Introspection or definition of introspection in psychology and its types

Introspection is a method of studying the psyche through introspection. His goal is to know himself, his own consciousness. For a long time, this method seemed to be almost the only way to study the psyche and, for example, its manifestations such as intuition. This method was first introduced into scientific psychology by J. Locke, developing the ideas of Rene Descartes.

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Then this method was actively used by W. Wundt and E. Titchener, but behaviorism rejected this method, since supporters of this direction were convinced that only external manifestations of the psyche, that is, activity, could be studied.

Psychoanalysis criticized introspection for the fact that this method did not cover unconscious processes that are hidden from human consciousness and therefore cannot be known through introspection. But Gestalt psychology and cognitive psychology have successfully introduced this method and actively use it along with their other techniques.

Moreover, many psychologists believed that introspection is the only possible method of directly studying the psyche and the processes taking place in it.

Read on and you will find out how you can greatly improve the quality of your life through self-observation.

In this article:

What is the essence of the introspection method? Introspection or reflection. How to learn introspection. Why do you need introspection?

Method of introspection

Introspection is reflection, that is, a person’s focus deep within himself, which differs from his focus on the outside world. The main method of introspection is self-observation. But there is a flaw here - no one can evaluate the correctness of a person’s work during introspection, because in essence a person is engaged in subjective observation. He evaluates himself in a way that suits him. Here you can resort to various forms of psychological defenses in order not to notice certain qualities in yourself.

Introspection methods are divided into types:

1. Analytical - analysis of feelings and emotions into parts, details, examining them down to the smallest detail.
2. Systematic – analysis of one’s feelings and thoughts after performing specific actions, that is, after the fact.
3. Phenomenological – a description of one’s internal state without experiencing it traumatically.

To cope with any, even the most difficult situation, it is very important to understand your own feelings. When you realize that you are angry, bored, offended, etc.

etc., then it’s easy for you to determine the reason for this feeling, and then communicate with yourself about how objective these reasons are.

In fact, you may not be angry where you would normally be angry; do not be offended where you are usually offended; not to be afraid where you are used to being afraid, etc. But to do this, you must first trace these feelings in yourself, understand the reasons for their occurrence and realize how stupid, childish or unnecessary they are sometimes. You can work on not reacting negatively to certain events. Why be upset again? After all, life can be made a holiday if you understand that many troubles happen for harmless reasons.

Even if the reason for your grief is serious and objective, you also have the right not to be upset about it. Who told you that you should cry if someone dies? To whom do you owe grief if a loved one leaves you? Even if the reasons are serious, you can say to yourself: “Yes, the situation is unpleasant, I want to cry, take revenge, beat my offender. But I may not react to this situation at all. What happened happened. I just won’t think about it, but will continue to live my happy life.”

Let your life be independent of what other people do. Become the master of your own happiness, which depends only on what you do. Unpleasant situations may happen to you, but you have the right to choose what feelings and emotions to experience. After all, you can rejoice at the departure of your loved one (“Now I won’t have to do what only he (she) wanted, and be what he (she) wanted me to see”; you have gained freedom to express yourself) or be indifferent to the fact that you were not promoted (“And thank God. But I will be able to spend more time with the people I love”).

Find the positive in a situation that is usually perceived negatively. And remember that you are free to choose not only your feelings, but also the people with whom you will continue to communicate, the places you will visit in the future. You are not obligated to maintain relationships with those people who deprive you of happiness and joy. It is better to be alone than to communicate with those who parasitize on your desire to achieve success and perfection.

Main features

You can recognize synthetics by the following features:

Developed intuition

Synthetics often cannot explain why they are confident in a particular development of events, but their premonitions very rarely deceive them.

Losing details from sight, inattention to them. It is difficult for synthetics to go from the particular to the general; specifics interest them only if it helps to better understand some features of the general.

The ability to “grab” information “on the fly”, quickly understand the essence

Synthetics subtly sense the interlocutor, often giving the impression of people who seem to read minds.

The ability to see patterns within the whole. An analytical doctor treats a specific disease and relieves its symptoms, while a synthetic doctor tries to understand the cause of the disease and its effect on the functioning of other organs.

The predominance of the right hemisphere, responsible for intuitive, imaginative, visual perception. You can check which hemisphere is dominant in you using a simple test, which is described in the video below.

What is introspection?

Introspection is a way of turning a person deep into himself for the purpose of self-knowledge. This is introspection, self-knowledge, introspection with the goal not to judge or evaluate, but with the goal of understanding oneself. This is how introspection differs from remorse, when a person begins to delve into himself, and then negatively evaluate his motives and actions, considering them wrong.

Introspection is a way to know yourself. To do this, a person must simply observe his mental processes, the emergence of desires, emotions, etc. There is no need to evaluate or condemn anything here. You just need to watch. If you do everything correctly, then you can not only understand yourself, but also realize why you made so many mistakes, what controls you. When a person understands himself, he can change in the direction in which he himself wishes.

