edwing boring, "a history of introspective psychology"

Vol. 50, No. 3 May, 1953

Psychological Bulletin

A HISTORY OF INTROSPECTION

EDWIN G. BORINGHarvard University

A proper but cumbersome title forthis article would be "The History ofthe Availability of Consciousness toObservation in Scientific Psychol-ogy." If conscious experience can besaid to exist, then the question arisesas to whether modern psychologyought not to take into considerationits data, as indeed it used always todo. Thus my paper might even becalled "What Became of Introspec-tion?" One common answer to thatquestion would be that introspectionwas not viable and so gradually be-came extinct. Another answer, how-ever, is that introspection is still withus, doing its business under variousaliases, of which verbal report is one.The former statement about thefailure of introspection is approxi-mately true of that introspectionwhich flourished under Titchener atCornell in 1900-1920, whereas thelatter statement about camouflagedintrospection is accepted by themodern positivists who hold that theconcept of conscious experience hasmeaning only when it is definedoperationally.

DUALISMThe belief in the existence of con-

scious mind in man is very old, as oldas philosophy and as old as the beliefin the immortality of the soul, theimmortality of that part of a personthat is not his mortal body. Thus ithas come about that something con-scious is usually one term in a dual-

ism, like mind vs. matter, the rationalvs. the irrational, or purpose vs.mechanism. There have been psycho-logical monists, like La Mettrie (44),the materialist, who argued in 1748that man is a machine and who gothimself consequently into theologicaltrouble, but even he was more con-cerned with reducing to their bodilybases the mental states that dualismhad already established than in de-scribing man without benefit ofdualism.

Inevitably the doctrine of im-mortality and the old-time impor-tance of theology played a role inpsychology. The words for soul andmind are not distinguished in Frenchand German (I'dme, Seek) nor are theGreek and Latin words (psyche,nous; anima, mens) as distinct as theEnglish translations. It was thefaculty of reason that carried with itthe right to immortality, and Des-cartes, a devout Catholic, gave menrational souls, made of unextendedimmortal substance, and maintainedthat animals are mortal irrationalautomata (20). Thus Descartes be-came an important ancestor in boththe dualistic (conscious, introspec-tive) line of descent, and in the ob-jective (mechanistic, reflex, tropistic)line.

British empiricism fixed dualismand the concept of consciousnessupon psychology. Locke, Berkeley,Hume, Hartley, Reid, Stewart,Thomas Brown, the two Mills, and

169

170 EDWIN G. BORING

Bain, all were concerned in differentways with how the mind gets toknow about the external world. Thusthey recognized the basic mind-matter dichotomy. Presently therecame also into the hands of thesephilosophers the doctrine of associa-tion which dealt with the syntheticrelations among the items of mind orconsciousness (8, pp. 157-245). Therenever was—nor is there now-—a goodword for this immaterial term of themind-matter dichotomy. James wascomplaining about that in 1890 (32,I, pp. 185-187). Mostly the wordwas either mind (Seele) or conscious-ness (Bewusslheit). Nineteenth-cen-tury psychology formulated thedichotomy as psychophysical paral-lelism, and that doctrine was sofirmly impressed upon psychologicalthinking that the American opera-tional revolution of the present cen-tury came about only with thegreatest difficulty.

It would not be profitable to gointo great detail here about the his-tory of the belief in what we arecalling consciousness. The existenceof consciousness seemed for manycenturies to be an obvious immediatedatum, the basic undeniable realityof one's own existence. "Cogito, ergosum," said Descartes. James summedthe matter up (32, I, p. 185):

Introspective Observation is what wehave to rely on first and foremost and al-ways. The word introspection needshardly to be defined—it means, of course,looking into our own minds and reportingwhat we there discover. Every one agreesthat we there discover states of conscious-ness. So far as I know, the existence ofsuch states has never been doubted byany critic, however skeptical in otherrespects he may have been. That wehave cogitations of some sort is the in-concusswm in a world most of whose otherfacts have at some time tottered in thebreath of philosophical doubt. All peopleunhesitatingly believe that they feel

themselves thinking, and that they dis-tinguish the mental state as an inwardactivity or passion, from all the objectswith which it may cognitively deal. /regard this belief as the most fundamentalof all the postulates of Psychology, andshall discard all curious inquiries aboutits certainty as too metaphysical for thescope of this book.

In general the philosophers, physi-ologists, and physicists who foundedthe new experimental psychology in1850-1870—Fechner, Lotze, Helm-holtz, Wundt, Hering, Mach, andtheir associates—were psychophysi-cal parallelists who would have sub-scribed to this view of James' (8,pp. 261-356). Psychology—even thenew "physiological psychology"'—•was essentially the study of con-sciousness, and its chief method wasintrospection. Physiology came inbecause these parallelists believed in"no psychosis without neurosis"(Huxley's phrase, 30, 1874) and thuscould employ the apparatus of thephysiological laboratory to controlstimuli and to record the effects ofneural events.

