1.1 The association method

Outline

Essentially, the association test seeks to discover the complexes which each person harbours in their personal unconscious. These pesky impish things namely interfere with the associations one makes. Associations in conversation but equally as much in the setting of the so-called ‘association test’. In short, this test consists of an experimenter calling out words while the test subject is required to utter the first associated word that comes to mind as fast as possible.

What one will soon notice is that certain words systematically produce longer reaction times than others, irrespective of the difficulty of the stimulus word. Jung emphasises that in these instances feeling-toned complexes are in action below the surface. ’In our experience, affective processes always take longer than purely associative processes, both to appear on the surface and to take their course’ [1]. As a result, the triggering of the complex delays the appearance of a suitable association in the mind of the subject.

Importantly, the affect has been shown to often linger on so that, in addition, the reaction-time to the following word is delayed. In sum, complexes betray themselves in two ways in the association test: ‘(1) The association through which the complex is constellated has a prolonged reaction-time. (2) The association immediately following that through which the complex has been constellated has an extended reaction-time owing to the reverberation of the feeling-tone’ [1].

Moreover, Jung highlights that other interferences of the complex are also possible: ‘Reaction by two or more words if subject usually responds with one word, repetition of the stimulus-word, misunderstanding of the stimulus-word, mistakes, slips of the tongue, translation into a foreign language, reaction with some other unusual foreign word, insertion of "yes" or other exclamations before or after the reaction, any unusual contents of the reaction, perseveration as to content or form’ [2].

By observing the patterns of disturbances in this experiment, invaluable insights can be made as to the psychological inventory of a patient. ‘The laying bare of a repressed complex is of immense practical importance, e.g., in hysteria. Every hysterical patient has a repressed complex of causal significance. It is therefore essential for treatment that the complex be identified’ [3].

Because the patient frequently hides these complexes, these festering psychic wounds of pastime, from themselves, standard dialogue often remains superficial and beside the point. Patients suffering from hysteria have trouble with this in particular. They simply cannot report on their complexes, just as little as they can report on the rear view of their body. For that, a mirror is needed. The association test presents such a mirror hereby. A mirror that ‘gives us as it were a cross-section of the actual personality from a psychological point of view’ [1]. 

Many readers may dismiss this method as pseudoscience, having seen the occasional pop-culture reference to it that makes it seem like tarot card reading. The mechanism behind the association experiment is, however, remarkably straightforward. In fact, we have an analog for it in our daily lives: The conversation. ‘The association experiment, too, is not merely a method for the reproduction of separate word-pairs but a kind of pastime, a conversation between experimenter and subject. In a certain sense it is even more than this. Words are really a kind of shorthand version of actions, situations, and things. When I present the subject with a stimulus-word meaning an action, it is as if I presented him with the action itself and asked him, "How do you feel about it? What's your opinion of it? What would you do in such a situation?"’ [4].

For personally unproblematic concepts this may be an easy task and be followed by a quick response. But how about those concepts or situations that one remains unadapted to, that one may even have a visceral fear of? These trigger the complexes, the feeling-toned constellations that always designate a certain vulnerability. ‘There are certain stimulus-words that denote actions, situations, or things about which the subject is also in reality unable to think quickly and with certainty’ [4]. Thus, ‘the art of the method, which is never easy to use, lies in distinguishing the reactions connected with a complex from the irrelevant ones’ [3].

Scientific basis

How does Jung dare to make such seemingly speculative statements? The reason is that these conjectures are based on ample scientific evidence. To address the doubts of the shrewd reader some of this evidence will be laid out in the following.

On the one hand, word association experiments have been made with a so-called galvanometer. This device records the emotional valence of the test subject's experiences during the experiment by recording changes in the electrical conductivity of a subject’s skin. High emotional valence would thereby stimulate the sweat glands through sympathetic nervous system activation and alter the conductivity. It was found that the galvanometer would move when an acoustic, tactile or optic stimulus was merely announced instead of being actually applied. This ‘oscillation through expectation’ led to the conclusion that this device can objectively represent feelings [5].

