You're reading: Handwriting, facial expressions can reveal a lot about a person

Facial expressions and handwriting offer clues about a person, but can they help spot the next serial killer or whether the guy or girl you secretly have a crush on is also keen on you?

Perhaps, but not likely. Physiognomists, professionals who analyze facial expressions, and graphologists, those who analyze handwriting, don’t promise miracles.

But they say their skills can reveal a lot about the attitudes, old traumas and even hidden desires of a person by studying the right clues.

Alisa Anisimova considers herself the only true physiognomist in Ukraine. She can’t stop doing it.

“When I am going to a restaurant to have a salad, I unconsciously start analyzing who is who around me, whether they are potentially dangerous to me or not. I analyze the mood of the waiter and dig into his life problems,” Anisimova says. “I almost can’t live a normal life.”

Specialists such as Anisimova say that almost all parts of the human face and almost every letter in a person’s handwriting have their secrets to give up.

Eyebrows are responsible for temperament and hidden desires.

A jutting chin can characterize its owner as a leader and one who is eager to win.

Even haircuts and beards offer clues.

Anisimova says a person’s face gives away life’s events. “Different moral traumas are the most expressive ones,” she says. “Moral injuries connected with pressure will be reflected on the forehead, traumas connected with cruelty would leave marks on the eyes and between brows, depressions can be read on lips, while the general attitude to life can be detected through the chin and neck.”

Another graphology and physiognomy specialist Grygoriy Semchuk says that a person comes to the world with a set of facial features that change, for better or worse, depending on how a person lives.

“I am not a fortune teller, I can’t tell whether this person will kill someone tomorrow or not, rather why the person killed someone in the past or whether the person has an ability to kill,” Semchuk explains. “Diseases are also very hard to detect through both graphology and physiognomy, unless they have already changed the appearance.”

Anisimova says physiognomy and graphology have already started attracting society’s attention in Ukraine.

“In Ukraine, physiognomy is mostly used by big corporations that deal with big amounts of some products and fear that either intellectual property or some products can be stolen from them,” she explains.

Yuriy Gorda, director and owner of E-matras shops chain in Kyiv and Donetsk and Semchuk’s regular client, said they have been seeking such help since 2006. “We always ask him for advice when choosing new staff, without exceptions,” Gorda says. “He analyzed our writings and we were quite shocked with what he said and decided to apply that to the recruiting process. We mostly don’t make decisions ourselves, only with his advice.”

He explains that company employees usually hold the first interview themselves, just talking to a candidate and then asking them to write the CV by hand. Later, the writings are analyzed by Semchuk.

“Graphology is not moralistic. It’s pure psychology, but much more detailed,” Semchuk says. “I can say very specific things – can the person steal or not, is he a coward or not, does he crave money or not.”

The job pays well, if clients can be found. Anisimova charges up to Hr 1,000 for one consultation. “I practice every day and it’s normal for me,” she says proudly.  Semchuk charges much less, only Hr 240 per session.

Semchuk got into graphology and physiognomy in 2001 after getting a degree in physics and taking on his education in the University of Effective Development, where he met his teacher and mentor Volodymyr Taranenko. Anisimova is more secretive about her training, saying only she worked with international specialists. She also employs greater efforts to make her profession seem complicated and only for the well-trained.

Semchuk and Anisimova say that both graphology and physiognomy have a wide range of complex methods used to analyze both people’s writing and faces.

“There are many parts of human face that are very informative, some are less informative and the same applies to writings. Some letters mean a lot, while others almost nothing, unless there is something unique in a way a person writes it,” Semchuk explains.  “What I can tell people is usually what they prefer to hide even from themselves,” Semchuk says.  “I am not telling what people want to hear. The main purpose of graphology and physiognomy is to dig into what is hidden from the eye.”

Kyiv Post staff writer Daryna Shevchenko can be reached at [email protected].