Graphology—handwriting analysis—has, of course, no respectability as a science, nor, perhaps, does it deserve to have. Yet it seems to this reviewer to deserve some attention as a variety of projective testing.

This book, however, is more narrowly focused than its title would indicate. It is essentially an attempt to show how Freud's character, as revealed by his handwriting, determined the conception and course of psychoanalysis. Freud's strong sensuality (evidenced, according to the author, by the long downward loops prevalent in his handwriting) and limited powers of sublimation (short upward extensions) led him to emphasize the significance of the drives and to be pessimistic about the powers of sublimation: “Short upward extensions would indicate a state of arrest in the bodily realm…. The tendency to sublimation was only slightly developed in him.”