About introspection (innere Wahr-nehmung) there was, however, somequestion. There is a long history ofopinions on the manner in which themind observes its own processes, onethat begins with Aristotle and Platoand carries on to the present. Eislerhas abstracted the views of eighty-four writers on the subject, fromAristotle to the beginning of thepresent century (21, III, pp. 1735-1742). Locke, founding empiricism,held that all ideas-—that is to say, thecontents of the mind—come from ex-perience either by sensation, whichprovides knowledge of the externalworld, or by reflection, which is theinner sense and provides knowledgeof the mind's own operations. Neithersensation nor reflection, however,was regarded by the early empiricists

A HISTORY OF INTROSPECTION 171

as a process subject to error. Thebelief grew up that to have consciousexperience is also to know that youhave it, and thus ultimately Wundt,basing his new systematic physiologi-cal psychology upon British empiri-cism, denned introspection as im-mediate experience (98, pp, 1-6).The facts of physical science, hethought, are mediated and derived byinference from immediate experience,which in and of itself is immediatelygiven and constitutes the subjectmatter of psychology. This viewsuggests that Wundt thought thatintrospection cannot lie, but actuallythere was an inconsistency there, forthe Wundtian laboratory put greatemphasis upon training in introspec-tive observation and in the accuratedescription of consciousness.

Brentano wrote in 1874: "Thephenomena inwardly apprehendedare true in themselves. As they ap-pear . . . so they are in reality. Whothen can deny that in this a greatsuperiority of psychology over thephysical sciences comes to light?"(12, I, pp, 131-203). Against thisview, James remarked: "If to havefeelings or thoughts in their im-mediacy were enough, babies in thecradle would be psychologists, and in-fallible ones" (32,1, p. 189). The clas-sical objection to the ipso facto ade-quacy of the immediate was raised byAuguste Comte, the founder ofpositivism, who noted that introspec-tion, being an activity of the mind,would always find the mind in-trospecting and never engaged in thegreat variety of its other activities(17, p. 64). Actually Comte's argu-ment was, however, much more thanthis quibble, which could have beenanswered by the statement that in-trospection is not a procedure butmerely the recognition that knowl-edge, when given, exists as knowl-edge. Comte was complaining, as did

twentieth-century behaviorists, thatintrospection is unreliable, that it re-sults in descriptions which often can-not be verified, and that in manyother ways it fails of the positivecharacter that science demands.

J. S, Mill answered Comte's quibbleby asserting that introspection is aprocess and requires training for re-liability. It is not strictly immediate,Mill thought, for it involves memory•—immediate memory, perhaps; yetimmediate memory is not the datumitself and comes with a chance forerror in it (53, p. 64). On this wholematter, see James1 excellent discus-sion (32, I, pp. 187-192). Mill'spoint is reinforced by the modernrealization that it is almost impos-sible to distinguish between anes-thesia and immediate anterogradeamnesia: a man whose memory lastsonly one second is so crippled incapacity for introspection as to bepractically as unconscious as anyreacting organism or machine.

CLASSICAL INTROSPECTION

We may regard that introspectionas classical which was defined byfairly formal rules and principles andwhich directly emerged from theearly practices in Wundt's laboratoryat Leipzig. Of course, there were noimmutable rules for introspection.The great men kept disagreeing withone another and changing their minds.Nevertheless there was a body ofopinion which was in general sharedby Wundt, by Kiilpe before he leftLeipzig, by G. E. M tiller at Gottingen,by Titchener at Cornell and by manyother less important "introspection-ists" who accepted the leadership ofthese men. Stumpf at Berlin held toless constrained principles, andKiilpe's later doctrine of introspec-tion after he had gone to Wurzburgwas opposed by Wundt and Titchener.

Classical introspection is the com-

EDWIN G. SORING

mon belief that the description ofconsciousness reveals complexes thatare constituted of patterns of sensoryelements. It was against this doc-trine that Kiilpe at Wiirzburg, thebehaviorists under Watson and theGestalt psychologists at Wertheimer'sinitiative revolted. Introspection gotits ism because these protesting newschools needed a clear and stable con-trasting background against which toexhibit their novel features. No pro-ponent of introspection as the basicmethod of psychology ever calledhimself an introspectionist. Usuallyhe called himself a psychologist.

Wundt, undertaking to establishthe new psychology as a science,turned to chemistry for his model.This choice landed him in elementism,with associationism to provide forsynthesis. The psychological atomswere thus sensations and perhapsalso feelings and images. The psy-chological molecules were precep-tions and ideas (Vorstellungen) andthe more complex combinations (Ver-bindungen}. Because Wundt changedhis views from time to time aboutimages and feelings, the sensationbecame the example of the sort ofstuff that appears in a good descrip-tion of consciousness. Thus, half acentury later, we find Titchener con-cluding that sensory is the adjectivethat best indicates the nature of thecontents of consciousness (85, pp.259-268). In this way Wundt fixedboth elementism and sensationismupon introspection, and introspec-tionism in the proper laboratoriesalways yielded sensory elements be-cause that was "good" observation.It seems reasonable to suppose thatlaboratory atmosphere and local cul-tural tradition did more to perpet-uate this value than did any pub-lished admonitions about observa-tion.

