The stream of consciousness

implications for a humanistic psychological theory

Joseph Rychlak

pp. 91-116

in: Kenneth S. Pope, Jerome L. Singer (eds), The stream of consciousness, Berlin, Springer, 1978

Abstract

The first time I read anything by William James was in an undergraduate philosophy course, where we were assigned selections from Pragmatism (James, 1907). He was never incorporated into my general psychology courses, but in time I did elect to take a history course and then read Boring (1950) to learn something about James as an historical figure. I had, of course, heard of him by way of the popular media and soon undertook to read his The Varieties of Religious Experience (James, 1928), which was then and still is prominently displayed on the popular bookshelves. By the time I was completing my undergraduate education, I had the impression of James as a remarkably insightful person, a man who was marvelously in touch with the human condition, but whose impact on the theoretical models then being advanced in psychology (circa 1953) was amazingly absent.

Cited authors

James William