In order to accept yourself as you are, you need to start with forgiveness. All people make mistakes. Sometimes a person blames himself more than other people do. Sometimes only you consider yourself to blame for something, and other people do not hold a grudge against you at all. Therefore, you need to forgive yourself first to see whether other people blame you or not.

When apologizing to someone, people sometimes do not forgive themselves. How can you be forgiven if you blame yourself for everything? Other people may have forgiven you a long time ago, but you continue to think that they are offended by you. Do you know why this happens? Because you blame yourself and from this you transfer your thoughts to other people. Everyone has already forgiven you, but it seems to you that they are offended at you because you do not forgive yourself. This is called "transference" when you project your own thoughts onto other people, thinking that they think about you in the same way as you think about yourself.

Forgive yourself first. Sometimes you don't need to ask other people for forgiveness. Sometimes you don’t need to waste your time and nerves seeking forgiveness from others. The most important thing is not to blame yourself. As long as you blame yourself and don’t forgive, even other people’s apologies won’t help you. But if you forgive yourself, then you may not even need the words “I forgive” from others.

The most important thing is to forgive yourself. Then it becomes clear whether you need to spend time seeking forgiveness from other people or whether they have already forgiven you a long time ago.

During the introspection process, it is important not to overdo it. After all, a person can go to the other extreme - self-examination

You need to not evaluate yourself, condemn or praise yourself, but simply get to know yourself, as if observing from the outside. If you begin to engage in self-examination, you will be guided by the desire to find some kind of flaw in yourself and reproach yourself for its presence.

Modern psychology, introspection and reflection

In current conditions, introspection is perceived as a historical stage in the development of psychological experiments. Now psychologists conduct research exactly the opposite. By analogy with the classic example of early psychology, in which introspection occupied a dominant place, the same object is taken - a red apple. But the subject must say what exactly he is holding in his hand, without going into analytical detail. This is the only way to analyze the psychological state of a person at the time of the experiment. Analytical introspection and introspection today are different concepts. Comprehension of the facts of one’s own consciousness is called monospection, and reflection is replaced by direct knowledge.

An experimental psychologist, when conducting a test task, relies on his own sophistication of the mind, and not on the intricate conclusions of the subject. Only in this respect the method of introspection is used as a tool of one’s own knowledge, and the data of introspection represent nothing more than professional experience.

Regarding the theory of dual consciousness, psychiatrists have a slightly different opinion, which is expressed in a clear formulation - schizophrenia. As for self-knowledge, it has nothing to do with introspection.

Description of the method

Introspection is very useful in a person’s knowledge of himself and his activities. This method is practical and does not require additional standards or tools. Its most significant advantage over other methods is that no one in any way can get to know a person better than he knows himself.

The method is very good because a person only needs his own help and desire. He must want to know himself and devote time to this.

But the method also has disadvantages, the most serious of which are:

• Bias - a person can exaggerate, embellish or not notice some features, distorting the picture of what he sees in himself.
• Subjectivity - a person perceives his inner world as he really wants to see it, that is, he can hide some aspects.

Adults, as Locke believed, perform the following basic actions:

• Knowledge of the surrounding reality.
• Processing information received from this reality.

Children are generally not able to carry out introspection, since their psyche is not sufficiently formed.

Method of introspection

According to his own teaching, which states that the human mind is capable of internal contemplation and analysis, J. Locke makes two fundamental statements:

• The activity of the human mind can occur on two levels, that is, “bifurcate”;
• The second level of consciousness requires training and attention, while the first is just a reflection of external factors.

Based on the possibility of doubling mental processes, the method of introspection has emerged, which presupposes the need to study and comprehend internal experience. The psychology of consciousness has adopted the following conclusions of the founder of the doctrine of introspection, J. Locke:

• To find out what is going on in a person’s soul, a psychologist is obliged to conduct research on himself. Only analogies drawn by the method of introspection will help to understand what exactly is happening to the subject. In a word, the psychologist must put himself in the place of his patient;
• Since not all people are prone to reflection, the feeling of introspection requires constant training, long-term and continuous exercise.

Psychology of the century before last accepted the method of introspection as the only correct one, since it reflected the causal relationship of all manifestations of the psyche. The specialist perceived external stimuli only from the point of view of the subject, that is, introspection assumed psychological facts without distortion by his own consciousness. At the end of the nineteenth century, psychologists around the world conducted a grand experiment to test the power of introspection under rigorous laboratory-like conditions.

As a result, big questions have arisen that touch on the colossal problems of the crisis in psychology. According to the instructions, the subjects avoided specific answers, but used terminological formulas. For example, a person could not say that he saw a red apple, but had to formulate a response at the request of introspection, that is, explain his feelings based on the color scheme and the expected taste sensation. Each subject spoke differently, as a result of which doubts arose among psychologists. How can psychology be successful if its introspection does not have uniform sensations? One sees the color red, the other thinks about the taste of an apple. The contradictions overturned the entire basis of practical psychology. In practice, it turned out that the specialist was not able to think in the categories of the subject.

