Brother of novelist Henry James and godson of eminent philosopher, essayist and poet Ralph Waldo Emerson, William James earned his own reputation for the monumental contributions he made in the field of Psychology. Here in his most comprehensive work on psychology, "Principles of Psychology", we find a textbook which took James twelve years to complete, and which is still prevalent in the contemporary study of psychology. James' writings were influenced by Charles Darwin's ideas about adaptive evolutionary change, philosophical pragmatism, and various German psychologists who focused on the study of psychological processes. This work delves into James' assumption that developmental processes involve an interaction of nature and nurture, a view that almost all contemporary developmental psychologists hold. His fundamental theories on brain processes and abstract thought, behavioral tendencies and states of consciousness, all of which he presented a decade before Sigmund Freud, have become integral to the framework of modern social psychology. Originally published in two volumes in 1890, the complete "Principles of Psychology" is collected together here in one volume. This edition is printed on premium acid-free paper.
Biografie
Der amerikanische Psychologe und Philosoph William James (1842-1910) gründete das erste psychologische Universitätsinstitut in den USA. Mit den Theorien, die er in seinem Werk The Principles of Psychology formuliert hat, nahm er Grundideen der Gestaltpsychologie und des Behaviorismus vorweg. James ist außerdem einer der Väter des philosophischen Pragmatismus, den er zu einer weltweiten geistigen Bewegung machte. In den Jahren 1867/68 lebte er in Dresden und Berlin, um vor allem bei Hermann von Helmholtz zu studieren. Von 1872 bis 1876 war James Professor für Physiologie und vergleichende Anatomie in Harvard. In den folgenden Jahren hielt er Vorlesungen an der Universität von Kalifornien, an der Stanford Universität und in Boston. Von 1894 bis 1895 war James Präsident der Society for Psychical Research.
