Master Gangxiao: The Mysteries of the Zhou Yi — Psychology Chapter 5: The Word Association Method, Where Each Sees Differently, and Other Approaches

Chapter 5: The Word Association Method, Where Each Sees Differently, and Other Approaches

You may have heard of the lie detector — now regarded as an advanced criminal investigation technique. It originally grew out of Dr. Jung's word association test. You prepare a list of about a hundred words covering a broad range of topics: money, directions, weapons, relationships, and so on. You read out a word and ask the subject to respond with whatever comes to mind, while you note the reaction time. If a word carries particular weight for the subject — as the saying goes, his heart "gives a little lurch" — his reaction time lengthens. The response doesn't come smoothly (and if instruments are available, you can detect changes in heartbeat, galvanic skin response, and the like). This is the unconscious exerting its force; no matter how composed he tries to appear, he can't truly fake it, and the delay will show. Strung together, these words can tell a story.

Jung once conducted an experiment with a thoroughly respectable thirty-five-year-old man who, over the course of the word association test, gave himself away. Jung said, "I'm sorry — I had no idea you'd been through such an unpleasant experience." The man stared at him. "I don't know what you're talking about." Jung replied, "Oh, you do. You once got drunk and had an unpleasant incident that ended with someone being stabbed." The man asked, "How did you know?" — and then confessed everything. He came from a respectable, upright family and had spent time abroad. One day, drunk, he had gotten into an argument and stabbed the other man with a knife, landing himself in prison for a year. After moving to this town, no one had known about it — and Jung was the only one to uncover the truth.

Dr. Jung had noticed that for five words — knife, strike, sharp, and bottle — the man's reaction times were markedly prolonged, far exceeding the average (he plotted the times on a bar chart, which made the pattern easy to see at a glance). The delay on "knife" suggested the incident involved not just a bottle but a blade. "Sharp" could refer to either object. So there was a knife and a bottle: the knife was used to wound someone, but what about the bottle? It must have been a wine bottle — the stabbing happened during a bout of drinking. And strike likely meant hitting someone, a fight.

One elderly professor who studied crime simply refused to believe in the method Jung had devised. Jung said, "If you're willing, try it yourself." They went to the professor's home. Jung had barely read out a dozen words when the professor lost patience: "What can you possibly accomplish with this? Nothing at all." Jung said, "Let's finish anyway." When they were done, Jung told him: "Your money is nearly gone. You have a heart condition. You studied in France and had a love affair there — one you still think about often." A lifetime of secrets laid bare, the professor was astonished. Jung explained: the words with prolonged reaction times were as follows —

Heart — illness

Money — little

Payment — le semeur (answered in French)

Kiss — beautiful

Death — to die

Connect these few words and the story tells itself. Only two responses call for explanation. Le semeur (the Sower) is the figure depicted on French coins. Although Jung and the professor had been speaking German throughout, here the professor switched to French to name a French coin — suggesting a particular emotional attachment to France worth exploring. Had he perhaps lost money on the franc? There had been no news of French currency devaluation at the time. But once you hear that his response to "kiss" was "beautiful," everything falls into place: it was a love affair. He wasn't the sort who would have gone to France late in life; he must have studied there as a young man (in those days it was not uncommon for Swiss students to study in France, just as in the 1950s many young Chinese went to study in the Soviet Union). The rest was simply a matter of stringing the story together. From then on, this criminologist was convinced.

These hundred words (you could use a few more or a few less) and the subject's free associations also fall under the principle of "each seeing according to their bent, the wise according to their wisdom." You can pay special attention to the words with prolonged reaction times and observe what the subject brings up. The reason for having many words is to cover as wide a range of topics as possible. In practice, though, even a smaller set of words will eventually bring the subject to his inner complex — so long as the intermediate steps are there. It just takes more roundabout stages, much like investigating a huatou (a critical phrase in Chan practice).

Jung's very first publication was on the word association experiment: Studies in Word Association. It made his name overnight, and it was precisely this work that led Clark University in the United States to award him an honorary doctorate. During Jung's lifetime, although he primarily used the word association experiment with psychiatric patients, the criminal investigation agencies nearby often regarded him as their last hope for cracking impossible cases — when all else failed, they had no choice but to turn to Dr. Jung.

The Apperception Test

In 1935, C. D. Morgan and H. A. Murray published "A Method for Investigating Fantasies: The Thematic Apperception Test" in the journal Archives of Neurology and Psychiatry. That same year, the method began to be used in some psychological clinics. In 1943, Murray published Thematic Apperception Test through Harvard University Press. After numerous revisions, it gradually gained wider use; today there are various scoring systems and adapted versions, and it has become an important projective technique.