Although Wundt defined the sub-

ject matter of psychology as im-mediate experience (97; 98, pp. 1-6),he did distinguish introspection(Selbstbeobachtung) from inner per-ception (innere Wahrnehmung). Innerperception might be self-validating,but it was not science. Wundt in-sisted on the training of observers.Even in the reaction experimentLeipzig observers had to be trainedto perform the prescribed acts in per-ception, apperception, cognition, dis-crimination, judgment, choice, andthe like, and to report when con-sciousness deviated from what hadbeen called for. Thus it is said thatno observer who had performed lessthan 10,000 of these introspectivelycontrolled reactions was suitable toprovide data for published researchfrom Wundt's laboratory. SomeAmericans, like Cattell, had the ideathat the minds of untrained ob-servers might also be of interest topsychology, and later a bitter littlequarrel on this matter developed be-tween Baldwin and Titchener (8,pp. 413 f., 555). For all that, Wundt'snotion of what constitutes proper in-trospection was much more liberalthan is generally supposed, for heleft room in formal introspection forretrospection and for indirect report.He was much less flexible in respectof the elements and their sensorynature.

What happened next to introspec-tion was the acceptance of the con-ception that physics and psychologydiffer from each other in points ofview but not in fundamental mate-rials. Mach in 1886 argued thatexperience ("sensation") is the sub-ject matter of all the sciences (48),and Avenarius a few years later thatpsychology views experience as de-pendent upon the functioning of thenervous system (he called it the"System C") and physics as inde-pendent of the action of the nervous


system (3). Presently, after the twomen had agreed that they agreed,they had great influence upon Kiilpeand Titchener who were both then atLeipzig. In his textbook of 1893Kulpe accepted this distinction bypoint of view (41, pp. 9-13), butTitchener is the person who em-phasized it most. In 1910, he wassaying that the data of introspec-tion are "the sum-total of humanexperience considered as dependentupon the experiencing person" (79,pp. 1-25), and later he could writethe formula:

Introspection = psychological(clear experience—>report),

which means that introspection isthe having of clear experience underthe psychological point of view andthe reporting upon it also under thepsychological point of view (83, pp.1-26). Substitute physical for psy-chological, and you have the formulafor physics. The stock example forintrospection is the illusion, the casexvhere perception differs from stimu-lus-object in some respect. For per-ception experience is regarded just asit comes, dependent upon the per-ceiving of the perceiving person andthus the action of his nervous system.For the physical account of the ob-ject, however, the perceiver must beabstracted from and the physicist hasresort to measurement and otherphysical technics. Titchener held tothis distinction by point of view allhis life (85, pp. 259-268).

It was Kiilpe who split Wundt'spsychological atom, analyzing sensa-tion into its four inseparable but in-dependently variable attributes: qual-ity, intensity, extensity, and dura-tion (41, pp. 30-38). Titchener laterheld to this view which served totighten rather than to loosen theconstraints of atomism upon intro-spective psychology (6, pp. 17-35).

One of the most thorough discus-sions of introspection was providedby the erudite G. E. Muller in 1911(55, pp. 61-176). Muller was moreliberal than Wundt and left room forall the indirect and retrospectiveforms of introspection. Being pri-marily interested in the applicationof introspection to memory, he dis-tinguished, for instance, between thepresent recall of the past appercep-tion of a past event and the presentapperception of the present recall ofa past event, an important distinc-tion, since present apperception canbe interrogated as to detail whereaspast apperception has become fixedand no longer subject to exploration.

It was Titchener who placed thegreatest constraints upon introspec-tion by his requirement that thedescription of consciousness shouldexclude statements of meaning. Atfirst Titchener had perception inmind and called the report of mean-ings the stimulus-error, insisting thattrained observers by taking the psy-chological point of view would de-scribe consciousness ("dependent ex-perience") and attempt no state-ments about the stimulus-objects("independent experience" as givenby the point of view of physics) (5;79, pp. 202 f.). After Kiilpe hadclaimed to find imageless (non-sensory) thoughts in the conscious-nesses of judgment, action, and otherthought processes, Titchener broad-ened his criticism to an objectionagainst the inclusion of any meaningsat all in the data of introspection(80). He was arguing that straightdescription (Beschreibung, cognitiorei) would yield the kind of sensorycontents that had become standardin classical introspection, and thatinferences about conscious data(Kundgabe, cognitio circa rem) aremeanings which do not exist as dothe observed sensory processes (81,

174 EDWIN G. BORING

82). Thus his psychology has evenbeen called existential psychology, be-cause he believed that the meanings,occurring as inferences, lack thepositive character of sensations andimages, the existential data (85, p.138).

It was never wholly true that in-trospection was photographic andnot elaborated by inferences or mean-ings. Reference to typical introspec-tive researches from Titchener's lab-oratory establishes this point (28,58, 25, 64, 59, 16, 31). There was toomuch dependence upon retrospec-tion. It could take twenty minutes todescribe the conscious content of asecond and a half and at the end ofthat period the observer was cudgel-ing his brain to recall what hadactually happened more than athousand seconds ago, relying, ofcourse, on inference. At the Yalemeeting of the APA in 1913, J. W.Baird with great enthusiasm arrangedfor a public demonstration of in-trospection with the trained ob-servers from his laboratory at Clark,but the performance was not impres-sive. Introspection with inferenceand meaning left out as much aspossible becomes a dull taxonomicaccount of sensory events which,since they suggest almost no func-tional value for the organism, arepeculiarly uninteresting to the Ameri-can scientific temper.

