Special Populations

Abstract

The left hand is weak and awkward for the typical right-handed individual. When forced to do something with the left hand, a typical right-hander will almost invariably perform the task less adequately. Considerations such as these may have led the right-handed majority to look upon the left hand as inferior, or perhaps even evil. Such an attitude is reflected in many ways, as demonstrated in Chapter 6. The moral and religious encoding of this notion is particularly interesting. Christianity demonstrates its bias against the left in the Gospel according to St. Matthew (Chapter 25) in the parable of the sheep and the goats. In this vision of Judgment Day, God gathers before Him all of the people of the world, and He divides them into two groups, one on the right side and the other on the left. Then, according to the Bible, He designates the relative value of the two sides: “Then shall the King say unto them on His right, ‘Come ye blessed of my Father, inherit the Kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world....’ Then shall He say unto them on the left hand, ‘Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the Devil and his angels.” This point of view is not confined to Christianity, since the Buddha made it clear that there were two roads through life. There is a left road, which is fraught with peril and is of ill omen, and an eightfold right path, which is of good omen. Perhaps it was such a context of religious antipathy toward the left that led to the opinion that the left-handed individual is also suspect. Left-handedness was referred to by a philosopher in 1686 as a “digression or aberration from that way which nature generally intendeth” (quoted in Wile, 1934, p. 92). This viewpoint indicates that left-handedness should be regarded as direct evidence for some pathology or abnormality.