Psychodiagnostics

This term covers the many methods for discerning what lies within the hidden motivations and unconscious mind of the individual. External appearance and behaviour are studied through a variety of more or less accepted techniques including: [graphology]

(the study of handwriting); [palmistry]

(markings on the hands); [stoleomancy]

(the clothes a person wears and his manner of wearing them); [phrenology]

(the shape of the head); [laliognomy]

(speech analysis); [pateomancy]

(gait and manner of walking). [Xenoanalysis]

studies unguarded speech and behaviour under some influence (as drugs, alcohol, shock, pain) and particularly in dreams - [oneiromancy]

. Particular tests involve word-association, response to images (as in the Rorschach ink-blots test), free association; and emotional maturity may be demonstrated in an individual's response in intelligence tests. Group therapy and relations with family and friends, and also reactions to emotive subjects, provide further material from which to understand the "inner man".