Psychology: Briefer Course

by William James, Michael M. Sokal (Introduction)

Overview

Today's scholars know James's psychology primarily through his great Principles of Psychology (1890), but those who studied the subject at the turn of the century were more apt to learn his view through his Psychology: Briefer Course (1892). Indeed, professors at colleges and universities throughout the United States use this book—which their students labeled "Jimmy" to distinguish it from the larger "James"—in their classes, and more than six times as many copies of the Briefer Course were sold by 1902 as were sets of Principles.

Despite its title, the Briefer Course is more than a simple condensation of the larger work. For example, to the material from Principles James added several chapters on the physiology of the senses that helped mesh his psychology with the other sciences of the period. The earlier chapter title "The Stream of Thought" is replaced here with "The Stream of Consciousness." Psychology: Briefer Course remains a useful and highly readable introduction to James's views on psychology and is an essential source for anyone interested in studying all of his psychological writings.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780674721029
Publisher:	Harvard University Press
Publication date:	03/01/1985
Series:	The Works of William James , #12
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	602
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x 1.50(d)

Table of Contents

CHAPTER 1
  HABIT
    "Its importance, and its physical basis"
    Due to pathways formed in the centres
    Its practical uses
    Concatenated acts
    Necessity for guiding sensations in secondarily automatic performances
    Pedagogical maxims concerning the formation of habits
CHAPTER 2
  THE STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS
    Analytic order of our study
    Every state of mind forms part of a personal consciousness
    The same state of mind is never had twice
    Permanently recurring ideas are a fiction
    Every personal consciousness is continuous
    Substantive and transitive states
    Every object appears with a 'fringe' of relations
    The 'topic' of the thought
    Thought may be rational in any sort of imagery
    Consciousness is always especially interested in some one part of its object
CHAPTER 3
  THE SELF
    The Me and the I
    The material Me
    The social Me
    The spiritual Me
    Self-appreciation
    "Self-seeking, bodily, social and spiritual"
    Rivalry of the Mes
    Their hierarchy
    Teleology of self-interest
    "The I, or 'pure ego'"
    Thoughts are not compounded of 'fused' sensations
    The 'soul' as a combining medium
    The sense of personal identity
    Explained by identity of function in successive passing thoughts
    Mutations of the self
    Insane delusions
    Alternating personalities
    Mediumships or possessions
    Who is the Thinker
CHAPTER 4
  ATTENTION
    The narrowness of the field of consciousness
    Dispersed attention
    To how much can we attend at once?
    The varieties of attention
    "Voluntary attention, its momentary character"
    "To keep our attention, an object must change"
    Genius and attention
    Attention's physiological conditions
    The sense-organ must be adapted
    The idea of the object must be aroused
    Pedagogic remarks
    Attention and free-will
CHAPTER 5
  CONCEPTION
    Different states of mind can mean the same
    "Conceptions of abstract, of universal, and of problematic objects"
    The thought of 'the same' is not the same thought over again
CHAPTER 6
  DISCRIMINATION
    Discrimination and association; definition of discrimination
    Conditions which favor it
    The sensation of difference
    Differences inferred
    That analysis of compound objects
    "To be easily singled out, a quality should already be separately known"
    Dissociation by varying concomitants
    Practice improves discrimination
CHAPTER 7
  ASSOCIATION
    To order of our ideas
    It is determined by cerebral laws
    The ultimate cause of association is habit
    The elementary law in association
    Indeterminates of its results
    Total recall
    "Partial recall, and the law of interest"
    "Frequency, recency, vividness, and emotional congruity tend to determine the object recalled"
    "Focalized recall, or 'association by similarity'"
    Voluntary trains of thought
    The solution of problems
    Similarity no elementary law; summary and conclusion
CHAPTER 8
  THE SENSE OF TIME
    The sensible present has duration
    We have no sense for absolutely empty time
    We measure duration by the events which succeed in it
    The feeling of past time is a present feeling
    Due to a constant cerebral condition
CHAPTER 9
  MEMORY
    What it is
    It involves both retention and recall
    Both elements explained by paths formed by habit in the brain
    "Two conditions of a good memory, persistence and numerousness of paths"
    Cramming
    One's native retentiveness is unchangeable
    Improvement of memory
    Recognition
    Forgetting
    Pathological conditions
CHAPTER 10
  IMAGINATION
    What it is
    Imaginations differ from man to man; Galton's statistics of visual imagery
    Images of sounds
    Images of movement
    Images of touch
    Loss of images in aphasia
    The neural process in imagination
CHAPTER 11
  PERCEPTION
    Perception and sensation compared
    The perceptive state of mind is not a compound
    Perception is of definite things
    Illusions
    First type: inference of the more usual object
    Second type: inference of the object of which our mind is full
    Apperception'
    Genius and old-fogyism
    The physiological process in perception
    Hallucinations
CHAPTER 12
  THE PERCEPTION OF SPACE
    The attribute of extensity belongs to all objects of sensation
    The construction of real space
    The processes which it involves:
      1) Subdivision
      2) Coalescence of different sensible data into one 'thing'
      3) Location in an environment
      4) Place in a series of positions
      5) Measurement
    "Objects which are signs, and objects which are realities"
    "The 'third dimension,' Berkeley's theory of distance"
    The part played by the intellect in space-perception
CHAPTER 13
  REASONING
    What it is
    It involves the use of abstract characters
    What it is meant by an 'essential' character
    The 'essence' varies with the subjective interest
    "The two great points in reasoning, 'sagacity' and 'wisdom'"
    Sagacity
    The help given by association by similarity
    The reasoning powers of brutes
CHAPTER 14
  CONSCIOUSNESS AND MOVEMENT
    All consciousness is motor
    Three classes of movement to which it leads
CHAPTER 15
  EMOTION
    Emotions compared with instincts
    The varieties of emotion are innumerable
    The cause of their varieties
    "The feeling, in the coarser emotions, results from the bodily expression"
    This view explains the great variability of emotion
    A corollary verified
    An objection replied to
    The subtler emotions
    Description of fear
    Genesis of the emotional reactions
CHAPTER 16
  INSTINCT
    Its definition
    Every instinct is an impulse
   

