The purpose of this study was to investigate the relation of subjective feelings of tension and measurements of muscular tension during the continuous muscular activity of handwriting in a series of psychiatric patients and in normal control subjects.
Many methods have been used for obtaining measurements of muscular tension. These as a rule are measurements of tension during movement or during periods after or between discrete muscular movements. Investigations dealing with muscular tension or its converse, muscular relaxation, have been reported by Jacobson1; Golla and Antonovitch2; Davis3; Ruesch, Finesinger and Schwab,4 and Ruesch and Finesinger.5 These studies have been concerned primarily with the speed of relaxation or the state of the muscle after a movement or during mental activity. Another approach deals with the study of muscular tension during learned, coordinated, integrated muscular activity. In a previous paper,4 handwriting was selected as a characteristic