INTROSPECTION

The careful observation of one's consciousness to ascertain its states and activities. It is one of the methods used in the science of psychology to study the facts of psychic life. Such facts can be studied from different points of view and are accessible to different methods of investigation. But of all methods, introspection alone is capable of reaching psychic facts in their immanent character. Without it, the psychologist would know psychic life only analogically—through relationships between mental states and their bodily resonances—much as a blind man might be said to know colors. Yet introspection as a method also has its limitations, and for this reason is not relied upon exclusively by most contemporary psychologists.

Uses. Some kind of introspection has always been used in psychological investigation. aristotle, regarded by many as the founder of psychology, dealt mainly with sensory perceptions, images, dreams, intellectual operations, and affective states. The first of these, for instance the perception of colors or of tones, would be impossible without the direct experience of certain sensitive qualities, e.g., the blue of the sky and the tone of a flute. It was precisely by means of such introspection that Aristotle collected the extensive material on which his psychology was based. Yet, for him, introspection was not a method for solving psychological problems, but rather a technique for acquiring psychical facts. E. B. Titchener has referred to this as an "information introspection," a type of introspection that has always been used in human medicine. The veterinarian, lacking this, is comparatively handicapped, for his patients are not able to tell him when they feel sick, where they feel pain, etc.

maine de biran in France and the British associationists made extensive use of introspection in their psychological investigations. Their method, however, was logical rather than observational (see associationism). Careful observation of consciousness was first developed in the 19th century by W. Wundt, who may rightly be considered the founder of modern psychology. Titchener, one of his disciples, brought the Wundtian tradition to the U.S.

For Wundt, the principal aim of psychology was to analyze the contents of mind. This analysis was to be effected not by ordinary reflection, but in a systematic, objective, and fully scientific manner. Because such a task was difficult, Wundtian introspectionists were given considerable laboratory training in special methods of observation. The subject matter studied by this "trained introspection" included sensations, images, and feelings. The introspectionist had to describe accurately what these looked like and how they were interrelated or combined; because of this Wundt's psychology was sometimes referred to as mental chemistry.

According to Wundt, the higher mental processes, thinking and willing, could not be studied by introspection because they were too abstract, the attention paid to them could hardly be controlled, the conditions under which they appeared could not be varied easily, and they could not be repeated. But many psychologists, among them several of Wundt's disciples, did not accept these strictures.

Oswald Külpe, for example, presented a "stimulus word" to his subjects with instructions to respond verbally to what the association of ideas suggested, and then to report what went through their minds while performing this intellectual operation. Again, he asked them to make judgments, e.g., determining which of two weights was the heavier, and then to give full introspective reports of the process. Others who did active work in this field include: R. S. Woodworth, K. Marbe, N. Ach, K. Bühler, K. Koffka, J. Lindworsky, and A. Willwoll.

Such introspective methods have considerably enriched man's knowledge of mental life, and many of their results have been incorporated into contemporary psychology. They furnish information not only about sensations, images, and feelings, but also to some degree about the higher psychic functions such as understanding, abstraction, reasoning, judgment, and choice.

Limitations. Yet introspective methods were vigorously attacked by many psychologists, particularly those with materialistic tendencies, and also Gestalt psychologists, psychoanalysts, and behaviorists. While some of their objections expressed simple prejudices, others had a real foundation in fact.

The limitations of introspective analysis as a "subjective" technique were brought out in the controversy among introspectionists on the theory of imageless thought. Observers trained by Wundt and Titchener found sensations in their thoughts, or, at least, images of sensations; subjects working in the laboratories of Külpe, Binet, and Woodworth, on the other hand, asserted that their thought was not made up of images or sensations, although they admitted that these accompanied thought processes.

Again, introspective methods have intrinsic limitations. They cannot be applied to children, to psychotics, or to animals. In addition, the question of unconscious or automatic psychic processes cannot be answered by introspection. The same applies to feelings, for as soon as one fixes his attention on these in order to observe them carefully, they lose their natural character or even disappear completely.

For these reasons, the exclusive use of introspectionist methods has long been abandoned by psychologists in favor of the more "objective" methods. Yet subjective and objective methods, when properly used, are complementary and capable of supplying useful information for psychological analysis.

Bibliography: p. siwek, Experimental Psychology (New York 1959). j. p. chaplin and t. s. krawiec, Systems and Theories of Psychology (New York 1960). t. g. andrews, ed., Methods of Psychology (New York 1948). e. g. boring, "A History of Introspection," Psychological Bulletin 50 (1953) 169–186; A History of Experimental Psychology (2d ed. New York 1950). a. gemelli and g. zunini, Introduzione alla psicologia (4th ed. Milan 1954).

[p. siwek]