Becoming William James

by Howard M. Feinstein

Overview

Jointly published by Plunkett Lake Press and Cornell University Press.

"In the early years of my psychotherapeutic practice, I was struck by the pervasive uncertainty that many of my patients, both young and not so young, felt about their work lives. I soon became dissatisfied with constructions that depended solely on internal conflict for an explanation when there was so obviously a cultural and historical dimension to the problem... I decided to embark on a more extended study of the James family... I found the Jameses to be vivid personalities with a gift for self scrutiny and an enviable habit of weekly letter writing and letter saving that spans American history from the close of the American Revolution to the end of the first World War. They could, I thought, be looked upon as an avant garde with characteristics that are commonplace now but were unusual then. They were urban and educated, with sufficient means to have genuine choices. Hoping to discover the historical and cultural context for what I heard and saw in my consultation room, I set out to harvest the James family experience." — Howard M. Feinstein, Introduction to the 1999 edition of Becoming William James

Becoming William James was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Biography in 1985.

"Howard Feinstein has written a brilliant study of William's crises over idleness, illness, and vocation within the context of intense parental and sibling entanglement." — London Review of Books

"Dr. Feinstein's book is certainly a success. He has offered us a rich new vocabulary with which to describe William James." — Willard Gaylin, The New York Times

"Howard M. Feinstein, a psychiatrist and historian, has finally given us a life study equal in richness to James himself... a superb developmental biography." — Dorothy Ross, The American Historical Review

"Becoming William James is a work of painstaking scholarship, written in an engaging and energetic style... Feinstein is also to be commended for a playful sense of irony, which prevents this psychobiographical study from degenerating, as others have, into a series of diagnostic vignettes... [an] excellent study." — Brian Mahan, The Journal of Religion

"The best and truest thing one could say about the richly provocative Becoming William James is that William, while perhaps raising an eyebrow here and there, would have welcomed it and praised it lavishly." — Times Literary Supplement

"[Feinstein] offers us much new or reevaluated information about James and his family. In particular, he offers a series of challenges to the received views of James's life: the nature of his relationship with his father and brother Henry, the causes of his abandonment of a career as a painter, the etiology of his various crises..." — James Campbell, CrossCurrents

"Feinstein's volume presents a finely nuanced reading of the internal Sturm und Drang of William James's early years; he places center stage the familial conflicts over vocation... Feinstein's deep penetration into the documentary sources of the James family history unearths many new insights and facts..." — George Cotkin, American Quarterly

"[A] solidly documented, steadily perceptive, and long overdue biography... Feinstein's thesis is strong in its outline, rich in its detail... [Feinstein] sheds penetrating light into the darker regions of one of America's great families." — Kirkus

"Since its first publication in 1984, the book has been highly praised for its imaginative yet painstaking exploration of the parent-child and sibling relationships of one of America's most complexly gifted families." — Marcus Cunliffe, American Studies International

"A well-focused theme and inventive but rigorous scholarship mean that Howard M. Feinstein's study of the first three decades in the life of William James is timely and valuable." — Steven Weiland, The Journal of American History

"Feinstein's chronicle is absorbing." — Lawrence Willson, The Sewanee Review

Product Details

BN ID:	2940162450658
Publisher:	Plunkett Lake Press
Publication date:	02/23/2021
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	9 MB

About the Author

Howard Marvin Feinstein was born at home in the Bronx in 1929. He attended the Bronx High School of Science and Cornell University as a College Scholar studying a wide range of subjects with an emphasis on history. He entered Cornell Medical College, graduated in 1955 and married in 1956. He uncovered his interest in psychiatry, began a year of residency at the New York Hospital Westchester Division and spent two years in the Army under the “Berry Plan” as a Captain in the Medical Corps at Fort Sill, Oklahoma before two stimulating years of residency at the Massachusetts Mental Health Center at Harvard.

After moving back to Ithaca in 1961 to practice psychiatry, Feinstein gradually extended beyond analytically informed psychotherapy, incorporating psychopharmacology and often involving the patient’s family. He noticed that many patients struggled with ambivalence about work choices and was introduced to the James family through discussions with a friend, Cushing Strout, a professor of American intellectual history.

Feinstein began formal graduate studies at Cornell while continuing to practice and raising three sons. In 1967-68, he studied psychobiography with Erik Erikson and read hundreds of James family letters at Harvard’s Houghton collection. In 1976-77, he explored the resources of the British Museum Library as a Visiting Fellow at the Tavistock Clinic. Returning to Ithaca, he completed his Ph.D. in 1977 with a thesis entitled “Fathers and Sons: Work and the Inner World of William James, An Inter-Generational Inquiry” which evolved into Becoming William James, published by Cornell University Press in 1984.

Feinstein was an Adjunct Professor of Psychology at Cornell University for over 15 years and is a Lifetime Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association.