Page:American Journal of Psychology Volume 21.djvu/614

602 These emotions are not the only symptoms of a complex. Quite frequently there are also references to the picture seen or the story read. Some of them consist of images, movements, or kinæsthetic sensations connected with the study of the picture or story, and may occur with varying degrees of completeness and vagueness. The other kind of references to the complex is more puzzling. They read like the following: "memory of end of story," or: "conscious of story," again: "aware that my association was taken from story," "the whole story was present, can't tell how," or this: "I knew stimulus-word had nothing to do with picture." The last quotation shows that some of these references appeared even when the stimulus was not intended to be significant. Probably these hints of the complex are signs of the general attitude of "being on guard," and should be grouped with the frequent attempts at justification of the given reaction-word. It may be mentioned that G did not always successfully maintain this attitude, but such cases are too rare to deserve fuller treatment.

What, then, is the "complex?" According to these results it is a strongly unpleasant group of ideas (connected with the concealed object), reinforced by certain organic sensations, and characterized by a quick change from focal crowdedness through a momentary blankness to the dominance of a single focal idea. It may, perhaps, be surprising to some readers that nothing has been said about any of the specifically Freudian complexes, such as the wish-complex, the sexual-complex, or the father-complex. Probably the conditions of these experiments were not favorable for their occurrence; the author cannot deny their existence in his dream life. It is hoped that future work will throw more light upon these problems.