74 JUNE E. DOWNEY 



which might occur in the dysplastic pyknic. He reports that the pyknic 

 man writes a rounded, fluent hand, one pyknic hand being very much like 

 that of another. Asthenic individuals write a much greater variety of hands 

 and more sharply individualized hands, characterized by angularity, split 

 words and letters, sometimes by micrography. When writing by an 

 asthenic is rounded it gives the impression of great effort made in producing 

 the individual letters and hence results in a childlike handwriting, in ir- 

 regularity and insecurity. 



Jislin's graphic characterizations have much in common with mine for the 

 writing of extravert and introvert. Kretschmer's bodily types are by him 

 and his followers associated with the cyclothymic and schizothymic 

 make-up, while the accepted view among psychologists for extraversion- 

 introversion is that probably such characterizations apply to extremes of a 

 normal distribution curve with the possible intensification at each end into 

 pathological patterns such as the manic-depressive and the schizophrenic. 

 Such an interpretation shows a possible connection between body-type and 

 extra version-introversion, and suggests an interesting field of exploration. 

 Casual observation would, I believe, classify five (possible seven) of my 

 faculty extravert group as pyknic in build; six (possibly seven) of the 

 introverts would be classified as asthenic in bodily- type. One of the in- 

 troverts would seem to be dysplastic pyknic in build. Besides this, no other 

 discrepancy was noted. Half of the group do not lend themselves to casual 

 classification. During the course of the experiment, it may be said, a 

 number of rather outstanding pyknic individuals were checked for extra- 

 version with negative results. 



It is the writer's belief that the concept of introversion-extraversion as 

 ordinarily used contains two and perhaps more variables which may or may 

 not be interrelated. In her opinion one of these variables refers to the ease 

 or difficulty with which a motor discharge occurs or to the evidence of pres- 

 ence or absence of neural and motor tension. Just why and how such 

 motor characteristics tie up with temperamental traits is, of course, the 

 crucial question. The fact that in the present experiment the handwriting 

 of selected introverts and extraverts should have shown, in the main, 

 differences in fluency and ease that led to an identification that is distinctly 

 superior to a chance identification is most promising and, so far as the 

 author's expectation was concerned, most surprising. 



The effort to find an objective test for any variable that is included in the 

 introversion-extraversion makeup is certainly worth pushing. The results 

 of the present test are to be amplified by studying graphic automatism in 

 relation to introversion-extraversion. It is possible that a test for motor 



