William James (and his brother Henry, who became a famous novelist) was born in the Astor House, a New York hotel, into a well-known wealthy family. His father devoted himself with enthusiasm to the education of his five children, alternating between Europe (because of his belief that American schools were too restricted in their outlook) and America (because of an equally strong belief that his children should be educated among their countrymen). Jamess early formal education, often interrupted by travel, took place in France, England,
Switzerland, Germany, Italy, and the United States. (A biography of james contains a chapter on this sporadic education,
entitled, appropriately, "Zigzag Voyages.") The father encouraged intellectual independence among his children, whose family ties remained strong throughout their
lives. The stimulating experiences of his youth exposed james to the intellectual and cultural advantages of England and Europe and made him a man of the world. Frequent trips abroad characterized his entire life; his father's method of dealing with illness was to send the ailing family member to Europe rather than to a hospital. Because his health was seldom good, james became a commuter between the United States and Europe. Although his father seemed to think that none of the children needed to be concerned with learning a vocation or earning a living, he did try to encouragejainess early interest in science. At age 15, james received a microscope as a Christmas gilt. He already had a "Bunsen burner and vials of mysterious liquids which he mixed, heated, and transfused, staining his fingers and clothes, to his father's
annoyance, and sometimes even causing alarming explosions" (Allen, 1967, p. 47). james decided, however, at the age of 18, that he wanted to be an
artist. Six months at the studio of William Morris Hunt persuaded him that he lacked promise, and in 1861 he entered the Lawrence Scientific School at Harvard. He soon left his first choice, chemistry, apparently because he disdained the painstaking demands of laboratory work, and enrolled in medical school. He had little enthusiasm for the practice of medicine, however, noting that "there is much humbug therein ... with the exception of surgery, in which something positive is sometimes accomplished, a doctor does more by the moral effect of his presence on the patient and family, than by anything else. He also extracts money from them" (Allen, 1967, p. 98)..James interrupted his medical studies for a year to assist the zoologist Louis Agassiz on his expedition to Brazil to collect specimens of marine animals in the Amazon. On this trip he sampled another possible career, biology, but found that he could not tolerate the precise and orderly collecting and categorizing that this field required. His reaction to chemistry and biology was prophetic of his subsequent distaste for experimentation in
psychology. Although medicine was no more attractive to him after the 1865 expedition than it had been before, james reluctantly resumed his studies because nothing else appealed to him. He interrupted the work again, complaining of depression and physical problerns including digestive disorders, insomnia, eye problems, and a weak back. He was able to attend lectures on physiology at the University of Berlin and
remarked that it was time for "psychology to begin to be a science" (Allen, 1967, p. 140). James finally obtained his medical degree from Harvard in 1869, but his depression deepened and his will to live was not very strong. In those dark months he began to build a philosophy of life, compelled not so much by intellectual curiosity as by desperation. After reading a number of essays by the philosopher Charles Renouvier on free will, James became persuaded of its existence and resolved that bis first act of free will would be to believe in free will, and to believe that he could cure himself thrQugh belief in the efficacy of the will. He apparently succeeded to some
extent, because in 1872 he felt well enough to accept a teaching position at Harvard in physiology. After one year he took a year off to travel in Italy, but then returned to teaching. In 1875-1876 James taught bis first course in psychology, called "The Relations between Physiology and Psychology." Harvard thus became the first American university to offer the new experimental psychology. James had never received formal classroom instruction in psychology-, the first psychology lecture he attended was his own.) Also in 1875, James secured $300 from Harvard to purchase laboratory and demonstration equipment for the course. In 1878 two important events occurred. The first was his
marriage, which would produce five children and a certain amount of much needed order in bis life. it was James's father who had first met the 27-year-old schoolteacherjames was to marry. He returned from a meeting one night and announced that he had just met his son's future
wife. Shortly thereafter, James verified his father's prophecy. The second event was the signing of a contract with the publishing house of
