The Hands Of Children

AN INTRODUCTION TO PSYCHO-CHIROLOGY

Julius Spier

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780415210683
• eBook ISBN: 9781136334641
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Health Care Delivery

This is Volume XVIII in a series of twenty-one in a collection on Individual Differences. Originally published in 1931, this posthumously published work provides the reader with an introduction to psych-chirology with additions by the current editor's experiments and anaylsis. With an Appendix on the Hands of the Mentally Diseased by Herta Levi.

The Theoretical Foundation of Psycho-Chirology

CHAPTER ONE

WHY THE HANDS OF CHILDREN?

Become what thou art.

PINDAR.

I have chosen Pindar’s discerning words because they contain the starting-point as well as the aim of my book, which is not only to interpret and to analyse but also to point out the road of development which leads towards perfection, and to achieve the true synthesis of the personality.

I base my approach on the assumption that man is born with definite dispositions which in normal cases determine his intellectual and spiritual development at least in part, though they may be decisive in abnormal cases. The essential factor is a person’s attitude to the events and phenomena of his life, and here the dispositions of a person normally present a number of possibilities. Most people, however, because of wrong education and haunting impressions from childhood which have produced disturbances and inhibitions, are unable to adopt that attitude to life which is in accordance with their actual dispositions. The ignoring and neglecting of their true dispositions have forced them into an unrelated, uncongenial condition and warped their outlook on life. This restricted attitude places them in social isolation and egocentric confinement, causing all kinds of disturbances, inhibitions and conflicts and often brings about a complete standstill in the development of the personality. It is at this point that the work of the chirologist begins. Apart from ascertaining the character, the talents, the unconscious influences, the effect of the milieu, it is his task to find out how and by what a person is prevented from leading a life according to his own natural dispositions, how and why a person is again and again compelled to go through certain experiences which bind and limit him, and impede his true inner development. In this clarifying process it is necessary to show him in what way he is connected with his ancestors, that is to say, to make him realize that his life and his destiny are directly connected not only with his dispositions but also with the life experiences of his forefathers.

The mechanisation and mad speed of the present day have driven man further than ever before into a state of social isolation which makes him forget that he is not merely an individual but also a part of a much greater whole. The conscious realisation that his reactions and experiences are closely linked with the life of his forbears lends a new meaning to his life and often gives it an inner significance, breaking down his artificial isolation and leading him from his exaggerated egocentric attitude to a better relationship with and adaptation to the community. He finds his proper place in the universe and he is able to bear all his sufferings and hitherto incomprehensible difficulties consciously and, therefore, with greater ease. He learns to accept what up to now he had resisted and he is now able to throw overboard the negative ballast which had burdened his mind and prevented him from the positive realisation of his true dispositions, so that at last he can become what he is.

In the case of most adults the task of the psycho-chirologist is necessarily of a therapeutic nature ; with children, however, it is possible to intervene in time and to take prophylactic steps.

From the first year the hand of a child clearly shows its dispositions with all their subsidiary traits, particularly the right hand, which according to my observations must be looked upon as the ancestral hand. If the hand is not clearly lined and marked in early childhood, it will be so at the latest between the eighth and twelfth years, which will then enable the experienced chirologist to determine the dispositions of the child, in which direction they tend, by what means they can be furthered and what may be preventing their natural development. Every normally affectionate mother and every loving father will look upon their child as their most precious possession, and yet how do they treat—or rather ill-treat—it. They usually bring it up according to the negative experiences of their own childhood and consequently go to the opposite extreme. They are inclined to spoil and pamper the child if they discover a positive trait of their own in it, and to oppose and discourage it whenever the child is “ disappointing” in this respect. The parents mostly seek compensation for all that had been denied to them and thus treat the child accordingly, and burden it with their own personal problems and conflicts. It is indeed a rare occurrence for parents to guide and educate their child without self-love and according to its own dispositions and talents. It is, however, extremely difficult to discover the true dispositions and talents of a child, particularly if the parents have very little or no knowledge of their own selves. So many parents never become what they should have become, and unconscious of this fact, try to find the fulfilment of their own frustrated wishes in their child without realising that they are continuing the vicious circle which now prevents their own child from finding the fulfilment of its true possibilities and talents. Here the analysis of the hand offers a unique possibility of solving both difficulties : to ascertain the disposition of the parents, and particularly that part of the disposition with which the child is directly, biologically and psychologically, connected, and the individual disposition of the child. A chirological analysis very often shows that the difficulties in the development of the child are not produced by its own inadequate dispositions but by conflicts and mostly unconscious difficulties of the parents which disturb, upset and frighten the child or force it into opposition and obstinacy.

