Psychology Today | 03.06.2026 23:06
William James in The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902) describes a world sickness that can destroy joy, meaning, and value. I find this one of the best and most vivid ways to portray the different forms of acute and chronic suffering and anguish people experience. The richness of this concept, with vivid descriptions of its five phases, supplements the clinical language of some mental disorders including addiction. Overly clinical language may not be up to the task of capturing many people’s experiences of suffering. James’s world sickness gives voice to the ways suffering morphs and expands in a person’s life.
