Chapter 6: William James

A History of Psychology
(3rd Edition)
John G. Benjafield
 William James (1842–1910)
• Family wealth; liberal, democratic values
• Childhood: family visited Europe often
• 1861-1869: studied at Harvard
– First atudied chemistry; later medicine
• 1872: taught physiology at Harvard
 The Principles of Psychology

• 1878: began writing; took 12 years to

complete
• Each of its two volumes is almost 700
pages long
• Principles is a central work in the history of
psychology
 Habit
• People are largely creatures of habit
• Formation of habits depends on plasticity
• Plasticity: the ability of an organism to alter
its behaviour as circumstances change
• Habit = ‘the great flywheel of society’
 Habit: Practical Suggestions

• Important to ‘make automatic and habitual,

as early as possibly, as many useful
actions as we can’
• When first acquiring a habit, be consistent
• Form useful habits
 James’ Approach
• Consider every issue in an open-minded
fashion
• Introspection: ‘looking into our own minds
and reporting what we there discover’
– Not perfect, readily prone to error
– Indispensable source of data
 Phenomenology
• James as a precursor to phenomenology?
– Method that follows from Brentano and Husserl
• James did not impose a prior set of
categories on experience
• Psychologist’s fallacy: to confuse one’s
standpoint with that of the mental fact about
which one is make a report
• Psychology = a natural science
– Not an experimentalist but acknowledged
experimental and comparative methods
 Use of Metaphor
• Characteristic feature of James’ method
– Not just a literary device
• Convey overall complexity without
necessarily specifying precision
• Ex. The stream of thought
 The Stream of Thought

≠ only intellectual events

• ‘Thought’ = all of our experiences
• Later renamed ‘the stream of
consciousness’
– Vs. ‘train of thought’ or ‘chain of thought’
 The Stream of Consciousness
Characteristics:
1. ‘Every thought tends to be part of a personal
consciousness’
2. ‘With each personal consciousness thought is always
changing’
3. ‘Within each personal consciousness thought is
sensibly continuous’
4. ‘Consciousness always appears to deal with objects
independent of itself’
5. ‘It is interested in some parts of these objects to the
exclusion of others, and welcomes or rejects all the
while’
Consciousness is like a bird’s life…
• ‘alternation of flights and perchings’
• Places where the stream flows at different
rates
– Substantive parts: places were the stream
flows slowly
– Transitive parts: places where the stream
flows quickly
– Language better suited to describing
substantive parts
 Fringe of Consciousness

• Stream of consciousness does not have a

well-defined edge
– Difficulty to say where it ends and begins
• James discussed events beyond the fringe
of consciousness
– Ex. Tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon
 The Consciousness of Self
Self divided into two parts:
1. I: knows things, including oneself
= Pure ego
2. Me: what I know about myself
= Empirical self
 The Pure Ego

• Can we say anything about a self that

exists over and above our experiences?
• James’ conclusion:
– Nothing of the pure ego we can observe
– If it exists, pure ego cannot observe itself
 The Empirical Self
Divided into three parts:
• The Material Self
= All those things you would call yours
• The Social Self
= Tied to those occasions when other people recognize
us
• The Spiritual Self
= A person’s inner or subjective being (≠ Soul)

Success
Self  esteem 
Prentions
 Attention
• Descriptions of attention still cited by
theorists 100 years after the publication of
Principles
• Appreciated the complexity of attention
– Inattention: the process by which we do not
pay attention to what we are doing
• Very common
• Automatic Writing
 Memory

• Primary memory: of the present moment

= Immediate memory
– Tends to be quickly forgotten without
rehearsal
– Permits us to recall recent experiences
immediately and accurately
• Secondary memory: of the past
 The Emotions

• James-Lange Theory of Emotions

– Called Lange because similar viewpoint
advanced independently by C.G. Lange
– The theory appears to have been
systematically misinterpreted for decades
– Critic: Walter B. Cannon
 Will
• 1870: James resolved bout of depression
partly by choosing to believe in free will
– We cannot freely choose to do anything
whatsoever
– But our will can make a difference when we
are in conflict situation
• Preoccupaton with will power
– Supported self-help movements
 Other Topics in Principles

• Parapsychology
• Religious experience
 Distinctions between People
• Tough-mindedness: tends to place great
store in facts and is materialistic,
pessimistic, and skeptical
• Tender-mindedness: tends to believe in
principles and is idealistic, optimistic, and
religious
 James on Freud
• James met Freud in America in 1909:

‘…I have always wished that I might be as

fearless as he was in the face of
approaching death’

‘The future of psychology belongs to your

work’