Classical introspection, it seems tome, went out of style after Titchener'sdeath (1927) because it had demon-strated no functional use and there-fore seemed dull, and also because itwas unreliable. Laboratory atmos-phere crept into the descriptions,and it was not possible to verify,from one laboratory to another, theintrospective accounts of the con-sciousnesses of action, feeling, choice,and judgment, It is not surprising,therefore, that Killpe, Watson and

Wertheimer, all within a decade(1904-1913), reacted vigorouslyagainst the constraints of this ideal-istic but rigid pedantry.

DESCRIPTION OF THE IMPALPABLEWhat came to be called systematic

experimental introspection developedat Wurzburg in 1901-1905 underKiilpe's leadership (8, pp. 401-410,433-435). Kiilpe, influenced likeTitchener toward positivism byMach, had gone from Leipzig toWurzburg with the conviction thatexperimental psychology ought to dosomething about thought. The newexperimental psychology could handlesensation, perception and reaction,and Ebbinghaus in 1885 had addedmemory to its repertoire. Wundthad said that thought could not bestudied experimentally, but Kulpe, apositivist, was convinced that all youhad to do was to get observers think-ing under controlled conditions andthen have them introspect upon thethought process.

There followed a brilliant series ofpapers by Ktilpe's students: Mayerand Orth on association (1901),Marbe on judgment (1901), Orth onfeeling (1903), Watt on thought(1905), Ach on action and thought(1905). Every one of these investiga-tors found what we have calledclassical introspection inadequate tohis problem. Mayer and Orth coulddescribe the associated trains ofimages that run on in thinking butcould discover from introspection noclue as to how thought is directedtoward a goal (50). Marbe foundjudgments forming readily in termsof images, but got from introspectionno hint as to how or why they wereformed (49). Feeling resisted Orth'sintrospective analysis and he wasobliged to invent a vague term, con-scious attitude, to describe the affec-tive life. Certainly feelings did not


appear as sensations or images to hisobservers (60). Watt and Achworked independently and came tomutually consistent conclusions.Watt, to make introspection moreefficient, invented fractionation. Hesplit up the psychological eventunder investigation into several suc-cessive periods and investigated eachby itself, thus reducing the amount ofmemory and inference that were in-volved in the introspective report.Still the essential in thought eludedhim, until he realized that the goal-directedness of thinking is predeter-mined by the task or instruction—the Aufgabe he called it-—-which theobserver accepted before the in-dividual thought process got underway (92). Ach developed the conceptof the determining tendency as the un-conscious guide which steers theconscious processes along a predeter-mined course to solve whateverproblem thought is directed upon.He also elaborated fractionation withchronoscope control and coined thephrase systematic experimental in-trospection. The determining tend-ency itself is unconscious, but theconscious processes which it directsseemed to Ach's observers not to bedescribable in the terms of classicalintrospection, that is to say, inimages and sensations. Ach there-fore invented the term awareness forthese vague and elusive contents ofconsciousness and his observerslearned to describe their conscious-nesses in terms of impalpable aware-nesses (unanschauliche Bewusstheiteri)(1).

The Wiirzburgers thought theyhad discovered by introspection anew kind of mental element, but theBewusstheit never gained the acceptedstatus of a sensation or an image. In-stead the Wurzburgers were said tohave discovered imageless thought,and many persons argued that the

school had failed because its findingwas negative: thoughts were notimages, but what actually were they?Titchener, however, believed he knew.He said that these Wiirzburg thoughtswere in part conscious attitudeswhich are vague evanescent patternsof sensations and images, and in partmeanings and inferences which oughtto be kept out of psychology as theKundgabe which is not true descrip-tion (80). We, with the perspective offorty years upon us, see that themain contribution lay in the realiza-tion of the importance of the uncon-scious Aufgabe and determining tend-ency. The course of thought is un-consciously determined: that is aconclusion which fitted the Zeitgeistof the period of its discovery, whenFreud too was discovering that moti-vation is ordinarily not available tointrospection.

Ktilpe's conclusion was, however,different. He believed that the im-palpable awarenesses had been estab-lished as valid data of consciousnessand he called them functions to dis-tinguish them from the sensationsand images of classical introspection,which he called contents (43). Funk-tionen and Inhalte are two kinds ofconscious data that make up whathas been termed the bipartite psy-chology of Kiilpe's later days. In thischoice Kiilpe was combining theintrospection of Wundt with the in-trospection of Brentano. He was alsomaking easier the coming protest ofGestalt psychology against Wund-tian introspection,

AWARENESS OF MENTAL ACTIVITYMeanwhile nearly all the t phi-

losophers and psychologists were dual-ists and most of the psychologistswere also psychophysical parallelists.If you believe in conscious events asdependent upon brain events butwholly separate and different from

176 EDWIN G. BORING

the brain events, then you mustbelieve in some kind of introspectionor inner perception whereby 3̂ 011 ob-tain your evidence about the mentalevents. The behavioristic monism ofthe twentieth century was unknownin the nineteenth. A belief in somekind of introspection was general inpsychology and also in commonsense.

