Psychology: The Briefer Course

Front Cover
Courier Corporation, Jan 1, 2001 - Psychology - 343 pages
Condensed and reworked from James's monumental Principles of Psychology, this classic text examines habit; stream of consciousness; self and the sense of personal identity; discrimination and association; the sense of time; memory; perception; imagination; reasoning; emotions, instincts; the will and voluntary acts; and much more. This edition omits the outdated first nine chapters.
 

Selected pages

Contents

HABIT
1
THE STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS
18
THE SELF
43
ATTENTION
84
CONCEPTION
106
DISCRIMINATION
111
ASSOCIATION
120
THE SENSE OF TIME
147
PERCEPTION
179
THE PERCEPTION OF SPACE
202
REASONING
218
CONSCIOUSNESS AND MOVEMENT
237
EMOTION
240
INSTINCT
258
WILL
282
PSYCHOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY
328

MEMORY
154
IMAGINATION
169

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

About the author (2001)

William James, oldest of five children (including Henry James and Alice James) in the extraordinary James family, was born in New York City on January 11, 1842. He has had a far-reaching influence on writers and thinkers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Broadly educated by private tutors and through European travel, James initially studied painting. During the Civil War, however, he turned to medicine and physiology, attended Harvard medical school, and became interested in the workings of the mind. His text, The Principles of Psychology (1890), presents psychology as a science rather than a philosophy and emphasizes the connection between the mind and the body. James believed in free will and the power of the mind to affect events and determine the future. In The Will to Believe (1897) and The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902), he explores metaphysical concepts and mystical experiences. He saw truth not as absolute but as relative, depending on the given situation and the forces at work in it. He believed that the universe was not static and orderly but ever-changing and chaotic. His most important work, Pragmatism (1907), examines the practical consequences of behavior and rejects the idealist philosophy of the transcendentalists. This philosophy seems to reinforce the tenets of social Darwinism and the idea of financial success as the justification of the means in a materialistic society; nevertheless, James strove to demonstrate the practical value of ethical behavior. Overall, James's lifelong concern with what he called the "stream of thought" or "stream of consciousness" changed the way writers conceptualize characters and present the relationship between humans, society, and the natural world. He died due to heart failure on August 26, 1910.

Bibliographic information