Strikingly, it was discovered that a delayed response to a stimulus word consistently resulted in an upward movement on the galvanometer scale. The logical conclusion is that the cause of the delayed association response is due to the disturbing effects of emotions.

For the sake of illustration, let us take a case study Jung provides. The test subject is a ‘young, diligent, and gentle man, of whom I knew nothing, except the fact of his being an abstainer’ [5]. The galvanometer during the association test yields this result:

Each number designates one stimulus word, resulting in the following associations:

Each number designates one stimulus word, resulting in the following associations:

1. Pay – money; 2. Snake – animal; 3. Fine – beautiful; 4. Love – hatred; 5. Help – assist; 6. Restaurant - non-alcoholic; 7. Polished – glass; 8. Soldier – military; 9. Write – letter; 10. looking-glass – clear; 11. Full – man; 12. Intelligence – prudent.

From the galvanometer movements, it can be seen that the sixth stimulus word precipitates a sudden rise which remains elevated until the 13th stimulus word. The fact that the word ‘restaurant’ engenders a pronounced affect hints at the subject’s history with alcohol. Subsequently, the association ‘polished-glass’ further augments the ‘restaurant complex’ as Jung puts it. Finally, the eleventh stimulus word also produces a slight rise. Bearing in mind that the test was done in German, one can observe that the German translation ‘voll’ had the occasional meaning of being completely drunk.

Just from this brief transcript of a mere 13 associations one can already discern a possible pattern underlying the subjects associations. Jung concludes: ‘As things present themselves we may be right in supposing that there is a complex with strong feelings that has some relation to restaurant and drunkenness. When asked, the man confesses that once, when drunk, he had committed the crime of a serious assault and had consequently been sentenced to a long term of imprisonment. Because of these occurrences he had become an abstainer as a means of preventing his again getting into a similar situation’ [5]. From this example alone, one can begin to grasp the surprising insight this test provides, insight into areas the subject themselves has little knowledge of.

A second piece of evidence for the efficacy of the association experiment comes from the following ingenious test setup. The aim of this test was to check if the effort of conscious concealment produces the same prolonged reaction-time as complexes do. ‘The subject was shown a picture, the contents of which he had to commit to memory (e.g., a picture of a religious service in the chapel of a crypt). The stimulus-words were in some cases chosen from the picture (names of objects shown or otherwise obvious associations with it), but in other cases, irrelevant words with no recognizable relation to the picture were used.’

Thus, the preconditions were just as they are in the association experiment in which some words will relate to complexes and some will not.  ‘The subjects had previously been instructed not to give themselves away, i.e., not to give any associations revealing that they had seen the picture.’ In this manner, the test subject acts from the vantage point of the complex insofar as both are motivated to conceal their fundamental content. The results are accordingly: ‘The stimulus-words arousing the complex (relating to the picture) yielded an unusually large number of long reaction-times, and in these cases the reactions also gave a strange impression; there was something deliberate about them. It also often happened that the complex-characteristics appeared in reactions to irrelevant stimulus-words. In these cases a stimulus-word relating to the complex had appeared immediately before’ [6]. From this, one can conclude that the effort of concealment indeed produces that exact delay of response as in the association experiment.

The procedure

Before diving into the details of the association test, the complementary test must first be mentioned: The reproduction test. The reproduction test is a useful addon to the association test insofar as it too lays bare the stimulus words which touch upon personal complexes. Jung reports, ‘In my very heterogeneous material there is undoubtedly a relation between incorrect reproduction and prolonged reaction-time, and it shows itself in such a way that disturbances of reproduction chiefly occur with prolonged reaction-times but also partly following these. Furthermore, the association that is afterwards incorrectly reproduced has on average twice as many complex-signs as the correctly reproduced one’ [3]. As a rule, it is unclear if the corresponding stimulus word or the one preceding it touches upon the complex. And yet, when comparing these to the other complex manifestations the verdict most often tilts towards the one or the other. In this way, the reproduction test can provide further material in unearthing the complexes, those evasive creatures of old.

