Introspection

From No Subject - Encyclopedia of Psychoanalysis
Revision as of 01:00, 25 May 2019 by 127.0.0.1 (talk) (The LinkTitles extension automatically added links to existing pages (https://github.com/bovender/LinkTitles).)
(diff) ← Older revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)
Jump to: navigation, search

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,...