CONTRIBUTION TO THE SURVEY OF HANDWRITING
The "Gestalt" of Handwriting of Apparently Normal Persons in Comparison with Specimens of Institutionalized Mental Patients
MAX A. BRUCK M. D.1
1 The Veterans Administration Hospital, Canandaigua, N. Y.
1. By applying technical methods and mathematical principles to the survey of Gestalt in handwriting the shift from solely intuitional comprehension to scientific testing and practical evaluation is begun.
2. The tests are performed with the help of a map measure, a simple device which makes a quick integrative measuring possible.
3. On scripts of 27 apparently normal individuals the following hypothesis is tested and found to be justified: The total of the length of words, measured in the middle zone of letters, is related to the total length of lines according to the principle of the "golden section."
4. Among 25 institutionalized mental patients were 9 cases whose scripts revealed proportions not conforming with the principle of the "golden section."
5. The results of this investigation, evaluated by tests of significance, advocate this method as a sort of graphometrical screening test. The author intends to supplement it with other tests, according to the principles of integrative survey.