When performing the association test on patients, Jung proceeds in the following way: ‘We usually record a series of a hundred responses from the subject whose complex we wish to investigate. When this series is complete, we ask the subject to repeat his reaction to every single stimulus-word. Here memory often fails. Then we go into the question of whether the points where incorrect or incomplete reproductions are given are random or determined’ [6]. Importantly, one must also mind that at the time of experimentation, the subject is in normal physical condition. ‘Fatigue obliterates individual differences and drives the act of association in a particular direction. Besides this, Aschaffenburg also discovered that in one of his subjects who was suffering from a severe attack of influenza, the associations were similarly affected. So the special disposition of the brain caused by fever also has an adverse effect on the value of association tests in that mainly sound associations are produced.’ As a rule, the more external and sound associations are made the more likely it is that the patient’s attention is either compromised or occupied by other sensory stimuli [7].

Moving on to the analytical stage, a certain degree of customizability is required. To remain as true to Jung’s personal analytical process as possible, it is given word for word: ‘I first look for the reproduction-words and tabulate them; then I pick out the stimulus-words that show the greatest disturbances. In many cases, merely tabulating these words is sufficient to unearth the complex. In some cases, one is obliged to put a question here and there’ [4].

In this manner, one gradually taps along in the dark and eventually discovers the pattern of the subject’s associations. In particularly tricky cases one can conduct a second association test, this time interspersing probable ‘critical’ words in the list. With critical words is meant words that are likely to trigger the given complex the experimenter conjectures to exist.

 When reporting on a case, Jung laid out two ways to do this: ‘I next distributed these critical stimulus-words among double the number of ordinary stimulus-words, so that for each critical word there were two ordinary ones. It is an advantage for the critical words to be followed by ordinary ones so that the influence of the former may stand out all the more clearly. One can, however, also let one critical word follow another when one wants to show up especially the importance of the second’ [4]. Hereby the association test almost takes on the form of an art rather than a science. Seemingly, only a certain measure of creative ingenuity is able to tease out the most evasive of complexes.

This brings us to one of the chief prerequisites when dealing with associations. One must realize that one is dealing here with processes that are by no means linear. Rather, the associations spring from one image or situation to the other in a much more lateralized and exploratory fashion. In this way, it is far more suitable to view the associations as one would view a dream.

The experimenter who is searching for definite or literal ideas will be searching in vain. Instead, expect subtle allusions, subjective fantasies and vague anthropomorphizations. For this a certain way of thinking is required, one that seeks to bring symbols to light. ‘It is a way of thinking that is innate in a poet but is carefully avoided in scientific thought, which is said to be characterized by clear-cut ideas. Thinking in symbols demands from us a new attitude, similar to starting to think in flights of ideas’ [8].

To concretize this, an illustrative case study from Jung is provided in the following. ‘The patient was an educated woman of thirty years of age, who had been married for three years. Since her marriage she had suffered periodically from states of agitation in which she was violently jealous of her husband. The marriage was in every other respect a happy one and in fact the husband gave no grounds for jealousy. The patient was sure that she loved him and that her agitated states were absolutely groundless. She could not imagine how this situation had come about and felt quite at a loss. It should be noted that she was a Roman Catholic and had been brought up to practise her religion, whereas her husband was a Protestant. This difference in religion was stated to be of no consequence.

A more thorough anamnesis revealed an astounding prudishness: for instance, no one was allowed to talk in the patient's presence about her sister's confinement, because the sexual implication caused her the greatest agitation. She never undressed in her husband's presence but always in another room, and so on. At the age of twenty-seven she was supposed to have had no idea how children were born’ [4] From this profile one can already notice that a certain pathological disturbance underlies her personality, seemingly one of erotic nature.

