The Stream of Consciousness: XVI. James in Recent Context (1986–1991)

Abstract

By addressing work on consciousness that has been published in this journal, I bring contemporary material to bear on my ongoing exploration of William James's stream. How do psychologists of the present day demonstrate or acknowledge the relevance of their great predecessor's introspectively grounded theses and arguments to their own work? I am considering the first fifteen volumes of Imagination, Cognition and Personality in units of five, the middle five in this article. I inquire into what was explicitly drawn from James's work by seven authors or teams of authors; thus, I provide greater or lesser comment pertaining to: a) the kinds of mental occurrence, b) present day incompatibilities of James's thought, c) purported Jamesian inad quacies, d) the use of symbols to evoke belief, e) watching one's stream of consciousness flow by, f) Walt Whitman's mystical experiences, and g) whether inner awareness requires an appropriation of the respective mental-occurrence instances to oneself.