The appeal to introspection wasespecially important in the case ofact psychology, which claimed that acareful and unbiased examination ofthe mind shows that it does not con-sist of stable contents like images andsensations, but of acts directed in-tentionally upon an object or of ac-tivities striving purposively toward agoal (8, pp. 439-456, 715-721). Wehave already seen that Brentano de-fended introspection as self-validat-ing. He was the representative of in-tentionalistic act psychology who wascontemporary with Wundt, and whothus posed the dilemma betweenWundt's contents and his own acts(12), a dilemma of which Kiilpe, aswe have just noted, seized both horns.Brentano influenced the philosopherJames Ward in his subject-objectconative psychology of 1886, revisedin 1918 (87), and Ward influencedMcDougall, who, in spite of havingonce denned psychology as the scienceof behavior, elaborated a purposivepsychology in 1923, a system thatmade purpose and striving a charac-teristic of all mental activity (51).

In Germany, Stumpf, stimulatedby Brentano's sponsorship of psychicacts and by HusserPs argument forphenomenology as the simplest de-scription of experience (29), came tothe conclusion that Wundt's kind ofintrospection yields the data ofphenomenology but that psychologyproper consists rather of Brentano'sacts or, as Stumpf called them,psychic functions (76). Thus it is cor-

rect to say that by 1915 both Stumpfand Ktllpe believed in two kinds ofintrospective data: on the one hand,Stumpf in phenomena and Kiilpe incontents, and, on the other, both ofthem in functions (acts). Kiilpe wasinclined to think that the functionswere observed retrospectively (rilck-schauende Selbstbeobachtung), the con-tents immediately (anscliauendeSelbstbeobachtung) (43, pp. 42-45).

Except for Titchener and his satel-lites, American psychology tended allalong to be practical and functionalin the Darwinian sense, As such itwas destined to become behavior-istic. It is interesting, therefore, tonote that early American functionalpsychology of James, Dewey, Angell,and the Chicago school was introspec-tive. Organisms have acquired con-sciousness because of its adaptivefunction, the argument ran. Whenthe smooth course of habitual actionis interrupted by external events,then "in steps consciousness," saidJames Angell, to solve the organism'sproblem (2; 9, pp. 276-278). It isbecause functional psychology re-garded the data of consciousness asessential to an understanding of theadjustment of man to his environ-ment that Watson, founding be-haviorism, declared that he was asmuch against functional psychologyas against introspectionism.

PHENOMENOLOGICAL DESCRIPTION

The next protest against the con-straints of classical introspectioncame in connection with the foundingof Gestalt psychology-—by Wert-heimer, we generally say, in hispaper of 1912 on seen movement(94). Wertheimer was working onthe conditions of visually perceivedmovement. You can see movementwhen no stimulus object moves, aswhen stimulus displacement is dis-crete. Seen movement is thus a con-


scious, not a physical, event. Clas-sical introspection would have re-quired the-description of perceivedmovement with reference to con-scious contents, or mental processes,or images and sensations, or perhapsthe attributes of sensation. Wert-heimer thought, however, that anysuch reference or analysis would be asupererogation. Perceived movementcan be recognized as itself and itsconditions studied; why bother thenwith the Leipzig hocus-pocus? Sinceseen movement can thus be acceptedimmediately as an identifiable phe-nomenon, Wertheimer called it $—•the "^-phenomenon." In 1912 thenotion of phenomenology was in theair. Husserl had used the term forthe free unbiased description of ex-perience ("being") (29) and Stumpfhad picked it up (76). Thus Kohlerand the other Gestalt psychologistscame always to speak of the data ofdirect experience as phenomena,avoiding all the words that were as-sociated with classical introspection.Later it was such phenomenologicalobservation that became a technic todisplace introspection (8, pp. 601—607).

This Magna Carta of phenomenol-ogy presently released a great deal ofgood research, most of it on problemsof perceptions. In G. E. Mtiller'slaboratory Katz's work on brightnessconstancy (34) had even precededWertheimer's, and Rubin's classicalstudy of figure and ground (68) camesoon after. There began a long seriesof investigations of the laws of per-ceived form, studies which introducednew descriptive concepts for the phe-nomena, like organization and artic-ulation, and new functional concepts,like closure, transposition, and objectconstancy (8, pp. 611-614).

Nearly all these perceptual studieshave been performed in an atmos-phere of dualism. You try to find

the stimulus conditions or else thebrain pattern that is necessary andsufficient for the perception. Wert-heimer, Kohler, and Koffka have allsupported the concept of isomor-phism, the hypothesis that the fieldpattern of the perception correspondstopologically to the field pattern ofthe underlying events in the brain,and, while neither Gestalt psychologynor experimental phenomenology re-quires isomorphism as a basic con-cept, nevertheless isomorphism re-quires some kind of dualism, andthus the phenomena become oneterm in its psychophysiological cor-relation. Kohler's great book onPhysische Gestalten in 1920 supportedthis view (36).

As Gestalt psychology waxed, clas-sical introspection waned. Wert-heimer's paper on phenomenal move-ment was in 1912 (94). Kiilpe died in1915. Kohler worked with apes onthe island of Teneriffe during WorldWar I and applied the new phenom-enological principles in the descrip-tion of their psychology (35).Koffka's students were busy publish-ing papers on perception. Wundtdied in 1920, the year that Kohlerpublished Physische Gestalten (36).In 1922 Kohler went to Berlin tosucceed Stumpf. The Gestalt psychol-ogists had started a new journaldevoted to their interests in 1921,Psychologische Forschung, and Wert-heimer used its early pages to makethe case against classical introspec-tion (94). Koffka restated the case inEnglish for Americans in 1922 (38).Titchener died in 1927. Kohler'sGestalt Psychology appeared in 1929(37), and Koffka's Principles in 1935(39). It is reasonable to say thatphenomenological observation hadwon out over classical introspectionby 1930.

