| | well, _bébé_ | to take | | | care | 14 |attention | lead | |to draw, everything | pencil| 8 | possible can be drawn | sad | 9 |to weep, that is not |to be | | always the case | plum | 16 |to eat a plum, pluck what |fruit | | do you mean by it? Is | | | that symbolic? | to marry| 27 |how can you? reunion, |union, alliance | | union | --------+----------------+--------------------------+---------------- The following diagrams illustrate the reaction times in an association experiment in four normal test-persons. The height of each column denotes the length of the reaction time. [Illustration: FIG. 4.] [Illustration: FIG. 5.] [Illustration: FIG. 6.] [Illustration: FIG. 7.] The succeeding diagram shows the course of the reaction time in hysterical individuals. The light cross-hatched columns denote the places where the test-person was unable to react (so-called failures to react). [Illustration: FIG. 8.] [Illustration: FIG. 9.] [Illustration: FIG. 10.] The first thing that strikes us is the fact that many test-persons show a marked prolongation of the reaction time. This would seem to be suggestive of intellectual difficulties,--wrongly however, for we are often dealing with very intelligent persons of fluent speech. The explanation lies rather in the emotions. In order to understand the matter, comprehensively, we must bear in mind that the association experiments cannot deal with a separated psychic function, for any psychic occurrence is never a thing in itself, but is always the resultant of the entire psychological past. The association experiment, too, is not merely a method for the reproduction of separated word couplets, but it is a kind of pastime, a conversation between experimenter and test-person. In a certain sense it is still more than that. Words really represent condensed actions, situations, and things. When I give a stimulus word to the test-person, which denotes an action, it is as if I represented to him the action itself, and asked him, "How do you behave towards it? What do you think of it? What would you do in this situation?" If I were a magician, I should cause the situation corresponding to the stimulus word to appear in reality, and placing the test-person in its midst, I should then study his manner of reaction. The result of my stimulus words would thus undoubtedly approach infinitely nearer perfection. But as we are not magicians, we must be contented with the linguistic substitutes for reality; at the same time we must not forget that the stimulus word will almost without exception conjure up its corresponding situation.