Reviews for Psychology

The average rating for Psychology based on 2 reviews is 5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2013-12-23 00:00:00 Julius Brown William James’s monumental Principles of Psychology has long been on my to-read list. But I have a nasty habit of letting books scare me; and a 1,400-page textbook from 1890 was sufficiently intimidating to make me put it off indefinitely. To warm up to the task, I decided to read a couple shorter books of James's. First, I tackled his Varieties of Religious Experience—a pioneering work on the psychology of religion, and a similarly respected classic. There’s a lot of good stuff in that book, and he makes many points neglected by other scholars of religion. Nevertheless, James’s verbosity is on full display. Pages and pages are filled with extended quotes. Instead of sticking to the analysis, James lets himself get carried away in his fascination with altered mental states. He includes diary entrees, testimonies, and biographies of mystics from the past, all quoted in extenso. Much of it was fascinating; but much was redundant. Thus, I was led to suspect that the 1,400 page behemoth on the horizon was similarly stuffed with fluff. The next book of his I read was Pragmatism (which is at least mercifully short). Not only was I unimpressed with that work, but I found much of it to be downright stupid. So by the end of those two books I suspected that William James's magnum opus was both bloated and bland. As a result, when I heard that William James had himself condensed his larger work of psychology into this volume, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to both lay my curiosity to rest and to avoid getting bogged down in a verbal Slough of Despond. But my fears were misplaced. This is a big blooming buzzing brilliant book. I loved it from first to last. In fact, I fear that I’ll sound rather ecstatic when I try and describe how incredible an accomplishment this was. The most immediate and obvious merit of this book is simply James’s eloquence. As I read, I found myself highlighting passage after passage. He was surely at the height of his powers as a writer when he put this book together. Some sections are as beautiful as anything ever written by Proust on the inner life of the mind. Consider this quote on spacing out: Most of us probably fall several times a day into a fit somewhat like this: The eyes are fixed on vacancy, the sounds of the world melt into a confused unity, the attention is dispersed so that the whole body is felt, as it were, at once, and the foreground of consciousness is filled, if by anything, by a sort of solemn sense of surrender to the empty passing of time. In the dim background of our mind we know meanwhile what we ought to be doing: getting up, dressing ourselves, answering the person who has spoken to us, trying to make the next step in our reasoning. But somehow we cannot start; the pensée de derrière la tête [thought at the back of the head] fails to pierce the shell of lethargy that wraps our state about. Every moment we expect the shell to break, for we know no reason why it should continue. But it does continue, pulse after pulse, and we float with it, until—also without reason that we can discover—an energy is given, something—we know not what—enables us to gather ourselves together, we wink our eyes, we shake our head, the background ideas become effective, and the wheels of life go round again. If that’s not beautiful, I don’t know what is. The next attraction of this great book is the multitude of fascinating glimpses it provides into the psychology of the past. Psychologist would perform quirky experiments on themselves, such as one psychologist who tried to simultaneously mentally multiply numbers together while reciting poetry. Some experiments were more gruesome: severing the spines of frogs and then spilling acid on them; sticking thermometers in the brains of dogs, and then holding up a piece of meat to their noses to determine whether mental excitement produces a change of temperature. James even includes a footnote detailing instructions for dissecting the brain of a cadaver. But my favorite was an experiment in which subjects were placed on a delicately balanced table, so that any slight change in weight either of their head or legs would cause the table to tip in that direction. The experimenter would then ask the subject a question, thereby causing him or her to think, which caused blood to rush to the brain, thus tipping the table. It was the original MRI. The third and greatest attraction of this book is its enormous vastness. James manages to bring together the works of German, French, Italian, and Anglo-American thinkers; to combined cutting-edge knowledge of experimental psychology with Darwin’s ideas; to combine the long tradition of philosophy with the young (at the time) field of psychology. It’s not everyday that you see diagrams of the anatomy of the eye alongside discussions of Locke’s theory of ideas. Unfortunately, now I sort of wish that I had just gone ahead and tackled the bigger book—sort of. (Upon finishing The Principles of Psychology James famously wrote to his publisher that it was “a loathsome, distended, tumefied, bloated, dropsical mass, testifying to nothing but two facts: 1st, that there is no such thing as a science of psychology, and 2nd, that W.J. is an incapable.” Of course, I disagree.) But until I read the full version, all I can do is recommend this book with all my heart. It is one of the greatest works of American literature, and one of the greatest books in the history of Western thought. A classic in every sense of the word.

