Introspection

8 Key excerpts on "Introspection"

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  Conceptual Issues in Psychology

  • Elizabeth R. Valentine(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Chapter 5 Introspection What is Introspection?

  William James saw no problem: ‘The word Introspection need hardly be defined – it means, of course, the looking into our own minds and reporting what we there discover’ (James, 1890). For Wundt it was the observation of the contents of consciousness, self-observation (Selbstbeobachtung), as distinct from self-perception or inner perception (innere Wahrnemung). Natsoulas (1970) describes it as ‘a relatively neutral term for the process(es) whereby one arrives on the spot at introspective awareness … process(es) whereby one acquires on-the-spot beliefs or convictions concerning his mental episodes’. Essentially, Introspection is noting, and being in a position to report on, mental states and processes.

  A number of attempts have been made to distinguish different types of Introspection. McKellar (1962) notes the following sources of variance in the method: the circumstances in which the reports are obtained (for example, laboratory, clinic or everyday life), and whether they are normal or special (as in the case of hypnosis, sensory deprivation or drug-taking); whether or not the procedure is systematic; the training of the subjects and the experimenter; and the purpose for which the reports are required (for instance, for oneself or another). Radford and Burton (1974) distinguish self-observation (which might be called Introspection proper), in which subjects aim to observe and report on their experiences; self-reports, in which experiences, perhaps of an unusual kind, are described without trying to be particularly objective; and thinking aloud, in which an attempt is made to provide a running commentary on some on-going mental activity. Evans (1980) distinguishes reporting an experience and reporting a strategy.

  Pilkington and Glasgow (1967) distinguish five kinds of verbal report in terms of the extent to which they can be checked by other methods. These range from descriptions of subjective experiences such as dreams and images, through reports about phenomena which have behavioural components, such as personality traits, to explanations of behaviour and experiences. These differences have important implications for the validity of Introspection. In this connection it may be useful to distinguish reporting: the content of experience, the process of behaviour and the determinants of behaviour.

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  Forms of Truth and the Unity of Knowledge

  • Vittorio Hösle(Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • University of Notre Dame Press

    (Publisher)

  These nineteenth-century empiricists took for granted, as-suming rather than arguing, that Introspection was the method for studying anything to do with the mind. (Lyons, 7) I mention this history and quote James to illustrate it because from it I want to retain the notion of modes of direct access to the subject matter of psychology and, correlatively, a notion of the direct given-ness of it. On the other hand, I set aside the traditional understanding of a metaphysical dualism of inner mind and external world. Conse-quently, my avoidance of the traditional term intro spection. In its place I shall employ terms like first-person perspective or, simply and more often, self-awareness. However, my analysis will lead to a distinction between two different forms of first-person perspective, two kinds of self-awareness. Is Introspection Indispensable in Psychology? 183 Self-Awareness and What It Is Aware Of Let me explain further why the term Introspection troubles me. I shall claim that the subjective realm given to us in self-awareness is not just a sphere of mental processes. It is a sphere of mental processes which are experiences of something. In particular, they are experiences of my body and experiences of the world. Readers who have heard some-thing about phenomenology will probably recognize this as an adher-ence to Edmund Husserl’s notion of intentionality (Gurwitsch 2009, 139–56). The world that is the object is the world as experienced by the subject. Similarly, the body is precisely the body as experienced by the subject. And here body and mind are not experienced as separate: the mind given through self-awareness is an embodied mind. Moreover, it is an embodied mind situated or embedded in the world (Merleau-Ponty; Rowlands, 51–84). In insisting that this is the body as experi-enced and the world as experienced, I am not propounding an idealism: I am not denying that there is a world and body other than the world and body as experienced by the subject.

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  Mindfulness-Informed Relational Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis

  Inquiring Deeply

  • Marjorie Schuman(Author)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Chapter 8 Reflections on Subjectivity and the Experience of Self

  This chapter has two major goals. The first is to describe subjectivity in a way that clarifies the similarities and differences between Western psychological and Buddhist concepts of self. The second is to define in some detail what psychoanalysis calls “self-reflective function,” explain how and why it is an important therapeutic mechanism of action, and describe the role of self-reflective practices in cultivating it.

  In general terms, enhancing self-awareness is one of the implicit aims of most forms of psychotherapy. Simply by engaging a therapeutic process (whether psychotherapy, counseling, coaching, “growth work,” or psychoanalysis) attention is focused in a way that makes us more aware of ourselves in some respect(s): what we do, how we think and feel, and how that affects others.

  In the sections that follow, basic concepts about self will first be presented in order to clarify the use of theoretical language. Self-reflection will be defined and described in a psychoanalytic/theoretical context.1 The psychoanalytic view of subjectivity will be presented, followed by some reflections on subjectivity within a framework of Buddhist ideas. These various strands will be integrated into a discussion of self and self-experience that is compatible both with psychoanalytic work and Buddhist practice. Interwoven throughout the chapter, a clinical example will show how self-reflection can unfold and deepen within the process that I call inquiring deeply.

