Just When I Was About to Abandon My Profession ...

... along comes William James.

Or, to be more precise about it, A Stroll With William James. One might recognize him as the “founder” of American psychology: James not only founded the first psychological laboratory in this country, he wrote extensively on the subject, distinguishing it from its parent discipline, philosophy. My graduate school program mandated a course in the history of psychology; I took it during a time when I didn’t think much of historical study ... although the ice had started to thaw some, thanks to my mentor. I even went so far as to purchase a quality hardbound copy of James’ The Principles of Psychology, but let it go years later, mostly unread. I thought I knew William James’ ideas well enough; and I didn’t see a lot of value in holding on to a three–volume set brimming with the dense prose characteristic of his time.

I was so wrong.

I am not yet 100 pages into the biography, and so many ideas have lodged themselves into my mind that I see no way through the thicket but to read his Principles. James rejected reductionism long before the behaviorist and cognitive revolutions whittled us into automata of differing types; instead, he effectively presaged Gestalt psychology. But these positions have not endeared James to me nearly so much as his grokking that reason and emotion are inseparable elements of thinking—moreover, they are highly individualistically combined in each of us. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is what has pulled me back from the brink.

Barzun (the biographer) offers a clear and thought–provoking examination of the implications of this perspective (pp. 55–56, footnote omitted, all emphasis mine):

In guarding its own thoughts so simply and stubbornly, the mind is duly saving its energy and preserving its individuality. In the day–to–day routine it has no occasion to doubt that the world is as perceived. Hence the actual chaos of men and opinions, so evident to the historian, is only to be expected, a natural result of perception as it develops individually.

When one is reminded of this native discord ... one grows dizzy trying to imagine, behind the endlessly different features [of faces], the contents of the “streams” [of consciousness] animating them. If one had access, a residue of similarities would be found, but how small!—or rather, how artificial and misleading: old platitudes, fashionable thought-clichés, pieties acquired early in life and fixed by thoughtless repetition. ...

The best minds themselves work and apperceive as much with error, superstition, and perverse fancy as with sound knowledge and decent feeling. As any biography shows, no grade of intelligence or education makes us free of these deformities. We are all bundles of wild and warrantless convictions, especially about one another, and when one gets an accidental glimpse of someone else’s candid mind, the sight is dread–inspiring. For his cozy chamber of horrors—and particularly his facts—are owned and enjoyed in complete good faith. They are to him the reality of whatever subject—the stars, the good life, art, money, God, child rearing, or the etiology of migraine headaches.

Such “honest beliefs” are our undoing, singly and collectively. Even within a group calling itself a league, a union, a party—hence somehow agreeing—the perpetual dissensions are signs of different worlds honestly perceived. Among nations it is for these worlds, manifestly true and right, that wars are fought. “Interests,” for good and evil, govern us from the start of the simplest perceptions.

It is clear that for society to survive, the individual “takings” must somehow be made to overlap. That is why states and churches snatch the young—to create a uniform apperception early in its making. Ideologies coin slogans and enforce the party line to repair in adults the divergent, wayward streams. A free society itself can subsist only with the aid of conventions, of beliefs tacitly held in common, whether or not they jibe with individual perceptions and preferences. When they do not, they must be respected under social pressure—lip service is as good as belief; from which it follows that because the mind works as it does, society cannot endure without customary and beneficial hypocrisy.

“Different worlds honestly perceived”, indeed! Anyone who has tried to explain to a child how one’s perspective differs from the child’s knows how difficult it is to get the child to allow that a difference is even possible; I suspect we all also know the challenge of trying to bridge a chasm of perspective or feelings among the players in a sticky situation. Yet, attempt it we must, if we are to create and maintain frith amongst our fellow freedom–loving individuals.


[I know that I promised an exploration of my karate training some time back, and I do intend to make good on that. As the endeavor is intensely personal in some fundamental ways, I’m finding it challenging to address it meaningfully yet without divulging too much. I hope the above is sufficiently meaty to be an acceptable diversion, whilst I try to find my way.]