Dr. Richard J. Stoller has a Ph.D. in educational psychology. He is a former teacher and school principal with 31 years of experience. He is a Master Graphoanalysist, author of "Write Right" and "Change Your Handwriting and Change Your Life." He lectures internationally and is a television personality. He has statistically proven - with a 79% success rate - personality and self-image can be changed by changing certain strokes in a person's handwriting. He is considered the father of graphotherapy.

"Graphology". The art of knowing men by their handwriting, is a phrase coined by two French priests in their 1872 and 1878 publications. These two, the Abbe Flandria and his disciple the Abbe Jean-Hypolyte Michon, spent their lives studying handwriting and together established some basic rules for determining specific characteristics. Michon possessed a methodical mind, an extraordinary gift for observation, and a photographic memory with which to assist Flandria's innate understanding of human behavior.

The word graphology comes from the Greek "graph", which means writing, and the suffix "ology", which is applied to the names of scientific studies.

Three thousand years ago, Nero said he did not trust a man in his court because "his handwriting shows him to be treacherous." Over 300 years before the Christian Era, Aristotle observed that "written words are the symbols of spoken words", and "all men have not the same writing." In A.D. 120 Suetonius Tranquillus described in a book on the Caesars, a peculiarity in the handwriting of Octavius Augustus was so economical "he squeezes his words together at the end of one line rather than start a new line."

The ancient Chinese apparently had insight into the psychology of handwriting. King Jo-Hau, a philosopher and painter of the Sung Period who lived between 1060 and 1110 A.D., declared that "handwriting infallibly shows us whether it comes from a vulgar or a noble minded person."

It is not widely known that Edgar Allen Poe, analyzed handwriting and published his analysis coining the term "autographery." Robert & Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote, "Dark Words on White Paper Bare the Soul."

German statesman Prince Otto Edward Leopold von Bismarck united Germany around 1842. He felt his handwriting exemplified and should represent the German people. He proclaimed that every German citizen should model their handwriting after his…. the von Bismarck method. Henceforth, the German population instilled in their personalities his personality traits of belligerence, determination (stubbornness), antagonism, feelings of superiority, aloofness and being stern.

In 1915, Dr. M. N. Bunker began his studies in handwriting analysis and formed the International Graphoanalysis Society (IGAS.) This was the first established school for handwriting analysis in the United States. essaynow.net