Editorial Reviews

American psychologist and philosopher James (1842-1910) examines a wide range of topics such as the importance and physical basis of habit, stream of consciousness, self and the sense of personal identity, discrimination and association, the sense of time, memory, perception, imagination, reasoning, emotions compared to instincts, the will and voluntary acts, and other subjects. This brief version omits the long-outdated first nine chapters of his original two-volume treatise. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Booknews

"The re-publication of James's work . . . is a testimony to his monumental importance in the field of psychology. The work, a brief of his larger work, The Principles of Psychology, illustrates to the modern mind how far we have come in returning to some of James's insights."

Studies in Formative Spirituality

"This book . . . was originally published in 1892 by Holt and republished by Harper in 1961. A durable classic in the field, it is developed on the structure of seventeen definitive chapters treating cryptic themes such as Habit, Stream of Consciousness, The Self, Attention, Conception, Discrimination, Association, Memory, Imagination, Perception, Reasoning, Emotion, Instinct, Will, and the like. . . . Today . . . it is still eminently readable scholarship."

Journal of Psychology and Christianity

"This book . . . was originally published in 1892 by Holt and republished by Harper in 1961. A durable classic in the field, it is developed on the structure of seventeen definitive chapters treating cryptic themes such as Habit, Stream of Consciousness, The Self, Attention, Conception, Discrimination, Association, Memory, Imagination, Perception, Reasoning, Emotion, Instinct, Will, and the like. . . . Today . . . it is still eminently readable scholarship." —Journal of Psychology and Christianity

"The re-publication of James's work . . . is a testimony to his monumental importance in the field of psychology. The work, a brief of his larger work, The Principles of Psychology, illustrates to the modern mind how far we have come in returning to some of James's insights." —Studies in Formative Spirituality

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