive from Jewish mysticism.

I am speechless again.

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