Introspection in psychology

Introspection is popular in psychological practice, but many problems arise here, which are largely related to a person’s subjective vision of himself, as well as his reluctance to tell the whole truth about himself to others. The specialist can use introspection, but it will always be incomplete.

And yet introspection can be used independently, if only for the sake of simply knowing yourself. The most important criterion here remains observation. Do not try to evaluate and divide your manifestations into “bad” and “good”. Just watch and understand that you have it, don't run from it. If you want to use the knowledge gained in the process of introspection to change yourself, then it will be easy for you to do this.

From childhood onwards, all people first have their parents, then their educators and teachers, then their friends, other people and society as a whole say something, teach something and indicate something. If in childhood a child still takes everything on faith, then as he grows up, each person understands that society, parents and friends can also make mistakes. Moreover, there are people who use, manipulate, and provoke with the help of information.

Thus, the attitudes of society and parents are a way for a person to act to please them, perhaps to the detriment of himself.

How many people sacrifice themselves just because they were once told that they need to help their neighbors? How many people are willing to starve themselves just to feed their neighbors? How many people spend years getting a higher education instead of working and studying locally? How many people start families when they don't really want to? There are a great many such examples. And we can say that people suffer not because life is hard and unfair, but because people try to live by other people's rules, and not by their own.

It is better to listen to yourself when it comes to what kind of person you should be, what to strive for, how to live, who to love, where to work, etc. Everything that concerns you personally should remain the territory in which no one else has the right to command. In relationships with other people on shared territory, both partners are in command. But in your soul, head, thoughts, only you are the king.

If as a child you did not understand what was happening, now, as an adult, you have a choice. If you listen to someone, then it is your choice. And don’t cry because your life is bad. If you obey yourself, then you must understand that all results are your merit. Whatever one may say, you still answer. So, who are you going to listen to if the responsibility still remains with you?

B.M. Teplov. Introspection and introspection Added by Psychology OnLine.Net 08/23/2004 (Edit 04/12/2006) What should be understood by the subjective method in psychology? To answer the question, let us turn first of all to the primary source - to those psychologists who believed that the subjective method was the only possible one in psychology, and directed all efforts towards the development of this method. These include most of the pillars of bourgeois idealistic psychology. Let us take, for example, the two main representatives of officially approved psychology in pre-revolutionary Russia: Moscow University professor G.I. Chelpanov and St. Petersburg University professor A.I. Vvedensky.

In the psychology textbook that high school students of that time studied from, Chelpanov wrote this: “Mental phenomena can be cognized only through introspection. Cognition through introspection in psychology is usually called a subjective method, in contrast to the objective method of natural science” (1905, p. 7).

Vvedensky wrote a similar thing, only in a sharper form: “Mental phenomena are recognized or perceived only by the person who experiences them” (1914, p. 15). “We cannot perceive someone else’s mental life; she herself remains forever outside the limits of possible experience” (Ibid. p. 74). Observation of mental phenomena in oneself “is called introspection, or internal observation, or introspection, while the systematic use of introspection for scientific purposes is called the subjective, or introspective, method” (Ibid. p. 13).

So, mental phenomena can only be known in oneself; their knowledge is carried out using introspection (inner vision) or introspection; the systematic use of introspection for scientific purposes is the subjective method; This method, as is clear from the above, is the only possible one in psychology.

What to do with knowledge of someone else's mental life? In this matter, Vvedensky, we must give him justice, took the most consistent position - the position of extreme agnosticism, a kind of “psychological solipsism.” “I have the right,” he wrote, “to boldly assert, without any fear of contradicting any obviously existing facts, that except for myself, exactly no one is animated in the entire universe” (Ibid. p. 72). And further: “I cannot find out where there is animation besides me and where it is not, so without any contradiction with the facts I observe, I can, wherever I want, either admit or deny it” (Ibid. p. 73). Thus, a university professor, charged with teaching a course in psychology, considered himself entitled to admit mental life at the closet and deny it to the person closest to him. Naturally, the content of a psychology course taught from such a position cannot be of any interest.

Chelpanov took a more streamlined and apparently scientific position.

<...> “It cannot be said,” Chelpanov wrote, “that an objective method is used in psychology, because all objectively obtained material becomes accessible to the psychologist only due to the fact that he translates it into the language of introspection. If he interprets the mental life of a child in one way or another, if he somehow understands the mental life of a mentally ill person, etc., then this is only because he has previously had the opportunity to experience similar states” (1905, p. II).

The most famous of the American introspectionists, B.E. Titchener, did not hesitate to continue the same reasoning in relation to the study of animal psychology. The psychologist, he wrote, “tries, as far as possible, to put himself in the place of the animal, to find conditions under which his own expressive movements would be generally of the same kind; and then he tries to recreate the animal’s consciousness according to the properties of his human consciousness” (1914. Vol. 1, p. 26).