Under Hitler's influence the Ge-stalt psychologists who remained pro-

178 EDWIN G. BORING

ductive all came to America. Therethe victory of phenomenology, madeeasier by Titchener's death, was nogreat triumph, for other strong forceswere operating to swing Americanpsychology toward behavioristics.Nevertheless, phenomenology re-mained, not only respectable, butstimulating and useful in initial at-tacks upon many psychological prob-lems, as Gibson's recent phenomeno-logical study of the visual worldshows (26). So here we come to acase where introspection, under analias, can be said to be still practiced,provided the word introspection is notrestricted to its Leipzig-Cornell mean-ing.

PATIENTS' PROTOCOLSThe emphasis which modern psy-

chopathology places on the uncon-scious creates for it a complementaryconcern with the conscious. Thuspsychoanalysis stresses the impor-tance to therapy of bringing re-pressed ideas from the unconsciousinto consciousness. The analysand,bubbling free associations on thecouch, is certainly giving the analystinformation about his consciousness(Kundgabe) though he remain farfrom the use of classical introspec-tion. When and how, we may ask,did psychopathology get itself con-cerned with the content of conscious-ness?

Nearly always the first evidence ofwhat we now call mental disease liesin abnormal conduct, in maladaptivebehavior. The abnormal person,witch or patient as the case may be,first calls attention to himself byqueer or alarming conduct. The ob-vious symptoms that require socialaction, remedial or protective, areusually not reports of visions orcomplaints about voices, but suchdeviations from standard behavior as

inconvenience others. Neverthelesspsychopathology, which grew upsurrounded by a belief in dualism,was never primarily behavioristic.There was for it always the presump-tion that a witch is conscious, eventhough the devil might have takenpossession of her will, and later thatthe hallucinations and delusions ofthe hysterical patient are consciousphenomena. Subjectivism, always im-plicit in these symptoms, was notvery often explicit before the end ofthe nineteenth century.

Zilboorg's account makes it clearhow the idea of mental derangementbegan in the conception of de-moniacal possession (96, 90). Forthese possessed people and for thefools, except in those cases where theywere honored, the therapy consistedof discipline, threats, fetters, andblows, none of which actually hadmuch value except to relieve thosewho administered the punishment.Even the Renaissance, which is saidto have "discovered man," did notfree these unhappy victims of an in-tolerant theological self-assurance,until at last the reaction toward hu-mane treatment arrived with Pineland his successors early in the nine-teenth century. During the seven-teenth and eighteenth centuries youget as subjective data the reports ofmelancholy (sometimes ending insuicide), of passions, of deliriums("errors of reason"), of fantasies, ofcholers, humors and madness, ofspleen, vapors and hysterical dis-tempers, of love as a cause of mentaldisability. An incubus might be awoman's hallucination, delusion, orwish projection, or else a fiction ofother people's belief about her. Thereforms of the nineteenth centurytoward the humane treatment of theinsane and the rise of the concept ofmental disease (Pinel, 1801) did not


go far toward the subjectivization ofpsychopathology (61). Braid's theoryof hypnosis, as the scientific successorto mesmerism was called, was basedon suggestion as a principle, a men-talistic but not a conscious entity(11). Liebeault cured a patient ofsciatic pain by hypnosis; is a patientwho says he feels pain introspecting?Liebeault was a dualist, for the titleof his book asserts that he was study-ing I'action de la morale sur le physi-que: a treatise on psychosomaticmedicine in 1866 (45). Later Charcotworked out the stigmata of hysteriaand thus, as he thought, of hypnosis,but most of the stigmata were notdescribed in conscious terms, beingphenomena like anesthesias, am-nesias, and catatonias (IS, III & IX).Kraepelin, Wundt's one-time stu-dent, whose classical system of men-tal diseases reached maturity about1896, established the basic dichotomybetween manic-depressive psychosesand dementia praecox (40). Thus herecognized elation, depression, andhallucinations as symptoms of men-tal disease, but that is a far cry fromsaying that his psychiatry was basedon some kind of introspection.

Nevertheless this last decade ofthe nineteenth century was the dec-ade for psychopathology to turntruly psychological. It marked theemergence of Janet first, and then ofFreud. Janet's classical study of thesymptoms of hysteria appeared in1892 (33), and Freud's great book onthe interpretation of dreams in 1900(24). Janet's theory of hysteria interms of dissociation and the retrac-tion of the field of attention was apsychological theory, although not anintrospective one. Freud in his as-sociation with Breuer discovered the"talking cure" out of which psycho-analysis has emerged (13). The effectof psychoanalysis upon psychiatry

has during the present century beenprofound. Not only has psychiatrytaken over psychoanalytic conceptswhile rejecting the total system, butthe psychiatric interview has beenarranged to assay consciousness, aswell as to bring to consciousnessthose forgotten materials whose ab-sence constitutes a symptom ofmental disorder. Nowadays the in-terview and the couch are used astools for a special kind of introspec-tion, one which inventories conscious-ness and seeks to bring forgottenmemories up to and across the thresh-old of introspection.

