Keywords: mental vision of glyph handwriting
In the study of graphology, the investigation of Chinese characters can be divided into lines, glyphs, word arrays and texts, in which lines are restricted by physiology (mainly touch) and deep psychology, glyphs are restricted by vision and consciousness, and texts are restricted by social environment, and word arrays are between glyphs and texts.
If the lines of handwriting reflect a person's subconscious and behavioral characteristics, the glyph reflects a person's overall attitude and is a projection of the spiritual world. In general, people's first impression when they see and write handwriting is the shape or font of the word.
The study of glyphs is of great significance. If there are only lines without rules of word formation, it is just a bunch of messy lines, which is meaningless. Only when the lines are arranged and combined according to the writing rules to form a glyph can the lines have the meaning of handwriting. Through the analysis of glyphs, a lot of research has been done in the published works. However, there is not much discussion on the psychological principle of glyph formation. We can see the methods of classifying and explaining the radicals of fonts, and the methods of analyzing the orientation of dividing them into nine palaces, and so on. What kind of psychological or physiological mechanism is behind these methods, I have done some immature thinking.
among human senses, the most primitive senses are touch and smell. The human sense of smell has been seriously degraded, so I won't discuss it too much here. Touch is innate, and it is one of the bases of other forms of vision, among which the touch of hand is the most dense and developed. If the sense of touch directly affects the formation of lines, then the visual perception has the greatest influence on the formation of glyphs. In daily life, visual information accounts for more than 9% of the information received by people, which shows the importance of vision.
A lot of experiments have been done in psychology. The formation of human vision is not innate, but the result of acquired experience. For example, in 1896, stratton proved this point through a pair of glasses designed by himself to reverse and displace the projection of an object on the retina. Congenital blindness can't perceive three-dimensional things and space after gaining vision, which also shows this point. There are many senses related to handwriting that are closely related to visual perception, such as visual constancy, optical illusion, orientation perception, spatial perception, motion perception and so on. Therefore, the study of vision plays an important guiding role in the study of glyphs in handwriting.
before discussing this problem, let's first discuss the orientation and direction of handwriting. This is related to the purpose of people's writing. People don't write for writing, but because they want to read it. So the orientation of handwriting is reading orientation rather than writing orientation. As we know, when people write, the orientation of the paper is 9 degrees perpendicular to the human body, and people's eyes look at the angle of depression, while the pen tip is nearly 9 degrees perpendicular to the paper and close to the human body. When people are reading, without a desk, the best orientation angle of paper is parallel to the human body, that is, if people stand, the paper is "standing" like people, so at this time, people's observation angle of paper and words is the same as that of daily observation of other things, that is, "head-up" in art.
on the above premise, we discuss the up, down, left and right directions of Chinese characters. People have formed a lot of rich visual experience in daily life, and the visual experience formed by normal people in daily life is three-dimensional and moving, so people will also bring these three-dimensional and moving experiences when observing plane things. That is, the visual constancy in psychology.
As we all know, there is a rule in the perspective of vision, that is, "the near is big and the far is small". This is the perception of size in spatial perception, which is realized by the cooperative activities of vision, touch and kinesthetic, in which visual perception plays a leading role. In the same distance, the visual image of a large object in the omentum is large, and the perception is large; The visual image of a small object on the omentum is small, and the perception is small. What I want to say is not only the size of the font, but also the shape of the font. Generally speaking, Chinese characters are square. When viewed from different visual angles, the projection or vision of the upper, lower, left and right sides of the square on the retina is unequal.
In general, the central point of vision is consistent with the central point of a word. When looking at a square (word), the upper, lower, left and right sides are equal, and the projection on the retina is a square, which is consistent with the objective world. Because this is the most common perspective, the writer's daily life is also more conventional, and he looks at things objectively and honestly, but it may tend to be mediocre.
when looking at a square (character) from top to bottom, the top (top) side of the square is longer than the bottom (bottom) side, so the human perspective is overlooking. If we look at the writing process from this perspective, the visual scanning direction is from top to bottom. When writing a square Chinese character, the writer will visually feel that the top edge of the word is much shorter than the bottom edge, so he will actively adjust the font of the writing and write the word as an inverted trapezoid with a big top and a small bottom. People who write with a bow angle may also look at things from a bow angle, which requires a higher perspective. Therefore, it is reasonable to say that this writer has a "far-sighted" view of the problem, and he is bound to have pride when he has ambition.
when viewing a square at the elevation angle, the lower (bottom) side looks longer than the upper (top) side. Similarly, if a writer writes a square character, he will visually feel that the bottom edge of the character is shorter than the top edge, so he will adjust the writing style, lengthen the bottom edge of the character, and write a regular trapezoid with a big top and a small bottom. The observation position of people who write in elevation is on the ground, and their thinking level is close to the ground. They are pragmatic and material-oriented, but they are also practical, but they may tend to be conservative.
