Sex, Lies, and Handwriting

Have you ever looked at someone’s handwriting and wondered, what does this say about them? In Sex, Lies, and Handwriting, Michelle Dresbold argues that handwriting is far more than an act of communication—it's a projection of the writer’s inner world. Every loop, slant, and curve reveals who a person is, how they think, and even what they’re hiding. Dresbold contends that penmanship operates as a fingerprint of the mind, showing emotional, psychological, and moral dimensions through the strokes we make on paper. What your hand writes, your brain confesses.

As a forensic handwriting expert trained by the U.S. Secret Service, Dresbold takes readers on a tour through famous crimes, psychological profiles, and intimate letters that have crossed her desk. She mixes humor, insight, and detective storytelling to show how handwriting analysis—known as graphology—can unmask liars, lovers, and even murderers. Her central argument: handwriting never lies. It may stutter, disguise, or decorate itself, but the truth leaks through every stroke.

Handwriting as Brainwriting

Dresbold starts with the provocative claim that handwriting comes not from the hand, but from the brain. If the brain is injured, handwriting changes; if the hand is injured, it eventually returns to a recognizable pattern. Thus, each person leaves behind what she calls a ‘brainprint.’ Handwriting functions as a mirror of cognitive processes, revealing our level of confidence, emotional stability, aggression, patience, and even sexual drives. This makes it a valuable forensic and interpersonal tool for understanding psychological motives.

From Everyday Signs to Criminal Clues

Throughout the book, Dresbold weaves stories from high-profile murder investigations and casual letters sent by readers to her column, “The Handwriting Doctor.” She recounts how she identified killers through their handwriting, predicted personality disorders, and warned people away from potentially dangerous relationships. The smallest detail—a dagger-shaped letter, a forked tongue stroke through the letter O, or an X-shaped signature—can expose hidden violence or deceit. As she notes, handwriting reveals the unconscious impulses that often precede moral or psychological breakdown.

Learning to Profile Through Strokes

Readers are guided through a mini-course in profiling. Dresbold teaches how to read size, slant, pressure, and spacing, explaining the psychology behind each. Large letters suggest extroversion; small ones, introversion. Heavy pressure points tell of intensity or aggression; light strokes, emotional sensitivity. When letters lean forward, the writer reaches toward others; when they slant back, the writer hides. These become the grammar of personality—a language the reader learns to translate intuitively.

Sex, Lies, and Forensic Secrets

The book’s charm comes from its intersection of sex and crime, the domains where emotion and deception overlap most vividly. Dresbold investigates the lusts, lies, and perversions of killers from Ted Bundy to Aileen Wuornos, showing that pathology often reveals itself first in writing. A person’s script not only shows what they did but why they felt compelled to do it. She also examines love letters and diary entries to reveal jealousy and obsession. It’s part psychological thriller, part forensic science, part self-help manual for understanding human behavior.

Why These Ideas Matter

Dresbold’s work matters because it bridges art, psychology, and criminal investigation. In an era saturated with digital communication, she reminds us of the profound intimacy of handwritten words—the traces we leave behind in ink. Whether you’re analyzing a killer’s note or a lover’s signature, handwriting offers clues the eyes alone can’t see. This book shows how pattern recognition, intuition, and empathy combine into a powerful diagnostic craft. By the end, you realize that every scribble is a secret—one you can learn to read.

At the heart of Dresbold’s method lies the idea that handwriting is a physical manifestation of mental processes. It is not simply a tool of communication but a physiological reflection of internal states. She calls this concept “brainwriting.” Readers learn that every tilt, pressure, and rhythm in pen movement corresponds to cognitive and emotional wiring—a code her trained eyes interpret.

Brainwriting 101

To illustrate brainwriting, Dresbold presents side-by-side examples: the small cramped handwriting of the Unabomber Ted Kaczynski versus the large, sweeping signature of Ted Bundy. Kaczynski’s tiny script exposes withdrawal and obsession, while Bundy’s expansive scrawl reveals charisma, narcissism, and boundary-breaking. These comparisons turn handwriting into a psychological x-ray. Dresbold urges readers to test themselves—write their name big, small, and “itsy-bitsy” and notice how physical contraction feels restrictive while large letters induce openness. Your hand feels what your brain believes.

The Zones of Personality

She divides handwriting into three zones—the upper, middle, and lower—which correspond to the head, heart, and body. High loops in the upper zone reflect imagination; middle-zone emphasis conveys social focus; and exaggerated lower loops suggest strong physical and sexual drives. Through analyzing these zones in figures like Mother Teresa (gentle middle zone) and Heinrich Himmler (angular upper zone), Dresbold demonstrates how handwriting becomes a personality map. Balanced handwriting shows emotional equilibrium, while distortions reveal obsessions or perversions.

