The Principles of Psychology: Volume 1 by William James

The Principles of Psychology: Volume 1 Reviews

• 
  Chrissy

  This was an extremely fascinating, challenging, and at times infuriating read: Fascinating because James accurately predicted so much of modern psychology in 1890, before the experimental method really existed (beyond psychophysics, which he lambasts as a waste of time when one could just introspect instead); Challenging because he roots so many of his insights and explanations in classical philosophy, a slow and thorough approach that breaks the issues down to their fundamental assumptions for examination (I'm not at all used to approaching psychology in this way, and it was extremely rewarding, if laborious); Infuriating because for all he got right, he also got so, so much wrong. James was a religious man, and while he tries to leave spirituality separate from the study of psychology, it regularly seeps back in through his language and assumptions throughout. Case in point: Mind Dust from the Soul.
  
  The book is also home to a wide gamut of hilariously antiquated social faux-pas, from racism to sexism to good old classism. The "old Princeton boys" manner of speech is pure comedy when applied to an elaborate discussion of how boring Germany must be for psychophysics to have come into existence. I got a lot of enjoyment from the book for this rich-white-Victorian comedy appeal alone.
  
  I'm actually really, really glad I read this book. It doesn't offer much in the way of real insight into my own work, but I feel my perspective has broadened significantly through a consideration of my field's humble roots.
• 
  Amy

  Wow. He didn’t cut any corners in his explanations and arguments. This tomb is incredibly detailed and surprisingly really witty throughout thanks to that Victorian stiff upper lip bourgeois style of thinking. You can tell he absolutely loves his field, and work and is vibing on thinking through every single principle of psychology that he can come up. James is so incredibly well read and seems to know everyone in this field at the time. He is certainly no dummy. As someone who enjoys learning about different subjects and who never studied any psychology per se, (he also goes deep in metaphysics which Im fairly familiar with) I learnt a tremendous amount from this at times grindingly long book. Overall I’m very glad I stuck with it, and I have no doubt a bunch of the science parts are out of date but regardless, it was a thorough and fascinating read that I would recommend to anyone wanting a very comprehensive overview of everything psychology.
• 
  Jamey

  Written in 1890, it's a classic tastycake! In chapter 10, "The Stream of Thought," James lays the groundwork for Joyce and Woolf and all that good stuff.
• 
  Matt

  A fantastic blend of philosophy, psychology and 19th century neurobiology. It is, unavoidably, dated as all science books seem to be chained to the limits of progress of the time. But the discussion of mind and philosophy retain a timelessness given the continued mystery they pose.
  
  James’ writing reveals his classical roots. His discussions flow between epistemology and physiology. One moment he is discussing the impact of Aristotle, the next he is comparing it to our understanding of brain hemispheres. He dips and dives into why and how we perceive the world around us using every tool available to him.
  
  But knowing that our scientific understanding has progressed far beyond James’ understanding in his day, one can’t help but wonder what his writing provides the modern reader. For those seeking a book on the facts and mechanics of the brain, this is foundational at best. However, if you read it as a philosophical work, I think the modern reader can find great pleasure in it. His scientific desire to understand trims the excess found in more “pure” philosophical works. His pragmatic analysis carves out a place for him in the Western canon. His psychology critiques stoicism and challenges Platonic tradition:

  Why, from Plato and Aristotle downwards, philosophers should have vied with each other in scorn of the knowledge of the particular, and in adoration of that of the general, is hard to understand, seeing that the more adorable knowledge ought to be that of more adorable things, and the things of worth are all concretes and singulars. The only value of universal characters is that they help us, by reasoning, to know new truths about individual things… In sum, therefore, the traditional universal-worship can only be called a bit of perverse sentimentalism, a philosophic “idol of the cave.”Pp. 479-480.

  Where James is probably most profound is in his examination of consciousness and the process of thought. Not only are we limited by our senses, but we are limited by what we have attuned our senses process. We perceive not only what we see, but what we have been trained to pre-perceive. The resulting stream of consciousness ebbs and flows with insight and understanding. Thought is not a defined package of ideas. It is murky and rages between the banks. However, it is by capturing moments from it, that we can define and discuss them:

  Thought is in fact a kind of Algebra, as Berkeley long ago said, “in which, though a particular quantity be marked by each letter, yet to proceed right, it is not requisite that in every step each letter suggest to your thoughts that particular quantity it was appointed to stand for.” Mr. Lewes has developed this algebra-analogy so well that I must quote his words: “The leading characteristic of algebra is that of operation on relations. This also is the leading characteristic of Thought. Algebra cannot exist without values, nor Thought without Feelings” […] It need only be added that as the Algebrist, though the sequence of his terms is fixed by their relations rather than by their several values, must give a real value to the final one he reaches; so the thinker in words must let his concluding word or phrase be translated into its full sensible-image-value, under penalty of the thought being left unrealized and pale. Pp. 270-271.