The same is true in the left and right directions of glyphs. Modern Chinese characters are written from left to right. In the process of writing, the written words are on the left and the unwritten words are on the right. Therefore, the left side represents past and existing things, and the right side represents future and unrealized things. The words with big left and small right have the meaning of the past from the perspective of the left. And the right big left small perspective is on the right side, which has the meaning of focusing on the future. The specific demonstration process is the same as the up-and-down perspective, so I will skip it here.
word lines are formed by individual words, and the shape of individual words will form word lines. Everything is complementary and interactive, and word lines play a role in restraining and guiding single words at the same time. People's visual scanning direction when reading a text is a straight line scanning from left to right, rather than a visual scanning along the strokes of each word.
Simple formula for measuring word width: word width = word line length ÷ number of words
Assuming that the visual scanning speed of word line and the length of word line are unchanged, in order to improve reading and writing efficiency, it is necessary to compress the width of each word, that is, the horizontal stroke becomes shorter, and the vertical stroke becomes relatively longer. This is a fast state. From this point, we can see that there is a certain relationship between the vertical length of the glyph and the pursuit of efficiency, which is also convenient to understand that the vertical and long characters have positive enthusiasm and courage to act. On the contrary, under the same premise, if we focus on a single word, the number of words will be reduced in the same time, and the width of a single word will become larger, that is, the horizontal strokes will become longer, and the vertical paintings will appear shorter accordingly, forming a flat and wide word. This is a slow state, which naturally shows the writer's calm and other personality characteristics.
Einstein, a genius in physics, invented the theory of relativity, arguing that light will be bent by the gravity of stars, and the strong gravity of stars will form a gravitational lens. Li Zongwu, a scholar in China, was inspired to enrich his own theory of Jorge Posada. Li Zongwu believes that human psychology is like a huge star, which exerts a strong gravitational force on human behavior. We all know that the eye is an optical receiver. Light enters the eye along a straight line and then passes to the brain. In the process of passing to the brain, it is bound to be deformed and bent by powerful psychological energy. We might as well call the powerful effect produced by psychological energy psychological lens.
as in reality, useful lenses can be basically divided into two types: concave lenses and convex lenses.
when observing a square font through a concave lens, the square font will become a shape with four corners protruding outward and four sides concave inward. We all know that concave lenses can reduce the size, especially in the center, which makes the font appear to be over-compressed in the middle and the four corners are relatively larger. Then correspondingly, people's vision has also been compressed. The compression of vision may indicate that the writer's psychological energy has been concentrated on a point, and his thinking has also been compressed to a point. Although he is focused, he is not open enough.
A convex lens is a common magnifying glass, which has the function of magnifying. Observing a square font through a convex lens at a proper distance, the central part of the font has the highest magnification, while the four right angles become obtuse angles, which tend to converge inward and the four sides protrude outward. Under the action of convex lens with high curvature, the square will even become round or close to round. Accordingly, the psychological vision of writing has also been enlarged, and the thinking and psychological energy have room for action, not limited to one point, and have certain flexibility. This is also one of the reasons why some people who write round characters are easier to adapt to the environment.
as we do in nature in real life, our vision will be influenced by the external environment. It is the sun that affects the visual environment. The sun shines strongly on everything. Besides the bright side, things under the light will cast shadows on the ground. The prototype put forward by Jung of psychoanalysis school has the concepts of sun prototype and shadow. There are two sides of yin and yang in each of us, and the benign psychological energy of pursuing light, hope, warmth and upward shines on our hearts like the sun. And negative psychological energy such as darkness, evil, anger and hatred follows us like a shadow.
