Correcting Perry’s Misleading Narrative: Historicizing James’s “Shady Excursions” into Phrenology

While William James’s research in mental healing, psychical research, and religious experience are all well documented, his encounters with phrenology is less closely examined. The leading narrative derives from Ralph Barton Perry’s depiction of James as a believer in the truth of phrenology and also portrays him as being sympathetic to it as an art of character study. Textual evidence suggests that not only does Perry’s account originate from undocumented and shaky oral history, but also that his supporting evidence derives from a misreading reading of Thomas A. Hyde’s How to Study Character. As a corrective, I historically and thematically reconstruct James’s interest in phrenology as being scientific in nature, specifically focusing on how his interest in phrenology belongs to the problem of cerebral localization.