Chapter Background of The Interpretation of Dreams - Study Guide by Sigmund Freud

Background

Most modern psychology developed along the lines of Locke's view that the source of human knowledge was through experience. Locke believed that all information about the physical world comes through the senses and that all correct ideas can be traced to the sensory information on which they are based. However, some European psychologists, remained loyal to Descartes' ideas that some mental organisation is innate and this concept still plays a role in theories of perception and cognition.

Complimentary to this philosophical background, psychology also received contributions from physiology. German physiologist Johannes Müller tried to relate sensory experience both to events in the nervous system and to events in the organism's physical environment. The first psychologists, Fechner and Wundt, introduced experimental methods for measuring sensations in terms of physical magnitude of the stimuli producing them, and in 1879 Wundt founded the first laboratory of experimental psychology. So, it was from this scientific climate that Freud developed his theories of psychoanalysis and dream interpretation, calling attention to the instinctual drives and unconscious motivational processes that determine people's behaviour.