Psychoanalysis and the Association Experiment

Carl Jung

Newcomb Livraria Press

About this ebook

Jung's early essay "Psychoanalysis and association experiment" (Psychoanalyse und Assoziationsexperiment) was published in the Journal "Diagnostic Association Studies" in 1904. Here a young Jung, while working at the Bürghölzli psychiatric clinic in Zurich, explores concepts such as the Word Association Test, Identification of Complexes, the Nature of Complexes and Psychotherapeutic implications of these concepts.

This edition is a new 2023 translation from the original German manuscript with an Afterword by the Translator, a philosophic index of Jung's terminology and a timeline of his life and works.

This essay was published in the Scientific Psychology Journal "Diagnostische Assoziationsstudien" (Diagnostic Association Studies) and it represents one of his earlier forays into experimental psychology. The publication, co-authored with Franz Riklin, aimed to investigate and understand the unconscious processes affecting an individual's conscious responses to stimuli. It marked an important phase in Jung's exploration of the unconscious mind. Through word association tests, he identified the presence of emotionally charged complexes that affect conscious thought, laying the groundwork for many of his later theories. Here we see Jung fully under the influence of Frued's 1901 work "The Psychopathology of Everyday Life".

About the author

A massively influential Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, Jung founded the field of analytical psychology and built the modern concepts of Therapy. His concepts of the collective unconscious and archetypes were influential in understanding human psychology. Jung’s theories on personality, including the notions of introversion and extraversion, have left a lasting mark on psychology and psychotherapy to this day.