Zones: The Vertical Dimen

THE THREE ZONES O HANDWRITING: UPPER, MIDDLE, AND LOWER F

Zonal movement takes place in the vertical dimension o writing, the dimension f of the self, and thus is the sturdy column of character. Zonal movement supports all of the horizontal and peripheral flourishes of personality like a backbone or a tree trunk. The proportions of the three zones determine the balance between the three major areas of ego development: the intellectual and spiritual sphere of the individual, his everyday social self and his often unconscious instinctual drives. Zonal symmetry in handwriting is a measure of the persons inner equilibrium and maturity. Symbolically the three zones can be interpreted in terms of time and space, as divisions of the body and as levels of consciousness as first defined by Sigmund Freud. In the sequence of time, the upper zone represents the future, the middle zone the present and the lower zone the past. A spatial analogy to this would be a tree, with its branches and leaves reaching into the sky, the playground of the mind and abstract thought, its trunk thrusting out of the baseline earth, the area closest to the concerns of human endeavor, and the root system reaching unseen below representing energy in the area of instinctual drives. Good growth balance between branches, trunk and roots promises that our tree/writer will withstand many a storm. The human body has been used in the following drawing to represent zonal areas because a persons handwriting accurately reflects the physical characteristics of each zone. The head in the upper zone (referred to as UZ, for short) contains the intellect, imagination and spiritual aspirations, as well as the articulation of the moral attitudes of the writer and his conscience. In the upper zone the writer shows the degree and quality of his self-awareness. Physical illness or abnormalities reveal themselves as writing irregularities in the zone that corresponds to that area of the body. Upper body problems will most clearly affect the formation of the upper zone portions of letters, just as the middle zone or trunk of the body influences the flow of letter strokes in that area, and the lower zone of the writing responds to physical and psychic conditions there. In the formation o personality the three zones interact with each other, just as f the body functions as a whole. The demands of UZ rulesof conduct try to adapt to the instinctual energies, unconscious drives and organic needs, which are stored in the unconscious and expressed in the lower zone (LZ) of the writing. The middle zone