A survey of the psychological writings of Herbart, an important nineteenth-century German philosopher, reveals interesting similarities between his theory of unconscious mental functioning and Freud's. Herbart's model of the mind was spatial, or 'topographic'; it featured dynamic and economic points of view. Mental representations which opposed each other produced conflict; 'resistance' was offered to antithetic ideas. Stronger ideas forced, or 'repressed', the weaker out of awareness, or below the 'threshold of consciousness'. Representations beneath this threshold perpetually exerted a counterforce in efforts to return to consciousness, which return was possible given a change in the balance of forces.

Many of these concepts were described in a textbook which was in use at the Gymnasium while Freud was in attendance there. This textbook gives evidence of the widespread