Review # 2 was written on 2017-08-13 00:00:00 Tabatha Loftis The Psychology Of William James In 1890, following a twelve-year effort, the American philosopher and psychologist William James published his 1200-page "Principles of Psychology". The "Principles" is a grand work which a group of distinguished psychologists described in 1969 as "the most literate, most provocative, and at the same time the most intelligent book on psychology that has ever appeared in English on any other language." The "Principles" proved greatly influential on many philosophers, notably Edmund Husserl and Ludwig Wittgenstein, as well as on psychologists. Because of the length and depth of the "Principles", it proved unsuitable for classroom use by undergraduates. Thus, working rapidly in 1891, William James substantially revised and abridged his masterpiece, resulting in his "Psychology: Briefer Course" published in 1892. For many years, this book was a standard textbook in psychology, and it remains eminently worth reading as an introduction to the discipline and to James's own thought. The "Psychology" is about one-third the length of the "Principles." It consists of approximately 40 percent new material, most of which is in the opening chapters of the book on sensation and on anatomy and physiology. The remainder of the book is an abridgment of the earlier work, with philosophical discussions, quotations from other authors, and polemical material deleted or sharply curtailed. The "Psychology" is an accessible and endlessly fascinating book on at least three levels: first, for its insight into the science of psychology; second for the suggestive character of its discussion of the relationship between psychology (and the natural sciences)on the one hand and philosophy and religion on the other hand; third, for the eloquence of James's writing and for his passion for the ethical and active life. I will say a short word in the following three paragraphs about each of these. At the outset, James defines psychology as "the description and explanation of states of consciousness as such." He also finds that psychology and mental activity are neurologically and physiologically based. In other words, as James writes, "the immediate condition of a state of consciousness is an activity of some sort in the cerebral hemispheres." An illustration of the physiological basis of James work is his theory of the emotions, called the James-Lange theory, in which he argued that human feelings and emotions were rooted in actions and efforts rather than, is is still frequently supposed, the other way round. Everything that James writes has an empirical, physiological cast; and yet his work is far from reductionist. For all its emphasis on physiology, James analysis of the mind begins in chapters 9 and 10 with his discussions of the "stream of consciousness" and of the nature of the "self". He uses what he describes as the analytical method to analyze the fact of consciousness into habit, emotion, instinct, reasoning, attention, and the like. He does not take a Lockean/Humean approach by attempting to derive consciousness by compounding from simple sensation. James distinguishes the scientific approach of psychology from the questions of metaphysics of philosophy while showing their interrelations. Scientific studies are partial and rely upon evidence, while metaphysics involves an attempt to think globally. With an appealing humility, James stresses how little is fundamentally known about psychology, an observation that may still hold true today. James emphasizes the limited reach of human cognition and the selective character of all human perception. In a memorable passage, he describes the mind's attempt to abstract from reality, which he characterizes as "one big blooming buzzing Confusion." I found a Kantian tendency in much of what James says about human knowledge in the Psychology. James also emphasizes, as did Kant, the deterministic character of scientific observation and study. But James does not find the physiological character of human effort necessarily inconsistent with human free will or with the power of the individual with effort to control his or her destiny. With all its scientific learning, the Psychology has an ethical, exhortatory tone as befitting its proposed use by students. James can be a magnificently inspiring writer. The Psychology concludes with a discussion of the will. James writes about the need to hold to the possibility of the free will in order to make an individual's life meaningful and significant. He writes at the conclusion of his chapter on the will: "Thus not only our morality but our religion, so far as the latter is deliberate, depend on the effort which we can make. "Will you or won't you have it so?" is the most probing question we are ever asked; we are asked it every hour of the day, and about the largest as well as the smallest, the most theoretical as well as the most practical, things. we answer by consents or non-consents and not by words. What wonder that these dumb responses should seem our deepest organs of communication with the nature of things! What wonder if the effort demanded by them be the measure of our worth as men! What wonder if the amount which we accord of it were the one strictly underived and original contribution which we make to the world!" The edition of the "Psychology" I am reviewing here is the authoritative edition of "The Works of William James" published by Harvard University Press. Certain other editions in print omit the early chapters on sensation and should be avoided. The best source of this work for the interested reader is in volume 1 of the writings of William James, 1879-1899 published by the Library of America. It includes the Harvard text of the Principles as well as several other works of James and sells at an economical price. Robin Friedman