I decided to collect more material on association in normal
people
THE ASSOCIATIONS OF NORMAL SUBJECTS by C. G. Jung and Franz Riklin
For some time past, attention has been paid in this clinic to the process of association.
In order to produce scientifically useful material for this, my director, Professor Bleuler, has compiled a list of 156 stimulus-words and experimented with them on all types of psychosis
. In these experiments a very considerable difficulty soon presented itself.
There existed no means of precisely and quantitatively separating association in
abnormal subjects from that in normal ones.
No work had been done giving any facts on the range of normal subjects and
formulating the apparently chaotic coincidences of association into rules.
In order to fill this gap to some extent and thereby to pave the way for experiments on pathological associations,
I decided to collect more material on association in normal people and at the same time to study the principal conditions involved.
I carried out this plan with my colleague, Dr. Riklin.
The main experimental methods are as follows:
Initially we collected associations from a large number of normal people, with the intention, first, of examining the reactions to see whether they are at all subject to any law; and, next, of discovering whether individual patterns occur, i.e., whether any definite reaction-types are to be found.
We combined with this a second experiment of a general psychological nature.
3 The mechanism of association is an extraordinarily fleeting and variable psychic process; it is subject to countless psychic events, which cannot be objectively established.
Among the psychic factors that exert the main influence on the mechanism of association, attention is of cardinal importance.
It is the factor that in the first place directs and modifies the process of
association; it is also both the psychic factor that can most easily be subjected to experiment and the delicate affective apparatus that reacts first in abnormal physical and mental conditions and thereby modifies the associative performance.
4 Attention is that infinitely complicated mechanism which by countless threads links the associative process with all other phenomena of the psychic and physical domain in consciousness.
If we know the effects of attention on the process of association, then we also know, at least in general, the corresponding effects of every psychic event that attention is capable of affecting.
5 These considerations led us to investigate the effects of attention on the process of association, hoping to clarify as precisely as possible the following questions:
i. What are the laws governing the range of association in normal subjects?
- What are the direct effects of attention on the association process? In particular, does the valency of the association decrease with the distance from the focus of consciousness?
6 Our experiments have revealed a series of facts that not only encourage us to follow the paths on which we have set out into psychological regions but also, as we believe, fit us to do so. C. G. Jung ~Carl Jung, CW 2, Para 1-6
Footnote 1:
1 [First published as “Experiinentelle Untersuchung liber Assoziationcn Gesunder,”
Journal fur Psychologie und Neurologie (Leipzig), III (1904), 55-83, 145-64, 193-214, 238-308, and IV (1905), 24-67, 109-23. Republished in Diagnostische
Assoziationsstudien: Beitrage zur experimentellen Psychopathologie, edited by C. G. Jung, Vol. I (Leipzig, 1906; 2nd edn., 1911; 3rd edn., 1915), pp. 7-145 (I. Beitrag). Translated by M. D. Eder in Studies in Word-Association (London, 1918; New York, 1919).
[Franz Riklin (1878-1938) was assistant physician on the staff of the Burgholzli
at this time. From 1907 to 1913, he and Jung were active in the International
Psycho-Analytical Association. For his principal publications, see the Bibliography.]