Henry Holt, which resulted in one of the classic books in psychology. James believed that it would take him two years to write the book-, it took 12. He began the work, to the amusement of his friends, on his honeymoon. In 1880 James was made assistant professor of
philosophy. He was promoted to professor of philosophy in 1885, and his title was changed to professor of psychology in 1889. His book was delayed by travels abroad, where he met many European psychologists of the day, including Wundt, who, he
wrote, "made a pleasant and personal impression on me, with his agreeable voice and ready, tooth-showing smile." A few years later he
wrote that Wundt "isn't a genius, he is a professor-a being whose duty is to know everything, and have his own opinion about
everything" (Allen, 1967, pp. 251, 304). The Principles of Psychology finally appeared in two volumes in 1890 and was a tremendous success; it is still considered a major contribution to the field, Almost 80 years after its publication one psychologist wrote: "james' Principles is without question the most
literate, the most provocative, and at the same time the most intelligible book on psychology that has ever appeared in English or in any other language" (MacLeod, 1969, p. iii). One indication of t e boo 's popu arity is that it is o ten rea y peop e who are not required to do so. In 1892 James published a condensed
version. Not everyone reacted favorably to the book. Wundt and Titchener, whose viewsjames attacked, did not like it. "It is literature," Wundt
wrote, "it is beautiful, but it is not psychology" (Bjork, 1983, p. 12).
James's own reaction to the book on its completion was not favorable either. In a letter to his publisher he described the manuscript as 'la
loathsome, distended, tumefied, bloated, dropsical mass, testifying to nothing but two facts: Ist, that there is no such thing as a science of
psychology, and 2nd, that W.J. is an incapable" (Allen, 1967, pp. 314-315).
With the publication of The Principles, James decided that he had said all he wanted to about the science of psychology and no longer
wanted to direct the psychological laboratory He arranged for Hugo Münsterberg, then at the University of Freiburg in Germany, to become director of the Karvard laboratory and to teach courses in psychology, thus freeingjames to turn to work in
philosophy. Münsterberg had been criticized by Wundt, and this was high praise in Jamess eyes. Münsterberg, however, never fulfilledjames's intention of providing leadership in experimental research for Harvard; he worked in a variety of fields, such as psychotherapy, legal
psychology, and industrial psychology, and paid little attention to the laboratory after his first few years there. He helped to popularize
psychology, however, and to make it a more applied discipline.
We noted that james was not an experimentalist, although he did begin and equip the laboratory at Karvard. He was never fully convinced of the value of laboratory work in psychology and did not like it personally. 1 naturally hate experimental work," he had written to Münsterberg. In 1894 he stated that the United States had too many laboratories, and in The Principles he commented that the results of laboratory work were not in proportion to the amount of painstaking effort involved. It is not surprising thatjames contributed little of importance in the way of experimental
work. We noted earlier that james had no loyal disciples to carry on his point of view, nor did he direct a large number of Ph.D. students, as Titchener did, Several of james's students, however, including Angell, Thorndike, and Woodworth, made noteworthy contributions to the development of psychology. We shall discuss their work in later
chapters. James was also instrumental in facilitating the graduate education of Mary Whiton Calkins, who later became the first woman president of the American Psychological Association. Despite James high opinion of her abilities, Harvard refused to award the Ph.D. degree to a
woman. She had never been allowed to enroll formally at the university, but James had welcomed her into his seminars and had urged the university administration to grant her the degree. Later, she succeeded Williarn James as president of the APA. James spent the last 20 years of his life refining his philosophical system, and in the 1890s became Americas leading philosopher. In 1899 he published Talks to Teachers, developed from lectures he had given to teachers, which helped to apply psychology to the classroom learning situation. The Variettes of Religious Experience appeared in 1902 and three additional works in philosophy were published in 1907 and 1909. James health remained poor and he retired from Harvard in 1907. In 1898, while climbing in the Adirondack Mountains, he became lost for 13 hours and the ordeal aggraveted a heart lesion. The condition grew worse and resulted in his death in 1910, two days after his
return from a final trip to Europe. |
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