Experimental studies of daydreaming and the stream of thought

Jerome L. Singer

pp. 187-223

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

Abstract

Perhaps symbolic of some deep irony in the history of psychology, the death of William James in 1910 coincided with the dramatic emergence of behaviorism in American psychology and with the turn from sensitive introspection toward a kind of mindless but well-documented motor responsiveness that characterized behaviorism. The young psychologists who emerged during the next half-century, establishing their bastions and rat-laboratories in Indiana, Iowa, and dozens of the land-grant universities scattered over the face of America, had no patience with the quiet speculations about the self and consciousness of William James. Indeed, led by Watson, they mocked the dry efforts of Titchner and his students to separate out sensation, perception, and imagery in consciousness by introspecting about the degree of "purpleness' of a light. American psychologists wanted facts, hard data, and precise methodologies that could lead to replicable experiments.

Cited authors

James William