America's first psychologist

William James died 100 years ago today, but his influence is still with us. He contributed mightily to the early growth of psychology, writing the first textbook, establishing the first demonstration laboratory, and teaching the first course on the subject.

A sibling of novelist Henry and diarist Alice, James was educated in a variety of schools in America and abroad - none of which seemed to suit his father, a brilliant eccentric who preferred the kind of informal education that took place in spirited discussions around the family dinner table.

Thanks to the wealth of William's Irish emigrant grandfather, he didn't have to find a job. He did, however, agonize over finding his place in life. He studied art but decided he was no artist; obtained a medical degree but never practiced medicine; joined expeditions on the Amazon but found collecting specimens tedious. What intrigued him were the scientific and philosophical theories of Darwin and other intellectual luminaries.

Throughout his formative years, James was plagued by debilitating bouts of anxiety and depression. His disconsolate emotional state was heightened by, and in turn fed into, his intellectual struggles.

To James, science suggested life was a matter of chance, with neither purpose nor meaning. As he put it, "the bubbles on the foam which coats a stormy sea are floating episodes, made and unmade by the forces of the wind and water. Our private selves are like those bubbles. ... [T]heir destinies weigh nothing and determine nothing in the world's irremediable currents of events."

James' resolution was to accept this determinism in the realm of science, but not in life. Life, he decided, is better when people believe they can think and accomplish what they will.

Searching for a place in the philosophical feast to sink his teeth in, he hit upon physiological psychology. He was offered a position at Harvard in 1873 and taught the first experimental psychology course there. He enjoyed and excelled at teaching, and Harvard provided a base from which his prolific mind generated a stream of writings and lectures.

At the time, the predominant school of empirical psychology was structuralism, which focused on the organization and classification of mental processes, hoping to do for the mind what the periodic table did for the elements. But James studied mental processes by observing what they accomplished.

This approach, consistent with the American spirit, came to be called functionalism. It welcomed a variety of ideas, particularly those that helped solve practical problems. James' interest in applied psychology showed in his recruitment of an industrial psychologist to head the psychological laboratory at Harvard, as well as his efforts with John Dewey to improve American education.

James' writings, including The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902), are thought-provoking even today. His ability to coin a catchphrase - describing the infant's world, for example, as a "blooming buzzing confusion" - and his imaginative speculations intrigued the public and scientists alike.

If you see a bear in the woods, do you run because you are afraid? No, James held, you are afraid because you run. Researchers haven't proved that, but today we believe that what we say and do affects how we think and feel, not just the other way around.

James' questions about determinism in human psychology are still being debated, too. But his arguments against behaviorism - which emphasizes that the mind, at least for scientific purposes, does not exist - are prevailing.

Today, James' view that psychology could have broad applications that help individuals and society has clearly been borne out. Counseling and psychotherapy have proven effective. And psychology is being used in fields as diverse as computer systems, space exploration, forensics, health sciences, organizational development, and early education.

And finally, the odyssey of James' life constitutes one of the most intriguing self-help books ever written.