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Jung's Collected Works #2
Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Volume 2: Experimental Researches
Includes Jung's famous word-association studies in normal and abnormal psychology, two lectures on the association method given in 1909 at Clark University, and three articles on psychophysical researches from American and English journals in 1907 and 1908.
661 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1973
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443 people want to read
About the author
C.G. Jung
1,875 books11.5k followersCarl Gustav Jung (/jʊŋ/; German: [ˈkarl ˈɡʊstaf jʊŋ]), often referred to as C. G. Jung, was a Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology. Jung proposed and developed the concepts of extraversion and introversion; archetypes, and the collective unconscious. His work has been influential in psychiatry and in the study of religion, philosophy, archeology, anthropology, literature, and related fields. He was a prolific writer, many of whose works were not published until after his death.
The central concept of analytical psychology is individuation—the psychological process of integrating the opposites, including the conscious with the unconscious, while still maintaining their relative autonomy. Jung considered individuation to be the central process of human development.
Jung created some of the best known psychological concepts, including the archetype, the collective unconscious, the complex, and synchronicity. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), a popular psychometric instrument, has been developed from Jung's theory of psychological types.
Though he was a practising clinician and considered himself to be a scientist, much of his life's work was spent exploring tangential areas such as Eastern and Western philosophy, alchemy, astrology, and sociology, as well as literature and the arts. Jung's interest in philosophy and the occult led many to view him as a mystic, although his ambition was to be seen as a man of science. His influence on popular psychology, the "psychologization of religion", spirituality and the New Age movement has been immense.
The central concept of analytical psychology is individuation—the psychological process of integrating the opposites, including the conscious with the unconscious, while still maintaining their relative autonomy. Jung considered individuation to be the central process of human development.
Jung created some of the best known psychological concepts, including the archetype, the collective unconscious, the complex, and synchronicity. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), a popular psychometric instrument, has been developed from Jung's theory of psychological types.
Though he was a practising clinician and considered himself to be a scientist, much of his life's work was spent exploring tangential areas such as Eastern and Western philosophy, alchemy, astrology, and sociology, as well as literature and the arts. Jung's interest in philosophy and the occult led many to view him as a mystic, although his ambition was to be seen as a man of science. His influence on popular psychology, the "psychologization of religion", spirituality and the New Age movement has been immense.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
December 16, 2025
Doctor: Are you quite comfortable?
Subject: Perfectly, thank you.
Doctor: Then we shall begin. I will state a word, and I want you to reply immediately with a word or phrase in response. There is no correct or incorrect answer; you should respond with whatever word comes to your mind.
Subject: I am ready.
Doctor: Very well, here we go. Pleasure.
Subject: Books.
Doctor: Violence.
Subject: Social media.
Doctor: Goodreads.
Subject: Enshittification.
Doctor: Freud.
Subject: Penis. I mean, Venus.
Doctor: Jung.
Subject: Traumlogik.
Doctor: Amazon.
Subject: Uh…evil.
Doctor: I can’t help noticing there was some hesitation there.
Subject: Yes, I was about to scream a swearword in your face, but I restrained myself.
Doctor: Well try not to let it happen again.
Subject: Understood, doctor.
Doctor: Let’s continue. Zurich.
Subject: Gnomes.
Doctor: Word association.
Subject: Dubious.
Doctor: Let me stop you there. You find this technique scientifically dubious?
Subject: Well, some of the conclusions drawn from it seem tenuous to me.
Doctor: Nonsense.
Subject: Trump.
Doctor: No, I meant – oh, never mind. Why do you find the conclusions tenuous?
Subject: Well, one epileptic patient in Jung’s study replies ‘hat’ to the stimulus-word ‘head’. Jung says this is a reflection of his ‘stupidity complex’, on the grounds that a friend of the patient’s once drew a sketch of him with ass’s ears and he still felt embarrassed about it. But associating hats with heads seems perfectly reasonable to me.
