224 CONTEMPORARY SCIENCE 



here alone that one is enabled to comprehend the very 

 original and revolutionary conceptions on which Freud 

 bases his theory of the unconscious and in which he elabo- 

 rates the principles underlying his searching study of the 

 biology of mind. 



Next in importance to dream analysis is the association 

 experiment which Jung of Zurich has adapted to practical 

 psychoanalytic application. 6 The association experiment is 

 useful chiefly as an instrument of diagnosis and for the 

 purpose of a long-continued study of some specific prob- 

 lem, as the differences of reaction types. But it is also 

 most valuable to the student in beginning psychoanalysis 

 as a means of obtaining a preliminary survey of the gen- 

 eral reaction of the patient and of opening the way 

 toward gaining insight into his unconscious mental proc- 

 esses. 



The association experiment has three chief advantages : 

 First, it affords a direct avenue to the patient's repressed 

 interests ; second, it offers access to such repressed spheres 

 of affectivity in spite of the patient's own unyielding re- 

 sistances, and, third, it affords us a means of investigation 

 which includes in it the conditions of an objective control 

 so essential to an exact experimental study of the data 

 required in comparative psychologic tests. 



In arrangement and actuation the association experi- 

 ment is very simple. The idea of the test is this : Every 

 word represents for each person a psychologic situation. 

 This may have, according to individual circumstances, an 

 accent of greater or less emotional value. To say that a 

 word possesses an emotional value is the equivalent of 

 saying that it makes a deep impression on the psychic 

 organism, that is, that it stirs a strong wave of response 

 in the consciousness into which it falls. 



Manifestly, if the length of such emotional wave may 

 be estimated, we have obtained a measure of the relative 



6 Jung, C. J. : Diagnostische Associationsstudien. 



