tions of time, which are, of course, entirely unnoticeable so long as no exact measurements are introduced. Like many other branches of experimental psychology, the doctrine of association has become adjusted to the practical problems of education, of medicine, of art, of commerce, and of law. It is the last which chiefly concerns us here a kind of investigation which began in Germany and has since been developed here and abroad. For instance, our purpose may be to find out whether a suspected person has really participated in a certain crime. He declares that he is innocent, that he was not present when the outrage occurred, and that he is not even familiar with the locality. An innocent man will not object to our proposing a series of one hundred associations to demonstrate his innocence. A guilty man, of course, will not object, either, as a declination would indicate a fear of betraying himself; he cannot refuse, and yet affirm his innocence. Moreover, he will feel sure that no questions can bring out any facts which he wants to keep hidden in his soul; he will be on the lookout. As long as nothing more is demanded than that he speak the first word which comes to his mind, when another word is spoken to him, there is indeed no legal and no practical reason for declining, as long as innocence is professed. Such an experiment will at once become interesting in three different directions as soon as we mix into our list of one hundred words a number, perhaps thirty, which stand in more or less close connection to the crime in question words which refer to the details of the locality, or to the persons present at the crime, or to the probable motive, or to the professed alibi, and so on. The first direction of our interest is toward the choice of the associations. Of course, every one believes that he would be sure to admit only harmless words to his lips; but the conditions of the experiment quickly destroy that. feeling of safety. As soon as a dangerous association rushes to the consciousness, it tries to push its way out. It may, indeed, need some skill to discover the psychical influence, as the suspected person may have selfcontrol enough not to give away the dangerous idea directly; but the suppressed idea remains in consciousness, and taints the next association, or perhaps the next but one, without his knowledge. He has, perhaps, slain a woman in her room, and yet protests that he has never been in her house. By the side of her body was a cage with a canary bird. I therefore mix into my list of words also "bird." His mind is full of the gruesome memory of his heinous deed. The word "bird," therefore, at once awakens the association "canary bird" in his consciousness; yet he is immediately aware that this would be suspicious, and he succeeds, before the dangerous word comes to his lips, in substituting the harmless word "sparrow." Yet my next word, or perhaps my second or third next, is "color," and his prompt association is "yellow" the canary bird is still in his mind, and shows its betraying influence. The preparation of the list of words to be called thus needs psychological judgment and insight if a man with quick self-control is to be trapped. In most cases, however, there is hardly any need of relying on the next and following words, as the primary associations for the critical words unveil themselves for important evidence directly enough. Yet not only the first associations are interesting. There is interest in another direction in the associations which result from a second and a third repetition of the series. Perhaps after half an hour, I go once more through the whole list. The subject gives once more his hundred replies. An analysis of the results will show that most of the words which he now gives are the same which he gave the first time; pronouncing the words has merely accentuated his tendency to associate them in the same connection as before. If it was "house" -"window" first, then it will probably be "house" "window" again. But a number of associations have been changed, and a careful analysis will show that these are first of all the suspicious ones. Those words which by their connection with the crime stir up deep emotional complexes of ideas will throw ever new associations into consciousness, while the indifferent ones will link themselves in a superficial way without change. To a certain degree, this variation of the dangerous associations is reënforced by the intentional effort of the suspected. He does not feel satisfied with his first words, and hopes that other words will better hide his real thoughts, not knowing that just this change is to betray him. But most important is the third direction of inquiry: more characteristic than the choice and the constancy of the associations is their involuntary retardation by emotional influence. A word which stirs emotional memories will show an association time twice or three times as long as a commonplace idea.... The retardation is not always confined to the dangerous association alone, but often comes in a still more pregnant way in the following or the next following association, which on the surface looks entirely harmless. The emotional shock has perturbed the working of the mechanism, and the path for all associations is blocked. The analysis of these secondary time retardations is the factor which demands the greatest psychological skill. A few illustrations from practical life may make the whole method clearer. An educated young man of eighteen lived in the house of an uncle. The old gentleman went to consult a nerve specialist in regard to some slight nervous trouble of the younger friend. On that occasion he confided his recent suspicion that the young man might be a thief. Money had repeatedly been taken from a drawer and from a trunk; until lately he had had suspicions