by Paul J Croce
choly would not go away, but his volitional philosophy and healthful living
would keep them from dominating. He did not solve his crises, but in effect,
they went into remission as he managed them with increased effective-
ness, personally and intellectually. The thinness of evidence of James’s own
experiences from the winter of 1869–70 until his appointment in August
1872 to begin teaching the following spring has invited a wide range of ex-
planations about his “crisis,” with eagerness to understand the par tic u lar
launching moment of Amer i ca’s most popu lar phi los o pher. There is an im-
pressive variety of interpretations generally emphasizing specific strands of
his life as causal agents of his nadir experience, with deep, often conjectural
readings of pieces of evidence from the low point itself. The first and by far
the most influential interpreter offered an extended narrative of James’s
“philosophical pessimism and general depression of spirits about [his] pros-
pects” and a sharp interpretation of his religious response in seeking recov-
ery, which has shaped every succeeding account.92 That interpreter was
William James himself.
A Composite of Crises for Teaching about the Power of Religion
As an established psychologist toward the end of his life, James provided a
lurid description of a time when he felt a “horrible fear of my own exis-
tence.” However, when the story first appeared, he presented the introspec-
Crises and Construction 251
tive account anonymously as the writing of a French correspondent at the
end of lectures on “The Sick Soul,” in The Va ri e ties of Religious Experience
(1902). It is the last example in a series of reported religious conversions,
after accounts of yet another anonymous French melancholic, the writer
Leo Tolstoy, the Puritan John Bunyan, and the evangelical preacher Henry
Alline; in all of these, James reported, “man’s original optimism and self-
satisfaction gets leveled with the dust.” And the story of James’s French
stand-in is accompanied by both a footnote equating the psychological re-
action to “a very great trembling” during Bunyan’s conversion experience,
and another note frankly comparing the experience to the youthful crisis of
his own father, “another case of fear equally sudden.” The parallels with the
crisis of Henry James, Se nior (and with the other religious figures men-
tioned) are striking indeed. In addition to being equally sudden, the stories
of father and son also share similar graphic images and a religious resolu-
tion. However, where the elder James viewed volition and moral freedom as
mere stages toward the higher spiritual awareness he found in Emanuel
Swedenborg, William greeted them as culminations of his strug gle; the son
is not reporting conversion to a par tic u lar religion but presenting the psy-
chological usefulness of such beliefs in general. 93
The unnamed person behind James’s vivid description would have re-
mained hidden had he not privately told a friend that the passage, ostensibly
from a “sufferer,” written “original[ly] . . . in French,” and “translate[d] freely”
by James himself, was in fact the rec ord of “my own case— acute neurasthe-
nia with phobia”— but “I naturally disguised the provenance!” Publicly, he
merely said “the original is in French”; with his fluency in the language,
he could readily have written such an original version. The disguise was
hidden out in the open. 94 The “natu ral” need to dissemble has generally
been taken to mean that he was shy about exposing his personal life so pub-
licly, even though he often included personal commentary in his writing.
The anonymity directed attention away from James himself, and the hint of
mystery suggested some purpose more impor tant than discussions of his
identity in the story of the French correspondent.
In addition to being composed anonymously in retrospect, the crisis ac-
count leaves so many factual gaps that it is not a fully reliable primary
source; it is undated and the setting is not specified. Moreover, the style of
writing is very diff er ent from the impulsive spurts of reportage and insights
in James’s private writings from his youth, so often written with an “ani-
mal heat,” as he put it. By contrast, the mannered and carefully controlled
252 Young William James Thinking
storytelling quality of the anonymous narrative suggests that the text is a
composite of his own trou bles when he would indeed crave assurance, written
from memory, and edited for public delivery in order to illustrate psycho-
logical points in The Va ri e ties. In par tic u lar, in this book’s chapter, James
analyzes conversion as a “ mental rearrangement . . . able to change one’s
centre of energy so decisively.” The French correspondent is James, in part,
namely his religious side, comfortable with ac cep tance and seeking assur-
ing belief, reflecting years of trou bles. Author James even offered a hint of
distraction from simple storytelling by urging readers not to analyze the
report too deeply since the “case has . . . the merit of extreme simplicity. ”95
Like much of James’s mature work, there is a deceptive simplicity to it. Look
to these va ri e ties of religious experience, he seems to be saying. Look to the
patterns they share psychologically. So don’t look at me in par tic u lar. James’s
partial and clever hoax suggests that, in the telling, he was primarily con-
cerned with the composing of this chapter to convey the power of religion
for dealing with personal trou bles. His own introspective case, edited for
public display, was his most potent example.
