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James on Exceptional Mental States James on Exceptional Mental States
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The Formless Mass Within The Formless Mass Within
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The Centimeter of Observation The Centimeter of Observation
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6 Morbid and Positive Thinking: William James, Psychology, and Illness
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Published:January 2014
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Abstract
This chapter explores William James’s often overlooked Lowell Lectures on Exceptional Mental States of 1896, which bridge James’s early work on psychology in The Principles of Psychology and his later broad-ranging discussion of religion. The chapter extends the biographical focus of the previous one by analysing the nature of “exceptional mental states”, James’s interest in psychic experimentation, and his emphasis on therapeutic techniques available to individuals experiencing complex bodily and psychological ailments: James described such states as a “mass of floating matter”, difficult to pin down, extremely subjective, and not readily open to analysis. The chapter compares James’s own breakdown of 1872, famously recreated in The Varieties of Religious Experience, and his sister Alice’s illness experiences, published in The Diary of Alice James, as test cases for exploring tensions within James’s thought. The chapter also tests the contemporary theorist Frederic Jameson’s assumptions about the role of subjectivity within the history of modernist thought.
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