As you can see, the essence of the subjective method lies in the fact that the psychologist interprets the mental life of other adults, children, the mentally ill, and even animals from the point of view of the information that he received through introspection. The repertoire of those mental processes that can be found in this way is naturally limited and should, in essence, be limited to what the psychologist himself had to experience. The ideas, feelings, and thoughts of another person, a child, and even an animal are all the same ideas, feelings, and thoughts of a scientist-psychologist, because he does not know any others and has no right to know.

Consequently, actual knowledge of other people's feelings or thoughts (such knowledge is supposed to be impossible!) is replaced by the psychologist attributing to other people (or even animals) those feelings and thoughts that he considers, based on his own experience, to be most reasonable to attribute to them in this case. <…></…>

The scientific inconsistency of the subjective method in its expanded form is too obvious. However, we should not forget that the obviously absurd requirement to attribute mental processes to children, the mentally ill and animals from the stock of one’s own introspective experience is a direct and necessary consequence of the initial premise: self-observation is the only adequate method of understanding the psyche. If we accept this premise, then we should either refuse to study, for example, the child’s psyche, or adopt the method of “interpretation through introspection.”

The entire stated doctrine of the subjective method in psychology is based on the belief that a person has a special tool for direct knowledge of his psyche (internal perception, or introspection) and that another - mediated - knowledge of the psyche is impossible, and therefore, objective, universally valid knowledge of someone else's mental life, and therefore it must be replaced by a purely subjective translation into the language of introspection. It is not difficult to understand that here we are dealing with undisguised subjective idealism, that the main thesis of introspective psychology - “psychology is the science of direct experience” (W. Wundt, T. Lipps and others, right up to the majority of modern Anglo-American idealist psychologists) - has a defiantly idealistic character.

For Marxism, sensation is an image, a reflection of the objective world. In sensation and perception, we directly perceive objective reality. We do not directly perceive the sensations and perceptions themselves; we learn about them indirectly. The same applies to such internal

processes such as representation, memory, thinking, etc.
And in them we have images of the objective world. I directly know the content
of my thoughts, ideas, etc., but not
the processes
of thinking, ideas, and memories themselves.
I directly know what
I am thinking about, it is given to me in a subjective image (I use the term “image” in a broad philosophical sense, and not in the narrower sense of representation, a visual image), but I do not directly perceive
the process
of my thinking.
When a person says: “I remembered,” “I thought,” etc., this does not mean that he “sees” with his inner eye the processes
of remembering or thinking, that he somehow
internally perceives
.

Sechenov was deeply right when he declared in a polemic with K.D. Kavelin that “there is no special mental vision, as a special tool for studying mental processes, as opposed to material ones” (1947, p. 197), that this tool is a “fiction” (There. P. 211), And in another place: “... a person does not have any

special mental tools for cognizing mental facts, such as inner feeling or mental vision, which, merging with the knowable, would cognize the products of consciousness directly, in essence” (Ibid. p. 222),

The objective method in psychology presupposes an unconditional rejection of any vestiges of the belief that scientific research should be based on so-called introspection, understood as a tool for direct knowledge of mental processes.

Experience says: evidence of self-observation, such as ordinary reports of people about what and why they did and what they thought, never goes beyond the limits of ordinary everyday life

concepts -
remembered, thought, understood, decided, paid attention
, etc.
Self-observation, understood as internal perception
,
introspection
, does not provide any opportunities for analyzing what it means to
remember, think, understand, decide
.

Processes that are extremely complex in their objective nature and in the system of connections that form them usually appear to self-observation as absolutely simple. In psychology textbooks, we characterize perception as “a very complex process, which is based on the isolation of a certain group of sensations, combining them into a holistic image, a certain understanding or comprehension of this image and recognition of the corresponding object or phenomenon” (Teploye B.M., 1950. P. 55).

However, for self-observation, perception under normal conditions is an absolutely simple process, in which it is impossible to discern all the components described above. Perception becomes a “complex process” only under particularly difficult conditions or when brain activity is impaired.

People have been carrying out self-observation for tens of thousands of years, and the limits of those units into which self-observation can decompose mental activity have long been discovered. From the fact that a person is put in a laboratory, they give him instructions and record his testimony, the sharpness and depth of his internal vision

will not change.
A psychologist who makes an introspective experiment to discover the mechanism of the process of thinking or remembering is like a physicist who would put a person in a special room and give him instructions to examine
the atomic structure of the body.
No systematic selection of bodies to be examined
, no
training
of observers will make this action less absurd.
The atomic structure of a body cannot be seen with the naked eye. with a simple inner eye
. Any attempts in this direction are a waste of time. The knowledge of mental processes themselves can only be approached indirectly, through objective research.

All science is mediated knowledge. Forgetting this leads to a persistent desire to see

mental process, leads to disbelief in the power
of the objective method, which, through observation of the objective conditions for the emergence of the mental process and its objective manifestations, results, gives truly scientific knowledge of the process itself
.

