Many psychologists influence each other, and trigger theories for further experimentation, some battle each others theories, and some pay no attention to others theories. That is not the case with Wilhelm Wundt, William James, and Sigmund Freud. Freud was greatly influenced by both Wundt and James, and applied their knowledge, practices, and theories to his. I believe that Freud definitely took ideas from both Wilhelm Wundt, and William James. Wundt and James brought a lot of new ideas to the table that were a direct influence to the genius of Sigmund Freud. James idea of using introspective analysis of the states of conscious mind in daily life and functions they show physically for the organism, I believe opened he door for Freud. The major idea probed by Freud, and touched on by the others, was the idea of the unconscious. If some psychologists study the conscious mind then that leaves room for others to counter the conscious with the unconscious. The one thing that all of these psychologists had an interest in was ability to crack into the human psyche.
I believe that Freud definitely took some of Wundt’s ideas on experimental psychology to further strengthen his ideas in psychology, for example his idea of the unconscious. Wundt used the idea of self-observation to demonstrate more ideas of experimental psychology. Self-observation was founded by Wundt and is used to discover the inner mind of the individual. As we know, Freud used the idea of performing psychoanalysis on himself to uncover his unconscious. Without the idea of self-observation Freud would have been unable to further his research on psychoanalysis, as well as the unconscious.
James however, was not as interested in the idea of the unconscious. He believed that the unconscious was more prominent in the idea of Abnormal Psychology, most importantly, the idea of split personality disorder. James did not consider Freud idea of the unconscious to be used for a source of motivation and the...