Study of Association in Insanity

Among the most striking and commonly observed manifestations of insanity are certain disorders of the flow of utterance which appear to be dependent upon a derangement of the psychical processes commonly termed association of ideas. These disorders have to some extent been made the subject of psychological experimentation, and the object of this investigation is to continue and extend the study of these phenomena by an application of the experimental method known as the association test.

§ 1. METHOD OF INVESTIGATION.

In this investigation we have followed a modified form of the method developed by Sommer,[1] the essential feature of which is the statistical treatment of results obtained by uniform technique from a large number of cases.

[Footnote 1: Diagnostik der Geisteskrankheiten, p. 112.]