The objective method in psychology is a method of indirect knowledge of the psyche and consciousness. It excludes any kind of psychological agnosticism. For the objective method, someone else's mental life is no less accessible to scientific study than one's own, since the foundation of this method is not introspection

.

Statement on the objective cognizability of the psyche

is the most important methodological prerequisite for materialistic psychology. The possibility of such knowledge follows from the understanding of the subject of psychology revealed above: the subjective is the subject of scientific psychology not in itself, but only in unity with the objective.

Mental activity always receives its objective expression in certain actions, speech reactions, in changes in the functioning of internal organs

etc.
This is an integral property of the psyche
, the oblivion of which inevitably leads to the replacement of “psychic realities” with “psychic fictions” (Sechenov).

In this regard, it should be recalled that for Sechenov, who was the first to put forward the idea of ​​the reflex nature of the psyche, there were no reflexes in the literal sense of the word “without end.” “In all cases,” he wrote, “where conscious mental acts remain without any external expression, these phenomena nevertheless retain the nature of reflexes”; and in these cases, “the end of the reflex is an act that is completely equivalent to the excitation of the muscular apparatus, i.e. motor nerve and its muscles" (1947, p. 152).

The most important thing for psychology is the expression of mental processes in a person’s external activity, in his actions, words, and behavior. Sechenov wrote: “The mental activity of a person is expressed, as is known, by external signs, and usually all people, both ordinary people, scientists, naturalists, and people who study the spirit, judge the former by the latter, that is, by external signs.” (Ibid. p. 70). And further: “Everyone, without exception, judges the character of a person by the latter’s external activities” (Ibid. p. 114).

Sechenov's teacher and friend, the great Russian materialist Chernyshevsky, repeatedly pointed out that knowledge of man and his mental activity is achieved mainly through the study of his actions. In one of his last works, he wrote: “We still cannot acquire reliable information about the mind and character of a person by any reasoning on any general basis. They are acquired only by studying human actions” (1951. T. X. P. 820-821). <…>

The depravity of the subjective method in psychology does not manifest itself at all in the fact that it attaches importance to the study of statements

person, but in the fact that he attaches decisive importance to a person’s statements
about himself, about his experiences
.

It is often thought that the verbal statements of the subject in ordinary experiments on the study of sensations and perceptions are evidence of introspection. This is mistake. Testimony about what the subject sees, hears, generally feels or perceives is testimony about objects and phenomena of the objective world. Only a subjective idealist can insist that such testimony should be classified as evidence of introspection.

No sane person would say that a military observer who gives such information, for example: “An enemy tank has appeared near the edge of the forest,” is engaged in introspection and is giving evidence of self-observation. But what is the basis for talking about the evidence of introspection or the use of introspection in ordinary experiments on the study of sensations or perceptions, when subjects answer such questions, for example: which of two squares is lighter? Which of the two sounds is higher (or louder)? Is there a light circle in a dark field of vision? How many luminous points do you see? and so on. It is quite obvious that here the subject is engaged not in introspection, but in extrospection

, not
by internal perception
, but by the most ordinary external perception. It is quite obvious that he is not giving evidence of introspection here, but evidence about objects and phenomena of the external world. It is therefore impossible to speak of the testimonies of subjects in normal experiments on the study of sensations and perceptions as testimonies of self-observation. Otherwise, we would have to admit that all natural science is based on the evidence of introspection, since it is impossible to imagine a scientific observation or experiment that could do without judgments of perception.

But the matter, in essence, does not change if a military observer or intelligence officer gives testimony from memory, i.e. testimony about what he saw a few hours ago. And no one will call these indications evidence of introspection; These are statements about objects in the external world, and not at all about oneself, although from such statements it is possible in a certain way to make judgments about the memory of the person giving evidence. Consequently, the testimonies of subjects in many experiments devoted to the study of memory cannot be said to be evidence of introspection.

So, not all verbal testimony of subjects obtained in psychological experiments can be called testimony of introspection. Indications of self-observation should be called only statements of subjects about themselves

about your actions and experiences.

In general, we must decisively reject the false and harmful idea that the use in psychological research, and in particular in a psychological experiment, of verbal reactions or verbal reports of subjects is a sign of the subjectivity of the method, evidence of a departure from a strictly objective research method. <...> The objectivity or subjectivity of the method is least determined by what reactions - speech, motor, vegetative - are studied,

The most important condition for the objectivity of the method is the most rigorous and complete accounting of the influences on the subject and his reactions. This applies to both speech influences on the subject and his speech reactions.

. Not a rejection of them, but a desire to strictly take them into account - this is what follows from the requirement of objectivity of the method.

