HANDWRITING ANALYSIS : Paper Work : A session with a graphoanalyst leads to new insights--and the urge to use a typewriter.

You’ve been trying to find yourself for some time.

It’s not that you’re missing--you know where you are. It’s who you are, and why, that’s the philosophical stumper.

A well-meaning acquaintance suggests visiting a handwriting analyst. For you, a writer, this seems like a pain-free proposition: You do what you normally do--write a few lines--and the analyst reads between them. At best, maybe you will solve some personal mysteries. At worst, what? An ink stain on your tie?

On second thought, maybe there are things you’re better off not knowing. Maybe those innocent notes you wrote to friends really did reveal your innermost self. Maybe that problem you have with lowercase H’s is the manifestation of some repressed psychological trauma. Maybe the forceful crossing of your T’s isn’t boldness, but just boring poor penmanship.

Trying to put these concerns aside, you go ahead with the analysis. You head over to the Ventura residence of master graphoanalyst Maurine Moore.

Moore has taught handwriting analysis and has worked within the legal system, analyzing the handwriting of potential jurors and witnesses to determine their personality strengths and weaknesses.

Moore sits you down at a round wooden table next to a black wicker horn of plenty filled with plastic fruit. She starts out by telling you that people often create signatures to present a certain image. They want to stand out, she says, to be unique.

“But if you don’t know what you’re doing,” she adds, “you can put things into created signatures that are really negative.” And these negative characteristics, she says, are reinforced in the personality each time you write your name.

That’s a good reason right there for not writing so many checks.

Moore also stresses the danger in changing one’s signature without professional supervision. It’s kind of a don’t-try-this-at-home sort of thing. One woman, she says for emphasis, didn’t like the slant in her handwriting, tried to change it and ended up having a nervous breakdown.

You thank her for sharing.

Moore then has you write your name three times. The first signature represents your childhood, the second your immediate past and the third your present.

She looks at your writing and zeros in on your H’s. That letter, she tells you, reflects religious or philosophical viewpoints. “When you find an H that’s not in the copybook fashion,” she says, referring to an odd looping one, “it’s because the writer has repressed the religious teachings of childhood.”

Translation: You’re confused about your religious and philosophical beliefs.

You want to run off to church and chant some mantras but feel obliged to hang in for the remainder of the analysis.

Moore reels off a few more of your characteristics. “You have a lot of integrity,” she says. You agree. “You’re very open-minded,” she says. Well, you think, you ARE having your handwriting analyzed.

She also detects a sarcastic side.

Then she studies your lower-case T’s and I’s, telling you that your cross-bars indicate your tendency to procrastinate. You decide to think about that tomorrow.

The comma-shaped dots over your I’s, she adds, also indicate irritability. That can’t be, dammit.

Moore then points out that the loops in your T’s suggest a vulnerability to job-related criticism. You can see your editor nodding in agreement.

Having analyzed your signature top to bottom, Moore then asks for the two writing samples you brought with you. After you leave she will study them thoroughly. For now, though, she makes a few more quick observations: You have loops in your Y’s, where they shouldn’t be.Uh-oh.

“Imagination where it doesn’t belong is wrong,” she tells you. Oops, you knew that would get you in trouble some day.

“You have an inflated d-stem showing vulnerability to personal criticism. . . . It means you anticipate criticism and you take things wrong,” she says.

Obviously, you think, she is belittling you.

A few days later, the detailed analysis she promised you arrives. You learn that your very round F’s suggest a vulnerability to women. This is not news to you. On the plus side, though, the roundness of that letter “is one of the things that keeps you from being a social menace.”

You knew something was doing the trick. You just never suspected it was an F.

Sitting down at your living room table, you pull out a piece of paper and pen to write her a thank-you note for her insights. But you cannot bring yourself to do it.

Now, where did you put that typewriter?

* THE PREMISE

There are plenty of things you have never tried. Fun things, dangerous things, character building things. The Reluctant Novice tries them for you and reports the results. After all, the Novice gets paid to do them--and has no choice in the matter. If you want to tell the Novice where to go, please call us at 658-5547. If we use your idea, we’ll send you a present.

This week’s Reluctant Novice is staff writer Leo Smith.