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Left-handed writing has been much discussed in pedagogical, psychological literature. It is generally considered to be a congenital constitutional structure. It has been so interpreted, notably in the research made by Orton and continued by L. E. Travis (36), pointing out the fact that left-handedness is often a concomitant phenomenon of stuttering. The explanation given by L. E. Travis follows the generally accepted neurofunctional theory in which stuttering is considered to be a neuromuscular derangement due to “transient and mutual inhibitive activities of the right and the left hemispheres”, a symptom of the rivalry of the two hemispheres of the brain (22).
In distinction to this neurophysiological theory we consider left-handedness, as well as stuttering and every kind of speech activity, to be a psychosomatic phenomenon and, therefore, in principle accessible to psychoanalytical interpretation. The crucial question in this case will be whether left-handedness is indeed congenital and writing with the left hand is its necessary consequence, or every child is congenitally ambidextrous, using both hands equally, and able to develop left handedness by some unconscious motivation. Writing with the left hand is in this case only one of the strong impulses for organizing and stabilizing a general left-handed behavior. We have strong reasons to suppose, in contradiction to the generally accepted views, that this latter one is most frequently the case.
S. Freud has pointed out concerning the neurotic inhibitions in writing that they originate not from writing as such, but from a completely different activity, the meaning of which became transferred to writing (16). In other words, the cause of the inhibition can not be found by considering writing in itself, but can be found in the meaning which writing has assumed for the individual concerned. What is this meaning of “writing”? Every normal person knows what “writing” means, thus any further discussion or definition of