William James (1842-1910) and Functionalism

Some web resources:

• From Emory University, an excellent site about James
• The William James Society

Functionalists

1. Oppose the search for the elements of consciousness as futile.
2. Believe that the mind has the function of helping us adapt to the environment. They want to understand the function of the mind, the ways it helps us adapt.
3. Want psychology to be practical, not pure science.
4. Want psychology to be broadened to include research on animals, children, and atypical humans.
5. Believed the needs and motivations of the organism should be understood if one wanted to understand behavior.
6. They are more interested in what makes people different from each other than in what makes them similar.
7. They are willing to use a wide variety of methods of study.

William James

In 1896, a Berlin newspaper named Wundt "The Psychological Pope of the Old World, and James "The Psychological Pope of the New World".

James started as an artist, then pursued medical studies. He graduated in 1864, then he went to Germany, where he encountered Wundt's thought, and Helmholtz's.
He became deeply depressed, mostly because German Psychology made him think there was no freedom. Eventually, an article by a French philosopher by the name of Renouvier helped him. In this article, he found a definition of free will : "The sustaining of a thought when I might have other thoughts". This definition convinced him that freedom existed. So, he decided to believe in free will, and to believe in his individual reality and creative power.

James becomes a pragmatist. If an idea works, then it is valid. The criterion of truth lies in an idea's usefulness.
Consequently, in some areas of psychology, he will take a scientific determinist approach, but he will not assume that EVERYTHING in humans can be studied that way.
So, for example, he studied religious experience, and wrote The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902), a work that is based on qualitative interviewing and observational methods.
William James taught at Harvard, and wrote Principles of Psychology in 1878. It is the first "Intro to Psychology" text.

James established a Psych lab in 1875 (four years before Wundt's 1879), but it was mostly for the purpose of teaching demonstrations.

Important concepts in James

Stream of consciousness.

1. Consciousness cannot be divided for analysis
2. Consciousness is personal
3. Consciousness is always changing
4. Consciousness is selective: some elements are selected for entering into it, some are prohibited.         
5. Consciousness is functional (it serves an adaptive function) 

Habits and instincts

James saw instincts as malleable, and behavior as changeable. He encourages the formation of good habits through acting in ways that are compatible with the person you would want to become.

James' maxims to develop good habits:

1. Place yourself in circumstances that encourage good habits and discourage bad ones.
2. Do not allow yourself to act contrary to a new habit you are trying to develop. "Each lapse is like the letting fall of a ball of string which one is carefully winding up; a single slip undoes more than a great many turns will wind again."
3. Do not attempt to slowly develop a good habit or eliminate a bad one.  Radical and total change is better.
4. It is not the intention to engage in good habits and avoid bad ones that is important; it is the actual doing so: "There is no more contemptible type of human character than that of the nerveless sentimentalist and dreamer, who spends his life in a weltering sea of sensibility and emotion, but who never does a concrete deed."
5. Force yourself to act in ways that are beneficial to you, even if doing so at first is distasteful and requires considerable effort.

The self

The self is composed of the "me" (empirical self) and the "I" (transcendental self) who does the knowing.

Parts of the empirical self:

1. the material self (your body, and possessions)
2. the social self (your friends and relatives)
3. the spiritual self (your ideas and belief systems)
    

Self esteem: self esteem= success/pretensions

Thus, there are 2 ways to increase self-esteem: increase success, or decrease pretensions.

Emotions:

Peripheral theory of emotions.
I feel the way I act.
I am afraid because I run, depressed because I slouch...