The test materials consist of pictures that differ from Rorschach inkblots in that they have definite themes — they aren't entirely unstructured. Yet because there's no restriction on what the subject may say in response, it remains a projective test. The materials are divided into four sets of twenty pictures each; some images are shared across sets, others are specific to one, for a total of thirty pictures, one of which is a blank card. The four sets are designed for men, women, boys, and girls. Ten pictures are used per session.

The subject sits down, and the examiner gives the instructions: "I'm going to show you some pictures. For each one, I'd like you to make up a story. Tell me what's happening in the picture, what led up to this moment, what the people in it are feeling inside, and how it all turns out." Each picture calls for a story of about three hundred words or so.

For example, imagine a half-length portrait of an elderly woman and a young man. Person A might see a mother gazing fondly at her son. Person B might see a woman widowed young, fantasizing about her late husband as he once looked. And from there, the stories could branch out endlessly.

Another picture shows two middle-aged people in conversation. Person A might say they're deliberating a major corporate decision. Person B might see them striking a shady deal. Person C might take them for a pair of spies making a rendezvous.

A woman who reads the first picture as mother and son may well be living a happy life. A man who reads the second as a boardroom discussion is likely enterprising; one who sees an underground deal or a spy's rendezvous may be paranoid — not the easiest person to get along with.

In short, interpretations of these pictures, too, come down to "each seeing according to their bent, the wise according to their wisdom." Given the same picture, a hundred people will compose a hundred different stories. Through these stories, you can gain a rough understanding of the subject's psychological concerns, life experience, personality structure, and even a general prognosis. Each picture functions like a huatou — a starting point for free association.

The Drawing Method

We tell the child being tested: "Suppose a magician comes along and puts a spell on your whole family — grown-ups and kids alike. You've got paper and pencil right here. Draw what happens." Now the child becomes the magician. As he casts spells on each family member, we've given him a chance to express his unconscious notions and attitudes.

An eight-year-old child tested by Professor W. Kreuzer drew a picture and explained it this way: Mommy is the big monster; little brother is the clock hanging on the wall; big sister is that very sharp pencil; Daddy is the wine bottle; I turned into that little flower.

It turned out the child didn't want to go to school. Once there, he couldn't concentrate and had no interest in class. Mommy was as fierce as a monster, forcing him out the door each morning. Meanwhile, at the hour he had to leave for school, his little brother — too young for school — could stay tucked up in bed. His big sister was a good student who always did her homework well. Daddy liked to drink, and what the child feared most was being scolded when Daddy had been drinking. By turning himself into a little flower, he could stay put (mainly: avoid school) and still be something pretty to look at.

In the drawing, everything the child loves, hates, envies, and fears — along with his sense of where he stands in the family — comes through. The size a person occupies in the picture, and where they're placed, is never accidental. A child who draws himself small may suffer from low self-esteem. One who draws himself enormous may be the center of the household — undisciplined, self-absorbed.

The drawing method (the magic spell isn't strictly necessary) works not only with children but with adults as well. Dr. Jung once had a schizophrenic patient draw.

The first picture was made when the patient's illness was at its worst. He was lost in confusion, his thinking fragmented. The drawing could hardly be called anything — a fish, perhaps, or a bowl, but neither reading was convincing. Let's call it a bowl: it was tilted, and the whole thing seemed to have shattered, with obvious cracks running every which way across the surface. On the bowl sat something round, like a ball, ringed by scribbling.

The tilt of the bowl makes it easy for whatever's inside to spill out — as though the soul were leaking away. Those crack lines are characteristic of schizophrenia. But notice the round shape sitting on the bowl: a kind of "center." The scribbling around it suggests the patient is trying to pull his scattered spirit back together — he is struggling, fighting the illness. The very existence of this center holds out the hope of recovery.

And indeed, after a period of treatment, the patient's condition improved. Jung had him draw a second picture. This time he drew a proper vase, standing steady. His thinking had cleared enough to produce a recognizable image. On the vase were a moon, stars, a snake, and a fish — all "yin" elements, things of the "lower realm." The patient had regained a measure of clear consciousness, yet something strange lingered: a post-schizophrenic depression, perhaps, in which the conscious mind hadn't fully mastered the creatures of the unconscious (those yin things still surfaced). What was encouraging, though, was that the patient drew a human figure on the vase. A person is different from those symbols of the underworld and the unconscious — and this figure was placed at the mouth of the vase, crawling face-down, pinning the snakes and fish in place so they couldn't get out. The patient could continue along this constructive path until full recovery.

Whether the subject is a child or a psychiatric patient, when given the freedom to draw without restriction, each person produces something entirely different. Here, too: the benevolent draw the benevolent, the wise draw the wise.