The word-association method in the treatment of psychoneuroses.

Abstract

Study of the association-reactions, the inception of which we owe to Sir Francis Galton's work, carried out over thirty years ago, has proved to be equally fruitful for both psychology and psychopathology, and is now one of the most valuable methods at our disposal for investigating the constellations of mental functioning. In a recent paper Gallus2 remarks: ' Unter den psychologischen Versuchsanordnungen, die die Wissenschaft in so mannigfacher Gestaltung fur die verschiedensten Zwecke bereits gestellt hat, hat wohl keine in der Praxis eine reichere Anwendung und intensivere Verbreitung gefunden als die Assoziationspriifung.' [' Of the modes of psychological investigation with which science has already furnished us in such manifold form and for the most diverse purposes, none has found a richer or more extensive application in practice than the association test.'] At the present time the method is in regular daily use with a large number of neurologists and psychiatrists in Germany and America. During the past nine years the Zurich school, under the guidance of Bleuler, and particularly of Jung,3 has very greatly increased the value of the method by the discovery of fundamental laws which had previously been overlooked, by the definite establishment of the theory of the procedure, and by the demonstration of