Strongly rejecting introspection as a special internal perception

, which is a tool for direct knowledge of mental processes, the objective method in psychology, of course, does not deny a person’s ability to give
a verbal report
to himself or other people (including a research psychologist) about his actions and experiences (about the content of his experiences).
In this sense, we can talk about a person’s ability to introspect, sharply contrasting, however, the terms introspection
and
introspection
.
Self-observation in the only acceptable meaning of this word is not “internal observation”, it is not the result of direct perception of one’s mental processes or mental characteristics of one’s personality
.

There is a very widespread prejudice: a person supposedly receives all knowledge about himself - about his mental activity, about his mental characteristics - through introspection, i.e. through some direct knowledge inaccessible to other people. This view is false. A person receives the most important knowledge about himself indirectly, i.e. in essentially the same ways that are available to other people

.

Through introspection it is impossible to establish the reserves of my memory; it is impossible to find out what I remember and know. We must decisively abandon the view of memory as a storeroom in which everything that is remembered is stored and which can be viewed with the inner eye, i.e. through introspection. Memorization is the formation of a complex system of connections, and reproduction is the revival of these connections, and strictly determined, caused by a certain stimulus.

To find out whether a person remembers a given content or not, it is necessary to test whether this content is reproduced under those stimuli, under those influences that - as far as one can assume - are associated in a given person with the content of interest to us. (This kind of influence

and there are various questions, tasks, etc.) And the more diverse these influences are, the more reliable the result will be. The person himself does exactly the same thing, wanting to find out whether he remembers this content. He must ask himself about something related to this content, must give himself some task and, based on the results of this test, judge whether he has remembered. It doesn’t matter, of course, that he doesn’t do it out loud. The means at my disposal for finding out what I remember are, fundamentally speaking, the same ones that other people have at their disposal for determining the reserves of my memory. I learn about this not directly, not through introspection, but indirectly, because it is impossible to know something in any other way.

The task of psychologists is to transform the mediated path spontaneously used by each person into a scientifically refined method. And to do this, we must first of all abandon the disturbing and misleading idea that introspection can provide some help here.

So, introspection is not a means of determining one's own knowledge. It is quite obvious that it is not a means of determining one’s own skills and abilities. do this is to try

, i.e. the path is indirect, objective.
Internal perception will not help here. If a person sometimes (but not always!) knows better than others what he can do
, it is only because he has more often had the opportunity to try himself, and not because he has some special
tool
for knowing his own skills .

It is also easy to be convinced that it is not through introspection that a person learns the characteristics of his personality: temperament, character, abilities, interests. A person can judge all this very indirectly, fundamentally speaking, in the same ways that other people judge him - primarily by how he behaves in certain situations, how he acts, what he does. And it is much easier to observe people’s affairs than one’s own. Therefore, life experience proves that the most adequate description of a person can, in the vast majority of cases, be given by other people, and not by himself. In this regard, one remark of K. Marx has a deep meaning: “In some respects, a person resembles a commodity. Since he is born without a mirror in his hands and not a Fichtean philosopher: “I am I,” then a person first looks, as in a mirror, into another person” ( Marx K., Engels F.

. Op. T. 23. P. 62).

A person first learns to judge other people, and then about himself. A person judges himself basically in the same ways that he developed while learning to judge other people. A person does not have a special tool for perceiving himself as a person. He will be “born without a mirror in his hands.”

Therefore, it seems strange, from the point of view of scientific methodology, when psychologists, wanting, for example, to find out the interests of schoolchildren, ask the schoolchildren themselves about what their interests are. (This questioning has different forms, for example, the form of essays on the topics “What am I interested in?” or “My interests.”) Of course, doctors also ask patients all sorts of questions to make a diagnosis, but they never ask the question: “What is your disease?". It does not occur to anyone that establishing a diagnosis of a disease is the responsibility of the patient himself. Why might the thought occur that establishing a student’s range of interests is the responsibility of the student himself? Obviously, because the conviction still remains that a person has some tool for direct

consideration of their interests.
If all psychologists were firmly convinced that establishing a range of interests can be accomplished only indirectly, then they would hardly entrust this task to the schoolchildren themselves. Then essays and surveys similar to the above would be used not to find out what the interests of schoolchildren are, but to establish how schoolchildren express
their interests, how adequately they
understand
them.

In recent years, Soviet psychology has been dominated by the view that self-observation is, although not the only or even the main one, but still one of the necessary and important methods of psychology. This is exactly how the question is covered in S.L. Rubinstein’s book “Fundamentals of General Psychology” (1946), in the first four editions of my psychology textbook for high school, in the textbook for pedagogical universities edited by K.N. Kornilov, A.A. Smirnov and B.M.Tellov (1948), in two textbooks by K.N.Kornilov, published in 1946. Such a position was recently defended by Samarin and Leventuev in the Teacher’s Newspaper (dated May 26 and June 9, 1951 G.).

This view cannot be considered correct. Self-observation cannot be considered as one of the methods of scientific psychology, although self-observation data (in the specified meaning of this term) is an important object of study in psychology

(as in a number of other sciences).

