4. kafli - Origins of Scientific Psychology in America Flashcards
Who was William James (1842-1910)? I
His role and status in USA psychology are counterintuitive (sort of!)
Recognized as foremost U.S. psychologist
The American precursor to functional psychology
Did not found functional psychology but his ideas contained its seeds
More on William James (1842-1910) II
WJ’s family travelled across the Atlantic many times. WJ spoke French, German, and Italian fluently. His parents took an active interest in his education. He went to schools in the U.S., England, France and Switzerland and later in life claimed to know every important European psychologist and philosopher.
Many prominent thinkers were visitors of the James family, e.g., JS Mill, Emerson, Thoreau.
WJ had serious talent for painting and drawing, studied art. Leary (1992) argued that his artistic training was an important influence on his later philosophical/psychological theorizing (HOW? DOWNLOADED ARTICLE).
His father was so distressed by WJ’s decision to pursue art that he moved the family away from WJ’s painting teacher and threatened suicide.
He switched to natural history after hating chemistry. Became research assistant to Louis Agassiz (famed biologist, paleontologist). Agassiz mission was to disprove Darwin. WJ got very sick during the trip, but loved the plants and animal life of the Amazon and Brazilian Indians, but hated the climate and insects. He decided that this kind of life was not for him and choose to focus on more speculative works.
He started studying Medicine but interrupted his studies after he read Darwin. He travelled to Europe and visited labs of Fechner, von Helmholtz, Du Bois-Reymond. He completed M.D. (1869) but resolved to never practice.
As a med student, he had backpain, insomnia, eye troubles, but found no relief from the prescriptions. He noted that “a doctor does more by the moral effect of his presence on the patient and family, than by anything else.”
He believed his problems were psychological and were accompanied by anxiety and depression. Contemplated suicide.
These experiences oriented him toward issues of the mind. They also influenced him to contribute to pragmatism because he noticed that if he believed in free will, it made his life better.
More on William James (1842-1910) III
Wealthy Irish-American family
Schools in U.S., England, France, Switzerland
Vague career plans, studied art
Enrolled at Harvard, studied chemistry and hated it
Natural History, assistant on Amazon trip
Visited Fechner, von Helmholtz
M.D. (1869)
More on William James (1842-1910) IV
In 1874, he began teaching a course on the relationship between physiology and psych at Harvard. He had taken courses on physiology but he was self-taught in psychology (observing his own consciousness and people). He set up a demonstration lab and his courses became a success since he was a superb lecturer (and he was one of the few Harvard professors to allow students to ask questions during the lecture).
Note that his lab was established before Wundt’s, but we give credit to Wundt for the first lab because it was a more elaborate lab that was designed for serious research, not just teaching. WJ’s lab actually was recognized and funded by Harvard a decade later (1885).
In 1876 he was appointed asst. prof and in 1885 prof of phil and 1889 prof of psych.
In 1882, he visited Europe to renew his contacts. He didn’t think highly of all European thinkers (Wundt, Fechner, Müller) but he felt he owed much to Stumpf and deeply respected Ebbinghaus.
When he was 34, his father announced he had met WJ’s future wife. WJ married the girl and luckily, they were very devoted to each other. The same year, he signed a contract to write a psychology book. It took him 12 years and he sent the final draft with the note that it was a horrible piece of work “testifying to nothing but two facts: first, there is no such thing as a science of psychology, and second that W.J. is an incapable.”
But the book was an immediate success and is a classic in psych. It became the standard textbook in psych in US and Europe. It was so wide in the range of topics considered that “almost any later development in psychology can trace a line of ancestry there”
In 1992, Dember called the Principles “a marvel and still a source of joy and puzzlement to psychologists struggling with the core issues of our discipline.”
William James V
Regarded lab research in psych with suspicion
Focused on broad thoughts and insights
Withdrew from lab upon success of Principles
Choose Münsterberg as successor to head lab (1892)
Became interested in psychical phenomena, life after death, effects religious experiences on consciousness
Varieties of Religious Experience (1902)
William James VI
WJ’s style was not suitable for lab research in psych, which he regarded with suspicion. He was filled with horror at the thought of doing research along the lines of Fechner or Wundt. What he wanted to do was more broad and centered on personal insights.
Consistent with this inclination and upon the success of the Principles, he withdrew from lab research and choose the German psychologist Hugo Münsterberg (trained by Wundt) as the successor of the psych lab at Harvard.
He believed that psychologist must study the whole realm of human experiences, including psychical experiences. He studied phenomena such as telepathy and clairvoyance.
His book, Varieties of Religious Experience, looked into the effects of religious experience on human consciousness and was very successful.
William James VII
In the last decade of his life, WJ turned to philosophy and established a reputation as the best known American philosopher since Emerson. He contributed to a school of thought called pragmatism whose central tenet was that truth should be established by pragmatic criteria (e.g., If a certain person believes in God and it works in terms of happiness, health, etc., then God’s existence is a pragmatic truth for that person).
Since everyone’s truth can be different, pragmatic philosophy is an individual and relative system. Also, since circumstances change, what works will change, and thus truth will change.
An example of such thinking is that WJ argued that science and psychology would be impossible without determinism, but he personally believed in free will.
William James VIII
Turned away from psychology in his last decade
Became America’s best known philosopher
Pragmatism: The validity of an idea is measured by their practical consequences
Truth should be established by pragmatic criteria
Individual, relative, dynamic
Well-suited to the U.S. Zeitgeist
Cornerstone of Functionalism
William James IX
WJ remains influential but is a paradox as he:
never committed to psychology and wanted to be remembered as a philosopher.
Did not found a school, there were not Jamesians, in the sense that there were Freudians or Skinnerians
Considered the schools as premature, ill-considered, and harmful influences on the development of psychology
Did not make major research contributions, although he was active professionally and served twice as APA president (1894, 1904)
Did not invent or promote a particular method. Instead, he believed that nothing should be omitted (in terms of both topic and method).
Trained a small number of students, although they included Thorndike, Woodworth, and JR Angell.
So, his reputation mostly stems from Principles, and it is not clear to what extent its the content vs. his brilliant writing style.
William James - Definitions
Stream of consciousness and its linkage to selective attention
Consciousness did not exist in bits or discrete units, rather it flowed like a stream
Elemental analysis of consciousness made no sense - artificial psychology
William James - Influences
Influenced by Charles Darwin’s ideas about concepts of adaptation and survival value
James’s theoretical perspective on psychology came to be known as functionalism,
which sought causal relationships between internal states and external behaviors.
William James - Principles: Functions and Emotions.
Function: To make good choices we need consciousness
Consciousness had evolved with what purpose? What were its functions?
The live in a countless sensory inputs from which we must
extract some information,
make sense of it,
act on it.
