INTRODUCTION: WHAT IS PSYCHOLOGY?William James (1842–1910)
William James, the brother of novelist Henry James and diarist Alice
James, is most famous for his peerless two-volume, 1400-page book
The Principles of Psychology, a hybrid of textbook, self-help manual
and confessional memoir, published in 1890. His Varieties of Religious
Experience (1902) is also considered a classic.
James’s remarkably lucid insights into the human condition remain
as fresh and relevant as ever, and contemporary students continue to
benefit from his clear descriptions of key psychological phenomena
(“Everyone knows what attention is. It is the taking possession by the
mind, in clear and vivid form, of one out of what seem several simulta-
neously possible objects or trains of thought.”). James’s gift was likely
forged in the flames of his own turmoil – he struggled to settle on a
career path, studying medicine, art and philosophy before taking up
psychology, and he suffered a breakdown of depression and anxiety
in his early twenties.
James was offered a place at Harvard in 1873 where he taught
the first ever course on experimental psychology. There’s debate over
whether he, a medic by training, also founded the first US psychological
laboratory in 1875 at Harvard, or if the honour should go instead to his
doctoral student G. Stanley Hall who established a laboratory at Johns
Hopkins University in 1883. Supporters for the latter argue that James’s
lab was mostly for demonstration rather than original research. Such
controversies aside, it’s difficult to exaggerate his influence and today
James is usually referred to as the father of American Psychology.
Although James conducted little actual psychology research of his
own, his writings – especially on such topics as consciousness, free will,
attention, the self and emotions – anticipated many later psychological
findings. In a sense James’s psychology was self-taught, although he did
study briefly under Helmholtz during one of his many visits to Europe,
and also met other European psychology and physiology pioneers,
including Carl Ludwig, Carl Stumpf and even Wilhelm Wundt. James was
also heavily influenced by Charles Darwin, as revealed by his writings on
the possible adaptive functions of human consciousness.
James served as president of the American Psychological Association
in 1904 and his former student Mary Whiton Calkins would become
the first female president of the Association the following year. As
scientific psychology sought to distance itself from the practices of
mediums, mesmerists and other charlatans, James’s continued interest
and involvement in the paranormal became an enduring embarrass-
ment to his psychologist peers. In turn, James became progressively
disillusioned with experimental psychology as it began to shun
introspection in favour of an exclusive focus on outwardly observable
behaviours. The year before James died he met Carl Jung and Sigmund
Freud at Clark University, reportedly describing the latter as a man
obsessed by fixed ideas.