William James: Anhedonia and The Stream Of

Thought

Janelle Harrison
Religious Studies 15
T.A: Amy Copper
Due: 12/2/97
The legacy of William James is profound. His contributions to the fields of
philosophy, psychology, and religion are abundant. Some of his published works
include The Principles of Psychology (1890), The Will to Believe and Other Essays
in Popular Philosophy (1897), and The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902),
Pragmatism (1907), The Meaning of Truth and A Pluralistic Universe (1909).
These published lectures and other texts which William James has written bring
together the theories and concepts of a man, who is considered by some as the
most representative philosopher in America. He is considered to be a very
influential psychologist in the field of psychology; stressing the importance of
individual experience. He was also the first person to set up a laboratory in
experimental psychology in America (McHenry V). In the first of these writings
entitled The Principles of Psychology, James began forming the foundations for
would later be called his philosophical attitude of radical empiricism- which is
his “full-blown doctrine of pure experience” (Browning 72). He uses this
doctrine to some extent when he discusses the topic of the stream of
consciousness, which is found in chapter IV of Principles. The tone of his radical
empiricism theory is evident throughout his works, including his Gifford lectures
published as The Varieties of Religious Experience (72,73).
James' approach to many of his philosophical and psychological beliefs tend to
be viewed as contradictory or inconsistent as many have suggested. But rather
than conceding that his ideas are inconsistent it would be better to “consider
whether this inner conflict is not at the root of the fruitfulness of James’
psychological thought” as Hans Linschoten stated (32,33). Indeed, James’s
“attempt to hold together a descriptive and explanatory approach to study
human nature” goes against the basis of psychological study (32). He wanted to
use a functional approach to psychology as well as a phenomenological
approach; both of which are derived from very different theoretical beginnings
and in the scope of psychological study are thought of as opposing ends of a
spectrum.
James’s functional approach relies heavily on the scientific construct found in
The Principles of Psychology. Even as he examines such topics as the stream of
consciousness, will, or the emotions, James realizes that the issues of
metaphysics and phenomenological experiences are not avoidable (70). He knew
for instance, that the models of the external world could not begin to lead to the
understanding of “the internal phenomenological life of the person, to beliefs,
attitudes, values, or to the phenomena of changing states of consciousness”.
James outlines these changing states of consciousness in the five characters of
thought (Taylor 4).
The Varieties of Religious Experience, which consists mainly of personal
documents relating experiences by numerous people, including the famous
German literary figure Tolstoy is a work that begins to fully substantiate James’s
belief in the importance of the individual. James relies more considerably on the
phenomenological and metaphysical point of view he has asserted in his theory
of radical empiricism to support his claims for the importance of the individual
experience. In many ways, James brought together “the best aspects of the
functional and phenomenological psychology” in these writings (Browning 32).
There is within the first seven chapters of Principles a profound
“antiphenomenological” point being made as James “advocates both the
psychophysical dualism and an epistemological dualism” (69). James makes the
distinction quiet clear in Principles that there is a difference between the
consciousness of the body (brain) and the consciousness of the mind. He also
asserts that sometimes the brain causes mental states and sometimes, mental
states directly influence the brain (Browning 70). This is the psychophysical
dualism James discusses in the early chapters of Principles.
The epistemological dualism James “commits” to states that “the minds relations
to other objects than the brain are cognitive and emotion relations exclusively”
(Principles 140). The psychologist attitude towards cognition according to James
...Is a thoroughgoing dualism. It supposes two elements. Mind knowing and
thing known, and treats them as irreducible. Neither gets out of itself or into the
other, neither in any way is the other, neither makes the other (Principles 142).