One of the most definite claims forthe use of introspection by abnormalpsychology was made by MortonPrince, Janet's complement in Amer-ica, long a student of dissociated andalternating personalities, and laterinsistent upon the simultaneous func-tioning of coconscious personalities(62, 63). Prince once suggested thatintrospections might be obtainedsimultaneously from two coconsciouspersonalities, even though they hadbut one set of receptors and effectorsbetween them. You might, hethought, be able to question one per-sonality with written questions shownto the eye and get the protocolsspoken by the voice, while the otherpersonality received spoken questionsby ear and replied by writing on apad. This is a difficult form of dis-sociation and, when it has been tried,the protocols tend to become habit-uated cliches or nonsense (69); yetPrince's suggestion carries the pointthat patient's protocols are, after all,a kind of introspection. The opera-tionist can, of course, translate pro-tocols into discriminative response,for any consciousness that yieldspublic data can be described in be-havioristic terms; yet that fact doesnot alter the feeling of reality that

180 EDWIN G. BORING

the psychopathologists have aboutboth consciousness, got by introspec-tion, and unconsciousness, observedby more inferential technics.

PSYCHOPHYSICS

It was the prevailing nineteenth-century dualism of mind and body,and thus of spiritualism and mate-rialism, that led Fechner, concernedwith combating materialism and inestablishing a spiritualistic monism,to invent psychophysics (22). Bymeasuring both the physical stimulusand the psychical sensation and byshowing how the magnitude of thelatter is dependent upon the magni-tude of the former, he believed thathe was bringing mind and matter intoa single system of relationships. Theeffect of Fechner's success in devisingor standardizing the classisal psycho-physical methods which are still inuse was to support the current psy-chophysical parallelism—althoughthat is not what Fechner intended.For psychophysics the stimulus wasavailable as an independent variable.The sensations, or the relative mag-nitudes of two sensations, or thesense-distances between two sensa-tions, were available to introspectionand so constituted a dependent vari-able in the psychophysical experi-ment. This kind of introspection hasremained scientifically useful in ex-perimental psychology for a ful lcentury and persists in good statustoday, although of course opera-tionism has the necessary formulasfor transforming it into behavioristicterms.

Before Fechner the experimentalattack on sensory problems was aptto be psychophysical. Investigatorsdetermined both absolute and differ-ential thresholds. When Bouguer in1760 measured the differential thresh-old for brightness, he relied on the

observer's judgment as to when ashadow on a screen becomes onlyjust noticeable (10, pp. 51 f.).Weber's formulation of his psycho-physical law in 1834 depended on thesame kind of judgment (92, pp. 44-175). Sensory phenomenology wasstimulated by the discovery of thelaw of the spinal nerve roots (1811,1822) which showed that the sensorynerves present a set of problems oftheir own. Johannes Miiller's doc-trine of specific nerve-energies (1826,1838) was, in a sense, psychophysics,since it distinguished between sensoryquality and the property of thestimulus which arouses the quality(56, pp. 44-55; 57, II, p. v). Many ofthese early instances of psycho-physics, especially the quantitativeones, have been discussed byTitchener (78, II, pt. ii, pp. xiii-cxvi).There is no need to labor the pointthat parallelism was the accepteddoctrine of the century and thatpsychophysics consisted in the ob-servation of correlations, many ofthem quantitative, between the twocorrelated terms of mind and body.No one doubted that you can ob-serve mind as sensory experience.

For at least half a century (1860-1910) psychophysics flourished alongwith classical introspection and cameunder some of its constraints. It wasthought, for instance, that observersneed special training in order to givereliable results. Titchener, as wehave already seen, warned againstthe stimulus-error (5; 79, pp. 202 f.),and both Wundt and Titchener be-lieved that control stimuli (Vexirver-suche) were improper. For instance,in determining the limen of dual im-pression upon the skin, you vary theseparation of the esthesiometer pointsaccording to some standard pro-cedure, but you do not throw insingle points as controls—not if you


are a classical introspectionist. Thecontrol lies in training the observerto avoid the stimulus-error. If hesays two when he has only one, he isnot wrong, for introspection cannotlie—or at least it was thought thatgood introspection of trained ob-servers cannot lie very much, and inany case to argue that a one-pointstimulus cannot give rise to a two-point perception is to prejudge theexperiment which seeks to find whatit is that you do feel for every valueof the stimulus.

The same point about introspec-tion appears in Wundt's method ofidentical series for the investigationof recognition (66, pp. 24-30). Inthis method you give the observer aseries of stimulus-objects, and lateryou give him in the test the identicalseries again, having him state whichitems he recognizes. You do notintroduce new items as controls. Heknows the series are the same, butyou trust him in his introspection.He will not report recognition for anitem unless he experiences recogni-tion, and no one but the observerhimself can publish the privacy of hisown consciousness. If you place allthis responsibility on the observer,no wonder training becomes im-portant.

This kind of incontrovertible psy-chophysical introspection did not lastlong in the functional atmosphere ofAmerican psychology. Perhaps it hasnot now been heard of for thirtyyears.