  Where Plato saw the key to knowledge in geometry and forms, James finds it in algebra and motion. It’s a beautiful dichotomy.
  
• 
  Aaron Cliff

  The goat
• 
  Erin Blaire

  In his work The Stream of Thought, James tackles the fundamental notions of how we come to understand the matters of our own consciousness (which he defines as the multiplicity of objects and relations). For James, consciousness can only be one's own (that no two consciousness can ever be exactly identical), and consciousness "goes on."
  James is discontent with psychologists who deem consciousness through an unfounded verisimilitude with sensations. Sensations, according to James, cannot stand by themselves, for they are necessary results of discriminative attention.
  
  James then sets the rest of his work clarifying what he means by consciousness (that are unlike sensations that are mere results of discriminations) "goes on" in the human mind.
  
  First, James defines thought as a "personal form" to indicate the peculiar quality of each person's consciousness. Thoughts, for James, "belong" together, but belong together in one's own mind. No one's 'thoughts' are separate from one another, for one's own thoughts necessarily belong to one's other thoughts. The only states of consciousness for James, are located in the "personal consciousness" of one's own minds, selves, the "concrete, particular I's and you's" in which no one can have direct sight of thought into another person's consciousness.
  James describes that this phenomenon is "absolute insulation and irreducible pluralism."
  
  Secondly, James contends that the thought constantly changes for "that which takes place in sensible intervals of time" can never be "identical with what it was before."
  He presents his argument for this claim by postulating that whether we think or do not think, we always have a succession of different feelings. He moreover explains that when we actually pay close attention to the matter, we will come to realize that we do not experience the same bodily sensation twice in perceiving an object.
  What stays the same may be the "object" such as hearing the same note over and over again or seeing the same quality of green as the grass. However, we do not realize that we experience these objects differently when we do not attend to sensations as "subjective facts" and instead use them merely as stepping stones to pass over to the recognition of the realities (the object).
  We are prone to not attend to the different ways in which the same things look/sound/smell at different distances under different circumstances, for we are inclined to ascertain the "sameness of things."
  But James beckons us to recall the ways in which the same object may appear differently to us as we are sleepy or awake, hungry or full, fresh or tired, or as we go through different stages in life from childhood to adulthood. Our feelings towards the same object changes as we pass from one age to another or when we are in "different organic moods."
  James goes on to say that this indicates that every sensation does in fact correspond to some cerebral action, and there is no such thing as an "identical sensation" for it would require an unmodified brain and unmodified feeling which is a physiological impossibility.
  In other words, our state of mind is never precisely the same, and our thoughts, feelings, and the overall experience of an object differ in each circumstance, though we may be inattentive to the changes.
  James builds up a case for his phenomenology:
  The subjective experiences of the same object differently, and experience remolds us every moment, and our mental reaction on every given thing is a resultant of our experience of the whole world up to that date.
  Every brain-state is partly determined by the nature of this entire past succession. Each present-brain state is a record, in which the Omniscient eye will read all the foregone history of its owner. Each present is altered by the past success and the organ has been left at that moment by all it has gone through in the past. Therefore, no two ideas can be exactly the same for each idea belongs to a specific place in time.
  To even believe in the possibility of a permanently existing "idea" is to only be concerned with the "facts" the mental states reveal, rather than the complexities of the mental states themselves.
  
