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In his later technical formulations, Freud (1906) was more directly influenced by the associationist psychological schools of the time, especially in their applications of associations to experimental psychology and criminal law. In his “Psycho-Analysis and the Establishment of the Facts in Legal Proceedings,” Freud referenced (1906) the ‘School of Wilhelm Wundt’ (1883), in Leipzig, who theorized about the interconnections of psychic components in his association experiments . Therein, Wundt measured the reaction time between word-stimulus and word-response as a function of subjective states. Hans Gross , a professor of criminal law in Prague, along with his students, initiated a broad application of word association tests in criminal proceedings (Freud 1906). Emil Kraepelin applied word associations in a descriptive clinical psychiatric setting. Carl Jung (1906) further developed Wundt's notion of the connections between psychic elements and word association testing — from a dynamic point of view. Jung postulated that associations and their reaction times (as produced in Wundt's word association experiments) are determined by the totality of reactions to a specific, emotionally charged event. Jung gave this totality the name 'complex' (Jung 1906). In regard to Jung’s influence, Freud refers to it explicitly in the following passage: “…the Zurich school (Bleuler, Jung, etc.) in describing a group of interdependent ideational elements cathected with affect as a ‘complex’. We see, then, that if in our search for a repressed complex in one of our patients we start out from the last thing he remembers, we shall have every prospect of discovering the complex, provided that the patient puts a sufficient number of his free associations [ freien Einfall ] at our disposal. Accordingly, we allow the patient to say whatever he likes, and hold fast to the postulate that nothing can occur to him which is not in an indirect fashion dependent on the complex we are in search of.” (1910 a . p.:31-32) In “A Note on the Prehistory of the Technique of Psychoanalysis”, Freud (1920) credits Dr. J. J. Garth Wilkinson’s “new method” of “Impression” as a predecessor of free associatio n, among others. Wilkinson referred to it as “a kind of exalted laissez-faire”, in which “reason and will are left aside…and the faculties of the mind are directed to ends they know not of” (Wilkinson 1857, in Freud 1920, p. 264). It should be noted that Wilkinson used this method for writing poetry, not for clinical purposes. Additionally, Freud (1920) cites Ludwig Börne’s (1823) essay “The Art of Becoming an Original Writer in Three Days”, which he read when he was 14 years old, and which, besides using the word ‘censorship’ instructs: “Take a few sheets of paper and for three days on end write down, without fabrication or hypocrisy, everything that comes into your head …and when three days have passed you will be quite out of your senses with astonishment at the new and unheard-of thoughts you have had. This is the art of becoming an original writer in three days.” (Börne 1823, in Freud 1920, p. 265).
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