Doctor: Might I suggest that you leave such things to the professionals?
Subject: Well, you asked.
Doctor: We don’t have many to go. Can we just get these finished?
Subject: Yes, all right.
Doctor: Psychology.
Subject: Fascination.
Doctor: Sex.
Subject: Mummy.
Doctor: A-ha!
Subject: I felt I had to throw you a bone somewhere.
Doctor: Asylum.
Subject: Home.
Doctor: Creative writing.
Subject: This book.
Doctor: Impossible.
Subject: This review.
Subject: Perfectly, thank you.
Doctor: Then we shall begin. I will state a word, and I want you to reply immediately with a word or phrase in response. There is no correct or incorrect answer; you should respond with whatever word comes to your mind.
Subject: I am ready.
Doctor: Very well, here we go. Pleasure.
Subject: Books.
Doctor: Violence.
Subject: Social media.
Doctor: Goodreads.
Subject: Enshittification.
Doctor: Freud.
Subject: Penis. I mean, Venus.
Doctor: Jung.
Subject: Traumlogik.
Doctor: Amazon.
Subject: Uh…evil.
Doctor: I can’t help noticing there was some hesitation there.
Subject: Yes, I was about to scream a swearword in your face, but I restrained myself.
Doctor: Well try not to let it happen again.
Subject: Understood, doctor.
Doctor: Let’s continue. Zurich.
Subject: Gnomes.
Doctor: Word association.
Subject: Dubious.
Doctor: Let me stop you there. You find this technique scientifically dubious?
Subject: Well, some of the conclusions drawn from it seem tenuous to me.
Doctor: Nonsense.
Subject: Trump.
Doctor: No, I meant – oh, never mind. Why do you find the conclusions tenuous?
Subject: Well, one epileptic patient in Jung’s study replies ‘hat’ to the stimulus-word ‘head’. Jung says this is a reflection of his ‘stupidity complex’, on the grounds that a friend of the patient’s once drew a sketch of him with ass’s ears and he still felt embarrassed about it. But associating hats with heads seems perfectly reasonable to me.
Doctor: Might I suggest that you leave such things to the professionals?
Subject: Well, you asked.
Doctor: We don’t have many to go. Can we just get these finished?
Subject: Yes, all right.
Doctor: Psychology.
Subject: Fascination.
Doctor: Sex.
Subject: Mummy.
Doctor: A-ha!
Subject: I felt I had to throw you a bone somewhere.
Doctor: Asylum.
Subject: Home.
Doctor: Creative writing.
Subject: This book.
Doctor: Impossible.
Subject: This review.
June 28, 2022
One of Jung’s early works, dealing primarily with word association tests and early skin conductivity and respiratory measurements. These would be used separate or in combination to identify the subject’s complexes (ideas/concepts/topics/memories with strong emotions attached to them).
The word association tests run like the board game Battleship. The facilitator would ask the subject to say the first thing that comes to mind as fast as they can when the facilitator said a word. Anytime a response took longer than average to be given or an odd response was given, boom! you got a hit. When finished, they would go through the word list again and anytime they could t reproduce the word or took a long time, boom! another hit. Take these all together and you can start to map out a subject’s complexes. These are usually unknown to the person and are step one to applying psychotherapeutic treatment.
The skin conductivity tests acted like a proto-lie detector test. The word association test would be given and the skin conductivity would be measured. The sweat gland affects the conductivity and responds to certain words, fairly reliably according to Jung. The respiratory tests didn’t give much useful data.
This is not a page turner. Lots of charts, graphs, and descriptions of the different types of word associations one might give and what is more likely based on sex, intelligence, and education, for example rhyming words (chair/stare), subjective opinions (garlic/gross), etc.