First of all, we need to pay attention to one terminological inconsistency. When describing psychological methods, each method is named based on what the researcher does

: method of experiment, observation, method of analyzing the products of activity, etc. If a researcher observes preschoolers playing “shopping,” then we call this the observation method, and not the “shopping game” method.
If a researcher studies children's drawings for psychological purposes, then we are talking about the method of analyzing the products of activity, and not about the drawing method. But if a researcher collects and analyzes the self-observation evidence of subjects, then for some reason we are talking about the “method of self-observation,” although the researcher’s method of work
here is not self-observation at all. Does this terminological inconsistency also reflect some deeper error? Doesn't this sometimes mean that by turning to the self-observation of subjects, the experimenter, in essence, shifts his task onto them? They, the subjects, are, as it were, sent “to the scene of an incident”, inaccessible to the researcher himself, in order to make scientific observations there, and the experimenter only has to systematize and process the results of these observations.

If we reduce the mental to the subjective and believe that the subjective is accessible only to the introspection of the person experiencing it, then such an understanding becomes inevitable. Then, indeed, in a psychological experiment, the task of scientific observation should be entrusted to the subjects, and then it is indeed not only possible, but also necessary to talk about the “method of introspection.” But if we refuse to reduce the psyche to the subjective, if we reject the thesis about the objective unknowability of the psyche, then there is no reason left for the subjects to turn from being studied into persons studying their own psyche. Then it becomes meaningless to call a method that includes the use of self-observation evidence from subjects a self-observation method.

.
Many sciences - medicine, literary history, art history - use people's testimony about themselves, about their experiences, about their work, i.e. what is called an introspection reading
.
But no one yet seems to have said that medicine or literary history works by the method of introspection
.

Making self-observation a special method

research specific to psychology and only to it is the most striking manifestation of the subjective method in psychology.<…></…>

In refusing to regard introspection as one of the methods of scientific psychology, we must most decisively contrast our position with that of American behaviorism.

Behaviorism rejects the method of introspection. But he refuses it in order to abandon the study of the psyche, human consciousness. The formal author of behaviorism, J. Watson, wrote: “If behaviorism is to have a future..., then it must completely break with the concept of consciousness.” “Those researchers who are unable to abandon “consciousness,” with all its complications, must seek better employment of their powers in some other field.”

Behaviorism proceeds from the same idealistic position that underlies introspective psychology: the psyche and consciousness are accessible only to introspective knowledge, they cannot be studied by an objective method. (This circumstance was rightly pointed out at one time by S.L. Rubinstein.)

“States of consciousness,” writes Watson, “like the so-called phenomena of spiritualism, are not of an objectively demonstrable nature, and therefore can never become the subject of truly scientific research.” “From the point of view of behaviorism, there is no evidence for “mental existences” or “mental processes” of any kind.”

At first, behaviorists acted under the banner of mechanistic materialism. But, as we see, their construction was based on an idealistic thesis. That is why the crude mechanism of the first behaviorists so easily and quickly turned into the equally crude idealism of their successors. <…>

Soviet materialist psychology is directly opposed to American behaviorism. The main task of our psychology is to materialistically explain the psyche, human consciousness. Behaviorism abandoned the method of introspection in order to abandon consciousness. Marxist psychology must abandon introspection as a method

scientific research because human consciousness can and should be studied consistently by objective methods.

Introspective psychology

Introspective psychology

- a generalized name for a number of unrelated psychological concepts based on the postulate about the non-mediation and fundamental incommunicability of an individual’s subjective experience and the impossibility of an objective study of mental processes. In this case, “alien” consciousness is considered as specially reconstructed through the transfer operation: the researcher, knowing about the connection of his own experiences with their external manifestations, builds a hypothesis about the internal experiences of another person based on his externally observable behavior. Thus, the leading psychological method in this approach is introspection, i.e. subjective description of internal experience.

The theoretical foundations of this methodological direction can be found in the philosophy of the 17th century, in the works of R. Descartes and J. Locke.

This direction includes the school of W. Wundt, the structural psychology of E. Titchener, the psychology of the act of F. Brentano, the Würzburg school, as well as the studies of L. M. Lopatin, G. I. Chelpanov. Descartes' philosophical and psychological ideas found their development in the phenomenology of E. Husserl.

Varieties

Types of introspection:

1. Phenomenological. It originates from Gestalt psychology. Aimed at describing mental phenomena in their integrity and immediacy to naive subjects. This technique has gained enormous popularity in descriptive psychology. Gradually it began to be applied in a humanistic direction.
2. Systematic. Developed by the Würzburg School. Focuses on description and tracking stages of thinking.
3. Analytical. It was developed in the school founded by E. Titchener. Its characteristics are the complete separation of the sensory image into individual components for their analysis.

Another type of introspection is self-inquiry. The main goal of this technique is to study the sense of self in order to move to its source - consciousness in its pure form.

