Graphology , long in the same U.S. doghouse with
such pseudosciences as astrology, palmistry, phrenology may not be
so phony as scientists have thought it. Last week in Manhattan, quiet,
greying, sharp-faced Dr. Walter William Marseille, former Berlin
psychologist, described graphology's partial emergence from the
doghouse to do a routine job of work: rating customer reliability for
Spiegel's, Chicago mail-order house, which sells clothing, furniture
and household goods to more than two million installment accounts. Emergence. Marseille studied psychology at Heidelberg and Berlin, got
his Ph.D.
in 1926 for a critical study of graphological theories, later
practiced in Berlin and Vienna as consulting psychologist and
personnel adviser for public-utility and industrial corporations. He
left Austria on the eve of the Nazi invasion. In 1940 Paul Lazarsfeld,
public-opinion researcher, retained him to make a handwriting
analysis of mail received by several U.S.
Senators during the debate on the conscription bill. His educational
rating of the letter-writers attracted
the attention of FORTUNE'S Elmo Roper, who is also a director of
Spiegel's. At Roper's suggestion, Spiegel's gave Marseille a trial: 20
handwritten order blanks from reliable customers, 20 from known
delinquents. Looking solely for indications of honesty or dishonesty,
he failed dismally. Next, he was given 200 specimens—100 of them good
accounts, 100 bad; and this time he looked, not for crooks, but for
inconsistent, unreliable, poorly adjusted people. He spotted them
correctly in over 70% of the cases. Spiegel's told him to go ahead. Routine. Instead of quibbling over the significance of high-crossed t's
and un-dotted i's, the Marseille system, basically, studies the
consistency or inconsistency of style, the degree of integration
revealed in an individual's handwriting; rates the subject
accordingly as: 1> very good risk; 2> fairly reliable; 3> dishonest; 4>
poor budgeter, probably harassed by bill collectors. Graphology's most intractable foes, handwriting experts , who specialize in detecting forgeries, were
quick to belittle Marseille's claims last week. More hopeful were the
psychologists and personnel consultants who would like to see
handwriting analysis established on scientific ground. If taken away
from fortune-tellers and given serious study, graphology may yet become
a useful handmaiden of psychology, pos-sibly revealing important
traits, attitudes, values of the “hidden” personality.
Research for medical graphology already indicates that handwriting is more than
muscular. Most re-assuring observation: people who lose their upper
extremities, then learn to write with mouth or toes, retain in their
new mouth-or foot-writing the essential characteristics of their
original handwriting. *Top to bottom: very good risk, fairly reliable, dishonest,
poor budgeter.
