| The aim of this study was to acknowledge the use of hand feature analysis as a psychodiagnostic tool. It traces the importance of the hand throughout recorded history from the Paleolithic period to the present, as an integral and universal part of cultures, religions, art, medicine, and psychology. Hand analysis was first used scientifically in medicine and psychology towards the end of the Eighteenth century, when the changes brought about by the French Revolution included new attitudes towards the individual and individual freedoms. While hand analysis is now recognized in medicine and other life sciences, its use in psychology---mainly in the Jungian school---is still seen in the science-oriented West as associated with the occult and mysticism. Hand analysis is used in medicine and genetics to detect markers of diseases of late onset, including mental illness. The diagnosis of schizophrenia, its subgroups and schizoaffective disorder is very complicated. Research has been done in the U.S into the genetic origins of dermatoglyphics, or hand features. This study also elucidates the unique terminology in this field. Ten variables were tested, five each from the psychological and medical-genetic approaches. Hand features of schizophrenics, schizoaffectives and normals were compared. There were significant differences between the groups in all five psychological variables. Only one of the medical-genetic variables proved statistically significant, while another two were partially significant. This study demonstrated that hand feature analysis is an effective diagnostic tool. It gives an immediate answer to differential diagnosis and it bypasses verbal communication, and simulation or dissimulation of diseases. This was a preliminary study that opens the way for the use of hand features analysis as well as further serious research in this field. |
