Abstract

Strange as it may seem today—especially given James’s reputation as a brilliant psychologist, an astute writer on religious life, and the eminent founder of pragmatism—no facet of James’s career received more ink in the general press than psychical research, at least during his lifetime.in his masterful introduction to Essays in Psychical Research, Robert McDermott observes that 1896 was a significant year for William James. He writes of James as a “weaver of intellectual and experiential threads” who “labored for the removal of those ideas, beliefs, and habits of mind that block insight and imagination” and that, on this account, “[t]he year 1896 is instructive” (McDermott xxvii). This paper attempts to shed ..