James’s anonymous story about “the worst kind of melancholy” took
place of an eve ning during the simple routine of walking “into a dressing
room in the twilight to procure some article that was there,” as the French
correspondent says with brittle artificiality. The quiet was interrupted
“without any warning” when “ there arose in my mind the image of an epi-
leptic patient whom I had seen in the asylum.” The reference to a mentally
disturbed patient and an asylum visit do reflect his own early working
experience: in 1863 he may have visited an asylum run by his cousin’s hus-
band; experiences in asylums were part of his clinical training at Mas sa-
chu setts General Hospital later in the 1860s; he included visits to asylums in
his teaching of physiology and psy chol ogy, and he wrote reviews of books
on public health and mental disease as early in the 1870s; and his student,
Dickinson Miller, reported on “two insane asylums which he had arranged
for the class to visit” in the 1890s just a few years before composing the
story of the French correspondent. There is also hearsay evidence that
James himself was a patient in the McLean Asylum in Somerville, but the
McLean Hospital (its current name) will not release any information about
patients, not even to confirm or deny their residency there. James’s per-
sonal experience with the events of the story, at some time and in some de-
gre
e, in himself and/or in observation of others, would explain his vivid
empathy with those suffering “insane melancholy.” Victims of its “over-
Crises and Construction 253
whelming horror” did not experience merely the “intellectual perception of
evil,” he noted in the same Va ri e ties chapter, but its “close, . . . grisly blood-
freezing heart- palsying sensation.” Horrible fear indeed— and with enough
power to serve as a palpable example of his point about the potential
for deep insight in moments of sheer duress to motivate people to turn to
religion.96
The asylum setting alone, however, does not firmly link the French cor-
respondent’s case to James, or to a par tic u lar moment: he had experienced
research asylums and also clearly felt youthful fears about his own mental
state; but, by contrast, he says of the Frenchman that this case did not in-
volve “any intellectual insanity or delusion.” Instead of illustrating incipi-
ent insanity, this case is more explic itly a story of religious conversion
within a chapter on the “sick soul,” a personality type that requires a stark
path through utter pessimism about humanity’s rational and moral abilities
compared to the transformative hope and help that religion brings. To illu-
minate the chapter’s main argument in its culminating example, to teach
about the importance of the sick soul in religious conversion, James was
willing to resort to a little artifice to make the point sharply, using the expe-
riences he knew best; for “permission to print,” he added with disarming
honesty, “I have to thank the sufferer.” In par tic u lar, James’s abundant
trou bles were much more multifaceted; with the Frenchman, there is no
mention of philosophical questions, vocational indecision, or awkwardness
with women. Instead, this character has a very specific trigger of crisis,
which was “a horrible fear of my own existence”; this feeling of vulnerabil-
ity is the crucial precondition for religious conversion. And the fictional
character does not mention any of James’s own health prob lems, but “si-
mul ta neously” at his fearful moment the Frenchman imagines sickness in
another, “an epileptic patient whom I had seen in the asylum.” The encounter
could surely coincide with one of James’s own experiences; however, while
James himself believed in the crucial role of habit and will in response to
this disease, the Frenchman does not take up these ideas. Instead, in the
story, the epileptic patient adds dramatically to the scariness of the scene.
The epileptic youth had “greenish skin,” was “entirely idiotic,” and looked
“absolutely non- human,” like a “sculpted Egyptian cat or Peruvian mummy.”
This terrifying tableau culminates with the Frenchman declaring that “this
image and my fear entered into a species of combination with each other,”
and still more sharply, “That shape am I, I felt, potentially.” 97 While many particulars between James and his character do not line up, many of their
254 Young William James Thinking
feelings do; whether from memories of his own asylum experiences or his
own abject feelings, James constructed a dramatic story that would gener-
ate good copy for the task of the chapter: depths of horror make the contrast
with the coming conversion all the more vivid.
