Dark words on white paper bare the soul.
Maupassant
Before D., an emotionally disturbed 18-year-old college girl, met Paul de Sainte Colombe, her handwriting looked like this:
That sample equipped De Sainte Colombe with all the clues he needed to diagnose the coed's distress. The tightly closed ovals in the O's and A's, for instance told him that she was deeply introverted. With particular concern, he examined the capital I's her references to herself. They were small (insecurity); some of them seemed crushed, fallen, unable to rise. Without seeing Patient D.,...