ABSTRACT
“Let us … turn towards those persons who cannot so swiftly throw off the burden of the consciousness of evil, but are congenitally fated to suffer from its presence.” With these words and his characteristic flourish, William James (1961 [1902], pp. 118–119) began his exposition of the “sick-souled”—individuals whom he characterized as having a “neurotic constitution” (p. 127) and “born close to the pain-threshold, which the slightest irritants fatally send them over” (p. 120), and who are thus at risk for “becoming prey of a pathological melancholy” (p. 127). Although by no means inevitable, James goes on to suggest that such individuals may be predisposed to seek relief from their deep-seated unrest in the context of religion.