To get a more objective picture Jung conducted an association test on her with the following results. ‘The stimulus-words that stood out because of their strong disturbing effect were these: yellow, to pray, to part, to marry, to quarrel, old, family, happiness, unfaithful, anxiety, to kiss, bride, to choose, contented. The following stimulus-words produced the strongest disturbances: to pray, to marry, happiness, unfaithful, anxiety, and contented’ [4].

At this point, the reader can try to guess themselves what may be the pattern and see how close they got to the answer. For his part, Jung conjectured, ‘that she was not indifferent to the fact that her husband was a Protestant, that she was again thinking about prayer and felt there was something wrong with the married state; that she was unhappy; she was false—that is, she was having fantasies about being unfaithful; she suffered from anxiety (about her husband? about the future?); she was dissatisfied with her choice (to choose) and was thinking about parting’ [4]. 

When Jung told her about this possibility she was at first taken aback, tried to deny it and then attempted to gloss it over. In time however, she finally gave in and confessed to it. ‘Moreover, she produced a great deal of material, consisting of fantasies about being unfaithful, reproaches against her husband, and so on. Her prudishness and jealousy were merely a projection of her own sexual wishes onto her husband. She was jealous of her husband because she herself was unfaithful in fantasy and could not admit it to herself’. Ultimately, a certain ‘divorce complex’ was disturbing her because she was, at bottom, so dissatisfied with her marriage [4].

From this example, it can be seen how indispensable the association method can be in therapy. It can lay bare the most private of secrets. Secrets that the patient has shut off from consciousness to the point that they themselves have no inkling of them anymore. ‘If we spread out our psychological booty in front of the subject, he will be amazed that we have been able to build up, as it were, a precise inventory of his present psychological condition.

In this way, it appears that everything that occupies the mind of the subject is expressed in his associations. In any case, all the most important individual complex-images are met with.’ Remarkably, when questioned the subject will report that at the time of reaction they were not aware that the stimulus word triggered this or that memory. Only when asked how they arrived at their reaction word will the relation occur to them [7].  

Traces of repression

In this context, it is important to understand how the complex distorts associations. To contrast this mechanism let us first consider the normal nature of association.  ‘Each association occurring in consciousness evokes as it were an echo of similarities and analogies that fades out through all stages of similarity of sound’ [1]. In our everyday lives, this can be seen in those moments when we relax concentration and enter the realm of the daydream.

Jung reports from two instances in daily observation, ‘A colleague on his hospital rounds caught a fleeting glimpse of a nurse who was allegedly pregnant and caught himself a moment or so later in the act of whistling the tune of: "Es waren zwei Konigskinder, die hatten einander so lieb" (There were two royal children, who loved each other so, etc.), although his conscious mind was occupied with something completely different. Another colleague betrayed to me the sad end of a love-affair by a succession of melody automatisms’ [1]. One usually cannot help these acts of genuine expression.

Lacking conscious awareness, these thought processes take on a life of their own and weave together all sorts of narratives. ‘All our thinking and acting, the vast bulk of which appears to us to be conscious, actually consist of all those little bits that are finely determined by innumerable impulses completely outside consciousness. To our ego-consciousness the association-process seems to be its own work, subject to its judgment, free will, and concentration; in reality, however, as our experiment beautifully shows, ego-consciousness is merely the marionette that dances on the stage, moved by a concealed mechanism’ [1].

In this stream of association, however, certain blockages can also be observed. This is where the complexes come in. As laid out before, they manifest themselves both in prolonged reaction-times and also in incorrect or lacking reproductions. Hereby, the complex interferes somehow with the act of recall as if to say ‘Don’t go here’. Instead, a substitute word is conjured up, one that is quickly forgotten again. ‘The reaction-words that are so easily forgotten seem like excuses; they play a similar role to that of Freud's "screen memories."

