|
|
| Subscribe to University Graphology |
KHŌRA: SPATIAL
SYMBOLISM IN PLATO
(a
revalidation of temperaments and character typologies in handwriting)
Francisco
Viñals Carrera and María
Luz Puente Balsells
Directors of the Master’s Programme in Graphistics, Graphopathology and Forensic Graphology at
the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB)
www.grafologiauniversitaria.com
Khōra helps us to understand psychophysical
elements as expressed within spatial symbolism. When elaborating a personality
profile, such elements are key in formulating graphonomic assessments of
handwriting in order to provide insight into psychosomatic, volitional and
moral characteristics.
Max Pulver’s work
with spatial symbolism contributed greatly to psychoanalysis (especially to
Jungian analysis) and opened up new worlds to graphologists. However long
before that, Plato had described his spatial scheme in Timaeus, agreeing on many points with Pythagoras.
For Plato, space
(khōra) is to be found at the meeting point between the chronological
history of our world and our personal histories. It exists where the generation
of the world and our own small time periods come together. Therefore, our own
space converges with these two aspects and with others. The medium is the
setting of time. Space is configured through the momentary and changeable
crystallisation of historical events. Seen from this perspective, the medium’s
relation to space is that of a fixing of generation.
Khōra’s
structure is that of a cross, which could be defined in the language of the
Italian school of graphology as the vertical axis (the path of will) and the
horizontal axis (the path of intelligence). Khōra is the intersection of
willpower and intellect; it is movement within space and time themselves, which
characterise the very essence of personality (temperament, character and
intelligence).
Looking at the
vertical axis, we see what Plato set out concerning “being” versus “becoming”.
In Spanish culture—which has in fact been greatly influenced by Plato—the
difference between these two (being
and becoming) is patent. The clearest
examples is that there are in fact two different ways of translating the verb
"to be" into Spanish, namely ser
and estar. There are many other
languages which do not have two different verbs to express this difference of
nuance, causing repercussions on their cultures and in the way they formulate
certain questions. This could also affect studies of handwriting: the
importance of vertical symbolism, vertical strokes, which is the greatest
exponent of the coordinate of space. In psychophysics, it is the personal
concept of one's own dignity as well as of power, control, and
self-affirmation. In TA (Transactional Analysis) this corresponds to the
position of the “Parent”, to the confidence implicit in an attitude towards
life that says: “I’m OK; you’re not OK”. Being
becomes directly involved in the world of ideas; that is why it is related to
abstract space: people “feel” like they have a specific status, which may be
imaginary or not. If, on the other hand, when someone “happens to be” (estar) in a specific situation, then
here it is the determining factors that define the subject. That is why one
speaks of concrete space – one lives the experience, one finds oneself in a
certain condition for pragmatic reasons, is materialised, there is nothing but
bare physical reality, completely lacking in imaginary or idealised attributes.
This distinction made in Spanish culture is helpful in developing the concepts
of abstraction and idealisation (the upper area) vis-à-vis that which is
concrete and comes closest to the body and to one’s instincts (the lower area).
In psychophysics, the horizontal axis
is related to the coordinate of time, and in TA, to intelligence (specifically,
to the way the “Adult” as well as the “Little Professor” move). We can see that
Plato already distributed the horizontal axis to the right as logos (eikôs logos) and to the left as myth (eikôs
muthos). It must be kept in mind that in Spanish culture, we tend
more towards logos than towards myth. Our tendency is to believe that logos is the correct way of thinking and
we therefore inhibit or disallow myth.
This also explains why we consider primitive cultures to be inferior. We
believe that our exceptional rationality and our never-ending search for logic
and deduction make us better than them. However here we must not fool
ourselves: despite our overuse of the deductive method (especially with cold
empiricism), we still seek refuge in myth (metaphysics itself is a mix between
the abstract and the supernatural). We have a tendency in our culture to
confuse knowledge with taxonomy (classification): we pigeonhole every little
thing and often overuse systematisation, thus undervaluing appearances. In
short, logos is to be identified with
Jungian conscious thinking, or with
the mental processes of the “Adult” from TA; myth, on the other hand, is related to the Jungian unconscious
processes of intuition and perception, or with the “Little
Professor” from TA (i.e., knowing without knowing why).
