A Psychology of Gesture

Charlotte Wolff

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317393238
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Personality in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Originally published in 1945, this title was a follow-up to the author's previous book The Human Hand. This time she looks at the psychology of gesture and its relation to personality. The special place that a psychology of gesture merits is obvious. It permits a direct knowledge of personality without any effort or misleading co-operation on the part of the subject, since it can be applied without his being aware of the fact. The book 'is constructed on a system of clinical studies and medico-psychological interpretations.' The author felt that this title must be regarded as a complementary study to her main studies.

Chapter V
The Pathology of Gesture (Clinical Study)

General Observations

THE anomalies of gestures and expressions in mental maladies are well known. They are classified as mannerisms, signifying that they are unnecessary and excessive movements, and are considered to be a kind of esoteric language for which no adequate interpretation exists. No observer, so far as I know, has attempted to throw light on these pathological expressions or to compare them with more normal psycho-motor behaviour. The expressive conduct of mental patients, especially of schizophrenics, the patients who exhibit the greatest anomalies, is shrouded in mystery. But the more I observed the behaviour of the insane the more sure I felt that there is no absolute and insurmountable wall between them and ordinary human beings, and that therefore the study of their mannerisms might be most helpful not only for the understanding of mental illness but for the understanding of expressive behaviour in general.

Accordingly, during the last six years I have carried out special research work amongst mental patients, trying always to establish contact with them by talking to them, and attempting to interest them in the process of my investigations. I strove to understand their reactions, and often myself imitated their gestures and postures as a means of realizing their states of mind. I believe that the best way to grasp the meaning of phenomena of this kind, which defy direct comprehension, is to make oneself receptive and suggestible and to apply the motor-ideo type of imitation, as children do when they try to comprehend the behaviour of others. To get at the root of their illness I tried to identify myself with the patients by imitating their gestures. The second phase of my research consisted in methodically studying the gestures of mental patients under conditions resembling as closely as possible those of ordinary life. To this end I chose to investigate expressive conduct (1) at work, (2) at meals. The advantage of this approach is obvious. Absorbed in their activities, the patients were as little self-conscious as possible and had no idea that they were being observed. Over a period of eight months I visited regularly the professional therapy classes of male and female patients at St. Bernard's Hospital, Southall, observing the patients at their different occupations. A certain number of them were easily approachable and I talked to them and made them talk to me. In this way I was able to find out a certain amount about their preoccupations, phobias, and obsessions.

I was conscious of a special atmosphere in the society of these 'working' patients. I realized the seriousness with which they worked and the satisfaction they derived from their occupations. Many of them had greatly benefited from this form of therapy. Apart from the fact that it helped diem to regain their self-esteem, manual work has the effect of a sedative without the bad effects of drugs.

The patients were inclined, I noticed, to attach themselves always to the same groups at the same tables and in the same attitudes. This stereotyped habit seems to me to be characteristic and the expression of a need for stability and security. The same need is exhibited by normal people in such habits as that of occupying always the same table in a restaurant. There were a certain number of solitary individuals who chose to remain always apart from the cliques in one special place in the class. These were paranoiacs, suffering from depression and avoiding contact with others with an inflexible resistance. I noted seven patients of this kind in the female class. They were seated near the window with their backs to the class. Sometimes they would look outside with a tense immobility but they never so much as glanced at another patient. The melancholies tried to hide in corners. One of them was a halfcast and I had been advised by the teacher on no account to ask her where she was born as she had a persecution complex about her colour. Another, who especially interested me, a woman of 43 years of age, suffered from religious mania. She was a case of paraphrenia, with ideas of persecution which, as so often with psychotics, were concentrated on sexual preoccupations. This patient, seated in front of a window as far as possible from the rest of the class, seemed to be very alive to the impressions of nature and told me that she watched the changes of the seasons while waiting for the day of liberation. She continued her needlework throughout our long conversations. She quoted the Bible to me at length; she discussed politics; and in fact, except for a certain mental intolerance, there was no sign of a real abnormality either in word, expression, or gesture. I could not understand why she was so sociable with me and so completely negative in her attitude towards the staff and the other patients. But one day when we had become still more intimate her obsessions found expression and I discovered the clue to her need for isolation. She suspected the patients and the staff of being in the pay of Scotland Yard in order to watch her movements and to keep her a prisoner in the hospital. All this, so she said, was due to the intrigues of a jealous woman who resented her love for a man who, in fact, she had never met in the flesh. She had been taken by his voice, which she heard every day on the radio. Later, as she imagined, she had made his acquaintance and had decided to save him from the bad woman who was now persecuting her. While telling me this story all her expressions and gestures changed. Her eyes were wide open and staring, her voice became high and pinched, and she made constant gestures with her hands. Her needlework she now dropped, though previously during our conversations when she was calm and composed she had carried on with it. She made centrifugal movements—emphatic and menacing gestures directed against her imaginary adversary, all of them extensor movements. Her fingers were splayed out fan-like and the index finger raised. From time to time these gestures were interrupted by the infantile gesture of opening and clenching the fists, revealing impatience and general excitement. All these psycho-motor reactions were the outcome of vividness of images, produced by an inner situation which had no relation to reality.

