William James

Psychical Research and the Challenge of Modernity

Krister Dylan Knapp

• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781469668758, 9781469631240
• eBook ISBN: 9781469631257
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology

In this insightful new book on the remarkable William James, the American psychologist and philosopher, Krister Dylan Knapp provides the first deeply historical and acutely analytical account of James’s psychical research. While showing that James always maintained a critical stance toward claims of paranormal phenomena like spiritualism, Knapp uses new sources to argue that psychical research held a strikingly central position in James’s life. It was crucial to his familial and professional relationships, the fashioning of his unique intellectual disposition, and the shaping of his core doctrines, especially the will-to-believe, empiricism, fideism, and theories of the subliminal consciousness and immortality.

Knapp explains how and why James found in psychical research a way to rethink the well-trodden approaches to classic Euro-American religious thought, typified by the oppositional categories of natural vs. supernatural and normal vs. paranormal. He demonstrates how James eschewed these choices and instead developed a tertiary synthesis of them, an approach Knapp terms tertium quid, the third way. Situating James’s psychical research in relation to the rise of experimental psychology and Protestantism’s changing place in fin de siècle America, Knapp asserts that the third way illustrated a much broader trend in transatlantic thought as it struggled to navigate the uncertainties and religious adventurism of the modern age.

Notes

ABBREVIATIONS

James Family Members

AHGJ

Alice Howe Gibbens James (WJ’s wife)

AJ

Alice James (WJ’s sister)

ARJ

Alexander Robertson James (WJ’s youngest son)

HJ Jr.

Henry James Jr. (WJ’s brother, “Harry”)

HJ Sr.

Henry James Sr. (WJ’s father)

HJ III

Henry James (WJ’s first son)

MMJ

Margaret Mary James (WJ’s daughter)

WJ

William James

WJ Jr.

William James (WJ’s second son)

Societies and Their Publications

ASPR

American Society for Psychical Research

JASPR

Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research

PASPR

Proceedings of the American Society for Psychical Research

SPR

Society for Psychical Research

JSPR

Journal of the Society for Psychical Research

PSPR

Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research

Primary Sources

CWJ

The Correspondence of William James

ECR

Essays, Comments, and Reviews

EP

Essays in Psychology

EPHL

Essays in Philosophy

EPR

Essays in Psychical Research

ERM

Essays in Religion and Morality

HI

Human Immortality

HJL

Henry James Letters

JJGW

James John Garth Wilkinson Papers

JP

James Papers

LWJ

The Letters of William James

LWJTF

Letters of William James and Théodore Flournoy

PP

The Principles of Psychology

Prag.

Pragmatism

PU

A Pluralistic Universe

SPP

Some Problems of Philosophy

SUC

The Selected Unpublished Correspondence

WB

The Will to Believe

WWJ

The Writings of William James

Secondary Sources

TCWJ

The Thought and Character of William James

Reference Works

BDP

Biographical Dictionary of Parapsychology

CAT

A Companion to American Thought

DAB

The Dictionary of American Biography

DNB

The Dictionary of National Biography

DSB

The Dictionary of Scientific Biography

EOP

Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology

EPhil

Encyclopedia of Philosophy

PDS

A Popular Dictionary of Spiritualism

RE

The Reader’s Encyclopedia

INTRODUCTION

1. Excerpted with quotations from EPR, appendix 3, “Sittings with Mrs. Piper: Kate Walsh and Baby Eliza,” 436–41. See also “Weather Report.”

2. EOP, s.v. “psychical research” and “telepathy.”

3. Ibid., s.v. “Spiritualism.”

4. WJ to Ralph Barton Perry, 9 September 1904, SUC, 348.

5. The one possible exception is Blum, Ghost Hunters. It is a very readable but journalistic account of the first generation of psychical researchers in the United States largely devoid of historical context, a conceptual framework, and an analytical argument. For an account of the scholarly literature, see my Historiographical Essay.

6. Perry, TCWJ, 2:155.

7. See Gale, Divided Self of William James; and W. Cooper, Unity of William James’s Thought, especially chap. 2. Thanks to an anonymous reader of the manuscript for pointing out the latter source and argument.

8. The impetus for my argument comes from Robert A. McDermott, who wrote, “James’s research concerning psychical phenomena may be understood as his effort to generate a tertium quid, or third position, between the equally unacceptable extremes of skepticism and uncritical acceptance.” See McDermott, introduction to EPR, xxix. While McDermott limited its applicability to psychology, my book develops a much broader notion of the concept. I am especially grateful to Howard Brick, who suggested the useful phrase “a tertiary synthesis of all dualisms.” Some psychologists, psychiatrists, and philosophers argue that F. W. H. Myers, one of James’s psychical research colleagues, took a third way approach to the study of the mind. See Kelly and Kelly et al., Irreducible Mind, esp. 62–63. I argue against this view in chap. 6. Thanks to one anonymous reader of the manuscript for pointing out this source.

9. RE, s.v. “tertium quid”; Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary, s.v. “tertium quid”; Chadwick, Early Church, 148, 157, 192–212.

10. WJ, “Thomas Davidson: Individualist,” ECR, 89.

11. WJ to G. S. Hall, 10 October 1879, CWJ, 5:64. On James’s rejection of Hegel and his impact on philosophy in Cambridge, see Richardson, William James, 213–16.

12. WJ, “On Some Hegelisms,” WB, 216–17.

13. WJ, Prag., 28; EPhil, s.v. “pragmatism,” by H. S. Thayer.

14. Perry, TCWJ, 1:458–59.

15. For a contrasting view that argues “pure experience” formed James’s center of vision, see Bjork, Wil...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Figures
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Tertium Quid
• I: Becoming a Psychical Researcher
• II: Practicing Psychical Research
• III: Theorizing Psychical Research
• Conclusion: Tertium Quid Redux
• Historiographical Essay
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index