  Thirdly, James points to the fact that within each personal consciousness, thought is continuous (that is, without break, crack, or division).
  What we may consider "breaches" in a single mind are mere interruptions or time-gaps, which are breaks in the quality or the content of the thought that may seem abrupt.
  However, James nonetheless clarifies that the thoughts within each personal consciousness are continuous, for even when there is a time-gap, the consciousness after feels as if it belonged together with the consciousness before, as another "part" of the "same self."
  James also repudiates any type of "absolute" sense of abruptness in one's consciousness for there will be even a dim sense of continuity, the sense that parts are connected and belong together as part of a "common whole" which is the self whom all these thoughts belong to.
  This phenomenon James calls, the community of the self, for one feels the warmth, intimacy, and immediacy of one's present thought that surely belongs to oneself. These qualities of warmth and intimacy to the self will also be connected to future considerations of thought, and past feelings also come with these qualities as the past also receives the greeting of the present mental state. The past, present, future all belong to a community of the self. Jameisan self is connected by psychological connectedness between the past, present, and future self as a coherent whole that fundamentally differs from Derek Parfit's successive selves. For example, Parfit denies that there can ever be a coherent self for there is no such thing as a "permanent self." What exists in the present brain state can only be classified as the present "self" and the next brain state is a distinct self. The chain of successive selves (notice, he uses the metaphor chain unlike Jamesian metaphor of the stream that flows together) are linked together through "memory," yet each self is distinct from previous and future self. There is no "person" that all these selves share, for a collective "I" is merely an illusion.
  Rather than Jamesian psychological connectedness of selves via continuity in thought, Parfit denies that there can be continuity and connectedness enclosed within one single life. Instead, his notion of successive selves are made possible by the degree of psychological connectedness to others. What Parfit is suggesting here is a much more tenuous "I" than the atomistic sense of individuality. Rather than a Jamesian community of "self" Parfit proposes a "community of selves' that are necessary for these successive selves to have any sort of meaning.
  
  On the whole, I can understand why Jamesian notion of the self as continuous and coherent can receive criticisms from many philosophers whose notion of the self is necessarily contingent upon the contexts and communities that will allow for the formation of selfhood. Is selfhood a given? Is consciousness that is continuous made possible by efforts of the will? For what can be said about situations of trauma in which there is such an absolute sense of abruptness in which the qualities of "warmth and intimacy" of thought to the self is no longer possible? For the thoughts that the self once had no longer has any vestiges of a connection to the present self? To this, I may agree with Parfit in that successive selves seem to fit better than a coherent, continuous self. Though, I also do not believe all individuals would necessarily go through life in the way Parfit describes it. One's experience of life, depending on the severity of trauma and trauma's impact on the psyche, can be a mixture of continuous and successive selves.
• 
  Rosemary Ferlinger

  Amazing insights and extraordinary neurological detail along with extremely cogent reasoning gives this book a modern aura if it weren't for the antiquated language. A startling look into a brilliant 19th century mind.
• 
  Sean Murray

  A hard slog.
  Read it if you must. It’s a sensible “deep background” book for most of psychology. Naturally, it’s pretty badly outdated in places. An important historical document
• 
  Melsene G

  Unless you're a psychology major or this is required reading, you will not get much out of this huge volume. It was originally published in 1890 or so and it's dense, hard to understand, and verbose. I followed the author's instructions and skipped the designated chapters per the preface. I look at this book as a foundational overview of this science. After all, the author is the guru and father of psychology and is quoted in every psychology/science/neurology book ever written. That said, it's still an extremely tough read. Plus, in the last 100 years, what we know about science, the brain, etc., has changed astronomically with technology, and so much of what's in this book is not current. If Mr. James was alive today, he'd have a lot more to say!
  
  I do have Volume 2 waiting in my queue and will get to it at some point, not soon though.
• 
  Enpitsu

  In a most surprising way I stumbled upon William James as a writer and his works. As someone who has a big interest in psychology, I decided to order this volume and the next using a gift card I received. His works blew a dent in my resolution to read 50 books this year, but with good reason.
  
  William James is an incredibly thorough and structured writer. The first nth of chapters lays fundamental groundwork, think of neurology, before approaching topics that goes in depth. It takes a lot of time and attention to digest the chapters properly, otherwise you might miss the point a page later. There's also input drawn from philosophy, which is an interesting take, but William James does make it work.
  
  I have too little a background to actually criticize his ideas here, especially since it's safe to assume that a portion of it is outdated, considering this book is over a 100 years old. But judging from other reviews and that his works are still being referenced to this day, does make me feel like this serves a good groundwork or fundament where one can branch out to modern subjects in psychology. Of course, only time will tell for me if that statement actually is true.
• 
  Keegan Landrigan

  One of the most bizarre reads in the entire history of science. So many chapters deserve 5 stars unto themselves, that it is difficult not to grant 5 stars to the whole, but the turns this book takes from neuro-anatomy to mystic panpsychism makes the whole feel at times oddly less than the sum of its parts. It helps, when reading it through this lens, to have on hand a fairly-mainstream history of experimental psychology like Edwin Boring's _History of Experimental Psychology_, to understand how lab psychologists managed to take away the things they apparently did from it.
  
