Does perfume reveal more about your personality than your handwriting?
A woman’s perfume tells more about her than her handwriting.”
This remark was made by Christian Dior, a French fashion designer and founder of one of the world’s top fashion houses, Christian Dior. The observation is funny, and it may be true to some extent.
According to members of the Dior gang, if a woman likes floral scents, it means she is unmistakably feminine and she is not afraid to flaunt it. She loves dresses and heels and sipping pink champagne from a tall glass.
And if she likes citrus scents, she pops out of bed ready to conquer the world. But if she likes woody perfumes, she is a no-nonsense type and a trendsetter.
On the other hand, if you are a candy-scented woman, you are usually delightful and interesting.
Perfume does reveal something about your nature.
The interpretations above appear rather simplistic. Nevertheless it’s unfair of me to comment on their validity because I don’t study perfumes or their connection with the human behaviour.
But the conviction with which Mr Dior places handwriting under his bottles of perfumes is baffling. Perhaps he is untouched by the power of handwriting analysis as a method to reveal personality secrets.
Therefore, I will take Mr Dior with a pinch of salt. Also, it will be a good idea to introduce him to Chinese philosopher Confucius who underscored the importance of handwriting and certainly knew that it reveals a great deal about the personality of the writer.
He said:
Handwriting can infallibly show whether it comes from a person who is noble-minded or from one who is vulgar.”
Graphology is the scientific study of character expression in handwriting, and at Write Choice, we have explained at length how it is an amazingly accurate tool, which helps a graphologist understand how a writer thinks, feels, and acts.
Apart from that, there are scores of articles on people who lie, people who cheat, people who beat their spouses, people who are suicidal, people who are jealous and, of course, on signature analysis.
Evidently, handwriting analysis is deeper than perfume analysis, because it does not bunch people under various behavioural categories.
Graphology is the analysis of the patterns of handwriting, indicating the writer’s psychological state at the time of writing.
It is an effective and reliable indicator of personality and behaviour, and a useful tool for many organisational processes, such as hiring.
Several handwriting analysts find it easier to brand people as liars, aggressive and temperamental.
But the real challenge for them is to find out dispassionately what caused the person to behave in a certain way.
Graphologists with deep understanding of handwriting analysis know that each handwriting reflects a way to survive in this world.
Handwriting can reveal more about your personality than perfume.
For example, if garland connections between letters appear predominantly in someone’s handwriting, an analyst realises that the writer needs a non-confrontational life and his desire is to be liked and accepted as a person one can turn to when looking for a patient listener.
Similarly, a handwriting analyst understands that someone who writes with angular connections between letters is confrontational because his personal experiences made him that way. The aggression in his personality is essentially a survival technique.
Likewise, the graphological explanation of a huge signature (in comparison to the moderate-sized handwriting) is that the writer is a megalomaniac.
But a handwriting analyst needs to unravel why the writer has chosen to build a big facade (signature) for the public though he is grounded in his day-to-day life (moderate handwriting size).
Let me give you another example.
Handwriting analysts usually frown upon illegible signatures, and think of it as a negative, but people whose jobs require them to maintain secrecy and work surreptitiously need a mental barrier that enables them to protect the secrets. And the illegible signature just establishes the existence of that barrier.
Therefore, it will be a mistake to always think that illegibility in signature reflects a deceitful intent. This distinction should be kept in mind all the time by handwriting analysts.
Clearly, analysing handwriting requires logic and knowledge. It takes many years of study and practice to become a good handwriting analyst. There is no shortcut whatsoever.
Any attempt to cut corners in our approach will bring us closer to the Dior-ian way of studying personality and farther away from depth and accuracy.
Therefore, it will be rewarding for aspiring graphologists to resist the temptation to categorise people in various personality baskets.
And if you ever lose your way, remind yourself of what Oscar Wilde said:
It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.”
Disclaimer: One element of handwriting may be analysed at a time, but always look at the entire handwriting sample before arriving at any conclusion.
