What is the association?

Association (from Latin – “join with”) – in psychology – the regular link between individual events, facts, objects or phenomena, which are reflected in the consciousness and retained in the memory. If there is an associative connection between two psychical phenomena A and B then appearance of phenomenon A in the human’s mind will also awake appearance of phenomenon B.

Association is a definite reaction or response of the organism to external and internal irritants. The roles of external stimuli play the sense organs: our eyes, ears, tongue, nose and tactile neural receptors. Internal stimuli are thoughts and ideas, as well as signals from the nerve endings of the internal organs. Associations reveal themselves in changing the thoughts of a person. Another simple definition of association – it is the process when something causes human to think about something else.

So, what is the association? Associations are our thoughts, our conceptions of good and evil, of light and darkness. They allow us to understand ourselves and our role in this world. Word associations arise from children's fairy tales, narratives, stories and fables. They accompany us in our magical dreams. Associations are absorbed by man with breast milk, along with lullabies. Associations, like tiny grains of wheat, are carefully selected, laid and reinforced in our minds. The process of forming associations is continuous. Most actively we get word associations at childhood, school, college and university years. Read books, oral communication, and heard stories give us this magical fruitage. Our treasury continues to replenish in later years. Day after day, with every gleam of dawn we begin to learn something new: the nature and people trust us their profound secrets. Communication with interesting people and reading of engaging literature contribute to grinding, polishing and accumulation of associations. And a generous man will surely share his accumulated wealth with the world. In contrast to the experience that man acquires in the process of conceiving the world, as a result of his own observations of nature, people and himself, word associations are different. Long ago, nature has given human a language. At one time it created the greatest means of transmission of human knowledge. Due to language skills are passed from person to person, without direct reference to the object of observation, bypassing experience. Our minds and our associations are indivisible.