When, for example, a hysterical young girl takes an agonizingly long time to react to to kiss with sister's kiss and afterwards has forgotten how she did react, it is understood without further ado that sister's kiss was only an evasion, which must conceal an important erotic complex. Such reactions are reminiscent of simulation (naturally, unconscious) and resemble the "screen memories" with which hysterical subjects conceal events that are of causal importance.’

Notably, such a so-called ‘amnestic blockage’ also has the characteristic of spreading to nearby ideas. Thereby everything that happens to coincide with the disagreeable affect of the ‘critical’ stimulus word is quickly brushed under the carpet again. Importantly, this applies by no means only to hysterics. In fact, it is an everyday phenomenon but merely in milder form. ‘In normal cases there is a brief embarrassment or momentary blockage, in hysterical cases there is the well-known arbitrary amnesia, and in catatonic cases there is a complete barrier’. Ultimately, no one is exempt from the influence of complexes. 

Finally, besides this mechanism, another reason for the forgetting of these reaction words is their superficiality. They are a mere façade and hence lack any substantiality that would anchor them in the subject’s memory [3].

Jung provides an example of such an occurrence from one of his patients who has had trouble with alcoholism. In the course of the association experiment the stimulus word ‘Fire’ (‘Brand’ in German) was associated with ‘Sea’ (‘Meer’ in German) with delay. ‘The stimulus was correctly understood, but changed immediately into Brandung (surf); hence the association of sea, with a somewhat longer reaction-time. Brand (fire) was therefore assimilated. The previous association does not constellate this assimilation. Brand, however, has an unpleasant tone and this is associated in his mind immediately with the meaning of acute alcoholism and, together with the latter, the memory of his having once been in that state, which aroused painful feelings’ [1].

Acknowledging this pain would, however, challenge the integrity of the ego and hence the psyche employs the following protective mechanism. ‘The ego-complex has forestalled the old but still active memory, which has assimilated the stimulus-word in a convenient sense and has thereby drawn a veil over the painful memory, i.e., has hidden it from consciousness. This mechanism (the censor in the Freudian sense) plays a very prominent role in hysteria. It must be emphasized that it is not at all a function of consciousness but an automatic mechanism that regulates what may or may not come into the conscious mind’ [1].

These ‘repressive assimilations’ as Jung calls them are particularly prominent in hysteria patients and are put on full display in the association experiment. Hereby, all sorts of substitute words that sound similar enough are conjured up to guard consciousness from a certain painful realization.

‘In these cases the complex is stronger than the conscious will and drives the subject in such a way that he cannot will himself to remember. The complex plays the part of a second and stronger personality, to which ego-consciousness is subjected. In these experiments we are shown the power of feeling-toned memories from which so many sensitive people suffer’ [1].

These memories come in the form of a complex of images that are linked by a most powerful affect. An affect which ‘is still reverberating in the patient and which his conscious mind finds unbearable.’ An affect that the hysterical patient has been unable to conquer and instead periodically conquers him. One must always remember that ‘in the depths of the mind of each hysterical patient we always find an old wound that still hurts’ [1].

Jung describes a case whereby one of his female patients has had a long history of repressing her rather wild and exploratory sexuality. These contents, however, ‘actually have a separate existence, they form a state within the state, they constitute a personality within the personality. In other words, there are two mental attitudes present, kept apart by strong emotional barriers. The one must not and cannot know anything of the other. This explains the peculiar disturbances of reproduction that counteract the analysis. The ethically superior mind has not the associations of the other at its disposal; she must therefore think she has forgotten these ideas and that she has never known such things’ [8].

 And yet there are subliminal remnants that the repressed complex leaves in its trail. ‘Even if a complex is still so far repressed, it must yet have a constellating influence on the contents of normal consciousness, for even the deepest split of consciousness does not reach the indivisible basis of the personality. Thus the repression must leave a certain imprint on the conscious processes’ [8]. This imprint naturally seems most strange to ego-consciousness insofar as its origin remains a mystery. In this moment of mental anguish the psyche comes to aid: It finds an acceptable rationalization, a substitute word or even a whole substitute story, that is compatible with ego-consciousness.  

