Interview by Lon Woodbury
In this week's L.A. Talk Radio Show episode of Struggling Teens, Annette Poizner, who is a clinical social worker with an extensive private practice in Toronto, Canada, talked to host Lon Woodbury about the job of Graphology in clinical evaluations. Poizner combined her skills as a psychotherapist with graphology, and found that it appreciably helped her in her work with patients. Graphology is a personality evaluation method that uses an individual's handwriting to understand their character.
Background
As Columbia-trained clinical social worker Annette Poizner has routinely used graphology and other forms of projective personality assessments in her clinical practice for more than 20 years. Her doctoral dissertation, completed at the University of Toronto, explored the use of graphology within psychotherapy. She has been designated one of three Master Graphologists by the American Handwriting Analysis Foundation, is a founding member of the Milton H Erickson Institute of Toronto, and specializes in psychological assessments, Ericksonian psychotherapy and hypnosis.
What Is Graphology?
After introducing his guest and mentioning her latest book, "Clinical Graphology: An Interpretive Manual for Mental Health Practitioners," Woodbury began the interview by commenting that graphology is often considered by the general public as a parlor trick and wondered how it could be used in a clinical setting. Poizner explained that handwriting analysis and projective personality assessments like analyzing dreams, drawings and stories allowed her to get to know her clients better.
Although dealing with a wide spectrum of clients with different issues, she specializes in working with issues that have been particularly unresponsive to typical psychiatric therapy, for instance issues like Obsessive Compulsive Disorders, Attention Deficit Disorder, Anorexia, Depression, and Anxiousness. Projective personality evaluations let her access character flaws and strengths by analyzing a variety of writing samples.
In the course of her clinical experience, she has actually come to consider any disruptive symptom as a cover-up - it is never the real reason why people are in treatment. The evident symptoms are actually the subconscious mind's attempt to solve some other issue, one that is hidden from view.
She shared various examples from her experience. In one situation, for instance, she had worked with a girl who was convinced that she had HIV despite the fact that all medical examinations proved otherwise. Utilizing graphology and various other assessment devices, she discovered that the girl's real need was to get more attention from her family.
Final Thoughts
Handwriting analysis is a discipline which teaches professionals the best ways to see what is really going on beneath the surface symptoms. However, graphology cannot be used in isolation in assessments. It has to be combined with other evaluation methodologies.
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