only of the servants; he had notified the police, and detectives had watched them. He was most anxious to find out whether his new suspicion was true, as he wanted, in that case, to keep the matter out of court, in the interest of the family. The physician, Dr. Jung, in Zurich, arranged that the young man come for an examination of his nerves. He then proposed to him a list of a hundred associations as part of the medical inspection. The physician said "head," the patient associated "nose"; then green" -"blue," "water"-"air," "long". "short," "five" "six,' 'wool" cloth," and so on, the average time of these commonplace connections being 1.6 seconds. But there were thirty-seven dangerous words scattered among the hundred words that had to do with the things in the room from which the money was abstracted, or with the theft and its punishment, or with some possible motives. There appeared, for instance, the word "thief." The association "burglar" seemed quite natural, but it took the boy suddenly 4.6 seconds to reach it. In the same way "police"-"theft" took 3.6 seconds, "jail"—"penitentiary" 4.2 seconds. In other cases the dangerous word itself came with normal automatic quickness, but the emotional disturbance became evident in the retardation of the next word. For instance, "key"—"false key" took only 1.6 seconds, but the following trivial association "stupid" — “clever ” 66 99 66 grew to 3.0 seconds. "Crime" "theft" came again promptly in 1.8, but the inner shock was so strong that the commonplace word "cook" was entirely inhibited and did not produce an association at all in 20 seconds. In the same way "bread" "water" rushed forward in 1.6 seconds, but this characteristic choice, the supposed diet of the jail, stopped the associative mechanism again for the following trivial word. It would lead too far to go further into the analysis of the case, but it may be added that a repetition of the same series showed the characteristic variations in the region of the suspicious words. While "crime" had brought "theft" the first time, it was the second time replaced by "murder"; "discover" brought the first time "wrong," the second time "grasp." In the harmless words there was hardly any change at all. But, finally, a subtle analysis of the selection of words and of the retardations pointed to sufficient details to make a clear diagnosis. The physician told the young man that he had stolen; the boy protested vehemently. Then the physician gave him the subtle points unveiled by the associations - how he had bought a watch with the money and had given presents to his sister; and the boy confessed everything, and was saved from jail by the early discovery. ... Our chief interest belongs to the legal aspect of this method. Carried out with the skill which only long laboratory training can give, it has become, indeed, a magnifying glass for the most subtle mental mechanism, and by it the secrets of the criminal mind may be unveiled. All this has, of course, no legal standing to-day, and there is probably no one who desires to increase the number of "experts" in our criminal courts. But justice demands that truth and lies be disentangled. . . . The "third degree" may brutalize the mind and force either correct or falsified secrets to light; the time-measurement of associations is swifter and cleaner, more scientific, more humane, and more reliable in bringing out the truth which justice demands. Of course, we are only at the beginning of its development; the new method is still in many ways imperfect, and if clumsily applied it may be misleading; moreover, there exists no hard and fast rule which fits every case mechanically. But all this indicates only that, just as the bodily facts have to be examined by the chemist or the physiologist, the mental facts must be examined also, not by the layman, but by the scientific psychologist, with the training of a psychological laboratory. 289. JOHN H. WIGMORE. The Psychology of Testimony. (Illinois Law Review. 1909. Vol. III, p. 410.) . . . The method of guilt-diagnosis by psychic associations was first publicly announced by Wertheimer and Klein in 1904, in the Austrian "Archiv für Kriminal-Anthropologie," edited by Hans Gross (their master, and professor of criminal law at Graz), and immediately taken up by Alfred Gross, at Prag. Meanwhile Jung, at Zurich, a psychologist, quite independently had been making similar applications, which first saw the light in 1905. Thereafter these two sets of researches were widely discussed in the same technical journals, from 1905 onwards. But the method is as yet in its infancy. Such statements as the following are significant for example, by Loeffler, professor at Vienna, in 1906: "Before we dare to rely on it in a real criminal case, it must be first studied in thousands of laboratory experiments;" by Gottschalk, advocate at Berlin, in 1906, "This method is so far in such mere beginnings that one cannot speak of it as having practical utility; it can therefore be here ignored;" by Lederer, of Prag, in 1906, "The danger of this method is certainly an adequate reason for rejecting it. Where it is not dangerous, it is usually quite fruitless. . . . We may positively say that criminal investigation has in the new method, either as hitherto put forward or as later to be improved, nothing useful to expect; " or by Hoegel, chief State's attorney at Vienna, in 1907, "I regard it as inconceivable to expect the State and the officers intrusted with the administration of justice to make use of an instrument so doubtful as this diagnostic against accused persons, even with their consent." . . . ... Let us take the psychologists themselves. Listen, for example, to Freud, lecturing to the law students at Vienna in 1906. "In the laboratory experiments you will never be able to reproduce the identical