Page:Jung - The psychology of dementia praecox.djvu/86

62 diminished attention, thought is rather superficially connected. The state of diminished attention expresses itself in a decrease of clearness of ideation. Whenever the ideas are not clear their differences, too, are not clear; hence our sensitiveness to differences is naturally diminished, for it is nothing but a function of attention or clearness (synonyms). Therefore there is nothing to prevent the mistaking of one idea ("psychic molecule") for another, although normally they are clearly defined. The experimental expression for this fact is the increase of mediate associations produced by the distractibility. (See Beitrag IB of the "Diagnost. Assoz.-Stud.") It is known that the mediate associations of the association experiments (especially in a condition of distraction), are generally nothing else than a displacement of an intimate connection by phrase or sound. (For example, see Beitrag I. Intr. "Diagnost. Assoz.-Stud.") On account of the distraction the psyche becomes uncertain in the choice of expression, and has to be satisfied with all sorts of errors in the speech and acoustic systems, thus resembling a paraphasic. We can readily assume the external distraction in our experiments to be replaced by a complex which displays its autonomous effect beside the activity of the ego-complex. We have discussed above the resulting association phenomena. Whenever the complex becomes excited the conscious association becomes disturbed and superficial, due to an escape of attention (or inhibition of