Jung contra Freud by Shamdasani Sonu Jung C. G. Hull R. F.C

Author:Shamdasani, Sonu, Jung, C. G., Hull, R. F.C.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2012-02-24T05:00:00+00:00

THE ASSOCIATION EXPERIMENT

335

There are many products of unconscious constellation besides dreams. In the association experiment we have a means of determining exactly the influence of the unconscious. We see these effects in the disturbances which I have called “complex indicators.” The task which the association test sets the subject of the experiment is so extraordinarily simple that even children can accomplish it without difficulty. It is all the more surprising that, despite this, so many disturbances of the intended action should be registered. The only things that can regularly be shown to be causes of these disturbances are the partly conscious, partly unconscious constellations caused by complexes. In the majority of cases the connection of these disturbances with feeling-toned complexes can be demonstrated without difficulty. But very often we must have recourse to the psychoanalytic method in order to explain the connection; that is, we must ask the patient what associations he can give to the disturbed reactions.

336

In this way we obtain the historical material on which to base our judgment. It has been objected that the patient could then say whatever he liked—in other words, any old nonsense. This objection is made, I believe, on the unconscious assumption that the historian who gathers material for his monograph is an imbecile, incapable of distinguishing real parallels from apparent ones and authentic reports from crude falsifications. The professional has means at his disposal for avoiding clumsy mistakes with certainty and more subtle ones with some probability. For anyone who understands psychoanalytic work it is a well-known fact that it is not so very difficult to see where there is coherence and where there is none. In addition, fraudulent statements are in the first place very significant of the person who makes them, and secondly they are easily recognized as fraudulent.

337

There is, however, another objection to be considered, which is more worth mentioning. One can ask oneself whether the reminiscences subsequently produced were really the basis of a dream. If, in the evening, I read an interesting account of a battle, and at night dream of the Balkan War, and then during analysis remember by association certain details in the account of the battle, even the most rigorous critic will fairly assume that my retrospective association is right and true. As I mentioned earlier, this is one of the most firmly entrenched hypotheses regarding the origin of dreams. All we have done is to apply this working hypothesis consistently to all the remaining associations relating to all other parts of the dream. Ultimately, we are saying no more than that this dream-element is linked with this association, that it therefore has something to do with it, that there is a connection between the two things. When a distinguished critic once remarked that, by means of psychoanalytic interpretations, one could even connect a cucumber with an elephant, this worthy showed us, by the very fact of associating “cucumber” with “elephant,” that these two things somehow have an associative connection in his mind. One

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