situation of the real accused person. . . . It should be your right, and even your duty, to carry on investigations for a series of years with suitable accused persons but without letting the results have any influence on the decision of the magistrate, or better still, without his having any knowledge of the results reached as to a particular person's guilt. After years and years of accumulation and comparison of such data, all doubt of the utility of this psychological method would certainly be dissipated.". . . Jung himself, after the first publication and critical reception of his results, frankly admitted, as late as 1906, in view of Stern's doubts and Krauss' critique, "To this doubt I must fully agree; the discrimination between the guilty and the innocent thus is difficult. I agree with Krauss in apprehending great difficulties in the application of the experiments to judicial practice. . . . I shall not quarrel with any one who says that he is unconvinced by the method. I do not desire to pour cold water on it, but I am not reluctant to warn against an unjustifiable optimism. I do this in the interest of the method itself, which can easily be discredited by striking instances of misuse. It is a delicate instrument. . . . In its present state one must not expect too much from it, though it has an undeniable capacity for development." and finally, in replying to Lederer's searching criticisms (above quoted), Jung again frankly declares in 1906, "I am of Lederer's opinion, that the psychological diagnostic, at least as yet, is thoroughly unsuitable for criminal practice.”. In short, on the Continent the new method appears to have met with a large, if not overwhelming, measure of hesitation, doubt, and opposition among jurists and even psychologists, in that the proposal of its practical use is regarded as quite premature at least. Now, as we read four centuries ago, in one of the earliest books on Evidence, "Præsumitur contra eum qui vellet innovare;" to which is the proviso, "nisi ista novitas esset utilis." So that the question here really is, Is this novelty useful and practicable? To this end let us ask, (1) Does the method indicate guilt? (2) Are its indications exact? (3) Are its conditions practical? And first, (1) Does this method indicate guilt? Is not the most that is claimed by its adherents this much, that they can diagnose whether the person knows about the facts? And that how he came to know them whether as a guilty doer or a mere spectator or even a disinterested witness or a newspaper reader - cannot be discriminated. For example, Alfred Gross himself plainly says, "In those persons to whom the sought facts are known we can diagnose with passable certainty their guilt or at least their strong suspicion or knowledge of the facts. Our task has been thus far no more than to answer the question whether a person knows of a certain fact or not." . . So that the method, even at these highest claims for it, does not indicate in any way whether the person's knowledge is guilty or innocent. . . . (2) Are its indications exact? In other words, are they not subject to so many possible interpretations as to be too loose for any practical use? ... Let us first take, as an example, the detailed report of Loeffler, professor of criminal law at Vienna. His experiment was on an assistant State's attorney, supposed to be arrested in a foreign country on suspicion of crime, and trying to pass himself off there as a bookkeeper. One hundred reactions were taken; let us look at some of them. (a) In the first eight, the reactiontime of six of them is 1.4 to 1.8 seconds, but the fifth, being 2 seconds, is "Service-Forenoon," which the observer calls a "self-betrayal" as attorney. Now, apart from this queer interpretation, look at the seventh reaction, which is the largest of the eight, 2.6 seconds, and reads "Write-Bill," and note that this "self-betrayal" as bookkeeper is quite ignored by the observer. (b) In the next group, reaction No. 11 is 2.6 seconds, and is called a "betrayal" because Nos. 12 and 13, which are 7.4 and 3.4 seconds, are so much longer, though colorless in their words. (c) In another series, the reaction of No. 4, in 4.6 seconds, "Private-party," is triumphantly taken as a "betrayal" because of the length of time though it is hard to see why a State's attorney thinks of "private parties." (d) In the same group, with reaction words "press-seen," after "copy-made," the observer complacently says of the former: "No bookkeeper would ever have reacted in this way!" and quite ignores the "copy-made." Now we do not lay stress on the radical lack of scientific method here; I mean that those who boast of testing everything by experiment should not affirm that “no bookkeeper would have reacted thus" without finding by experiment whether bookkeepers do thus react. What I desire to note is the delightful adaptability of this method to a judge's whims, in allowing him to prove whatever he is hoping to prove. For, observe the method as thus used: If the reaction-word is one essentially relevant to the accused's supposed occupation, it is a "betrayal"; if the word itself is colorless, but its reaction-time is long, it is also a "betrayal"; if it is colorless, and its own reaction-time is normal, but the ensuing reaction-time is long, it is again a betrayal; and if the word indicates some innocent occupation, it is ignored entirely. Now after reckoning these four possibilities, there will remain only a few reactions, so that the zealous magistrate is sure to "get his man"; there is no failure; he can always find guilt — if he wishes to. Might not any one whosoever be convicted on the above interpretations? This whimsicality and arbitrariness of interpretation are constantly to be seen in the records of these experiments. For example, in Jung's own |