To get at the facts which he suspected she was consciously or unconsciously concealing from him, Doctor Brill decided to make use of what is known as the “association-reaction method of mental diagnosis,” a cumbersome and formidable term for a really simple process.
Everybody knows that if a man is suddenly asked a question bearing on matters which personally concern him and which he is anxious to keep entirely to himself, he is apt to “react” to the question in a way that will betray the true state of affairs. He may blush or stammer before replying, may reply evasively, may find it impossible to reply at all. If he is a man of uncommon self-control, and not to be taken off his guard, the reply may come smoothly enough, and to all appearance without hesitation. Nevertheless, experiment has shown that, even in such cases, there is an appreciable difference in the time, if not in the character, of the replies he makes to emotion-arousing questions, as compared with the time it takes him to reply to questions that have no special significance to him. The same holds good in the case of questions evoking within him memories—albeit perhaps wholly subconscious memories—of happenings that may be no longer, but once were, of keen emotional import to him.
Out of the discovery of this fact the association-reaction method has been evolved. The specialist using it reads slowly to his patient a list of one hundred words or more, and requests him, as he hears each, to respond with the first word that comes into his mind. Seemingly the list of stimulus words is chosen at random; actually it is so constructed that some of the words are likely to stir into activity the subconscious memories of which the physician is in search. If they do this the fact will be disclosed in the time of his reaction-words—the words he utters in reply—as measured by a chronoscope or stop-watch; or in their character, as noted down by the specialist.
Of course, it is necessary for the physician to select words having, or likely to have, emotional significance to the particular patient; and as a guide in the selection, strange though it may seem, nothing is more useful than the patient’s dreams. For it has been definitely established that dreams are far from being the haphazard products of imagination they are generally supposed to be; that on the contrary, no matter how trivial or nonsensical they seem, they always have an emotional foundation corresponding with some present or past reality; and that usually they mask matters of distinct significance to the dreamer.
As a preliminary, then, in the treatment of his nervous patient, Doctor Brill asked her to write out her dreams and bring them to him.
“But,” she said, “I never dream, except when I am troubled by indigestion, and then my dreams are so absurd that they are not worth telling.”
“Never mind,” was his reply. “Whenever you do happen to have a dream, report it to me.”
Laughingly she promised to comply, and one day brought him the following: