AMERICAN STUDIES
Chapter One
William James and the
Case of the Epileptic Patient
I
In 1901, when he was fifty-nine, William James delivered the Gifford
Lectures at the University of Edinburgh. James was an international
academic celebrity. The Principles of Psychology, which
appeared in 1890 and which had taken him twelve years to write,
had been quickly recognized as the leading summation of developments
in a field transformed by the introduction of laboratory methods
and by the evolutionary theories of Charles Darwin. An
abridged edition for students, Psychology: Briefer Course, popularly
known as "Jimmy," appeared in 1892; by the time of the Gifford Lectures,
it had sold nearly fifty thousand copies.
The Gifford lectureship ... read full excerpt from American Studies ebook