We write from left
to right: this is not the case in other cultures. We are continually in search
of reason –we value it, believing it to be the foundation for any properly made
decision. If thinking is not based on certain criteria or guidelines, it is not
considered valid. And yet, we are surprised by the skills that certain (native)
peoples have: we observe a philosophy of life that is in complete contradiction
with our own apparent lack of common sense and with this imaginary world of
perfection in which we live, an idealised world of materialism that clashes with
the ties that humanity actually has with the rest of creation, with the force
of spirituality, with the source and origin of life.
Khōra is the
centre itself: it is the totality of those processes that take place within it.
It therefore corresponds to the area of the ego and of emotions coming from the
feeling of one's own space.
(Explanatory and
comparative charts on the symbolism of space can be found in the book Psicodiagnóstico por la Escritura:
Grafoanálisis Transaccional, by Francisco Viñals and María Luz Puente,
published by Herder Editorial,
Barcelona, 1999)
It is not easy to
define khōra, but it means something like “space in general”, which need
not be space occupied by anything specific. According to Ross (1986), Plato
considered spatiality, or extension, to be both inseparable from sense objects
as well as necessary for being. As opposed to other scholars such as Crombie or
Gómez Robledo, who did not completely understand Plato, Ross (an excellent
author) points out how spatiality must be clearly distinguished from
Aristotelian interpretations of matter (or, the place that contains something).
Naturally, when considering this idea of space, the Aristotelian viewpoint is
much more limited than Plato’s, which has caused a lot of confusion throughout
history.
In their attempts to get at an
understanding of the symbolism of space as seen in Timaeus, authors such as
Derrida (1993) have examined the dialogues of Plato and the premises and
postulates found therein (many of which are either hotly debated or falsely
assumed to be understood), such as the way of understanding muthos and logos, or being versus becoming. This understanding comes
through the constant reference to bipolar opposites, through inverted and
symmetrical insinuation linked simultaneously to other descriptions.
A large part of the symbolic framework is
also related to the description of the creation of the universe, the world, and
the soul (the soul having its X-shaped circles, one of which revolves around
the same, while the other revolves around the diverse). There are key sentences
such as “… the nurse of happening, moistened by water and inflamed by fire, and
receiving the forms of earth and air,…”, that speak not only of the movement of
the circle, but also of the areas where each of the elements are usually found.
These elements are fire, air, water and earth (sanguine, melancholic,
phlegmatic and choleric), and we propose a psychological correlation for each
of them when analysing handwriting:
expansion, variation, plasticity and resistance.
Allport (1963) echoes Wundt in declaring
the study of expressive behaviour to be one of the most promising methods for
studying individual personality. It involves the analysis of temperament as an element
within the involuntary nature of expression, comparing and contrasting it with
conscious, adaptive behaviour.
The correlation that exists between
handwritten expression, on the one hand, and temperament and character, on the
other, has been thoroughly corroborated by numerous tests and questionnaires,
among which is the PMK, or Myokinetic Test, developed by the eminent
graphologist Dr Emilio Mira y López (1951). Study of the PMK is mandatory in
many university programmes, most notably in the postgraduate degree in
Psychological Analysis of Handwriting at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona,
taught by Professors Viñals and Puente (2006).
The interplay of groups of agonist and
antagonist muscles is a determining factor in written expression (for example,
in vital force, in experiential reactions and in aggressiveness); but what is
more, it is also the link to khōra, Plato's spatial symbolism, via the
identification of the element “Fire”
with the graphic trait of forward expansion (height and impetus), as opposed to
the element “Water” which yields,
stays low, adapts itself with pliability to the recipient, and falls when there
is no support. Similarly, there is the element “Earth” with tension-resistance, applied when flexing muscles, seen
in downward movements that add a vertical quality to horizontally moving
strokes. Their persistence contrasts with the changing lightness (or one could
say disconnection or inequality) of the “Air” element or gestures affected by the antagonistic muscles that
support or lighten the top-down load of tension-pressure. This constant feature
is changed by the force which raises the stroke towards itself rather than
towards the rest when it should be bringing pressure to bear in its descent.
Naturally, these concepts are being
continually reinterpreted based on new ways of analysing personality, and yet
they retain their validity in modern psychiatry and psychology due to the
unarguable importance of temperament (that is to say, genetic or inherited
structures –see Millon, 1998). The TCI-R expresses this in terms of the
dimensions HA, RD, PS and NS
(Cloninger, Sven) and their differentiation, or points of interrelation, with
character (the results of the coming together of temperament and external
influences and exercising one's will to self-guidance, cooperation and
self-transcendence).
