Handshakes in which two people extend their arms to some degree and clasp each other’s hand and easily shake within a moderate degree of satisfaction is a common way of greeting one another.  This is so common as to be the norm that the handshakes often feel like a quick ritual, which in deed they are.

There are two extremes with the amount of squeeze power.  One extreme is the “cruncher squeezer,” usually a male, who gives some degree of pain to the person whose hand is getting crunched.  The squeezer is giving some degree of discomfort/pain to the victim, the squeezee.  (To make this clear, just as there is the employer and the employee, similarly, within what we’re focusing on right now, is the squeezer and the squeezee.)

The other extreme, is someone who barely has any tone of grasp when shaking another person’s hand.  In extreme cases, the hand shake has less tone than an over cooked limp noodle.

More often, it is a female who has a limp, low tone, barely touching the other person’s hand.  However, there are more males who have a low tone hand shake than males who go for the “cruncher” routine.

In 1967, I, Jonathan J. Brower, had about a one minute chat with Muhammad Ali (formerly Cassius Marcellus Clay).  When we had about a three second handshake, I was surprised that his shake was so soft and with almost no tone.  I was surprised that this powerful boxer was such a powder puff hand shaker.)

My guess/hunch is that the super powerful male “cruncher/squeezer” is less than 5% of men in the United States of America.  Among women, maybe one in a million.

What are the speculations that come to your mind as to why these male “cruncher/squeezer” types give various degrees of pain to the guys with whom they shake hands?  My SPECULATION is that these men had fathers or other men in their lives that were hurtful/harmful to them.  These young boys allowed themselves to have their striated muscles, the muscles for flight or fight, to be activated.  These boys were ready for assault, but decided not to totally crush the hand being shaken by the adult perpetrator.  These boys tended to generalize toward all men, perhaps with some exceptions, to crush them, not literally, but within reason, to give these men a degree of their retaliatory rage.

These “cruncher/squeezer” guys had a different bent with their mothers.  They put their mothers on a pedestal, to avoid allowing themselves to face the rage they had toward their mothers who did little or nothing to protect their children.  What we do know, in general, is that the parent (in this case, and most cases), who does not protect the child from the abusive parent, is the parent that the child has the most rage toward.

May all your handshakes be noticeable to you and may you have the memory to allow your feelings as you do engage in handshakes.  Be aware of what it is you feel with your emotions.  Bye for now.

Call me if you like.  Jonathan J. Brower, Ph.D.    818-707-4557