William James (2)
- George Elder
- Sep 8
- 5 min read
By George Elder, 9/8/25
I did not have room for the following comments in my post on “William James” so will add them here. In that earlier essay, I quoted James in the Varieties as saying “the most important step forward” in psychology had occurred with the “discovery, first made in 1886” of an “extra-marginal” field of the mind outside “consciousness of the ordinary field.”
He is referring to the hypothesis of an unconscious psyche late in the 19th century. The name “unconscious” was often rejected, however, lest it imply that the extra-marginal part of the mind was asleep or inoperative, when in fact the “discovery” proved otherwise.
The specific date refers to the publication by Frederic Myers, et alia, of Phantasms of the Living. In these two volumes, British psychologists (belonging to the Society for Psychical Research) presented hundreds of cases—reported or induced by experiment—of telepathy, i.e., the transmission of thoughts and feelings from one mind to another “otherwise than through the recognized channels of sense.” They were undeniable facts of experience but ignored by conventional science—partly because science could not explain them.
In a subsequent paper of 1892, “The Subliminal Consciousness,” Myers explained these facts of telepathy, automatic writing, the phenomena of hypnosis, and even dreams as due to mental activity below the “threshold” (Latin, limen) of everyday “supraliminal” awareness:
I suggest that each of us is in reality an abiding psychical entity far more extensive than he knows—an individuality which can never express itself completely through any corporeal manifestation. The Self manifests through the organism; but there is always some part of the Self unmanifested; and always as it seems some power of organic expression in abeyance or in reserve. (Internet Archive, 305)
He uses imagery. To think otherwise is to say that geysers are merely fed by the rain. To devalue the subliminal is to say that the clay beneath the gravel in one’s garden is inferior merely because it is cool and damp.
William James, as we have heard, was duly impressed and extended Myers’ hypothesis near the close of his Edinburgh lectures:
If the word “subliminal” is offensive to any of you, as smelling too much of psychical research or other aberrations, call it by any other name you please, to distinguish it from the level of full sunlit consciousness. Call this latter the A-region of personality, if you care to, and call the other the B-region. The B-region, then, is obviously the larger part of each of us, for it is the abode of everything that is latent and the reservoir of everything that passes unrecorded or unobserved. It contains, for example, such things as all our momentarily inactive memories, and it harbors the springs of all our obscurely motivated passions, impulses, likes, dislikes, and prejudices. Our intuitions, hypotheses, fancies, superstitions, persuasions, convictions, and in general all our non-rational operations, come from it. It is the source of our dreams, and apparently they may return to it. . . . It is also the fountain-head of much that feeds our religion. In persons deep in the religious life, as we have now abundantly seen—and this is my conclusion—the door into this region seems unusually wide open; at any rate, experiences making their entrance through that door have had emphatic influence in shaping religious history. (483)
James is saying a lot here, much of it intuited and not experimental—and neither Myers nor James had patients for whom their hypotheses led to actual relief from suffering. But James is nevertheless anticipating C. G. Jung’s distinctions within the “larger part of us.” He anticipates the personal shadow as the “the springs of all our obscurely motivated passions . . . and prejudices.” He anticipates the collective unconscious as the “fountain-head of much that feeds our religion.”
That puts Jung in context, just as the less famous Myers puts James in context. Some might conclude that doing so diminishes the contributions of great figures like James and Jung (not to mention Freud). For me, it lends credence to their work. It demonstrates that they belong to a deep-seated tradition.
In a delightful short book, The Unconscious Before Freud, Lancelot Law Whyte offers a history of the “idea of the unconscious” in reaction to Descartes who emphasized consciousness in his cogito ergo sum. Whyte shows that “the general conception of unconscious mental processes was conceivable (in post-Cartesian Europe) around 1700, topical around 1800, and fashionable around 1870-1880”—i.e., in the titles of many successful books and the topic of intellectual conversation in all the best salons. (160, his italics) It became necessary, moreover, after the Great War of 1914-1918 to explain why human beings fought a war that they all, consciously, said they did not want.
True, we’ve had another World War, and other wars, since then—while the “idea of the unconscious” seems not to have taken hold generally. Whyte explains that great ideas that transform culture come in waves: like the revolutionary Copernican view of the world as heliocentric that took centuries to become obvious.
ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS.
Let me add to my earlier brief comment on AA. As we saw, Jung explained in a letter to the grateful Bill W. that alcoholism could be cured only by “spiritus contra spiritum”—i.e., an experience of Spirit at least as strong as the lure of alcoholic spirits. That suggests that “God” or the “Higher Power” is simply against (contra) alcohol for certain people; and I’m sure most AA members think that, to their benefit.
Psychologically, however, the matter is more complex. “God” is not so much “against” alcohol as “displaced” for alcoholics—i.e., the “spiritual” dimension of the collective unconscious has (for whatever reason) been projected onto alcohol which has become highly charged, numinous. “God” is in alcohol, the same way that the ancients thought Dionysus was in the mysterious fermentation of grapes to make wine. That explains alcohol’s powerful attraction and the inability of the ego to resist it by will alone. Yes, there are personal reasons to drink alcohol to excess—to drown sorrows, to loosen inhibitions; eventually the body’s cells require it. But there resides in addictions of all kinds an unconscious attraction to the sacred.
Having a religious experience of a bright light and ecstasy, as Bill W. reports, “relocated” the sacred from the outer object of alcohol to wherever he understood that Light to come from (probably from heaven, because he was a Christian). In other words, the projection of “Spirit” onto “spirits” collapsed—and was withdrawn. Many members of AA have had similar experiences but, more commonly, they are able to “believe” in a Higher Power sufficiently to loosen the lure of alcohol, to soften the unconscious projection onto a poor substitute of what is truly “higher” in value. Ultimately, the Higher Power is an image of worth that resides within everyone--in order to survive or want to survive.
Alcoholics Anonymous does not understand their successes in this more psychological way anymore than the culture at large understands Jungian psychology. If they did, however, it would reduce the tension felt by those who are uncomfortable with an underlying Christian understanding of recovery. On the other hand, the “Lord’s Prayer”—recited at the close of most AA meetings—is filled with wisdom: ”lead us not into temptation” is a poignant plea to the unconscious to release its grip. (See my post, “Prayer”)
What members of AA do understand better than the culture at large is the psychological shadow. Having been defeated by it is a kind of boon, and the shadow is on display for remorse and for acceptance at every meeting. The Jungian analyst, Jan Bauer, writes in Alcoholism and Women: “Their alcoholism was a kind of felix culpa, a ‘fortunate crime’ that led to a new awareness, a transformation from persona-identification [i.e., living conventionally or as expected] to a degree of individuality.” (69) Thus, Alcoholics Anonymous anticipates for everyone—sometime in the future—a greater psychological honesty.