Temperamental and character typologies
therefore offer us an incredible wealth of information for assessing and
complementing the study of handwriting; this is something that has been proven
quite clearly by scientists working in the field of graphology, such as Dr
Emilio Mira y López and, later, Dr. Jean Charles Gille (1991), whose works are
required reading in the Master's Programme in Graphistics, Graphopathology and
Forensic Graphology at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.
No graphologist worth their salt nowadays
would work without taking into account the importance of temperament (be it via
Moretti’s method, Vels’s or other current methods) and character (for example,
using our system, Viñals & Puente’s Transactional Graphoanalysis based on
Eric Berne’s TA).
So we can see that
the description that Plato offers of khōra does not in any way contradict
the later discoveries of psychoanalysis. After all, psychoanalysis is not really
so recent; it was practiced by a Native American tribe near Washington that new
nothing of Freud.
An understanding of khōra makes clear
the need for a reassessment of the symbolism of space that we use in
graphoanalysis or in the psychological analysis of handwriting via
psychophysics. What is more important, through khōra, physics itself can
be reassessed: the idea of temperaments, for example, is not unique to Greece.
In Japan, long before they had ever heard of Hippocrates, they spoke of taiheki. In fact, Brändstrom, Paul
Schlette, Thomas R. et al. (1998) affirm that all cultures have explored the
concept. Likewise, khōra allows for a reassessment of the mind, in terms
of character and deep personality as reached through Transactional Analysis,
which is only one of many innovative and currently valid comprehensive systems
of individual and social psychiatry.
A selection of paragraphs from Timaeus
A
key factor in understanding the symbolism of space
33:
“(...) “Now the creation took up the whole
of each of the four elements; for the Creator compounded the world out of all
the fire and all the water and all the air and all the earth…”
“(…) that the animal
should be as far as possible a perfect whole (…)”.
“(...) Now to the animal which was to
comprehend all animals, that figure was suitable which comprehends within
itself all other figures Wherefore he made the world in the form of a globe,
round as from a lathe, having its extremes in every direction equidistant from
the centre, the most perfect and the most like itself of all figures; for he
considered that the like is infinitely fairer than the unlike (…)”
35:
Whereas he made the soul in origin
and excellence prior to and older than the body… to be the ruler and mistress, of whom the
body was to be the subject. And he made her out of the following elements and
on this wise: Out of the indivisible and unchangeable, and also out of that
which is divisible and has to do with material bodies, he compounded a third
and intermediate kind of essence, partaking of the nature of the same and of
the other, and this compound he placed
accordingly in a mean between the indivisible, and the divisible and material.
He took the three elements of the same, the other, and the essence, and mingled
them into one form, compressing by force
the reluctant and unsociable nature of the other into the same. When he had
mingled them with the essence and out of the three made one, he again divided
this whole into as many portions as was fitting, each portion being a compound
of the same, the other, and the essence”.
36:
“(...) This entire compound he divided
lengthways into two parts, which he joined to one another at the centre like the letter X, and bent them into a
circular form, connecting them with themselves and each other at the point
opposite to their original meeting-point; and, comprehending them in a uniform
revolution upon the same axis, he made the one the outer and the other the
inner circle. Now the motion of the
outer circle he called the motion of the same, and the motion of the inner
circle the motion of the other or diverse. The motion of the same he carried
round by the side to the right, and the motion of the diverse diagonally to the
left. And he gave dominion to the motion of the same and like, for that he
left single and undivided (…)”.
“(...) And because she is composed of the
same and of the other and of the essence, these three, and is divided and
united in due proportion, and in her revolutions returns upon herself, the
soul, when touching anything which has essence, whether dispersed in parts or
undivided, is stirred through all her powers, to declare the sameness or
difference of that thing and some other; and to what individuals are related, and
by what affected, and in what way and how and when, both in the world of
generation and in the world of immutable being. And when reason, which works with equal truth, whether she be in the
circle of the diverse or of the same -- in voiceless silence holding her onward
course in the sphere of the self-moved -- when reason, I say, is hovering
around the sensible world and when the circle of the diverse also moving truly
imparts the intimations of sense to the whole soul, then arise opinions and
beliefs sure and certain. But when reason is concerned with the rational, and
the circle of the same moving smoothly declares it, then intelligence and
knowledge are necessarily perfected (…)”.
“(...) When the father creator saw
the creature which he had made moving and living, the created image of the
eternal gods, he rejoiced, and in his joy determined to make the copy still
more like the original; and as this was eternal, he sought to make the universe
eternal, so far as might be. Now the nature of the ideal being was everlasting,
but to bestow this attribute in its fullness upon a creature was impossible.