  Self: Terms and Basic Concepts The Psychological Self

  Being a “self,” being “someone,” is a given in ordinary experience. We all have some sense of “who we are,” some sense of coherent identity in the core of our being. This

  psychological self

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  Historical and Philosophical Foundations of Psychology

  • Martin Farrell(Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  Above all, however, its source is to be found in the inner perception of our own mental phenomena. We would never know what a thought is, or a judgement, pleasure or pain, desires or aversions, decisions and voluntary intentions if we did not learn what they are through inner perception of our own phenomena. Note, however, that we said that inner perception and not Introspection, i.e. inner observation , constitutes this primary and essential source of psychology. These two concepts must be distinguished from one another. ( Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint , p. 29) Inner perception differs from Introspection in that, though we do not focus on the mental state that we are experiencing, we nevertheless grasp its nature while we are undergoing it. According to Brentano (again drawing on Aristotle), when you have a certain experience, you are not only aware of the object of that experience, Box 13.2 Phenomenology One of the most in fl uential schools of thought to emerge from Brentano ’ s teaching is phenomenology, which was founded by one of Brentano ’ s students, Edmund Husserl (1859 – 1938). Husserl de fi ned phenomenology as the science of how things appear to us in conscious experience. Phenomenology is not concerned, at least initially, with giving an explanation of our experience. Instead, it seeks to describe that experience and to identify the essential characteristics of each different type of conscious phenomenon. It thus has something in common with Brentano ’ s descrip-tive psychology and its taxonomic approach. A phenomenological description demands that we must, if only temporarily, suspend all our preconceptions as to what we think the phenomenon in question should be like in order to describe it as it actually is. If not, our description is likely to be coloured or distorted by these preconceptions. Husserl calls the suspension of preconceptions ‘ bracketing ’ them and the process of doing so he calls ‘ the phenomenological reduction ’ .

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  Kant's Empirical Psychology

  • Patrick R. Frierson(Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  Thus, as we will see in the rest of this section, there is a sense in which Introspection is “primary,” but introspective knowledge is neither sufficient nor “pure.”As mentioned in note 24, there is a sense in which Introspection cannot be primary. Given the Refutation of Idealism of the Critique of Pure Reason, Introspection is always dependent upon external observations in that we can only give an objective order to our internal mental states by appeal to changes in external objects. But this does not require prioritizing anthropological or psy- chological investigations of (others’) outward behavior over introspective study of oneself. Introduction 38 “physiognomy,” 44 whereby one seeks to draw inferences about mental states from others’ external expressions of those states, not only in delib- erate words and deeds but also in involuntary facial expressions and other cues. He points out, for instance, that one can read deception from the fact that “someone who is not cross-eyed looks at the tip of his nose while relating something” and that “the imprint of an affect … betrays itself by the painstaking restraint in gesture or in the tone itself ” (7:301, 300). Through long experience and careful attention, one can – and, to some extent, we all do – cultivate capacities of judgment about the inner lives of others. Cohen rightly points out that “insofar as [these inferences] have to do with ascribing motives and intentions, and given the opa- city of human motivation, they are condemned to remain interpretive” (Cohen 2009: 48). Nonetheless, she herself points out various ways in which the limitations of such judgments can be partially overcome, and empirical psychology in this sense merely generalizes and turns to a more systematic purpose a general capacity in all experienced adults of read- ing others’ intentions. Moreover, the limits of interpretation tend to be limits on knowledge of the particular mental states present in particular people at particular times.

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  William James

  • Gerald E. Myers(Author)
  • 1985(Publication Date)
  • Yale University Press

    (Publisher)

  We use language primarily to report the external environment, and only incidentally for introspective descrip-tions; consequently, few literal locutions apply to our Introspections. What we attempt in setting out to introspect the self is hardly obvious, and James's introspec-tions may confer meaning upon the very question of what it is like to be acquainted with the self. Whatever the philosophical worth of such Introspections, there is no doubting the intensity of James's search for the experiential meaning of expressions like experience of self, feeling of self, and self-acquaintance. James believed that the self s activity consists of acts of attending, assenting, negating, and making an effort. His Introspection disclosed that no purely spiritual or mental property is discernible in such activities; instead, they are experienced as physical movements in the head and sense organs. James's heroic Introspections here are as arresting as they are amusing. When I try to remember or reflect, the movements in question, instead of being directed towards the periphery, seem to come from the periphery inwards and feel like a sort of withdrawal from the outer world. As far as I can detect, these feelings are due to an actual rolling outwards and upwards of the eyeballs, such as I believe occurs in me in sleep, and is the exact opposite of their action in fixating a physical thing (Principles, 2: 300). The self s acts do not appear to our inner attention as nonphysical. But what else this Introspection shows is uncertain. It is not evident, he said, whether acts such as attending or assenting are identical with bodily processes or are accompanied by such processes. Introspection is fallible, so something purely mental may be overlooked, especially S E L F 347 on the fringe of consciousness, but for James the self seemed to be a collection of movements in the head; any feeling of spiritual or mental activity is probably a feeling of bodily processes we tend not to notice.