In the concluding practical section of this book (see Appendix, pp. 159-166) I shall analytically demonstrate by means of 23 prints of hands to what extent the psychology of children is expressed in the lines of their hands and how the destinies of children are sometimes conditioned and influenced by parents. These short analyses will show how difficult and hard it is to become what we essentially are, and help to achieve the aim of this book : to make a small contribution towards the solution of this problem which so vitally concerns the inner meaning of our existence.

CHAPTER TWO

GENERAL REMARKS ABOUT PSYCHO-CHIROLOGY

As far as acknowledgment and serious appreciation are concerned, chirology is still the Cinderella among all expressional systems, because it is still exposed to the odium of fortune-telling and charlatanry. The main reason for this may be that the general public as well as doctors, teachers, educationalists and psychologists confuse chirology with chiromancy and it is, therefore, essential that the position should be clarified.

Chirology deals with the shape of the hand, the fingers and nails and the lines of the palm. By an analysis and interpretation of all the features of the hand the chirologist endeavours to construct a complete psychological character-portrait of the personality, taking into account life experiences, dispositions, talents, vocational aptitude and dispositions to illnesses. The first and fundamental commandment of chirology is that no single sign, trait or line shall be considered and valued on its own strength but only in relation to all the features concerned.

The devotee of chiromancy, however, draws his conclusions about the qualities and character-dispositions of a person from definite signs, without considering the dynamic and psychological factors. Thus on the whole he ascertains external events and circumstances of life from certain signs in the hand without connecting these events with certain qualities of the character. Chiromancy, therefore, on the whole, deals with the prediction of the future. For the layman it is often rather difficult to separate chirology from chiromancy, for many hand readers style themselves chirologists but still indulge in the old manner of interpreting isolated traits, that is to say, they predict the future.

Various scholars, doctors and important scientists of the past have occupied themselves with and written about chirology scientifically. I only mention a few such as Aristotle, Savonarola, Paracelsus, Lavater in his Physiognomy, and most comprehensively, the doctor and philosopher Gustav Carus in his Symbolism of the Human Form. Between 1650 and 1730 chirology was officially included in the curriculum of the German universities of Leipzig and Halle.¹

In my method, which is based on my independent observations and thirty years of practical experience, I have incorporated hardly more than the four main lines of the old chiromantic systems, and it differs fundamentally from all extant chirological systems because it is not concerned with the static features alone but also, and mainly, with the dynamic aspect. I also attribute great importance to the consideration of a person’s forefathers in the analysis of the hand, biologically as well as psychologically.

The human soul is not a finished and unalterable entity but is in a state of continuous flux. Human beings have dispositions and talents which according to the influence of their environment, education, and other conscious and unconscious impressions, can be furthered and developed, or inhibited and suppressed, and it is the task of the chirologist to ascertain the original dispositions of a person and to what extent the above-mentioned influences and other alien forces have prevented their free development. Thus my work is not only concerned with the mere description of a person’s present state of mind but also with the awakening of latent and buried possibilities and the indication of the true tendency of his inner being.