Wherefore he resolved to have a moving image of eternity, and when he set in
order the heaven, he made this image eternal but moving according to number,
while eternity itself rests in unity; and this image we call time (…)”. “(...)
the past and future are created species of time, which we unconsciously but
wrongly transfer to the eternal essence; for we say that he "was," he
"is," he "will be," but the truth is that "is"
alone is properly attributed to him, and that "was" and "will
be" only to be spoken of becoming in time (…)”.
52:
“(...) And there is a third nature, which is space, and is eternal, and admits not
of destruction and provides a home for all created things, and is apprehended
without the help of sense, by a kind of spurious reason, and is hardly real;
which we beholding as in a dream, say of all existence that it must of
necessity be in some place and occupy a space, but that what is neither in heaven
nor in earth has no existence. Of these and other things of the same kind,
relating to the true and waking reality of nature, we have only this dreamlike
sense, and we are unable to cast off sleep and determine the truth about them.
For an image, since the reality, after which it is modelled, does not belong to
it, and it exists ever as the fleeting shadow of some other, must be inferred
to be in another, grasping existence in some way or other, or it could not be
at all (…)” (a direct reference to khōra).
“(...) that being and space and
generation, these three, existed in their three ways before the heaven; and that the nurse of generation, moistened
by water and inflamed by fire, and receiving the forms of earth and air, and
experiencing all the affections which accompany these, presented a strange
variety of appearances; …”.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Allport, G. W., Pattern
and growth in personality / La
personalidad: su configuración y desarrollo, Nueva York, Holt, Rinehart y
Winston, 1963 / Barcelona, Herder, 1974.
Cloninger C.R., Przybeck TR., Svrakic DM. (1991) The Tridimensional
Personality Questionnaire: U.S. normative data. Psychological Reports 69:
1047-1057.
Cloninger CR., Svrakic DM. Przybeck TR. (1993) A psychobiological model
of temperament and character. Archives of General Psychiatry 50: 975-990.
Cloninger CR (1994) Temperament and personality. Current
Opinions in Neurobiology 4: 266-273.
Derrida, Jacques (1993): Khôra.
Galilee, París
Gille-Maisani, J.Ch. (1990):
Tempéraments psychobiologiques et groupes
sanguins. Expression graphologique et artistique, Frison Roche.
Gille-Maisani, J.Ch.
(1978): Types de Jung et
tempéraments dans l’écriture.
Correlation avec le groupe sanguin. Utilisation en psychologie appliquée, Maloine,
1ª parte.
Gille-Maisani, J.Ch. (1991): Psicología de la escritura, Barcelona, Ed. Herder.
Millon, Theodore (1998) Disorders of Personality: DSM-IV-TM and
Beyond, 2nd Edition. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. NY, 18-20,
44-ss.
Mira y López, E. Le Psychodiagnostic
Miocinétique. *(e-libro) Centre de Psychologie Appliquée, Paris, 1951;
2da ed. 1962. Edición en español: Psicodiagnóstico
Miokinético (PMK) Ed. Paidós, Buenos Aires,
1957; 2da ed. 1962; 6ª reimpresión, 1979.
Edición en inglés: Myokinetic
Psychodiagnosis, Ed. Logo Press, New York, 1958. Edición en alemán: Ed. Hans Huber,
Berna, 1964.
Muntañola, Josep:
Hermeneutics, semiotics and architecture. Timaeus revisted. Mecanografiado.
Platón (1992): Diálogos VI;
Filebo, Timeo, Critias. Traducciones,
introducción y notas por M. Ángeles Durán y Francisco Lisi.
Gredos, Madrid
Ross,
David (1986): Teoría de las ideas de
Platón. Cátedra, Madrid
Streletski,
Dr. Camille (1943): Précis de Graphologie
pratique, deuxieme édition entiérement revue et corrigée, Vigot Frères,
Editeurs, Paris, 11-12
Sven
Brändstrom, Paul Schlette, Thomas R. et al. (1998)
Swedish Normative Data on Personality Using the Temperament and Character
Invetory. Comprenhensive Psychiatry, Vol. 39,
No 3: 122-128.
Viñals,
Francisco, Puente, Mariluz (1999): Psicodiagnóstico por la escritura, Grafoanálisis
Transaccional, Editorial Herder, Barcelona
UAB building
-Casa Convalescència-
Telf: (34) 93. 321.57.48 - (34) 93.433.50.00
http://www.grafologiauniversitaria.com - mariluzpuente@hotmail.co
VOLVER AL INICIO