AND ALLIED CONDITIONS. HARRIS. 313 



Some kind of method, however, may be traced in this 

 chromatic madness, for, according to Bleuler (^^) high-pitched 

 notes produce the lighter tints of colour, but low-pitched the 

 darker shades. According to this authority, the colours 

 oftenest aroused in the synsesthesia, sound-photism, are 

 dark brown, dark red, yellow, and white, which is not at all 

 the statement of the frequency of occurrence of colours in 

 coloured thinking. From the records of the psychochromes 

 of two brothers, the relative order of frequency of the colours 

 is white or grey, brown, black, yellow, red, green, and blue; 

 violet and indigo not occurring. Dr. Helene Stelzner(^) 

 says that green is the colour least commonly thought of. 

 But individual differences are extreme: thus both purple 

 and violet are such favourites with some coloured thinkers 

 that they hardly ever think in terms of any other colours. 

 The present writer(°^) has examined the psychochromes of 

 two men, one woman, and one child, with the result that 

 the relative order of frequency of occurrence comes out as 

 white, brown, black, yellow, green, blue, red, pink, cream, 

 orange, and purple. It is thus clear that the colours thought 

 of are not exclusively the pure or spectral ones, for certain 

 non-spectral colours like brown, pink, cream, white, and black 

 are quite commonly reported. The novelist, Ellen Thorny- 

 croft Fowler, in a private communication to the author, 

 wrote — "The colour which I always associate with myself, 

 for no earthly reason that I can discover, is blue. Therefore, 

 "E", my initial letter is blue; April, the month of my birth- 

 day is blue, and 9, the date of my birthday, is blue." This 

 is known as "colour individuation", and has been made a 

 special study of by Paul Sokolov(''^) in his paper "L'individua- 

 tion coloree" read before the fourth international congress 

 of Psychology held at Paris, 1900. Some people, in short, 

 have their favourite colours, and with these they invest 

 their pleasant thoughts, while their unpleasant thoughts 

 they find coloured by the tints they are not fond of. 



