Gestalt Antedated

Leaving the romantic interest for fairer game, one might turn to James's anticipations of Gestalt psychology. The torrents of impression by which the mind is inundated at every moment produce a narrow and highly select conscious experience. This struck James as extraordinary, and he marvelled at man's routine feats of selective attention.

"Thus my table-top is named square," he wrote, "after but one of an infinite number of retinal sensations which it yields, the rest of them being sensations of two acute and two obtuse angles; but I call the latter perspective views, and the four right angles the true form of the table, and erect the attribute squareness into the table's essence, for aesthetic reasons of my own." James claimed that every object is represented in some standard attitude, at some particular distance, of some typical size, and so forth. Yet each of these characteristics, which together constitute the "objectivity" of the object are naught but sensations--like all the "subjective" variations.

"The mind chooses to suit itself, and decides what particular sensation shall be held more real and valid than all the rest." This is the essence of the Gestalt doctrine of perceptual constancies. of course, in proposing such a theory, James was rejecting the passive, reactive, blank tablet model of the mind, which one associates with the Anglo-American tradition.

Theory of Emotions

Yet devotees of the more nativistic Continental psychologies should beware of immediately hailing James as a compatriot. He has had too much influence upon rival schools. Although James's own eclecticism and boundary-bursting originality preclude classification, many of his students eventually became leaders of the American functionalist movement. And tinges of behaviorism can even be spotted in some of his most famous doctrines.

An example is the James-Lange theory of the emotions. In presenting this theory James superbly displayed those gifts that brought him renown as a psychologist: novelty, lucidity, effective argumentation. "Commonsense says, we loose our fortune, are sorry and weep; we meet a bear, are frightened and run; we are insulted by a rival, are angry and strike. The hypothesis there to be defended says that this order of sequence is incorrect, that the one mental state is not immediately induced by the other, that the bodily manifestations must first be interposed between, and that the more rational statement is that we feel sorry because we cry, angry because we strike, afraid because we tremble."

While listening to poetry, drama, or music, James remarked, "we are often surprised at the cutaneous shiver which like a sudden wave flows over us and at the heart-swelling and the lachrymal effusion that unexpectedly catch us at intervals. . . . If we abruptly see dark moving form in the woods, our heart stops beating, and we catch our breath instantly and before any particular idea of danger can arise." The vital point of the whole theory James stated thus: "If we fancy some strong emotion, and then try to abstract from our consciousness of it all the feelings of its bodily symptoms, we find we have nothing left behind, no 'mind-stuff' out of which the emotion can be constituted."

Bored by Lab Work

In his survey of the history of psychology, Gardner Murphy provides a remarkably unbiased evaluation of the doctrine and its stormy career. He concludes, "Objectors to the James theory run into the hundreds; but we have here a view destined to be of enormous influence among psychologists, the starting point for nearly all modern theory regarding the emotions, as well as the stimulus to much research."

James himself did not seek detailed experimental corroboration. Though he was instrumental in establishing one of the first psychology laboratories in the world, he quickly became bored with it. Eventually he recruited Munsterberg from Germany to take over the experimentation.

James characteristically displayed more interest in the pedagogical significance of his theory than in confirmation by precise, quantitative methods. "There is no more valuable precept in moral education than this, as all who have experience know: if we wish to conquer undesirable emotional tendencies in ourselves, we must assiduously, and in the first instance cold-bloodedly, go through the out-ward movements of those contrary dispositions which we prefer to cultivate. The reward of persistency will infallibly come in the fading out of the sullenness or depression, and the advent of real cheerfulness and kindliness in their stead. Smooth the brow, brighten the eye, contract the dorsal rather than the ventral aspect of the frame, and speak in a major key, pass the genial compliment and your heart must be frigid indeed if it do not gradually thaw!"

Selfish Speculations

The notion of selfhood still contains countless perplexing problems, and no psychologist has surpassed James in surveying the topic. For several decades after the publication of the Principles there was little interest in the self. Some commentators have attributed the avoidance to the prevailing behavioristic temper, while others speculate that no one felt he could add to the Jamesian treatment of the concept. In the last twenty years concern with the self has steadily increased. Theories of existential psychiatry, the self-image, and the child's perception of his world all echo ideas originally proposed by James.

"The consciousness of Self," James wrote in summary, "involves a stream of thought, each part of which as 'I' can remember those which went before, know the things they knew, and care paramountly for certain ones among them as 'Me', and appropriate to these the rest. This Me is an empirical aggregate of things objectively known. The I which knows them cannot itself be an aggregate; neither for psychological purposes need it be an unchanging metaphysical entity like the Soul, or a principle like the transcendental Ego, viewed as 'out of time.' It is a thought, at each moment, different from that of the last moment, but appropriative of the latter, together with all that the latter called its own. All the experimental facts find their place in this description, unencumbered with any hypothesis save that of the existence of passing thoughts or states of mind."

James sadly commented on the conflict between different Me's; but, as usual, he concluded in an optimistic and morally educative fashion. His remarks provide a glimpse of the personal aims of his philosophical and psychological endeavor. "Not that I would not, if I could, be both handsome and fat and well dressed, and a great athlete, and make a million a year, be a wit, a bon-vivant, and a lady-killer, as well as a philosopher.... But the thing is simply impossible.... Such different characters may conceivably at the outset of life be alike possible to a man. But to make any one of them actual, the rest must more or less be suppressed. So the seeker of his truest, strongest, deepest self must review the list carefully, and pick out the one on which to stake his salvation. All other selves thereup-on become unreal, but the fortunes of this self are real. Its failures are real failures, its triumphs real triumphs, carrying shame and gladness with them."

(This is the fourth in a series of articles on William James)