HOW TO REALLY KNOW YOURSELF THROUGH YOUR HANDWRITING

Can you tell the iconoclast's squiggle which shows curiosity and imagination from the neurotic's fractured scrawl? Unlike Huntington Hartford's recondite You Are What You Write (KR, p. 1006), Ms. Solomon's book is lowbrow and pitched at the undemanding layman who wants a quicky personality diagnosis. Is your handwriting rounded and circular? Then you are a person who is motivated by love. Is it square and angular? Then security is your highest goal. Slant, pressure, spacing, the dot on the ""i"" and the loop on the ""p"" all reveal one's innermost dimensions; everything from good health to brain power shows up -- though to the untrained eye a curlicue is a curlicue is a curlicue. Helpfully, she provides a series of know-thyself quizzes aimed at identifying and eradicating immature and childish characteristics. ""Positive self-programming"" says it can be done by putting the cart before the horse: change your penmanship and your personality will change with it. Become more gregarious, adventurous, resolute, uninhibited. (Well, it's certainly cheaper than going to a psychiatrist.) Basically the book is for the already convinced who believe strongly in the power of positive-thinking, self-help and mind over matter. And, alas, there's nothing here for those who've given up penmanship for the typewriter. It doesn't seem quite fair.