How does John Locke's association of ideas influence Tristram Shandy?

Laurence Sterne was explicit about the influence of Lockean psychology on his writing in Tristram Shandy. Specifically, the narrator, Tristram, utilizes John Locke's principle of the association of ideas to explain the complexities of his life story and his family's eccentricities.12

In the novel, this principle helps account for the characters' tendency to reinvent or mythologize the conditions of their own lives. By incorporating this psychological framework, Sterne explores how individual experiences and thoughts are linked, which contributes to the novel's experimental structure, including its frequent digressions and non-chronological narrative. Ultimately, this influence reinforces the novel's themes regarding the isolation of individuals and the limitations of language, as characters struggle to connect their private, associated thoughts with the external world.12