James realizes after claiming this dualism of object and subject that a
psychologist must use “commonsense” in these instances “whatever ulterior
monistic philosophy he [she] may, as an individual who has the right also to be a
metaphysician, have in reserve (143). This statement is one, which will allow
James to emerge from his prior claims that were so antiphenomenological at the
beginning of Principles (Browning 70).
It’s quiet possible then to discuss James’s stream of thought in a very functional
way, use it for a basis, and also use his radical empiricism theory to discuss
Varieties- which is a work that is considered metaphysical and
phenomenological rather than functional. James has noted on numerous
occasions that the stream of thought (or consciousness) should be the core
study of psychology and thus, both approaches should be used to attain the
main objective of any study.
James’s radical empiricism does not follow the defined outlines of
consciousness that B.F. Skinner and his follower’s postulated; that
consciousness is nothing more than discrete sense impressions from outside.
No, James’s radical empiricism did not start with the simple sensation and
proceed synthetically, constructing each higher stage from those below it”
(Browning 72). He posited that objects and relations are the basic things of the
consciousness.
No one ever had a simple sensation by itself. Consciousness, from our natal day;
is of a teeming multiplicity of subjects and relations, and what we call simple
sensations are results of discriminative attention pushed often to a very high
degree (Principles 146)

James heavily discusses the multiplicity of subjects and relations in

philosophical terms of pluralism. James stated in Pragmatism that the monism-
pluralism issue which he had been brooding over for sometime has come “to be
the most central of all philosophical problems” (King 91). When discussing
monism-pluralism from the vantagepoint of psychology, James gives three
major advantages of pluralism:
1) It is more scientific than monism and allows scientists to operate naturally in
the stream of experience.
2) Pluralism encourages intellectual freedom
3) According to James, pluralism “agrees more with moral and dramatic
expressiveness of life.
James gives a better example of the differences between pluralism and monism
in Varieties when he discusses the two different temperament types he
distinguished as the healthy-minded and the sick soul. There is a corresponding
relationship between the experiences James gives in Varieties and his chapter on
the stream of thought in Principles.
According to James there are five characteristics of thought that he presents in
chapter IV of Principles. He notes that this chapter “is like a painter’s first
charcoal sketch upon his canvas, in which no niceties appear” (Principles 146).
In other words, these five characters of thought must be established if the
painting as a whole is ever to be completed. The five characters of thought are:
1) Every thought tends to be part of a personal consciousness.
2) Within each personal consciousness thought is always changing.
3) Within each personal consciousness thought is sensibly continuous.
4) It always appears to deal with objects independent of itself.
5) It is interested in some of the parts of these objects to the exclusion of
others, and welcomes or rejects- chooses from among them, in a word- all the
while (146).

James noted in the chapter prior to the stream of thought two kinds of knowing.
One was by “ acquaintance’ and the other “knowledge about”. Knowledge by
acquaintance is the knowledge of “bare impression”, like knowing what an apple
tastes like when you taste it.
In knowledge by acquaintance our sense for the relations or fringes surrounding
a thing is small and we are aware only in the penumbral nascent way of a fringe
of unarticulated affinities about it (77).

Knowledge about is much more specific and our “awareness of the fringe of
relations surrounding a thing is far more articulate and explicit”; it’s
understanding the concepts of a thought (78). And to James, finding the
meaning (or the fringe) is the primary objective for psychologist (82).
In James Varieties of Religious Experience, he distinguishes the healthy-minded
personality from the sick soul personality. In these lectures the emphasis is
placed on individualistic experience and what it means to a person in relation to
religion. It was in terms of usefulness and “the difference it makes in the
individuals day-to-day existence”(wulff 497). Thus, James relied heavily on
reported mystical experiences from individuals when he had given the Gifford
lectures.
When James distinguishes the pluralistic or healthy-minded individual from the
monistic sick soul he acknowledges that these minds work at different levels:
There are people for whom evil means only a mal-adjustment with things, a
wrong correspondence of one’s life with the environment. Such evil is curable.
But there are others for whom evil is no mere relation of the subject to
particular outer things, but something more radical and general, a wrongness or
vice in his essential nature, which no alteration of the environment, or any
superficial rearrangement of the inner self, can cure, and which requires a
supernatural remedy (Varieties 134).