Besides the isolated individuals near the window I noticed three women who were quite incapable of choosing any place for themselves. Each time I observed them they were standing on the threshold which separates the two rooms of the therapy class. No one could persuade them to sit down. There they remained for more than an hour as if paralysed, the head thrown back, the face tense, and from time to time they muttered to themselves or gave vent to inarticulate sounds. The hands were tightly clasped on the chest, the thumbs hidden in the palm—a gesture characteristic of depression. But all at once, on their own initiative, they began in a hesitating manner to move, with small, slow steps, and sat down on the nearest chair, but thereafter remained in a state of apathy without touching their work for at least another half an hour. After this interval they started on their mechanical occupation with a lugubrious expression, saying nothing. They often interrupted their work by putting the duster they were knitting into their mouths or letting it fall while looking into the distance and muttering to themselves.

The other patients in groups were employed in different kinds of work: making hook rugs, jumpers, shawls or weaving linen. Others made slippers, dolls, animal toys, &c., or mended clothes. Several were quite silent, others chatted, smoked or sang. There were a certain number who were very restless and ran from one end of the class to the other, either to look for material for their work, to talk to the nurses and the patients, or only to attract attention or to follow a sudden impulse of agitation. Some of them quarrelled or even went for one another. Others drew nearer together to communicate their special preoccupations, their histories of real or imaginary experiences. A certain number approached me regularly during each visit, asking me about their symptoms, but also questioning me on the subject of my work and my life.

The atmosphere was noticeably different in the male classroom. I do not consider the realization of something so intangible as atmosphere as a fortuitous impression, though many psychologists might question it. The reality of the perceptible emanation of a group cannot be proved, but its existence in this case was shown by the fact that different people of different temperaments, culture, and sensibility were all affected by it. I asked three nurses and a teacher if female and male patients behaved alike in their ways, manners, and approach to their occupations—and all four of them gave me practically identical answers which corresponded with my own impressions and conclusions. The male patients had naturally less variety in their occupations. They were employed in different crafts, such as bookbinding, shoe-making and mechanics. There was one table of twelve apathetic and depressed old men who made rugs. They were the only ones with a more or less feminine occupation. Some other patients were remarkably skilful: they made dolls'-houses and other wooden toys, sometimes of first rate quality. There were fewer isolated members than in the female class; I noted three. One of them was making paintings on the wall of a small room beside the general classroom; the second had a workshop of his own in another room; the third, a morose and apathetic man, was employed in ceaselessly tidying a heap of newspapers, folding them neatly into bundles. Immediately he had finished, he upset the bundles and began afresh. He was a schizophrenic and this form of stereotyped and repetitive activity is characteristic of the malady. There was much less stir among the men than among the women, less agitation and less emotional display. It must be mentioned that the male class was smaller than the female (38 men as compared with 65 women), for many of the men who were fit for such occupation worked in the garden. There were fewer cliques, apart from the large work-table of twelve; each man worked by himself and payed little attention to his surroundings. Not one of them tried to sit near a window or to become absorbed in contemplation as was the case with some of the women. Only one of the men took any notice of me. He asked me questions and recounted his troubles and preoccupations. His case was analogous to that of the woman of whom I have spoken at length, and like her he suffered from religious mania with ideas of persecution and sexual preoccupations. He talked ceaselessly with a tense and fanatical facial expression. At the same time his hands moved continually in emphatic gestures, the demonstrative gesture of the schoolmaster with the index finger raised appearing frequently, as well as menacing movements directed against an imaginary enemy. From time to time he jumped forwards and backwards, gesticulating wildly.

The patients who visited the occupational therapy classes were specially chosen and did not include the most difficult and unapproachable cases. For this reason the study of eating gestures furnished more variety, since many of those excluded from the class were capable of eating at table. The study of eating gestures had also the advantage that the act releases primary instincts and emotions, especially in certain mental patients. The return to a spoon-fed infancy is a well-known symptom in melancholies, mental defectives and others who are 'lifeless' and mute. I also observed distressing cases of patients who had to be fed by nurses in separate rooms, either because they refused to eat or because of those crises of aggressiveness or self-mutilation which appear in agitated melancholies.

I. Gestures During Work

Detailed Observations

The object of this study was the investigation of the gestures of the insane with the aim of obtaining knowledge of their emotional pathology and of the expressive symptoms of disintegration. Mental illness is devoid of any true link with exterior situations and is therefore under the control of imaginative processes. It seemed therefor...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Original Title
• Original Copyright
• ACKNOWLEDGMENT
• Contents
• INTRODUCTION
• I THE NATURE OF GESTURE
• II THE PHYSIOLOGY OF GESTURE
• III THE EVOLUTION OF GESTURE
• IV IMAGINATION AND GESTURE
• V THE PATHOLOGY OF GESTURE
• VI RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS
• COMMENTARY ON THE ILLUSTRATIONS
• A GLOSSARY OF TECHNICAL TERMS
• BIBLIOGRAPHY
• INDEX