William James
William James,
“the Psychological Pope of the New World,”[1]
was born in New York City on January 11, 1842. Many refer to him as the father of psychology.[2] He was born as a child of privilege to
a wealthy and religious cosmopolitan family. His father was extremely interested in literature,
philosophy and languages and pushed his children towards scholarly pursuits. He often took William and the family
for extended trips to Europe. He
was devoted to all his children and wanted to give them an education that would
put them ahead of all others. For
this reason William was enrolled in fine schools, had extremely talented
tutors, attended lectures, and visited the theater, museums and traveled to
different places
In 1952
William’s father enrolled him in the Institution Vergnes to learn
languages. However he was not
satisfied with the school and withdrew his children only one year later. Next William was enrolled in Richard
Pulling Jenks school. It was at
this school at age eleven that William discovered his love for drawing, thanks
to his drawing and artsteacher Mr. Coe.
William devoted hours to his drawing and became absorbed in his
art. William only attended the
Pulling Jenks school for a year and was again withdrawn and enrolled in another
school by his father. In fact
throughout the rest of his childhood William was continually separated from
schools and mentors that he truly liked.
It is most likely that Williams father saw this as a way to control his
children by being their one and only authority figure.
Between 1855- 1858
William traveled to Europe and attended schools and had tutors in England and
france. On June 30, 1858 they
returned to America and spent July with relatives in Albany. Shortly after in 1858- 1859 the family
settled in Newport Rhode Island.
William still had a love of art and at this time he attended school and
took lessons in the studio of artist William Morris- Hunt in Newport in 1859.
In 1859- 1860 the
family returned to Europe and received schooling and tutors in Switzerland and
Germany. He also attended Geneva
Academy before returning to America to attend university. William returned to America without his
family in order to pursue his wish of a scientific degree.
In
1861 at the age of 19 William entered Lawrence Scientific School at Harvard
University. He began Harvard at
the same time that the American civil war began. However he did not enlist because of health problems
including neurasthenia, weak vision, digestive disorders, severe depression and
thoughts of suicide.
In 1864 the James
family moved to Boston. In this
same year William switched to Harvard medical school because he realized that
the family fortune would not last and that he would have to support
himself. In 1865- 1866 William
joined Louis Agassiz on an expedition to Brazil. William’s family helped him come up with the necessary
funding for him to make the trip.
William said to himself, “in this excursion you will learn to know
yourself and your resources somewhat more intimately than you do now, and will
come back with your character considerably evolved and established.”
After
his return “He resumed medical school but was beset by assorted ailments-
back pain, weak vision, digestive disorders, and thoughts of suicide- some or
most of which were exacerbated by his indecision about his future.”[3] On April 16, 1867, “seeking
relief, he went to France and Germany for nearly two years, took baths, studied
under Helmholtz and other leading physiologists, and became thoroughly
conversant with the New Psychology.”[4]
In
June 1869 William finally received his MD from Harvard. Although Jamed viewed himself as
becoming a member of “an important profession,” he still was not
satisfied and still suffered from ill-physical as well as ill-emotional
health. Because of his ill-health
he decided not to practice with his MD, but instead decided to study
Psychology. He continued to fight
depression. He became so depressed
that he slipped into a “profound crisis- of spirituality, of being, of
meaning, of will.”[5]
It
wasn’t until 1870 that this psychological crisis began to clear. It was at this time that William encountered
an article by the French Philosopher Charles Renouvier. Renouvier philosophised
the idea of free will: “The sustaining of a though when I might have
other thoughts.”[6] This article helped William James
emensly. For the first time in his
life it helped him to believe that freedom existed. It was because of Renouvier that William decided to believe
in his own free will.
At
age 30, and three years out of medical school, William was offered a position
as a Harvard professor. He started
in 1973 as a professor of anatomy and physiology. But was soon physically exhausted and had to retire to
Europe to re-cooperate after his strenuous first year teaching. He spent 1873- 1874 in primarily Italy
and then returned in 1975 to teach Psychology at Harvard. There were no professors of Psychology
prior to James teaching in 1875.
It is interesting that James never took a class in New Psychology
because there was never one offered before he taught it. He even joked, “The first lecture
in psychology that I ever heard was the first I ever gave.”[7] It was also in 1875 that William James
set up the first laboratory of experimental psychology. This was four years before
Wundt’s laboratory in 1879.
James was not recognized as having the first running laboratory in
psychology because his laboratory was used mainly for teaching
demonstrations.
On
July 20, 1878 William married his fathers chosen wife Alice Howe Gibbens. She was a Boston schoolteacher, an
accomplished pianist and would become the dutiful mother of their five
children. She became
William’s lifelong companion, and even helped him to get over his
neurasthenia.
No
one field could hold William’s interest and in 1879 he began teaching
Philosophy as assistant professor.
This would be a decade of both imense tragedy and vast growth for
William. William’s first
child was born 1879. In this
decade he was involved with his teaching and writing of numerous articles for important journals. He also had extreme misfortune with the death of his mother
in January 1882, his father in December 1882, and his third son in 1885. It was after all this misfortune in
1889 that James moved to Cambridge.
Perhaps
William James’s most prestigious accomplishment of the decade was his
work on his publication The Principles of Psychology. He
began principles in 1878 and finally published it September 25, 1890. This book set James apart as one of the
most influential thinkers of his time. It was “as much psychology as it
was philosophy. It was also literature, autobiography, self-help manual, and
confessional tale.”[8] The principles of psychology also set a
“principle of functionalism in psychology, thus establishing psychology
among the sciences based on experimental method.”[9]
Functionalists
Since there were negative comments
about the personal nature of the book James later condensed the two volume set
into one book making more of a classroom manual on Psychology. This book was titled, Psychology: The
Briefer Course.
William James is
also credited as being the first American Psychologist to address educational
issues. In 1892 he made lectures
on education to faculty at Cambridge.
His first lecture was entitled “Talks on Psychology of Interest to
Teachers.”[11] Also in 1892 James traveled to Europe
and turned his lab over to Hugo Musterberg. When he returned in 1893 experimental psychology founded by
Wundt was in full force in America.
James despised psychology that only gave merit to experimental findings,
and soon wished to get out of the psychological field.
During the last
years of the century James lectured and published The Will to Believe and
other essays in Popular Philosophy. His lectures focused mainly on his
philosophical ideas. At this same
time William continued to travel back and forth to Europe giving lectures there
and in America. He also continued
to struggle with his physical ailments and weaknesses and found Europe to be a
good place to rest and revive himself.
In 1906 William
James began a series of lectures on Pragmatism. He is recognized as the father of American Pragmatism and in
1907 published Pragmatism. In this same year on January 22, 1907
he gave his last class lecture at Harvard and resigned from his teaching
position.
William James
continued to lecture and publish works mainly of the philosophical nature until
he got too ill. On August 26, 1910
he died in Chocorua, New Hampshire with his wife and son present. He died from “acute heart
enlargement.”
http://www.bethel.edu/~johluc/psy315/James.htm
http://www.emory.edu/EDUCATION/mfp/jphotos.html
http://www2.uic.edu/stud_orgs/hon/psichi/jamesbio.htm