"It is difficult to write a history of the scientific study of the problems of dreams because, however valuable that study may have been at a few points, no line of advance in any particular direction can be traced.  No foundation had been laid of secure findings upon which a later investigator might build; but each new writer examines the same problems afresh and begins again, as it were, from the beginning."
 
-- Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams
http://www.thefetishqueen.com/foot_fetish.htm