Doodling nothing unusual, doesn’t indicate wandering mind
Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller’s dood-ling in Parliament last Tuesday during the debate on the no-confidence motion brought against the Government by the Opposition is nothing unusual, says nutritionist Dr Heather Little-White.
In fact, says Little-White in an article e-mailed to the Sunday Observer, “most persons engage in the practice of doodling at some time or the other”.
“Some persons are prolific doodlers when they are talking on the phone, sitting at a meeting, or attending a lecture,” adds Little-White.
Observer Senior Photo Editor Michael Gordon captured Simpson Miller doodling during the debate, and the picture, published on the front page of last Wednesday’s Daily Observer, has generated a lot of debate.
On the day it appeared, Dr Kingsley ‘Ragashanti’ Stewart invited callers to his mid-morning radio talk show, Up Front on News Talk 97 FM, to give meaning to the sketches made by the prime minister.
But the photograph angered members of the Government and ruling People’s National Party who accused the Observer of embarrassing the prime minister. On Friday, the Parliament imposed a ban on journalists sitting in the Hansard area of Gordon House, which overlooks the Government benches and is the spot from which Gordon took the picture.
But the reaction, it appears, is extreme, given the volume of research by graphologists and psychologists who argue that while doodling can certainly reveal something of a person’s mental state, it cannot be used as the sole indicator.
According to Little-White, doodling is an expression of messages from the conscious or unconscious mind. “Doodles have tremendous therapeutic value in releasing nervous tension or stress,” argues Little-White. “It is also used scientifically for problem solving.”
Little-White says that when a person intentionally sets out to doodle, this is coming from the conscious mind. “The drawings or images may provide insight into a person’s mood, interests, creativity and sense of imagination. Analysis by a graphologist may reveal a hidden message or motive.”
The type of doodling that is more common, adds Little-White, is that coming from the unconscious mind, where a person unintentionally doodles while the conscious mind is taken up elsewhere, for example in a meeting or conference.
David Greenberg, a historian who examined two centuries of scribblings by American presidents for a book titled Presidential Doodles, is quoted on an ABC website as saying, “Doodles are often the last remnants of unconscious, unscripted presidential writing”.
According to the website story, datelined September 22, 2006 and headlined ‘The history of White House doodles: Spontaneous art or psychological insight?’, President John F Kennedy scribbled “Vietnam” over and over, drawing a box around the word each time; President Dwight Eisenhower sketched a picture of himself looking larger than life, bare-chested, and with a head full of hair; and President Ronald Reagan doodled smiling cowboys alongside love notes to his wife.
Added the report, written by Jessica Yellin: “On a memo produced during a visit by the Shah of Iran, Kennedy doodled the words “Iraq”, “Syria” and “Egypt” and put boxes around each word as well.”
Greenberg, the report said, views these sketches as a window into Kennedy’s problem-solving process.
“He’s drawing these doodles in meetings during times of high international tension. And the doodles show him trying to contain problems like Vietnam and the Middle East,” Greenberg is quoted by the report.
“You see this contained energy. You feel him working within the constraints of the time and the Cold War.”
The report also said that “in another Kennedy doodle with seeming modern-day relevance, he wrote “9/11” repeatedly and the word “conspiracy” next to it. He also inverted the numbers, writing “11/9”.
“It turns out that was the tally of a committee vote, not a foreshadowing of the September 11, 2001 attacks”.
President Eisenhower, the article says, was a frequent scribbler, and his renderings are well executed.
“In his doodles, though, he seems a fan of the self-portrait,” says the report. “On one memo with the heading ‘Cabinet Paper – Privileged’, he covers a third of the page – including text about the executive branch’s transportation responsibilities – with a massive pencil sketch of his head, with hair.
“Another memo outlining the agenda for ‘The Legislative Leadership Conference, Monday June 28, 1954’ is scribbled over with a gunboat and a rendering of himself with huge muscles, a bare chest, thick hair, and a much younger face.”
The article reports Greenberg as saying that that picture “shows him as this Charles Atlas style figure. with a kind of virility. It was during a time when America was exerting its military force abroad, and Eisenhower is drawing a kind of correlative to that”.
Most of Eisenhower’s drawings, the article says, incorporate weaponry – knives, boats and missiles.
“There also is a threatening undercurrent to the sketches. In one document he scribbled a picture of a bullet piercing the head of his chief of staff.”
According to the article, Greenberg is sensitive to accusations that presidential doodlers are weak-minded men. It quotes him as saying, “People think of doodles as a sign of a mind wandering, but really there can be something disciplining about doodling. It can be a way to focus your mind. Sometimes it’s when you’re not necessarily dwelling on your problem at hand that you come up with solutions.”
Greenberg, the article continues, believes that’s the case with President Lyndon Johnson.
“Johnson frequently drew scribbles over the words ‘The White House’ that adorned the top of his stationery,” says the article. “Greenberg believes it’s a habit the president developed to calm his mind.”
However, the historian believes there is another possible interpretation of those doodles, says the article.
“The Johnson under the strain of Vietnam and the party turning on him was a man full of anger and resentment. And there are times he drew bars over the words ‘White House’,” Greenberg is quoted.
Little-White argues that when properly assessed, doodles provide direction at moments of confusion and uncertainty in one’s life. “It may be at a critical time when there is ambivalence about a particular issue of unease in some area of a person’s life,” she says.
“Doodling helps persons uncover their real feelings, fears, dreams, hidden desires and fantasies.,” she says. “Doodles often represent areas of conflict between conscious thoughts and feelings and those of the unconscious.”
President Reagan, adds the Internet article, was one of the more prolific presidential doodlers. “His sketches are interesting for what they don’t reveal,” the article reports. “They betray no anxieties or internal struggles.”
Reagan, “sketched happy cartoonish pictures of cowboys and costumed movie characters often accompanied by love notes to his wife”, says the story.
“He filled one piece of paper with scribbled heads, including one that looked like his wife, Nancy, along with a heart pierced by an arrow. It also was inscribed with his and his wife’s initials, and a note read: “There I was doodling away – then I began to think about you”.
“The article reports Greenberg as saying that Reagan loved to give away his doodles as “as an instrument of public relations”.
“For him, the doodle was a deliberate way to show off his lighter, endearing side.”