ABSTRACT
In everyday language, ‘introspection’ refers to a ‘looking inwards’, observing and reflecting upon one’s own mind, and ‘being introspective’ is a tendency to engage in such self-scrutiny and selfexamination. In Psychology, this acquired a more technical character in the late nineteenth century when the German pioneer Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920) included a form of systematic disciplined introspection in his experimental studies of the nature of consciousness. This would, it was argued, overcome the problem that the ‘mind’ was private and not open to objective scientific study, and is now known as ‘introspectionism’. It has, however, been a much mythologised topic in Psychology’s understanding of its history and origins, routinely being characterised as its initial experimental approach or phase before being overthrown by behaviourism. As Alan Costall (Costall, 2006) has shown, this is far from being the case, even within Wundt’s own work introspection played a fairly minor role in comparison with other methods, such as use of reaction times, nor did the pragmatic use of introspection ever disappear. The numerous difficulties which introspection poses as an objective scientific method were well known to late nineteenth-century psychologists such as the American William James (1840-1910) as well as Wundt himself. In practical terms, it was impossible to resolve conflicting findings, more profoundly, however, it was increasingly realised that, on logical and philosophical grounds, it was impossible to observe what was going on in one’s mind, let alone report it, in a totally neutral ‘objective’ way. Experience is always interpreted in terms of the concepts we have available, our expectations and prior knowledge. We can never even experience ‘raw’ uninterpreted sensations, or at least we cannot describe them without interpreting them. This does not mean that introspection is valueless, the very act of trying to understand psychological discourse involves us in applying to ourselves what we reading or hearing, for example. It does, however, mean that we cannot use introspection alone as a viable scientific method. Another factor limiting introspectionism’s applicability was that the kinds of phenomena it could be used to study were quite restricted (such as the nature of sensations or what it was like to try and remember something). Long before 1900, numerous psychologists were turning their attention to a far wider range of topics such as child development, learning and animal behaviour, to which introspective methods were largely irrelevant. The endurance of the ‘introspectionism’ myth is a complex historical issue of some psychological interest in its own
right, and readers are advised to consult Costall’s on-line paper for a fuller exposition. The most ardent introspectionist was Edward Bradford Titchener (1867-1927), an English student of Wundt who spent his subsequent academic career at Cornell University in the United States. Although he cast himself as Wundt’s disciple and follower, his approach soon diverged significantly from Wundt’s, who criticised him strongly in later years. The topic is naturally covered in all general histories of Psychology but has received scant recent booklength coverage, however, Costall’s paper should be consulted to counter the orthodox story.
