You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
In this extremely clear manual Sutherland and Gill present a development of the Word Association method in connection with the object-relation theory of personality. As the authors point out, conflicts create various kinds of inappropriate responses and there are many ways in which the formal aspects of verbal communication can be influenced. Two main differences compared with the model as developed by Jung are, first, that the response to the stimulus word is a complete sentence and is considered to give more meaningful data about the subject's inner world than would a single word or an incomplete sentence. Secondly, the entire dynamic analysis of the subject response is made in relation to the object-relation theory.
The first part of the book therefore presents a very condensed but clear exposition of the object-relation theory and its implications for both normal and neurotic individuals, followed by a description of the test procedure in which the subject has to respond with one sentence to each of one hundred selected stimulus words. The last part of the book is concerned with eight case studies. Each study includes a clinical report, the response to the test in extenso and the analysis of the results. Thus it is possible to obtain most of the necessary amplification and detail as to the use of the test.
To my mind the two chapters on preliminary studies constitute the most interesting part of the book; they are of interest to both the experimental psychologist and the analyst.
The first preliminary study is an assessment of the efficiency of the test in detecting changes in personality functioning. Four groups matched for sex, age and intelligence were given the test. These four groups were 1, new patients; 2, patients in treatment; 3, patients after treatment; 4, normals. In spite of the lack of statistical treatment of the data resulting from the small sample of patients tested, the results show differences between patients and normals and to a lesser degree b