As I have already pointed out in the previous chapter, to understand and appreciate a personality in its entirety, it is necessary to consider certain aspects of the history of the person’s family as well as all the psychological and biological facts connected with it. The chirological approach to this is provided by the right hand, the ancestral hand. Its relationship to the left hand, which is expressive of the individual personality, will be discussed in greater detail in a later chapter.

In my chirological practice I lay such great stress on the past because it is the past which makes us understand the present and because the true understanding of the present and its purposeful adjustment to the whole personality are the condition for a positive and constructive development. As I attribute great importance to all experiences and impressions received in the past, it is only logical that I should strictly refuse to make pronouncements about the future, for if I did describe future events I should automatically exclude the active participation of a person in the shaping of his own development. By telling a person correct things about his character and his past, that is to say things he is able to verify, we tend to suggest an atmosphere of confidence which can remain equally effective in the case of subsequent negative predictions and the person may thereby be induced to concentrate with all his strength on these bad future possibilities. This attitude has a paralysing effect upon the natural powers of resistance and at the same time deprives the person of his inner possibilities of escape from what he now believes to be his doom. The fact that he, consciously or unconsciously, concentrates all his attention upon the “ unavoidable catastrophe,” actually drives him into it, and thus the prediction comes true.

In this connection I should like to elaborate the statement made cursorily in the first chapter that the normal person is equipped with a number of dispositions which open out various possibilities as he deals with the facts and events of life. The impact, however, with the environment and its different individualities, particularly with those of the milieu, often causes these dispositions to be forced into a one-sided direction and to assume a one-sided attitude. Consequently the freedom of scope for action and with it the freedom of the will in its attitude to life are impeded and limited. Thus it is the task of the conscientious and responsible chiro-analyst to restore the original variety of dispositions and with it the possibility of a free choice. The chiromantic hand-reader and predictor of future events works in the opposite direction and, therefore, produces the opposite, negative result which we have noticed above.

It would, however, be wrong to assume that only negative predictions can have a blighting effect on a person’s powers of development. Let us assume that a man is told of a great external success which is coming to him in the near future. Sure of success, he might be induced to give up working to perfect his own personality or mode of life, and to let himself go, thus doing harm to his inner self. Besides, such predictions cannot be made with an adequate measure of certainty because the lines and signs of the inner hand upon which the predictions are based are subject to changes, they may disappear within longer or shorter intervals or new ones may emerge. Moreover the signs of the inner hand have not only an external but also an inner reference. The fortune-teller who is only concerned with static phenomena and is bound to correlate his findings mainly with external events, will shackle and restrict his consultee to a fixed attitude. Inner processes, however, to an even greater extent than external events, are especially dependent on a free display and interplay of energies and forces.

An important factor in this connection is the general trend of our age, and of the individual, towards materialism, which means that the responsible psycho-chirologist whose duty it is to give his client greater inner stability should not foster and emphasise that tendency. He should realise that the restlessness and inner difficulties and unhappiness of so many people are to be attributed to the contagious materialist spirit of our period. The resulting inner isolation induces them to seek the advice of the chiro-analyst ; without being aware of it, a conflict has arisen between their vague but genuine striving for cognition, for inner development, and the contagious tendency of the age with which they are not in harmony. A mere prediction of future events would only increase their dilemma and inner isolation because it would fail to show the interconnectedness of inner and external life. Though the chirologist cannot and should not make predictions, he can, however, discover and point out possibilities of development and give prognostic advice in case of difficult, pathological or psycho-pathic dispositions. In such cases the chirologist bases his conclusions about possible future developments upon certain unalterable signs and verifiable symptoms.

The decisive factor in the treatment of and the correct attitude to these questions is, after all, the personality of the chirologist. As he is dealing with problems of education, psychotherapeutic treatment and analyses of children and adults, and thus has to shoulder considerable personal responsibility, it should be made a fundamental condition and minimum demand that he should know his own character very well and, above all, be conscious of all his weaknesses and imperfections. A chiroanalyst with a sense of moral responsibility should know himself to be free of lust for power, sadism, personal embitterment and resentment, any of which might lead him to repudiate and deny the world of values. I wonder how many disastrous predictions have been made because of an unconscious sadist trait of the predictor, and how many destructively negative character analyses must be attributed to a negative attitude of the analyst. It would, of course, be equally wrong to exclude and suppress negative traits in a graphological or chirological analysis, but they should be presented in a constructive way, for the activity of a chirologist is only justified if he points out the course which leads to constructive and positive adjustment.

Thus a person who wants to follow the profession of a chirologist or graphologist should at least go through a psychological training or, better still, a psychological analysis, to make him conscious of the weaknesses and negative traits which otherwise might unconsciously influence his attitude. I know from my own experience that the widening of one’s conscious sphere, which is the result of analytic work, also makes the chirologist a better teacher.

The basic principles of my chirological system, published for the first time in book form, are intended to instruct the chirological novice, or rather to support and supplement his instruction, for experience has taught me that chirological knowledge cannot be based on book learning only, but has to be acquired mainly by practical experience. In the following chapters I draw upon the experience of about thirty years and not on theoretical studies, and my observations and conclusions are based on numerous cases of all kinds and varieties, though most of them are based on people who are interested in psychology and have gone through inner difficulties and conflicts. As my work is chiefly empirical, my system is not a completely finished and rigid structure, but it is capable of expansion and adaptation and of assimilating new material which presents fresh angles of approach. This is the reason why I have not tried to superimpose my chirological teaching upon any extant psychological or philosophical system, though I gladly confess that C. G. Jung’s school of thought and psychological method appeals most strongly to me and that I make use of his terminology. Other chirologists, however, have tried to graft their theory upon such systems but, according to my experience, it is impossible and futile to adapt the reality of the human hand which is the expression of life in all its facets to a more or less abstract and sometimes even irrational system of concepts.

In the subsequent chapters I shall expound the theoretical foundation of my system and conclude my book with practical examples based on the hands of children. The theoretical part, however, has a wider range than the practical section because the back of the hand, for instance, and the fingers of children under twelve are not sufficiently developed to allow of analysis. Another reason for the publication of this book on the hands of children is that I plan to follow it up with a work based on my considerable material of the hands of adults comprising normal, difficult and psycho-pathic cases. The present book is intended to supply the theoretical basis for its successor. The elaborate introduction is necessary because the people for whom this book is chiefly written—educationalists, teachers, priests and parents—would be unable to get a comprehensive idea from the prints of the hands of the children alone without the complete theoretical exposition of the hand of the grown-up. Some han...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES In 21 Volumes
• Title
• Copyright
• PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION
• PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION
• Contents
• PLATES
• INTRODUCTION BY DR. C. G. JUNG
• 1. WHY THE HANDS OF CHILDREN ?
• 2. GENERAL REMARKS ABOUT PSYCHO-CHIROLOGY
• 3. THE OUTER HAND
• 4. THE FINGERS
• 5. THE POSITION OF THE HAND THE RELATIONSHIP OF THE FINGERS TOWARDS EACH OTHER THE PECULIARITIES OF EACH FINGER
• 6. THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE RIGHT AND LEFT HANDS
• 7. THE MOUNTS
• 8. THE MAIN LINES IN THE PALM OF THE HAND
• 9. SUBSIDIARY LINES AND VARIOUS OTHER FEATURES OF THE INNER HAND
• 10. PRACTICAL NOTES
• 11. CHIROLOGY APPLIED TO THE HANDS OF CHILDREN
• FIGURES
• APPENDIX ONE: SPECIMEN ANALYSES OF HANDS OF CHILDREN
• APPENDIX TWO: THE HANDS OF THE MENTALLY DISEASED
• NOTES ON HANDS OF SCHIZOPHRENICS
• NOTES ON HANDS OF NON-SCHIZOPHRENICS
• TABLE ONE
• TABLE TWO
• POSTSCRIPT
• INDEX
• INDEX OF FIGURES