The principles of psychology
The Principles of Psychology is a monumental text in the history of psychology, written by William James and published in 1890. There were four methods in James' psychology: analysis (i.e. the logical criticism of precursor and contemporary views of the mind), introspection (i.e. the psychologist's study of his own states of mind), experiment (e.g. in hypnosis or neurology), and comparison (the use of statistical means to distinguish norms from anomalies).
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- William James - Principles of Psychology
- The list seems very pop-psychology heavy to me. I would put William James, Principles of Psychology in the top spot.
In general William James writing seems full of profound ideas.
- Wundt's name pops up constantly in William James' extremely readable Principles of Psychology (1890). Most of it's what we'd think of as physiology - how our minds and bodies work together; reflexes, the senses etc. Stuff that can be measured and tested. A couple of quotes from it:
Consciousness, then, does not appear to itself chopped up in bits. Such words as “chain” or “train” do not describe it fitly as it presents itself in the first instance. It is nothing jointed; it flows. A “river” or a “stream” are the metaphors by which it is most naturally described. In talking of it hereafter, let us call it the stream of thought, of consciousness, or of subjective life. (Vol. 1, p.239, coining of stream of consciousness)
Our natural way of thinking about these coarser emotions is that the mental perception of some fact excites the mental affection called the emotion, and that this latter state of mind gives rise to the bodily expression. My theory, on the contrary, is that the bodily changes follow directly the perception of the exciting fact, and that our feeling of the same changes as they occur IS the emotion. Common-sense says, we lose our fortune, are sorry and weep; we meet a bear, are frightened and run; we are insulted by a rival, are angry and strike. The hypothesis here to be defended says that this order of sequence is incorrect, that the one mental state is not immediately induced by the other, that the bodily manifestations must first be interposed between, and that the more rational statement is that we feel sorry because we cry, angry because we strike, afraid because we tremble, and not that we cry, strike, or tremble, because we are sorry, angry, or fearful, as the case may be. Without the bodily states following on the perception, the latter would be purely cognitive in form, pale, colorless, destitute of emotional warmth. We might then see the bear, and judge it best to run, receive the insult and deem it right to strike, but we should not actually feel afraid or angry. (Vol2 p449, this is now called the James-Lange theory of emotion)
- The best practical advice on willpower that I've read is from an old classic, William James's Principles of Psychology. It's a long and dense chapter and resuming it here doesn't do it any justice. But I will try anyway:
1. Holding your attention fixed on an action eventually causes you to do that action. E.g. try relaxing and imagining all the little motions and then the final state of making a fist. Your hand will, after a few seconds, move of its own accord and make a fist.
2. The second part of willpower is to tolerate distractions and difficulties. James's phrase is "I will have it even so". E.g.:
"Do the dishes"
"But the water is cold"
"I will have it even so"
"But there are so many"
"I will have it even so"
"But there's an interesting article on HN"
"I will have it even so"
Your mileage may vary (I'd certainly be interested in hearing back), but personally I've been using this technique to do a number of unappealing but necessary tasks without too much of a feeling of effort.
Regarding the article, I would propose that there are two kinds of willpower. One is "tyrannical", where you simply force yourself to do something; this feels like it requires effort, and is depletable. The other is more "persuasive", using techniques similar to the one described above; it requires more preliminary thought, but reduces or eliminates the feeling of effort and is thus not depletable.
- Just because it's more often contested doesn't exempt the author from the responsibility to grapple with (or at the very least make himself aware of) the reasons why it's included in the DSM and the ISD and why it's been acknowledged (if grudgingly) since the very beginnings of the discipline and before - including a long section in James "Principles of Psychology" - if he's going to make such a claim. He seems patently unaware of the long list of psychological principles that no one contests that align with the diagnosis - from the existence of discrete states in sleep and infancy, to brain microstates, to state-dependent learning, to extreme state switching in bipolar, periodic catonia and the other disassociative disorders, to the commonality of hypocrisy of which the individuals themselves are blithely unaware, and the trickiness of personality science.
And that's not even addressing the highly detailed and often highly public case studies of DID across time and cultures, the research showing dramatically different brain readings across the spectrum based on the current identity of the DID patient, ect, ect.
But he doesn't even attempt to address any of that because he has no idea what the hell he's taking about. It's a deflationary article with the populist message that psychologists and Tiktokers are the dumb. So I get why it's popular, but it adds all of nothing to the conversation. He's just another panderer milking the public for attention and money.
And as for the label, again one can acknowledge the existence of a biopsychosocial cluster without coming down on either side of the question of whether or not they are symptoms of an underlying disease. There's a long history of scholars doing this, particularly in the sociology of mental health. Additionally the author does not appear to be making any such argument here against the psychiatric nosology as a whole - just this one diagnosis.
Edit: grammar.
- “The great thing, then, in all education, is to make our nervous system our ally instead of our enemy. It is to fund and capitalize our acquisitions, and live at ease upon the interest of the fund.”
— William James, The Principles of Psychology (1890)
