Introspection

INTROSPECTION. - It is the method of analyzing the appearing and the content of psychic processes by means of self-observation, which is called introspection when it is conducted in a systematic manner and according to precise scientific criteria. In this sense a distinction is made between self-introspection and hetero-introspection: in the first the subject on his own observes and describes the immediate contents of consciousness, whereas in the second he describes them following the instructions of the experimenter. The foundation of introspection lies in the capacity that the spiritual consciousness has to reflect upon its interior functions and to consider their objects and acts: «Intellectus supra seipsum reflectitur, secundum eamdem reflectionem intelligit et suum intelligere et speciem qua intelligit» (Sum. Theol., 1st, q. 85, a. 2). Although knowing is directed first of all to the object, at the same time it perceives its act and the subjective structures of its functions or the species of the Scholastics: «Et sic species intellecta secundario est id quod intelligitur» (ibid.).

The method of introspection was brought into prominence especially by the Denkpsychologie of the Würzburg school (Külpe) and had the merit of defeating positivism and phenomenism in psychology. The method of introspection was criticized in advance by Reid (Essay on the faculties of the human mind, I, 3; ed. Hamilton, vol. II, Edinburgh 1863, p. 518 ff.) and especially by Kant, according to whom «inner sense - unlike outer sense, which can see objects in space in a state of rest and therefore observe them at its leisure - perceives the relations of its own determinations only in time and therefore in their flowing, where that constancy of observation is lacking which is nevertheless a necessary condition for experiencing» (E. Kant, Anthropologie, part 1, b. I, § 4: Von dem Beobachten seiner selbst, in Werke, ed. E. Cassirer, VIII, Berlin 1922, p. 18). Similar criticisms of introspection were advanced by Herbert, Comte, Höfling. A middle way is the one envisaged by Gestalt psychology, according to which the «I» too appears as a field of «structural organization», which makes it present in its contents and in its functions (cf. K. Koffka, Principles of Gestalt psychology, London 1936, p. 319), but by this one draws near to the objective method of «behavior» (behaviorism). In philosophy the method of introspection had a particular development in Bergson's intuition and in the phenomenology of Husserl's school: nevertheless this direction bent toward an introspection in the transcendental idealist sense of consciousness.

Cornelio Fabro