Reading Emotional States

Even mood swings appear in script. Downhill writing signals depression, uphill brightness. Right slants show engagement; back slants, withdrawal. Dresbold’s playful examples, such as the handwriting of Vincent van Gogh and Pablo Picasso, make the lesson memorable. Van Gogh’s descending lines embody despair, while Picasso’s upward strokes carry buoyant ambition. She concludes that changing one’s writing direction can psychologically lift one’s mood—a therapeutic idea echoing cognitive-behavioral reprogramming (similar to Julia Cameron’s use of ‘morning pages’ in The Artist’s Way).

Why It Matters

Understanding brainwriting allows you to recognize emotional authenticity and deceit. Because handwriting bypasses conscious control, it reveals what speech conceals. “The hand never lies,” Dresbold insists. Once you learn to interpret angles, spacing, and rhythm, you gain a subtle radar for truth—a skill invaluable in relationships, work, and investigation alike.

One of the book’s most gripping sections teaches you how to spot danger before it erupts. Dresbold’s mantra: when handwriting becomes weaponlike, watch out. She outlines strokes that scream aggression, deceit, and instability—traits that appear in serial killers and manipulative personalities long before their crimes.

Weapon and Shark Strokes

Letters shaped like daggers, clubs, or shark’s teeth mark potential violence. A sharp point in an ‘n’ or a long stabbing ‘t’ bar indicates verbal cruelty—the writer attacks with words as others do with fists. In the handwriting of Adolf Hitler and Dr. Buck Ruxton, such club strokes show their brutality. “These are people who strike first and ask questions later,” Dresbold writes.

Felon’s Claws and Self-Sabotage

Among her favorite warnings is the ‘felon’s claw,’ a downward curve at the bottom of letters like G or Y. It appears in those who sabotage themselves and others out of guilt or self-hatred. Eighty percent of prison inmates show it in their script, Dresbold notes. This stroke signals self-fulfilling failure—the writer provokes rejection to confirm inner worthlessness. When she saw this sign in readers’ letters, she often advised immediate caution or therapy.

Forked Tongues and Dirty Secrets

Lying and manipulation have their own telltales. If your o’s and a’s—the “communication letters”—contain slashes or ambiguous openings, you’re dealing with a forked tongue. Dresbold finds these in O.J. Simpson’s and Jeffrey Dahmer’s letters, associating muddied o’s with deceit and perversity. Open letters reveal honesty; sealed ones, secrecy; crossed or filled ones, darkness.

Ambiguous Numbers and Corporate Betrayals

Even numbers can implicate deceit. When a businesswoman named Kathy Sue disguised her numerals in Dresbold’s case files, it exposed her as a con artist who forged accounts and cheated lovers. Similarly, an executive’s act of crossing out his boss’s name in notes predicted a corporate coup. Dresbold shows that sabotage first emerges in script—before it appears in spreadsheets.

Reading for Self-Protection

In a world where charm can mask cruelty, these clues give you self-defense skills. Dresbold’s lesson: when you see weapon strokes, ambiguous forms, or clawed letters, stop reading and start running. Handwriting is a behavioral alarm system—it tells you who will stab you metaphorically or literally long before you see the blade.

Dresbold dives unflinchingly into the erotic dimensions of handwriting, turning sexuality into a form of visible psychology. She demonstrates how the lower zone—the tails and loops below the baseline—reveal appetites for sex, materiality, and power. The results are surprisingly consistent: the bigger the loop, the bigger the desire.

The Erogenous Zone

The lower loops of letters like g, y, and j correspond to physical and sexual drives. Joseph Smith’s enormous looping ‘J’ mirrored his infamous libido and polygamous zeal, Dresbold observes. Meanwhile, J. Edgar Hoover’s coiled lower zones reflect secretiveness and sexual manipulation—his snake-like loops show someone who weaponizes intimacy for control. Elton John’s flamboyant lower loops signal exuberant sensuality, while the twisted loops of cult leader Jim Jones betray sexual confusion and predatory urges.

Compatibility and Deprivation

Pairings like Bonnie and Clyde become laboratories for sexual psychology. Bonnie’s inflated loops show hunger; Clyde’s mixed, squeezed loops show fear and repression. Their mismatched curves parallel their doomed intimacy. Dresbold contends that lovers’ scripts often predict romantic dynamics more accurately than conversation—it’s chemistry on paper.

Broken Loops and Trauma

When lower loops break, the writer may have experienced sexual trauma or physical loss. In one poignant case, a man’s split loops revealed impotence stemming from a medical issue he was too ashamed to discuss. The loops told Dresbold the truth his mouth could not. She encouraged him to seek a doctor—and he later confirmed her analysis had saved his emotional life.

Beyond Libido

Ultimately, Dresbold argues that sexual symbols in script reflect more than libido—they reveal a person’s relationship to pleasure, trust, and vulnerability. Every flourish below the baseline maps how easily we descend into body, desire, or danger. Learning to read these symbols turns handwriting into a subtle form of psychological anatomy.

Your signature, Dresbold teaches, is your mask—how you want the world to see you. It’s the performative side of handwriting: public identity as costume. By comparing celebrities’ signatures with their private writing, she shows how the two selves—the presented and the hidden—can contradict one another.