Types of introspection in psychology

The history of the method gave rise to certain types of introspection, discovered by scientists from different European philosophical and psychological schools. Among them are:

• systematic, allowing you to analyze the occurrence of thoughts and feelings in retrospect, that is, after performing certain actions;
• analytical, as if dissecting emotions, breaking them down into small components and showing them from the moment of formation to manifestation;
• phenomenological introspection is introspection, used in Gestalt psychology, when the analysis of a person’s internal state occurs descriptively, without causing mental trauma.

A number of scientific publications also highlight an introspective experiment, which can be used to repeatedly test a person’s emotional reaction to actions of a repetitive nature. At the same time, he gives independent psychological characteristics of observations. Until the beginning of the twentieth century, introspection was considered the only effective method for studying a person’s emotional state.

Issues

Introspection is a controversial technique for obtaining information in psychology. She has some problems. The main one is the difference in the perception of one’s own sensations and feelings among different people. The same feelings, motives, desires can change under the influence of various factors.

Using this technique, it is not mental processes that are examined, but only traces of their manifestation. Feelings and thoughts develop rapidly; when the time comes to draw conclusions, they will be changed.

Introspection cannot always be used. For example, it will not give results if a person is in an unstable mental state, has psychological illnesses, depression, or apathy. With its help, it is impossible to obtain accurate data from children and drug addicts. Because of its problematic nature, introspection is an additional, superficial practice used in conjunction with other methods.

In the 19th century, introspection occupied a leading position in obtaining information about the manifestations of the human psyche. After the emergence of other practices, it ceased to be in demand. The rapid decline in popularity is due to bias and subjectivity of introspection. Due to its shortcomings, it has been classified as a non-scientific practice.

Kinds

Psychologists distinguish several types of introspection:

• Analytical - drawing up a picture occurs on the basis of a set of sensations that are formed during introspection. This is the perception of things and objects through the senses.
• Systematic is structuring, awareness and understanding of internal processes.
• Phenomenological introspection is a description of the integrity and immediacy of phenomena.

The main disadvantage of introspection is that the process can be carried out by one person. And even during experimental introspection, psychologists cannot monitor how correctly a person draws conclusions and uses the method.

That is why the method helps to collect data, but it cannot be interpreted, evaluated, or separated.

Introspection, or observation, is carried out over the simplest processes of the psyche: associations, sensations, ideas. The advantage of the method is that there is no need for a report; only self-observation is necessary, which will then be analyzed.

Introspection and self-observation

The method of introspection and introspection are sometimes equated, implying that the aspects of study are the same for them: an internal emotional reaction to various events, where the assessment is given by the subject, who is usually called a “naive observer.” But experts believe that introspection and introspection have significant differences:

• self-observation is a way of obtaining information about the emotional and mental state of an individual from himself;
• introspection - the use of data obtained as a result of introspection.

Reflection and introspection - differences The interaction of introspection and reflection as two methods that expand the horizons of research into the emotional and mental state of an individual is interesting. Most experts agree that both are important: introspection and reflection; the differences are that the first is “responsible” for the soul, analyzing its reaction to the actions performed, and the second is for the body, giving information about its actions.

When is it necessary?

The peak of the practice of self-observation was noted in the heyday of empirical psychology, between the 18th and 19th centuries. Gradually, the popularity of this method decreased.

In recent years, the importance of the technique has begun to increase again. For example, self-observation is an addition to conducting surveys and conversations, but it can also be used as an independent practice. Direction - study of psychological moods and states.

The low popularity of introspection as an independent practice is explained by receiving false information. The result of self-report can be influenced by various factors - mood, physical condition, personal desire to hide the facts. To obtain the most accurate data, recording devices can be used - video cameras, cameras, voice recorders.

History of the method

As a special method, introspection was substantiated in the works of Rene Descartes, who pointed out the direct nature of knowledge of one’s own mental life. John Locke divided human experience into internal, which concerns the activities of our mind, and external, oriented towards the external world.

After Wilhelm Wundt combined the method of introspection with laboratory and instrumental techniques, introspection became the main method for studying mental states and the content of human consciousness in the emerging experimental psychology of the late 19th century. However, at the beginning of the 20th century, in connection with the change and expansion of the object and subject of psychology, the emergence of new directions in psychology, introspection was declared an idealistic, subjective and unscientific method.

However, introspection has always been present in the research of psychologists in the form of introspection, reflective analysis and other techniques for studying the inner spiritual life of a person.

General terminology

The term introspection comes from the Latin word introspecto, which translates as “to look within.” Introspection is a method of conscious self-observation, that is, these are equivalent concepts, and both are used in psychological research.

The method of introspection is indeed very important, since with its help you can learn to perceive the real world in depth, and then intuition and consciousness will open up to a person. People suffering from schizophrenia have excessive introspection; they replace reality with the inner world.

The method of introspection in psychology is used to observe one’s own processes, one’s own thoughts, experiences, feelings, attitudes, images. The method was founded in psychology by J. Locke.

Introspection is introspection, in which the person himself does not strive for self-judgment, which is why the method differs from remorse.