In The Principles of Psychology, William James addressed ten justifications for the concept of the unconscious mind, each of which he refuted. Twenty-five years later in The Unconscious, Freud presented many of the same, original arguments to justify the unconscious, without any acknowledgement of James's refutations. Some scholars in the last few decades have claimed that James was in fact a supporter of a Freudian unconscious, contrary to expectations. In this essay, I first summarize Freud's justification for the unconscious to highlight the arguments he used in 1915, before then demonstrating how clearly James had undercut these same argument in the Principles, published in 1890. Interpreters of James's thought should resist the claim that he would or did support Freud's idea of the unconscious, even if he at times spoke generously about other scholars. We also have reason to wonder about Freud's inattention to James's remarkable
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Nicholls, Angus;
Liebscher, Martin;
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Thinking the Unconscious: Nineteenth-Century German Thought
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Keen, Ernest;
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A History of Ideas in American Psychology
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Smith, Roger;
(2013)
Between Mind and Nature: A History of Psychology
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Kamerbeek, Christopher;
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Ferreri, Antonio M.;
(2003)
Il dibattito su James e sullo stream of thought/consciousness nelle riviste psicologiche statunitensi, 1887--1910
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Ferreri, Antonio M.;
(2006)
The Contribution of William James to the Origins of “Scientific” Psychology
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Ffytche, Matt;
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Sarin Marchetti;
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The Jamesian Mind
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John J. Stuhr;
(2022)
No Professor's Lectures Can Save Us: William James's Pragmatism, Radical Empiricism, and Pluralism
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Croce, Paul J.;
(2010)
Reaching beyond Uncle William: A Century of William James in Theory and in Life
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Welchman, Jennifer;
(2006)
William James's “The Will to Believe” and the Ethics of Self-Experimentation
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de Freitas Araujo, Saulo;
(2012)
Why Did Wundt Abandon His Early Theory of the Unconscious? Towards a New Interpretation of Wundt's Psychological Project
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Joravsky, David;
(1992)
The impossible project of Ivan Pavlov (and William James and Sigmund Freud)
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Natsoulas, Thomas;
(1996)
Freud and consciousness, IX: James, Freud, and the theory of consciousness
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Gephart, Emily Willard;
(2014)
A Dreamer and A Painter: Visualizing the Unconscious in the Work of Arthur B. Davies, 1890--1920
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Frank, Adam;
(2012)
Loose Coordinations: Theater and Thinking in Gertrude Stein
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Thibaud Trochu;
William James;
(2018)
William James. Une autre histoire de la psychologie
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Leary, David E.;
(2010)
Instead of Erklären and Verstehen: William James on Human Understanding
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Christopher D. Green;
(2019)
Where Did Freud’s Iceberg Metaphor of Mind Come From?
(/isis/citation/CBB277659272/)
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Croce, Paul;
(2009)
Nature's Beloved Incarnations: Inquiry, Conviction, and William James
(/isis/citation/CBB001023429/)
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