미국에서 최초로 심리학 수업을 시작한 사람이자, 하버드대에 심리학 프로그램을 도입한 공로가 있는, '미국 심리학의 아버지' 윌리엄 제임스의 초절주의 사상이 흥미롭다; 또 그의 부친이 스베덴보리의 영향을 깊이 받고 신비체험을 한 사람이었다는 것 역시

미국에서 최초로 심리학 수업을 시작한 사람이자, 하버드대에 심리학 프로그램을 도입한 공로가 있는, '미국 심리학의 아버지' 윌리엄 제임스의 초절주의 사상이 흥미롭다; 또 그의 부친이 스베덴보리의 영향을 깊이 받고 신비체험을 한 사람이었다는 것 역시

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_James

 

William James (January 11, 1842 – August 26, 1910) was an American philosopher and psychologist. The first educator to offer a psychology course in the United States, he is considered to be one of the leading thinkers of the late 19th century, one of the most influential philosophers and is often dubbed the "father of American psychology."^[1][2][3][4]

Born into a wealthy family, James was the son of the Swedenborgian theologian Henry James Sr. and the brother of both the prominent novelist Henry James and the diarist Alice James. James trained as a physician and taught anatomy at Harvard, but never practised medicine. Instead, he pursued his interests in psychology and then philosophy. He wrote widely on many topics, including epistemology, education, metaphysics, psychology, religion, and mysticism. Among his most influential books are The Principles of Psychology, a groundbreaking text in the field of psychology; Essays in Radical Empiricism, an important text in philosophy; and The Varieties of Religious Experience, an investigation of different forms of religious experience, including theories on mind-cure.^[5]

Along with Charles Sanders Peirce, James established the philosophical school known as pragmatism, and is also cited as one of the founders of functional psychology. A Review of General Psychology analysis, published in 2002, ranked James as the 14th most eminent psychologist of the 20th century.^[6] A survey published in American Psychologist in 1991 ranked James's reputation in second place,^[7] after Wilhelm Wundt, who is widely regarded as the founder of experimental psychology.^[8][9] James also developed the philosophical perspective known as radical empiricism. James's work has influenced philosophers and academics such as Alan Watts,^[10] W. E. B. Du Bois, Edmund Husserl, Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Hilary Putnam, and Richard Rorty.^[11]

 

 

 

 

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_James_Sr.

 

Swedenborgianism

Around 1841, James began to be interested in Swedenborgianism when he read some articles in London's Monthly Magazine on the subject by J. J. Garth Wilkinson, who would become one of James's closest friends. In his quest, he met and befriended Ralph Waldo Emerson, but did not find much satisfaction in Emerson's thought.

Emerson introduced James to Thomas Carlyle. But it was in the work of Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772), the Swedish scientist, religious visionary and teacher, that James found a spiritual home. In May 1844, while living in Windsor, in England, James was sitting alone one evening at the family dinner table after the meal, gazing at the fire, when he had the defining spiritual experience of his life, which he would come to interpret as a Swedenborgian "vastation," a stage in the process of spiritual regeneration. This experience was an apprehension of, in his own words, "a perfectly insane and abject terror, without ostensible cause, and only to be accounted for, to my perplexed imagination, by some damned shape squatting invisible to me within the precincts of the room, and raying out from his fetid personality influences fatal to life."^[3]

James's "vastation" initiated a spiritual crisis that lasted two years, and was finally resolved through the thorough exploration of the work of Swedenborg and Christian mystics. James became convinced that, as he put it, "the curse of mankind, that which keeps our manhood so little and so depraved, is its sense of selfhood, and the absurd abominable opinionativeness it engenders." He remained attached to Swedenborg's thought for the rest of life, and never traveled without carrying Swedenborg's works with him.

In 1845, James again returned to the United States and began a lifetime of lecturing about his spiritual discoveries. He devoted his mornings to writing, and published a number of discursive volumes devoted to the exposition of his thought.^[4]

 

Legacy

Thoreau's description of an encounter with James gives an idea of how his contemporaries saw and judged him:

I met Henry James the other night at Emerson's, at an Alcottian conversation, at which, however, Alcott did not talk much, being disturbed by James's opposition. The latter is a hearty man enough, with whom you can differ very satisfactorily, both on account of his doctrines and his good temper. He utters quasi-philanthropic dogmas in a metaphysic dress; but they are, for all practical purposes, very crude. He charges society with all the crime committed, and praises the criminal for committing it. But I think that all the remedies he suggests out of his head—for he goes no farther, hearty as he is—would leave us about where we are now. For, of course, it is not by a gift of turkeys on Thanksgiving Day that he proposes to convert the criminal, but by a true sympathy with each one,—with him, among the rest, who lying tells the world from the gallows that he has never been treated kindly by a single mortal since he was born. But it is not so easy a thing to sympathize with another, though you may have the best disposition to do it. There is Dobson over the hill. Have not you and I and all the world been trying to sympathize with him since he was born (as doubtless he with us), and yet we have got no further than to send him to the House of Correction once at least; and he, on the other hand, has sent us to another place several times. This is the real state of things as I understand it, at least so far as James's remedies. We are now, alas! exercising what charity we actually have, and new laws would not give us any more. But perchance, we might make some improvements in the House of Correction. You and I are Dobson; what will James do for us?^[6]