Identification with one’s worst fears coincided with ways James felt
hemmed in by the materialism and determinism of mainstream science. As
with the hierarchical theories of mind that James was meeting in physiolog-
ical psy chol ogy, perhaps his proud humanity was no more than a network of
mere physical drives. If so, both he and the Frenchman could say, “[n]othing
that I possess can defend me against that fate, if the hour for it should strike
for me.” And the Frenchman adds a note of hope that also coincides with
James’s own skepticism about these features of the scientific ethos: that
lurking fate awaits, but only potentially so. As James would perennially en-
dorse, other possibilities endure, even at such a dark hour. With diff er ent
personal traits but similar desperate feelings, both James and his character
experienced seasons of “quivering fear.” They diverged more fully in how
they would respond to those feelings. For the Frenchman in the throes of
religious conversion, as for “sick souls” in general, unlike for James himself,
the will was no defense, so the story contains no references to assertions
of free will or moral strug gle, which were at the center of real- life young
James’s crises and hopes. The condition of a sick soul could be answered
only by religious conversion, whereas James, who shuttled between crises
and effortful strug gle, gradually learned to manage his per sis tent trou bles
without adopting such fixed answers. However, like James during his own
crises, this anonymous character reported his troubling experience as “a
revelation,” a moment of deep insight; and, for both, these burdens spurred
deep sympathy for “the morbid feelings of others.” 98
James himself would extend this sympathy into a sense of the commonal-
ity of all humanity, sick and healthy. In the 1890s, after taking his psy chol ogy
students to an insane asylum, he talked about “a dangerous, almost naked
maniac” they had seen, and added pensively, “[Harvard] President [Charles]
Eliot might not like to admit that there is no sharp line between himself and
the men we have just seen, but it is true.” He could remember his own
youthful experience when he was indeed chained to such trou bles, when he
had already said “we are all potentially such sick men. The sanest and best
of us are of one clay with lunatics.” These statements went against the grain
of late nineteenth- century propriety and social hierarchy in depicting an
elusive line between normal and abnormal. While university presidents,
Crises and Construction 255
most people in general, and he himself would find ways to cope with their
trou bles, he indeed went through stark seasons without such capacity.
When deep within these experiences, when armed with less calm and more
vulnerability, even just witnessing such mental disturbance in others posed
an unsettling reminder of his own potential trou bles. So he depicted the
French correspondent feeling amazed by those, like his own mother, who
lived with such “unconsciousness of danger.” Reference to Mary James is
another point of pos si ble intersection with James himself since the descrip-
tion of her as “a very cheerful person” who lived with little inquiry into
“dangerous” speculations closely matches his mother, who was astute but
not particularly reflective. In contrast with such “healthy- minded” person-
alities, the sick soul confronted the vulnerability of existence, deeply feel-
ing the “pit of insecurity beneath the surface of life.” For these troubled
souls, the sense of the insufficiency of the natu ral self demands recourse to
wholesale redemption in order to feel truly whole: “[T]he deliverance must
come in as strong as the complaint, . . . with blood and miracles and super-
natural operations,” he observed in his role as “impartial onlooker.” “Help!”
sounds the cry of the sick soul, “help!” because “ there is something wrong
about us as we naturally stand. ”99
The French correspondent’s account expressed the parts of James with a
history of craving security and comfort when his willful strength was not
enough, such as his visits to water cures after periods of intense work, his
times of preference for ac cep tance rather than strug gle, his theoretical
acknowl edgment of “holidays to the spirit,” his deep re spect for religion,
and his own spiritual experiences. The reported fictional case, however,
veered toward a more extreme version of resignation of will than any that
James himself ever directly reported, and the case went beyond James’s
own spiritual beliefs in its statement that “this experience of melancholia of
mine had a religious bearing.” The French correspondent reported that if
he had not “clung to scripture- texts, . . . I think I should have grown really
insane.” The sufferer even explained which par tic u lar verses offered the
most help, specifying, “ ‘The eternal God is my refuge,’ etc., ‘Come unto me,
all ye that labor and are heavy- laden,’ etc., ‘I am the resurrection and the
life,’ etc.,” making for a rather didactic list— ritually displayed, with the “ etc.”
at the end of each verse showing even some impatience. Yet James did re-
spect the scriptures. In 1868, while at Divonne water cure, he realized that
he had forgotten “my Bible” at home; even though he missed it, he felt so
diff er ent from the “pious” figures around him that he felt “ashamed to
256 Young William James Thinking
borrow” any of their copies. James simply did not pray with the Bible’s ref-
erences to transcendental relief. He even said that prayer made him feel
“foolish and artificial.” In his letters, he would gush with emotion, often ex-
travagantly, and he would lament his trou bles, but he hardly ever mentioned
prayers, except in his fondness for using religious words such as “Pray do
what you can . . . ,” and “a blessing on you . . .” in conversation and letters.
When already feeling troubled in 1868, he made a notable exception, when