A Brief Analysis of American Psychology

Exploring the Foundations of American Psychology

Abstract

A detailed analysis of American psychology would lead to a better understanding of the psyche of this civilization. Since William James’s Principles of Psychology (1890) a very large corpus of material bearing psychoanalysis issues was published in America. It helped to create a uniquely American climate of opinion with regard to the nature of mind, relations between body and mind, mental states, mental health and mental diseases. On the basis of this book James’ psychology revolves around four methods: analysis, introspection, experiment and comparison. James discusses about illusions and offers a psychological explanation for them. He believes that brain reacts by those incidents which it has already experienced. He advocates that the brain makes us usually perceive the probable thing i.e., the thing by which the reaction was aroused on previous occasion.