Introspection

The etymology of the term introspection gives a clear indication of its meaning: the mental activity of a subject who is attentive to her/his own psychic processes (who looks inside).

Late nineteenth-century psychologists (Alfred Binet in France, the Würzburg school in Germany, Edward Bradford Tiltchener in the United States, to name but a few) considered introspection to be the sovereign method until its throne was usurped by objectivism and behaviorism.

The word has had a bad press in psychoanalysis. However,...