Experimental Studies on Associations of Healthy Persons

This paper was published in the scientific psychology journal "Diagnostische Assoziationsstudien" and represents one of his early forays into experimental psychology. Co-authored with Franz Riklin, the paper aimed to investigate and understand the unconscious processes that influence an individual's conscious responses to stimuli. It marked an important stage in Jung's exploration of the unconscious. Using word association tests, he identified the presence of emotionally charged complexes that influenced conscious thought, laying the groundwork for many of his later theories. Here we see Jung fully under the influence of Freud's 1901 work "The Psychopathology of Everyday Life".

Unlike his predecessors, who did not use the association experiment to study association disorders, but attributed them to external factors and regarded them as errors, it was these errors that attracted Jung's attention. By attributing them to internal factors, he developed the concept of 'affective complexes'. Their discovery later contributed to the creation of his typology of introversion and extraversion. These terms were later developed in academic psychology and are now part of the standard model for describing personality traits (the Big Five).

This research used the Word Association Test, a method refined and popularized by Jung, to explore the associative processes of people with no identifiable mental disorders. The purpose of the study was to establish a baseline understanding of associative dynamics in healthy individuals, providing a framework for later comparisons with pathological cases. This research not only highlighted Jung's methodological rigour, but also laid the groundwork for his conceptualization of the complex and unconscious processes that operate in all psyches.

Jung's use of the word association test involved presenting participants with a series of stimulus words and recording their immediate verbal responses, reaction times and any observable physiological indicators. By examining the responses of healthy individuals, Jung sought to uncover patterns of association that reflected the workings of the psyche in its normal state. This approach demonstrated his commitment to understanding psychological processes through both quantitative and qualitative lenses, bridging the gap between experimental psychology and deeper psychodynamic theories.