Biography
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7. Medicine and Breakdown
Standing for examination a few months after his return, William was granted the degree of doctor of medicine (M.D.) in June of 1869, but even such an accomplishment could not pull him out of his depression. From the time of his Brazilian trip in 1865, William's back had given him troubles. Further, his mood had been in decline since at least the earlier part of the decade, and not his travels in Europe, his accomplishments in academics, nor his time with friends and family could bring him back. When his pain had reached its epitome, the depths of his mood were not far behind. In the winter of 1870 James wrote in his journal:
Today I about touched bottom, and perceived plainly that I must face the choice with open eyes: shall I frankly throw the moral business [i.e. my father's vocational expectations] overboard, as one unsuited to my innate aptitudes, or shall I follow it, and it alone, making everything unsuited to it?[8]
"Touching bottom" was profoundly disturbing. Many years later, in The Varieties of Religious Experience, he wrote autobiographically:[9]
Whilst in this state of philosophical pessimism and general depression of spirits about my prospects, I went one evening into a dressing-room in the twilight to procure some article that was there; when suddenly there fell upon me without any warning, just as if it came out of the darkness, a horrible fear of my own existence. Simultaneously there arose in my mind the image of an epileptic patient whom I had seen in the asylum.... He sat there like a sort of Egyptian cat or Peruvian mummy, moving nothing but his black eyes and looking absolutely non-human. This image and my fear entered into a species of combination with each other. That shape am I, I felt, potentially.... After this the universe was changed for me altogether. I awoke morning after morning with a horrible dread at the pit of my stomach, and with a sense of the insecurity of life that I never knew before....
In general I dreaded to be left alone. I remember wondering how other people could live, how I myself had ever lived, so unconscious of that pit of insecurity beneath the surface of life.[10]
This account, uncannily similar to that of his father's own "vastation," displays the signs of deep pathology. His mood became what he would later call "an essentially religious disease," the cure for which seemingly was either to accept nature qua "hard facts" as the purely scientific mind does, or to admit of the possibility of religious salvation. And though the decline into depression was at least a decade in reaching bottom, the ascent to more affable heights came rather quickly. Surely among other cures, William's deliverance came from philosophic study and personal belief in human power. He wrote in late April of 1870:
I think that yesterday was a crisis in my life. I finished the first part of Renouvier's second "Essais" and see no reason why his definition of Free Will – "the sustaining of a thought because I choose to when I might have other thoughts" – need be the definition of an illusion. At any rate, I will assume for the present – until next year – that it is no illusion. My first act of free will shall be to believe in free will.... Not in maxims, not in Anschauungen [i.e. perceptions or inituitions], but in accumulated acts of thought lies salvation.... Hitherto, when I have felt like taking a free initiative, ...suicide seemed the most manly form to put my daring into; now, I will go a step further with my will, not only to act with it, but to believe as well; believe in my individual reality and creative power.... Life shall be built in doing and suffering and creating.[11]
William thus took a novel tact, namely to believe in the possibility that his own actions have the power to bring about salvation – otherwise unrealizable without effort. If the world is indeed the precarious and chaotic place that lights upon our senses, then no amount of certitude will resolve our concerns and wipe away our fears. "[O]ften enough our faith beforehand in an uncertified result is the only thing that makes the result come true."[12]
[8] See McDermott JJ (ed). 1977. The writings of William James: a comprehensive edition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. p 7.
[9] William's son, Henry, has explained that his father told him that this account, which according to the text is about a "Frenchman," is in fact about William himself from around 1869-1870.
[10] See McDermott JJ (ed). 1977. The writings of William James: a comprehensive edition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. p 6.
[11] See ibid, pp 7-8.
[12] See James W. 1897/1956. The will to believe and other essays in popular philosophy. New York: Dover Publications. p 59.
Source: Talisse RB, Hester DM. 2004. Lives in transition: experiencing James. In On James, chap 1. Belmont: Wadsworth Publishing. pp. 7-9. [Adapted by permission of the authors.]
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