  The whole earns its way back to five stars despite these qualms by being suffused with the literary sensibility of the James family.
• 
  Ege

  
  https://twitter.com/waldenpod/status/...
  
  http://www.scienzepostmoderne.org/Ope...
  
  https://www.jstor.org/stable/27744632...
  
• 
  Bob Nichols

  In this abbreviated (1893) edition of his classic work, James' model for how we interact with the environment is simple enough. Input comes from environmental stimuli, the brain processes it and converts it into bodily output (action). "The whole neural organism," he writes,"...is, physiologically considered, but a machine for converting stimuli into reactions; and the intellectual part of our life is knit up with but the middle or 'central' part of the machine's operations."
  
  James has one-half of the interaction right. We do react to stimuli, but his model has us as passive responders to what comes at us from the outside. We are more than what this model suggests. Drawing from Schopenhauer and from Darwin, we are impelled to go out into the world by Will (Schopenhauer) to actively seek (food, shelter, sex, status, love, group membership, etc.) what we need for survival and well being. The fuller model is, sequentially, life energy (Will, biological survival), species-specific life energy, and individual propensities (inborn character)all are involved in directing how we react to what comes at us, how we seek the objects (objectives) we need, and how much energy that is applied to them. Viewed this way, reaction and seeking are active components in the service of survival. Importantly, our interaction with the environment starts from within.
  
  James' model may reflect a residual inheritance of the Western philosophical tradition coming from Plato and others that believes the mind rides supreme. James may also advance as well as reflect a behaviorist model where human nature slides into the background, which leaves human reason free to create ideals for humans and society.
  
  When James refers to will, he means rational control, not the core, inner impulse that is Schopenhauer's Will that pushes reason. When James refers to motivation, he is referencing the "exciting" capacity of external stimuli, not the impulses prompted by internal need. The sharpness of James' theory fades when the next question is asked. Yes, external stimuli excite, but what is it inside of us that causes us to care enough to (1) be excited, and (2) to react one way and not another? James notes that the body (mysteriously?) has "a mind of its own" and this suggests that we have more of an active core than what James allows. Elsewhere, he states that we love adulation, we desire to please, and we are ambitions and vain. These well-known human traits are not reactive, but inner needs that motivate us to go out into the world and seek interaction with external objects in particular ways.
  
  James' theory does not allow for an inner "given" human being because, it might be speculated, this does not provide sufficient flexibility for us to become what James would hope we might become. Again, he says, objects and thoughts of objects motivate our reaction, and pleasure and pain reinforce or inhibit how we react. This view is at odds with Schopenhauer and Darwin's view that not only do we have a common life impulse (Will, survival), we also have a relatively fixed character that defines (or provides a propensity for) what objects we seek and defend against and the level of energy that we apply to them. Our inner character defines a substantial collection of inner needs. These needs Schopenhauer says are "pain". They are something we want to be satisfied. Pain prompts our action in the world, both seeking and reacting, to satisfy need. When we are successful in seeking or reacting, we experience pleasure and then actions stop until the life force within pops up again (e.g., hunger, sex, need to affirm group membership and one's value within the group). James disagrees. He rejects Schopenhauer's "determinism" of "fixed character" and goes on to say that "The problem with the man is less what act he shall now resolve to do than what being he shall now choose to become." As what that "man" might be, it is not for the weak-minded and sentimental type. Rather, it is the "heroic man" who by "pure inward willingness....makes himself one of the masters and the lords of life."
  
  James' view regarding the role of mind to guide behavior is not inaccurate. That is the evolutionary role for mind. However, the ends that the mind serves are relatively fixed (generally, survival ends and well-being, and by variable character traits that help define how each of us more specifically interact with the environment), and mind's role is to make choices about how these fixed biological needs will be met. Even with his admirable attempt to unite psychology with Darwinian biology, James nevertheless minimizes the role for relatively fixed biological ends, and he believes that we more or less have a blank slate to create ourselves. The alternative perspective outlined here suggests we are more anchored, for good and bad, than what James would allow. This is, perhaps, a more realistic assessment of who we are and who we are able to become.
  
  
• 
  JP

  It's the first modern form of truly scientific psychological analysis. He also builds from a knowledge of philosophy and later in his life focused very much on that.
• 
  Kelly

  Lent to ACP