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  C. D. Broad's Ontology of Mind

  • L. Nathan Oaklander(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • De Gruyter

    (Publisher)

  Chapter IV Introspection n Broad's analysis, we saw that mental events such as sensing a noise, perceiving a bell, or remembering a tie one wore yesterday share a feature: they all involve the relation of intuitive apprehension between a mass of bodily feelings on the subjective side and a particular sensum or imitative image on the objective side. Call this common feature the cogni-tive core. In addition to the cognitive core some mental acts involve a judgment as an essential constituent, i.e., a judging relation between a mass and an abstractum. Having proposed these analyses in the chapters on per-ception and memory, he attempts to give them an epistemological founda-tion in the chapter on Introspection. More specifically, he attempts to es-tablish that we can have introspective knowledge of the relations between and among the constituents of mental acts. Although the analysis of our introspective knowledge of relational mental situations is of primary importance in the chapter on Introspection, it is by no means the only important topic discussed there. Another topic specifically about minds which is worthy of our consideration is his de-scription of the Pure Ego and of our knowledge of it. I shall therefore di-vide this chapter into two sections. In the first I shall discuss his account of the general features of Introspection and certain issues involved in the Pure Ego Theory. Then I shall turn to his analysis of our introspective knowl-edge of mental events, and argue that even if relations are constituents of cognitive situations, we cannot, on his analysis know them. I According to Broad, three general characteristics belong to any process that deserves to be called Introspection. The first shows that Introspection is more like perception than memory since, It must be intuitive, like perception, and not merely discursive.

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  The Shaping of Modern Psychology

  An Historical Introduction

  • L.S. Hearnshaw(Author)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  65 There would seem to be an element of truth in both views, while each on its own is one-sided.

  There is no doubt that Wundt regarded psychology as essentially the study of consciousness. He opened his Lectures (1863) by stating that ‘Psychology has to investigate that which we call internal experience’,66 and he never deviated from this view. In his final publication on general psychology some fifty years later he wrote, ‘the subject matter of psychology is the whole manifoldness of qualitative contents presented to our experience.’67 The essential method of all psychology must, therefore, be ‘unmittelbaren subjectiven Wahrnehmung der Bewusstseinsvorgänge oder Selbstbeobachtung’ (‘immediate subjective perception of the processes of consciousness, or Introspection’).68 Introspection, however, needed to be disciplined by experimental control, and strictly managed, if it was to give reliable results. The aim of this experimentally controlled Introspection was to discover the elements of consciousness, and the laws of their combination. In his last brief, but definitive, Introduction to Psychology, completed after the final revisions of the Grundzüge and the shorter Grundriss,69 Wundt categorically stated, ‘The whole task of psychology can be summed up in these two problems: (1) what are the elements of consciousness? (2) what combinations do the elements undergo, and what laws govern these combinations? ‘70 It is, therefore, perhaps going too far to state, as one recent editor has done, that ‘Wundt, contrary to the interpretations of Titchener and Boring, rejected the traditions of mental and individual atomism’.71 To be sure the elements were fused and compounded in various ways, but the task of the psychologist was primarily an analytic one, and Wundt accordingly devoted nearly a third of his Grundzüge (over six hundred pages) to a consideration ‘von den Elementen des Seelenlebens’72 – and the two basic kinds of element he regarded as sensations and feelings. It is, however, incorrect to describe Wundt’s psychology as simply ‘content’ psychology, as Boring does, because Wundt accorded much prominence to volitional processes. Perhaps influenced by Schopenhauer, he maintained that ‘volitional activities are the type in terms of which all other psychological phenomena are to be construed.’73 All the same he did not regard will acts as primary psychic elements; rather ‘it [will] is to be considered an affective process’,74 reducible, therefore to feeling. Analysis into elements was certainly, therefore, a prominent feature of Wundt’s psychology. But there were, also, synthetic processes, and synthesis produced compounds. These were of two kinds, associative fusions and apperceptive unities, and the fusions and unities might themselves be blended in various proportions. Wundt was emphatically not an associationist in the British mould; ideas were processes which fused rather than separate psychic entities which became linked. And more important than association, which was a passive affair, was the active process of apperception, the volitional ordering aspect of the mind, centred in inner acts of volition, or attention.75

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