We have discussed the orientation and direction of Chinese characters. In the writing of Chinese characters, some upward and upward strokes have the symbol of the sun, especially the stroke. The powerful psychological energy displayed by these upper strokes represents the state of the psychological sun. For example, the strong upper strokes may represent the writer's pursuit of progress and lofty aspirations. And vice versa.
People who have the sun or light in mind will have smaller shadows or disappear. In Chinese character writing, downward strokes are like shadows cast on the ground under the illumination of light. These subconscious shadows can't see the sun, and if they are not handled well, they will cause the loss of psychological energy and make negative psychology heavier and heavier.
In visual imaging, whether the visual image is blurred or clear depends on whether the focal length is accurate or not and the light transmittance. The lens of a camera is divided into far focus, medium focus, near focus and zoom, etc. Correspondingly, the distance between people and paper in people's inner world is called psychological sight distance.
We assume that the distance between the human eye and the paper is generally defined as the middle focus, so that both reading and writing are the clearest. It can be inferred that the clearness of fonts is the most consistent with thought and reality, and the writer plays the greatest role in objective reality. While the psychological sight is clear, the thinking and consciousness are also clear.
There are two situations when the focal length is not allowed. One is that the focal length is too far, beyond the distance on the paper. One is that the focal length is too short and too close, and the sight distance has not reached the paper. In both cases, the psychological sight distance is not on the realistic level, which is reflected in the fact that the writing of words is shallow and light, giving people a sense of detachment.
Let's talk about the situation that the corresponding psychological sight distance is too far. The writer's thinking has exceeded the time constraint and has some foresight. However, the short psychological horizon indicates that the thinking is seriously shrinking and there is no foresight at all. In either case, it is not accurate enough to grasp the current state.
There is another kind of illegible handwriting, which is like observing the handwriting through a gray-scale mirror or a soft-light mirror with low light transmittance. I think this also reflects that the writer's state of mind is like a kind of filter, which is psychologically disturbed and seriously out of touch with reality. At the same time, it can't make his heart convenient to show and communicate with the outside world, and his self-awareness and intelligence have not been fully developed.
According to some schools of psychoanalysis, everyone's impression of self is a psychological mirror image, which is opposite to the real self. Through the investigation of the orientation of words, it is found that the orientation of words is just the mirror image of human body. It's like when people are writing, they are constantly looking in the mirror. Every Chinese character is a person who faces the writer himself, that is, the left side of the Chinese character is equivalent to the left side of the person, while the right side of the Chinese character is equivalent to the right side of the person. Chinese characters have a mirror image relationship with people whether they are written or read.
I said above that many people have a lens in their hearts. Then people's inner world may also have a mirror dedicated to looking at themselves. There are some differences between mirrors and lenses. What comes out of this mirror is ourselves, not the objective world.
Of course, the ideal situation closest to the objective reality is a flat mirror. However, in the process of people's psychological development, this psychological mirror will be more or less distorted, just like a haha mirror. From this distorted mirror, you will definitely see your deformed self, and the writer will unconsciously adjust himself to make himself look more satisfactory in the mirror. Just like real life, it is impossible for people to look in the mirror without clothes, so the self in the mirror is further away from the real self. This psychological operation mechanism is very complicated, which is beyond the scope of this paper. What I want to say is that people will unconsciously modify themselves in the process of writing, just like dressing themselves. If some people like to retouch strokes repeatedly; Some people like to decorate some strokes, make the corners more complicated and so on.
Different clothes are worn, for example, some women like to wear flowered skirts with gorgeous and gentle lines; Men like to wear military uniforms, the lines are straight and powerful, and so on.
Of course, there are people who really reveal their true feelings without clothes. The lines and fonts are unpretentious and not very beautiful.
in the last century, psychological research mainly focused on auditory research, and the research time on vision was not long. Chinese characters are the most visual characters in the world, so the in-depth study of visual psychology will inevitably provide strong theoretical support for the study of Chinese handwriting psychology.
There are still many problems in the vision of Chinese characters worthy of in-depth discussion. Due to the rush of time, the knowledge is limited, and some contents are still being studied and discussed. In addition, no one has seen this discussion yet. There are inevitably fallacies in the article, and some researchers are also invited to correct them.
(This article was written in 24, with the original title "The Relationship between Font Perspective and Handwriting Psychology")