Touching Bottom

Between 1861, when James entered the Lawrence Scientific School, and 1869, when he received a M.D. degree from Harvard Medical School, James trained in science.

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- He took courses in anatomy and physiology (2), completed an internship at Massachusetts General Hospital, and passed what he considered a perfunctory oral examination for his degree, administered by nine physicians, including Charles Edward Buckingham and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. Yet even as he pursued this goal, he suffered a protracted crisis of vocation. As can be seen from his medical school notes, his mind was not on science, as it had been some years earlier. In 1867-68, he interrupted his coursework in Cambridge to go to Germany, partly for continued study, but more critically in hopes of recuperating from depression.
  Not for the first time, but more intensely than ever, James suffered myriad symptoms: back pain, eyestrain, insomnia, digestive problems, weakness, and exhaustion. He was despondent and sometimes, he confessed to his friend Thomas Ward, suicidal. What we know of James’s crisis comes from surviving letters and diary entries. What we never will know is represented by the evidence of excised pages in a crucial diary displayed here. Whoever sliced out the pages –James himself, his wife Alice after his death, or his son Henry, his executor—removed from the historical record James’s profound feelings when he said he “about touched bottom.” Certainly the death of his cousin Mary Temple, on 9 March 1870, contributed to his depression. But James was consumed, too, with hopelessness about his future, personal and professional. Paralyzed with indecision and self-loathing, he envisioned himself as a catatonic epileptic patient whom he had seen in an asylum. He was horrified.
  In late April, 1870, however, he read an essay on moral freedom and action by French philosopher Charles Renouvier that proved life changing. In a diary entry on 30 April, he wrote that his “first act of free will shall be to believe in free will.”

In this section

	William James. Ambrotype (copy of an earlier daguerreotype), undated.	Harvard University. Medical Department. Announcement of the medical courses... November 1864.

	Harvard University. Medical Department. Catalog of Students, 1865.	WJ. Letter to Henry Bowditch. Pomfret, 12 August 1869.

	Henry Bowditch. Photograph, undated. Reproduced from the original in the James family album.	Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. Notman Photographic Co., photographer. Cabinet photograph, Boston, undated.

	WJ [Notebook 1] Autograph manuscript, signed; Geneva, 16 November 1859.	Notes on Lectures at Harvard Medical School : manuscript, 1866-1867.

	WJ. Diary [1]. Autograph manuscript, signed, [1868-1873].	Mary Temple. Daguerreotype, 1861.

	Charles Renouvier. Photographie Centrale, Avignon, photographer. Carte-de-visite, 1863 or 1883.	Charles W. Eliot. Photograph, ca. 1875.

	WJ. Letter to Alice James. Bar Harbor; 27 July 1872