A Study of Association in Insanity

Grace Helen Kent

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• Publié par: emku
• Publié le: 08 décembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 28
• Langue: English

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Project Gutenberg's A Study of Association in Insanity, by Grace Helen Kent Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook. This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project Gutenberg file. Please do not remove it. Do not change or edit the header without written permission. Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is important information about your specific rights and restrictions in how the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved. **Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** **eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** *****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!***** Title: A Study of Association in Insanity Author: Grace Helen Kent Release Date: October, 2005 [EBook #9172] [Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on September 10, 2003] Edition: 10 Language: English *** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A STUDY OF ASSOCIATION IN INSANITY *** Produced by Lee Dawei, Dave Maddock and Online Distributed ProofreadersA STUDY OF ASSOCIATION IN INSANITY BY GRACE HELEN KENT, A.M. AND A.J. ROSANOFF, M.D. KINGS PARK STATE HOSPITAL, N.Y. TABLE OF CONTENTS. PART I. ASSOCIATION IN NORMAL SUBJECTS. §1. Method of Investigation §2. The Normal Standard §3. The Frequency Tables §4. Normal Associational Tendencies §5. Practical Considerations §6. An Empirical Principle of Normal Association PART II. ASSOCIATION IN INSANE SUBJECTS. §1. General Survey of Pathological Material §2. Classification of Reactions §3. Non-Specific Reactions; Doubtful Reactions §4. Individual Reactions; Explanation of Groups and Methods of Application Normal Reactions Pathological Reactions Derivatives of Stimulus Words Partial Dissociation Non-Specific Reactions Sound Reactions Word Complements Particles of Speech Complete Dissociation Perseveration Neologisms Unclassified Reactions Normal Reactions Circumstantial Reactions Distraction Incoherent Reactions §5. Order of Preference §6. Errors Involved in the Use of Arbitrary Objective Standards §7. Analysis of Pathological Material Dementia Præcox Paranoic Conditions Epilepsy General Paresis Manic-Depressive Insanity Involutional Melancholia; Alcoholic Dementia; Senile Dementia §8. Pathological Reactions from Normal Subjects §9. Number of Different Words given as Reactions §10. Co-operation of the Subject §11. Summary Acknowledgments INDEX TO FREQUENCY TABLES AND APPENDIX THE FREQUENCY TABLES APPENDIX TO THE FREQUENCY TABLESPART I. ASSOCIATION IN NORMAL SUBJECTS. 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.] The stimulus consists of a series of one hundred spoken words, to each of which the subject is directed to react by the first word which it makes him think of. In the selection of the stimulus words, sixty-six of which were taken from the list suggested by Sommer, we have taken care to avoid such words as are especially liable to call up personal experiences, and have so arranged the words as to separate any two which bear an obviously close relation to one another. After much preliminary experimentation we adopted the following list of words: 01 Table 02 Dark 03 Music 04 Sickness 05 Man 06 Deep 07 Soft 08 Eating 09 Mountain 10 House 11 Black 12 Mutton 13 Comfort 14 Hand 15 Short 16 Fruit 17 Butterfly 18 Smooth 19 Command 20 Chair 21 Sweet 22 Whistle 23 Woman 24 Cold 25 Slow 26 Wish 27 River 28 White 29 Beautiful 30 Window 31 Rough 32 Citizen 33 Foot 34 Spider 35 Needle 36 Red 37 Sleep 38 Anger 39 Carpet 40 Girl 41 High 42 Working 43 Sour 44 Earth 45 Trouble 46 Soldier 47 Cabbage 48 Hard 49 Eagle 50 Stomach No attempt is made to secure uniformity of external conditions for the test; the aim has been rather to make it so simple as to render strictly experimental conditions unnecessary. The test may be made in any room that is reasonably free from distracting influences; the subject is seated with his back toward the experimenter, so that he cannot see the record; he is requested to respond to each stimulus word by one word, the first word that occurs to him other than the stimulus word itself, and on no account more than one word. If an untrained subject reacts by a sentence or phrase, a compound word, or a different grammatical form of the stimulus word, the reaction is left unrecorded, and the stimulus word is repeated at the close of the test. In this investigation no account is taken of the reaction time. The reasons for this will be explained later. The general plan has been first to apply the test to normal persons, so as to derive empirically a normal standard and to determine, if possible, the nature and limits of normal variation; and then to apply it to cases of various forms of insanity and to compare the results with the normal standard, with a view to determining the nature of pathological variation. § 2. THE NORMAL STANDARD. In order to establish a standard which should fairly represent at least all the common types of association and which should show the extent of such variation as might be due to differences in sex, temperament, education, and environment, we have applied the test to over one thousand normal subjects. Among these subjects were persons of both sexes and of ages ranging from eight years to over eighty years, persons following different occupations, possessing various degrees of mental capacity and education, and living in widely separated localities. Many were from Ireland, and some of these had but recently arrived in this country; others were from different parts of Europe, but all were able to speak English with at least fair fluency. Over two hundred of the subjects, including a few university professors and other highly practiced observers, were professional men and women or college students. About five hundred were employed in one or another of the New York State hospitals for the insane, either as nurses and attendants or as workers at various trades; the majority of these were persons of common school education, but the group includes also, on the one hand, a considerable number of high school graduates; and on the other hand, a few laborers who were almost or wholly illiterate. Nearly one hundred and fifty of the subjects were boys and girls of high school age, pupils of the Ethical Culture School, New York City. The remaining subjects form a miscellaneous group, consisting largely of clerks and farmers.§ 3. THE FREQUENCY TABLES. From the records obtained from these normal subjects, including in all 100,000 reactions, we have compiled a series of tables, one for each stimulus word, showing all the different reactions given by one thousand subjects in response to that stimulus word, and the frequency with which each reaction has occurred. [1] These tables will be found at the end of this paper. [Footnote 1: A similar method of treating associations has been used by Cattell (Mind, Vol. XII, p. 68; Vol. XIV, p. 230), and more recently by Reinhold (Zeitschr. f. Psychol., Vol. LIV, p. 183), but for other purposes.] With the exception of a few distinctive proper names, which are indicated by initials, we have followed the plan of introducing each word into the table exactly as it was found in the record. In the arrangement of the words in each table, we have placed together all the derivatives of a single root, regardless of the strict alphabetical order.[1] [Footnote 1: It should be mentioned that we have discovered a few errors in these tables. Some of these were made in compiling them from the records, and were evidently due to the assistant's difficulty of reading a strange handwriting. Other errors have been found in the records themselves. Each of the stimulus words butter, tobacco and king appears from the tables to have been repeated by a subject as a reaction; such a reaction, had it occurred, would not have been accepted, and it is plain that the experimenter wrote the stimulus word in the space where the reaction word should have been written. Still other errors were due to the experimenter's failure to speak with sufficient distinctness when reading off the stimulus words; thus, the reaction barks in response to dark indicates that the stimulus word was probably understood as dog; and the reactions blue and color in response to bread indicate that the stimulus word was understood as red.] The total number of different words elicited in response to any stimulus word is limited, varying from two hundred and eighty words in response to anger to seventy-two words in response to needle. Furthermore, for the great majority of subjects the limits are still narrower; to take a striking instance, in response to dark eight hundred subjects gave one or another of the following seven words: light, night, black, color, room, bright, gloomy; while only two hundred gave