Self-Reliance that would become "Self-Reliance" was presented by Ralph Waldo Emerson as part of a sermon in September 1830 a month after his first marriage. His wife Ellen was sick with tuberculosis and, as Emerson's biographer Robert D. Richardson wrote, "Immortality had never been stronger or more desperately needed!" From 1836 into 1837, Emerson presented a series of lectures on the philosophy of history at Boston's Masonic Temple. These lectures were never published separately, but many of his thoughts in these were later used in "Self-Reliance" and several other essays. Later lectures by Emerson led to public censure of his radical
History of psychology of some Continental Rationalist philosophers, especially Baruch Spinoza's (1632–1677) "On the Improvement of the Understanding" (1662) and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz's (1646–1716) "New Essays on Human Understanding" (completed 1705, published 1765). Also was an important contribution Friedrich August Rauch's (1806–1841) book "" (1840), the first English exposition of Hegelian philosophy for an American audience. The Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard also influenced the humanistic, existential, and modern psychological schools with his works "The Concept of Anxiety" (1844) and "The Sickness Unto Death" (1849). Also influential on the emerging discipline of psychology were debates surrounding the efficacy of Mesmerism (a precursor to hypnosis)