James had various bouts of depression and what was then called 'melancholia' throughout his early life. In 1870, these vague and troublesome psychological states coalesced into what he would later describe as his first and most profound 'mystical' experience, which launched his lifelong philosophical quest for understanding the meaning and nature of the human soul and the existence of the world:
I went one evening into a dressing-room in the twilight to procure some article that was there; when suddenly there fell upon me without any warning, just as if it came out of the darkness, a horrible fear of my own existence. . . . [I]t was as if something hitherto solid within my breast gave way entirely, and I became a mass of quivering fear. After this the universe was changed for me altogether. I awoke morning after morning with a horrible dread at the pit of my stomach, and with a sense of the insecurity of life that I never knew before, and that I have never felt since. It was like a revelation . . . for months I was unable to go out into the dark alone. In general I dreaded to be left alone. I remember wondering how other people could live, how I myself had ever lived, so unconscious of that pit of insecurity beneath the surface of life.
James made lasting contributions both to psychology and to philosophy, especially philosophy of mind, epistemology, and the philosophy of religion. He left Harvard to teach physiology and psychology at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, but returned to Harvard in 1880 as a member of its new illustrious philosophy department that included Josiah Royce and graduate student George Santayana (1863-1952). James directed Santayana's doctoral thesis, which apparently he was not very happy with, calling it 'the perfection of rottenness.'
In 1890 James published the first textbook on psychology, his famous and widely influential Principles of Psychology, which provided the philosophical foundation for the newly developing science of psychology. James also helped found the American Psychological Association and served as its first president.
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