Locke and the association of ideas

Locke thinks that ideas sometimes get associated together but not by the deliberate intervention of the mind. An example is a person who learns to dance in a room furnished with a particular trunk, and thereafter can only dance if a trunk is present in the room of performance.

See the Essay Book II Chapter XXXIII Section 16

There is nothing here of ideas forming functional associations without rteason's intervention, which is a view sometimes attributed to 'Associationism'.