Young William James Thinking by Paul J Croce

Author:Paul J Croce [Croce, Paul J]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Goodreads: 34933280
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
Published: 2017-12-05T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Four

Crises and Construction

For the past week, to be sure I have been laid up, . . . but I have come to

regard that as a periodical neccessity [ sic]. . . . I think I at last see a

certain order in the state I’m in.

William James, 1870

On the 9th of July 1868, William James declared that he was in “crisis.” After

more than a year in Eu rope learning the German language and physiological

psy chol ogy, he had traveled to Heidelberg hoping to hear lectures by Herman

von Helmholtz, whose researches on nerve impulses and sensory perception

James hoped to study for deepening his understanding of physiological psy-

chol ogy. But the “scientific genius” he hoped to meet was not lecturing that

season; he had planned poorly, and he was frustrated. James was so disappointed

with his “fiasco” that he “fled . . . under the influence of a blue despair” because

Heidelberg now reminded him of the work he was not yet accomplishing. This was

not his first crisis, and it wouldn’t be his last. Four years before, at age twenty-

two and about to begin classes at Harvard Medical School in the fall of

1864, he shocked himself with the intensity of his first major feeling of “desola-

tion.” In the next few years, a convergence of his health prob lems, his tenden-

cies to ambivalence about the Civil War, his social relations with family and

friends, his vocational uncertainties, and even bleak winter weather plunged

him into repeated crises. For example, he reported a “slough of despond” when

aboard the steamer Colorado destined for Brazil in April 1865; “a sort of cri-

sis” in 1868 on listening to music performed so well that it generated “hor-

ror” about his own “waste[d] life”; and a feeling that he had “about touched

bottom” in 1870 triggered by a simultaneous sore back and a sinking realiza-

tion that materially determined choices would undercut moral effort, starting

with his own philanthropic goals. His falls into despair were so bleak that sui-

cide sometimes seemed his only recourse. His trou bles were so frequent that his

“condish” became almost routine as he per sis tently kept trying for improvement

188  Young William James Thinking

and searching for reasons to keep motivated. 1 Moreover, he found constructive possibilities in the heart of the crises themselves. They trained his fighting

spirit for willful effort; they even seemed to be necessary stages toward im-

provement and growth, as the sectarian health- care providers argued; and he

noticed that wisdom might emerge from struggling with his trou bles.

James did not have one single moment of crisis from depression and indeci-

sion all at once and then become done with them. His first letters and note-

books give early hints of his dilemmas in choosing among vari ous vocations

and philosophies of life, and he was nagged by per sis tent health prob lems and

frustration from living at home while remaining remote from marriage. All

these factors conspired to make the years when he was in his twenties, from

1862 to 1873, a period punctuated by many bouts of utter discouragement.

The latter half de cade after 1868 was particularly

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