Upside Down Writer

About one child in ten is a "strephosymbolic" (twister of symbols). He tends to see or remember things backwards. Most common form of this peculiarity is to read was for saw. Other strephosymbolics are "mirror writers," who write backwards, from right to left. This phenomenon still baffles psychologists. Most widely accepted theory is that of famed Psychopathologist Samuel Torrey Orton of Manhattan. He holds that reading & writing are controlled by one side of the brain. Normally one cerebral hemisphere is dominant, but when that is not the case, the brain may picture an image in reverse, cause the individual to read or write backwards.

Last week in Chicago there came to public attention a more baffling case of inversion than any previously discovered -- a schoolboy who writes with his left hand, not only backwards but also upside down. When he was in the first grade in Chicago's Fulton Elementary School, Frank Balek, now eleven, the son of a left-handed mother, puzzled his teachers because he could not learn to read or write. In the second grade he pushed his paper sideways, began to make some progress. By the third grade he had shoved the paper all the way around and was writing rapidly by his own method. Starting in the lower right-hand corner of his paper, his first line would go like this:

I write upside down and backwards.

His writing continues in this fashion up the page, is easily read by his teachers, who merely turn the paper around. Frank also does arithmetic upside down. He reads more easily holding his book upside down, but has learned to read rightside up with better than average speed. He has also learned to write--slowly and laboriously, but legibly on a blackboard in the ordinary way, but it is much easier for him to write upside down (see cut).

Since attempts to force left-handers to use their right hands and inversionists to write normally frequently cause emotional disturbances, Frank's teachers have made no effort to change his natural style. Unusually bright for an inversionist, Frank has an average I. Q., is a B student, is rated "Excellent" in drawing, is two terms ahead of average pupils in spelling (although inversionists as a rule are bad spellers).

Psychiatrists at Chicago's Institute of Juvenile Research watched Frank Balek's performance, offered no explanation. When his eyes were tested, no visual defect was found to account for his peculiarity. Today Frank's principal, William R. Bowlin, is on the lookout for signs of inverted sight in other pupils to catch slight tendencies in that direction that can be corrected. He stands behind a child, calls him unexpectedly. If the child turns his head to the left rather than to the right to see the principal, it is considered a sign of inversionist tendencies.

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