William James and the Heidelberg fiasco

Urged on by his father to become a physician instead of a painter, William James pursued 3 evasion stratagems. First, to avoid becoming a practitioner, he declared that he wanted to specialize in physiology. Based upon this premise, he left for Germany in the spring of 1867. The second step was giving up general physiology and announcing that he would specialize in the nervous system and psychology. Based upon this premise, he declared that he would go to Heidelberg and study with Helmholtz and Wundt. However, he then deferred going there. When, at last, he was urged by an influential friend of his father's to accompany him to Heidelberg, he employed his default stratagem: He simply fled. He returned home after 3 terms in Europe without enrolling at a single university. There is no evidence that he had learned anything there about psychology or experimental psychology, except, possibly, by reading books. James's "Heidelberg fiasco" was the apogee of his evasion of his father's directive. A dense fog of misinformation surrounds his stay in Heidelberg to this day. By analyzing circumstances and context, this article examines the fiasco and places it in the pattern of his behavior during his stay in Europe. Nevertheless, experiencing this fiasco potentially shaped James's ambivalent attitude toward experimental psychology on a long-term basis. (PsycINFO Database Record