As a result, the uncovering of complexes is an eminently difficult task. ‘He who approaches a case with anything but absolute conviction is soon lost in the snares and traps laid by the complex of hysterical illness at whatever point he hopes to take hold of it. One has to know from the very beginning that everything in the hysteric is trying to prevent an exploration of the complex. Where necessary, not only the patient's interest and his regard for the doctor fail, but also his thinking, memory, and finally even his language’ [8].

But here comes the tragic part of the matter: Precisely this realization of the complex is what would be curative for the hysterical patient. At every corner the patient thus obstructs themselves. Therefore, to get to information on ‘intimate’ matters it can only be done by detours. ‘We liberate general cover-ideas which stand in some associative (often symbolical) relation to the idea of the complex, and so we gradually approach the complex from different aspects.’ Jung provides the analogy of how a merciful teacher would examine a nervous pupil. ‘The candidate cannot answer the special and direct question, he is too agitated; so the examiner first gets him to answer a number of quite general and easy questions, the emotional charge of which is not too great, and then the required answer comes quite spontaneously.’ Along these lines the association experiment operates. It queries a host of tangentially related words and measures the disturbances in the subject’s associations. In this ingenious fashion, it makes use of the peculiar defense-mechanisms of the complexes. Paradoxically, precisely through these the complex betrays itself finally [8].

Conclusion

To close off, the association experiment is an indispensable tool in the therapist’s repertoire. Independent of the patient’s conscious intention it lays bare a comprehensive cross-section of their psychic make-up. By querying a host of situations and concepts it gives important hints as to where the personality under question has remained unadapted. Those places of the outer as well as inner world the patient is avoiding for one reason or another. Jung quotes the psychiatrist Weygandt saying, ‘Tell me how you associate and I’ll tell you who you are’ [7]. Little else could highlight so assertively the tremendous utility of the association experiment in gaining self-knowledge.

References

1.        Jung, C. G. (1954). Experimental researches. The collected works of C. G. Jung (R. F. C. Hull (Trans.), Vol. 2). Princeton University Press. [Chapter 3: The reaction-time ratio in the association experiment

2.        Jung, C. G. (1954). Experimental researches. The collected works of C. G. Jung (R. F. C. Hull (Trans.), Vol. 2). Princeton University Press. [Chapter 9: Disturbances of reproduction in the association experiment]

3.        Jung, C. G. (1954). Experimental researches. The collected works of C. G. Jung (R. F. C. Hull (Trans.), Vol. 2). Princeton University Press. [Chapter 4: Experimental observations of the faculty of memory]

4.        Jung, C. G. (1954). Experimental researches. The collected works of C. G. Jung (R. F. C. Hull (Trans.), Vol. 2). Princeton University Press. [Chapter 10: The association method]

5.        Jung, C. G. (1954). Experimental researches. The collected works of C. G. Jung (R. F. C. Hull (Trans.), Vol. 2). Princeton University Press. [Chapter 12: On the psychophysical relations of the association experiment]

6.        Jung, C. G. (1954). Experimental researches. The collected works of C. G. Jung (R. F. C. Hull (Trans.), Vol. 2). Princeton University Press. [Chapter 6: The psychological diagnosis of evidence]

7.        Jung, C. G. (1954). Experimental researches. The collected works of C. G. Jung (R. F. C. Hull (Trans.), Vol. 2). Princeton University Press. [Chapter 8: The psychopathological significance of the association experiment]

8.        Jung, C. G. (1954). Experimental researches. The collected works of C. G. Jung (R. F. C. Hull (Trans.), Vol. 2). Princeton University Press. [Chapter 5: Psychoanalysis and association experiments]