The word association tests run like the board game Battleship. The facilitator would ask the subject to say the first thing that comes to mind as fast as they can when the facilitator said a word. Anytime a response took longer than average to be given or an odd response was given, boom! you got a hit. When finished, they would go through the word list again and anytime they could t reproduce the word or took a long time, boom! another hit. Take these all together and you can start to map out a subject’s complexes. These are usually unknown to the person and are step one to applying psychotherapeutic treatment.
The skin conductivity tests acted like a proto-lie detector test. The word association test would be given and the skin conductivity would be measured. The sweat gland affects the conductivity and responds to certain words, fairly reliably according to Jung. The respiratory tests didn’t give much useful data.
This is not a page turner. Lots of charts, graphs, and descriptions of the different types of word associations one might give and what is more likely based on sex, intelligence, and education, for example rhyming words (chair/stare), subjective opinions (garlic/gross), etc.
August 18, 2016
If you were to read just one book by Jung, this is probably the one most not to choose. A tome of word association studies that becomes gradually more involved, until finally the subjects are hooked up to galvanometers and pneumographs, this book took me many weeks to finish, and my experience ranged from enthralled to bleary-eyed, though even these latter sections had value. The galvanometric studies are cowritten, and perhaps for that reason are sometimes less clear than the others. but this just made me more aware of how engaging Jung can be - when on his own - on even the most technical subjects. With him setting up the background, one can almost recreate many of the studies in the imagination while looking at the tables of results. And when he combines psychoanalysis of individual patients with the word associations, the writing can be fascinating.
A side note: the book has multiple references to a fascinating study called, unfortunately but in the medical language of the time, 'The Associations of Imbeciles and Idiots' by Dr. K. Wehrlin. This study can be found online for free on the Hathi Trust site, on p. 173 of Studies in word association: Experiments in the diagnosis of psychopathological conditions carried out at the psychiatric clinic of the University of Zurich -- or use this link: http://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.390150... -- and this book also contains other perhaps just as fascinating studies referenced in Experimental Researches.
A side note: the book has multiple references to a fascinating study called, unfortunately but in the medical language of the time, 'The Associations of Imbeciles and Idiots' by Dr. K. Wehrlin. This study can be found online for free on the Hathi Trust site, on p. 173 of Studies in word association: Experiments in the diagnosis of psychopathological conditions carried out at the psychiatric clinic of the University of Zurich -- or use this link: http://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.390150... -- and this book also contains other perhaps just as fascinating studies referenced in Experimental Researches.
December 19, 2013
This and the volumes preceding and following of the Collected Works generally represent Jung before his personal association with Freud, laying low the common belief that he was just another "follower" of the founder of psychoanalysis. In terms of the history of psychology and psychiatry this may be the most important of them as it contains the bulk of his work in word associations tested by what amounts to a primitive galvanometer (lie detector). Despite the technical nature of many of the articles, Jung's excitement in advancing the new science is conveyed.
May 15, 2024
Basically unreadable. Mainly a lot of tables showcasing the results of word association tests.
Seems to me volume 1 & 2 are very skippable, with background in psychology you would’ve covered these ideas largely elsewhere. It is aged by today’s standard, interesting to see some moments in his development though.
In a few lines,
Volume 1 details his early clinical research and case studies in psychiatry.
Volume 2 focuses on his experimental work with the word association test, uncovering unconscious processes and complexes.
Seems to me volume 1 & 2 are very skippable, with background in psychology you would’ve covered these ideas largely elsewhere. It is aged by today’s standard, interesting to see some moments in his development though.
In a few lines,
Volume 1 details his early clinical research and case studies in psychiatry.
Volume 2 focuses on his experimental work with the word association test, uncovering unconscious processes and complexes.
May 28, 2019
Experimental researches by Carl Jung is one of the fundamental works from 1900s that lead the development of experimental and scientific research in psychiatry and psychology. Ironically, this work in itself is very speculative and unscientific, as well as pretty tedious to read - maybe because at its time it represented a very small portion of literature that tried to apply scientific experiments to measure the 'mind'.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews