Krister Dylan Knapp. William James: Psychical Research and the Challenge of Modernity.

Abstract

In the vast literature on William James, it is hard to find books that stand out, but Krister Dylan Knapp’s new contribution is carefully researched and revelatory, examining a less-studied side of James—namely, his work as a psychical researcher. Knapp uses a variety of primary sources to understand James’s lifelong preoccupation with psychical research and to contextualize it within tectonic cultural changes taking place during the second half of the nineteenth century, changes that included the rise of science and technology, the professionalization of scientific and social scientific thinking, and the varied ways that religious people experienced a sense of crisis and reformation. In William James: Psychical Research and the Challenge of Modernity, Knapp explores the key role that séances, mediums, and altered states of consciousness played in helping James navigate a “tertium quid” (third way) between the dogmatic assertions of materialistic scientists and the credulous overbeliefs of spiritualists and religious seekers (6). The author carefully analyzes primary evidence in a historical narrative that attempts to persuade readers that, as Ralph Barton Perry once wrote, “James’s interest in ‘psychical research’ was not one of his vagaries, but was central and typical” (5). Knapp argues that psychical research was central to James’s many philosophical, psychological, and religious notions.