The Public Persona

Elvis Presley’s glamorous, looping signature reflected swagger and sexual bravado, but his private script was small and anxious, betraying vulnerability and repression. His large Y tails proclaimed virility; his tiny lower loops whispered sexual insecurity. Similarly, Joan Crawford’s signature literally spelled “god” within her name—a subconscious expression of domination that mirrored her tyrannical motherhood (immortalized in “Mommie Dearest”).

Illegible Names and Hidden Selves

When a signature is unreadable, the person insists on privacy or control. Politicians with indecipherable autographs—Donald Trump, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton—prove as complex as their scribbles. Angular signatures show competitiveness; looping ones charm. A tangled signature resists clarity for a reason: it hides.

The Name Game

Dresbold offers playful exercises to expose relationships through name-writing: compare the size and pressure of your name versus another’s in a greeting card. If yours is small beside theirs, you feel subordinated; if larger, you assert dominance. Even placement on the page mirrors social hierarchy. Handwriting thus becomes a social map—a subconscious ranking of intimacy and power.

Why It Matters

Signatures blend psychology, performance, and design. They’re our logos, and Dresbold decodes them like brands. Learning to read them unveils authenticity, arrogance, or uncertainty—reminding you that even a flourish can betray a secret longing or insecurity behind the pose.

Dresbold’s most chilling talent lies in using handwriting to crack real criminal cases. As the Pittsburgh PD’s preferred profiler, she learned that murderers expose themselves through pen rather than confession. Each chapter connecting handwriting to famous crimes reads like forensic theater—where the page itself becomes the witness.

Ted Bundy and the Devil’s Fork

Bundy’s apparently normal script hid weapon shapes, resentment strokes, and sexual symbols. Dresbold’s recreation of his letter shows the ‘devil’s fork’ formation—pitchfork-like shapes denoting satanic obsession. Bundy’s exaggerated lower loops and anger-laden strokes verified his compulsion toward dominance and violence. In her casework, such symbols reliably predicted sadism.

Aileen Wuornos and the Mask of Perfection

Wuornos’s handwriting was mechanically neat—too perfect to be sincere. Overcontrolled script, Dresbold explains, masks internal chaos and rage. Her wide left margin symbolized fleeing from the past, and her underlined words screamed exaggeration and instability. Beneath balance lay mania—a match to her lethal volatility.

Jack the Ripper’s Identity

In a tour de force finale, Dresbold analyzes the infamous “From Hell” letter to argue that Francis Tumblety, an Irish-born quack doctor, was London’s legendary Ripper. Through matching loops, ticks, and dagger-shaped strokes in Tumblety’s other writings, she reconstructs not only handwriting but psychological pathology: rage, sexual impotence, and obsession with female anatomy. The page itself, she insists, was his crime scene.

Handwriting as Behavioral Evidence

For Dresbold, handwriting serves where fingerprints cannot. It captures motive, not just motion. By analyzing clubs, claws, and loops, she built profiles that led investigators closer to truth. Her forensic approach transforms psychology into detective art—and teaches readers that danger always leaves ink behind.

Beyond the crime scenes and confessions, Dresbold’s final message is empowering: your handwriting can change your life. She introduces the idea of handwriting therapy, showing how altering your script can reshape your thinking. Because handwriting connects directly to neural pathways, deliberate adjustments—like writing larger, curvier, or more upward—train your brain toward confidence and optimism.

The Private I

The letter “I” becomes the book’s emblem of identity. Tall, balanced I’s demonstrate self-assurance; tiny or crooked ones reveal insecurity. Dresbold helps readers modify their I’s to reinforce healthy ego and emotional stability. When she counseled an angry teenager whose I’s bent backward, she advised rewriting it upright while affirming, “I know who I am.” Over time, conscious changes cultivate psychological strength—a principle echoing graphotherapy schools (as in Vimala Rodgers’ Transform Your Life Through Handwriting).

Letters as Life Patterns

Every recurring letter tells a life story: long uphill t-bars mark optimism; sagging lines show discouragement; overcrowded words show pressure and anxiety. Dresbold’s column overflows with transformative anecdotes—a widow rebuilding self-worth by straightening her script, an anorexic dancer learning to draw fuller loops and reclaim body confidence, a troubled child venting through freer curves. The handwriting became mirror and medicine.

Applying the Art to Yourself

The book invites you to pick up a pen and observe: how your emotional weather shifts across days; how your lines tilt with fatigue or hope. Treat your writing like a daily pulse. By crafting strokes consciously, you craft self-awareness. Dresbold closes on a humanistic note—beneath the forensic intrigue lies compassion. The same lines that caught killers can also comfort healers.

The Power of the Written Self

Ultimately, Dresbold’s philosophy merges art, psychology, and grace. To understand handwriting is to understand the human soul caught mid-motion. Whether marking joy, guilt, or recovery, each stroke whispers: “This is me—alive, imperfect, and readable.”