These different levels of the sick soul lye at the heart of the monistic
philosopher’s rationale-and everything has an evil element behind it in this
case.
James also discusses the different thresholds of a man’s consciousness. One
person might have a high threshold to outer stimulus, while another may be
sensitive to small differences and have a low “difference-threshold”. This is
important to note because James believes that the differences between where
the healthy-minded threshold lies and the sick souls threshold lies in the
consciousness will determine if one person might need one form of religion and
another person might need another form (135).
When James begins to discuss the sick soul and “the secrets of their prison-
house, their own particular form of consciousness” he postulates that the
person must become the prey of such a pathological melancholy (135,145). He
posited that the subject of this kind of melancholy is “forced” to ignore any
good in the world and thus, finds the subject of this mental consciousness in a
state of neurotic constitutions rather than one of a normal constitution (145).
These instances according to James are very private and individualistic and the
only true way to understand their anhedonia, or lack of experiencing any form
of pleasure in life is to read their personal documents of such experiences
(145). James quotes Professor Ribot as he discusses the emotional constitution
of an ill magistrate
Every emotion appeared dead within him. He manifested neither perversion nor
violence, but complete absence of emotional reaction.

According to James, this kind of constitution can be the consequence of mental

isolation (146).
One personal document by a Catholic philosopher, Father Gratry describes in
further detail the incapacity to feel joy.
I could conceive no joy, no pleasure in inhabiting it. Happiness, joy, light,
affection, love- all these words were now devoid of sense. Without doubt I could
still have talked of all these things, but I had become incapable of feeling
anything in them, of understanding anything about them, of hoping anything
from them or believing them to exist (147).

James notes that this anguish can appear in “various characters” which might
appear in the quality of “loathing, sometimes that of irritation and exasperation;
or again of mis-trust and self-despair; or of suspicion” and even anxiety (157).
This person may accuse himself or others for this suffering that he is
experiencing.
When James begins his evaluation of Tolstoy’s personal document he notes the
similarities between religious conversion and the sudden changes in the
melancholy’s which are usually the same only “in reverse direction” (151).
Tolstoy was questioning ‘why?’ ‘Wherefore?’ and ‘what for?’ in his personal
documents. He begins by saying “something had broken within me on which my
life rested, I had nothing left to hold on to” (153). It becomes apparent through
Tolstoy’s confession that life had lost all meaning for him. He was in a state of
anhedonia. It was only through his second birth that Tolstoy was able to
overcome his despair (153).
…During the whole course of this year, when I almost uncertainly kept asking
myself how to end the business, whether by the rope or by the bullet, during all
that time, alongside of all those movements of my ideas and observation, my
heart kept languishing with another pining emotion. I can call this no other
name than that of a thirst of God (156).
The second birth, which cannot be experienced by the healthy-minded
individual because he or she does not experience this profound melancholy in
such a way as the sick soul does. This experience leads to “a deeper kind of
conscious being” (157). The healthy-minded individual is only once-born and
always sees the world as a sunny day according to James.
Throughout these personal documents there lies the principles of the stream of
consciousness presented by James in his work The Principles of Psychology.
James uses functional theories of psychology to examine what is considered
purely metaphysical or phenomenological. These experiences are also based
upon his theory of radical empiricism. The emergence of the use of opposing
ideas is what lies at the heart of Jamesian theory. He distinguishes between the
pluralistic attitude and the monistic attitude and recognizes the problem
presented by each in various ways when religion is concerned. James postulates
that religious conversion is at some point a matter of will. And that will, is an
action of thought which only experience can decide which thought will do in the
over all scheme of conscious life (Principles 810). All Of this and so much more
is what has contributed to what we consider today to be the legacy of William
James.

WORKS CITED.
Browning, Dan S. Pluralism and Personality. Associated University Press, London:
1980.
James, William. The Principles of Psychology. Ed. Adler, Mortimer J. Encyclopedia
Britannica, Chicago: 1994.
James, Williams. The Varieties of Religious Experience: a Study in Human Nature,
being the Gifford Lectures on Natural Religion Delivered at Edinburgh in 1901-
1902. Longmans, Green, & Co.: 1902.
King, Cheri., King, Brett., and Viney, Wayne. “William James on the Advantages of
a Pluralistic Psychology.” Reinterpreting the Legacy of William James. Ed.
Donelly, Maragret. American Psychological Association, Washington D.C.: pp 91-
100:1992.
Suckiel, Ellen K. Heaven’s Champion. University of Notre Dame Press, Notre
Dame: 1996.
Wulff, David M. Psychology of Religion: Classic and Contemporary. Second
Edition. John Wiley & Sons, New York: 1997.