An admitted Moral Psychologist, Jamess philosophies coincide with todays fields of Humanistic Psychology, Behavioral Psychology, and Transpersonal Psychology. He, like Jung, dared to look outside the normal experiences of the mind and expand theconcepts of consciousness. More particularly, William James attempted to describe theprocesses of the conscious rather than the definition of the conscious. He was the first tointroduce our nation to psychology as a standard educational course and the founder ofpragmatism which emphasizes the elimination of unnecessary thinking and finding truthonly if it is practically applicable. Practicality, James defines, as those ideas that can beverified, collaborated, validated, and assimilated.He believed consciousness to be exclusive, personal, and selective, a constantdecision maker subject to a sea of information and perceptions specific to eachindividual. Every decision or choice is unique in that James believes that the process ofthinking is linear. Each thought, according to James, proceeds and influences the nextwhich he called the stream of consciousness. Because of the infinite number of streamsit is inevitable that each choice is totally original in its creation.Within the process of selection lies the influences of the fringe, or the context thatgives meaning to the content (it is vague), and the nucleus (it is definite). Additionally,James explains that without attention to a matter a decision can not be made, and thathabits are seemingly automatic responses to our experiences that often dictate ourdecisions. Both must incorporate will which is described by James as the process thatholds one choice among the alternatives long enough to allow that choice to occur. Therationale of choice involves two levels of knowing - knowledge of acquaintance (anintuitive, sensory knowing) and knowledge about (intellectual, evaluative and factualknowing). James was particularly interested in the ...