For the half century after Fechnerthe psychophysicists always talkedabout observing and measuring sen-sation, but actually they were ob-serving, reporting upon, and measur-ing, not complete sensations, butsensory attributes. From Fechner on,the psychophysical methods were ap-plied to judgments of the quality,

intensity, extensity, or duration ofsensory experience, and Kiilpe, afterhe broke away from Wundt, sug-gested that you never actually doobserve a whole sensation, but onlyseparately its attributes, out of whichyou build the sensation up as a scien-tific construct (42). Later Rahn, astudent of Kiilpe's, reinforced thiscomment (65), and Titchener ulti-mately adjusted his views to meetthe contention (84).

Kiilpe in 1893 had argued that theattributes of sensation are (a) in-separable from the sensation (if anyattribute becomes zero, the wholesensation ceases to exist) but (6) in-dependently variable with respect toeach other (you can change one andkeep the other constant) (41, pp.30-38). Later this view turned out tobe wrong, for there are separate at-tributes, like the pitch and loudnessof tones and the hue and brightnessof spectral lights, which cannot easilybe varied independently by con-trolling their stimulus. Stevenssolved this problem by an appeal tothe concept of invariance. You have,he said, an independent attribute ifit remains invariant when the di-mensions of the stimulus are variedin accordance with some unique de-termined function (7, 70, 71). Thisconcept results in plotting isestheticcontours on a stimulus diagram, e.g.,in plotting isophonic contours forpitch and loudness against stimulusfrequency and energy, or isochro-matic contours for hue, brightness,and saturation against stimulus wave-length and energy, Sensory equalitybecomes the crucial datum, but sub-jective equality is computed from thesame basic introspective data thatFechner used'—judgments of greaterand less or of some similar comple-mentary categories.

Modern psychophysics is also en-

182 EDWIN G. BORING

gaged in the determination of sensoryinterval scales and ratio scales, andfor this purpose observers report onthe relation of one sense-distance asgreater or less than another (intervalscale) or on the ratio of one sensoryattribute to another (ratio scale) (75,pp. 23-30). Such introspection isreliable and receives general ap-proval, even in behavioristic Amer-ica.

There are other less quantitativekinds of psychophysics which stillmake successful use of reports onsensory experience and which can beproperly classified as modern intro-spection. An excellent example isCrocker's work on the analysis andassessment of flavors by trainedpanels of judges, persons who arereally introspectors especially trainedto appreciate and analyze tastes andsmells (18). They estimate the de-gree of the various olfactory andgustatory components in a flavor,check judgments against one another,working as a cooperative team withhigh motivation and enthusiasm.Such a trained panel may be sent outfrom the parent laboratory to someindustrial plant to savor and cali-brate its product, and then may laterbe brought back to the parentlaboratory for checking in introspec-tive reliability and also, when neces-sary, for analytic recalibration.Crocker's account of how attitudesare fixed and judgments rendereduniform in these panels is reminiscentof the atmosphere of Wundt's lab-oratory in all respects, except thatCrocker's laboratory lacks the au-thoritarian control of Wundt's.

Another recent example of themodern use of the report of sensoryexperience is the book on pain byHardy and his associates (27). Thisbook sets forth the psychophysicsof pain, having regard, among otherthings, to the different qualities of

algesic experience, and to establishinga sensory scale of pain by the sub-jective equation of algesic sense-distance.

The lesson to be learned from psy-chophysics is, therefore, that, inrespect of the observation of sensoryexperience, introspection has thrivedfor a hundred years and is still instyle.

ANIMAL CONSCIOUSNESS

In denying rational souls to ani-mals, Descartes had made the prob-lem of animal psychology relativelyunimportant, but Darwin, with hisevolutionary argument that the formsof both mind and body show con-tinuous development from lowerspecies to man (1872), changed allthat (1Q). You began then to hearfrom Romanes about mental evolu-tion and the evolution of intelligence(1883). Romanes coined the termcomparative psychology for the studyof the nature of mind in differentspecies (67). By giving the animalmind the benefit of the doubt, he wasable to represent animal intelligenceas not so far below man's. LloydMorgan, writing a comparative psy-chology, sought to temper Romanes"enthusiasm with the principle ofparsimony: do not interpret an actionas the outcome of the exercise of ahigher psychical faculty, he said, ifit can be interpreted as the outcomeof one that stands lower in the psy-chological scale (54). Lloyd Morganwarned against "anthropomorphism"in assessing animal behavior'—mean-ing, of course, anthropopsychism.Loeb, establishing the concept oftropism and the unconscious actionof lower animal forms (1890), sug-gested that consciousness emergesin the course of evolution as it be-comes needed for more adaptiveaction and that the faculty of as-sociative memory constitutes a cri-


terion of it (47). Experiments onanimal intelligence began, notablyThorndike's in 1898 (77). In the dec-ade 1900-1910 there was markedactivity in experimental comparativepsychology, a great deal of it con-cerned with the measurement ofanimal intelligence for which themaze was regarded as a very usefulinstrument.

Although there had already beenargument put forward in favor of anobjective animal psychology (4),comparative psychology got underway in a period when a psychologywith consciousness left out was gen-erally regarded as psychology with-out its psyche—a branch of physiol-ogy perhaps. American functionalpsychology kept consciousness insidethe fold, and the comparative psy-chologists settled on a formula forthe observation of animal conscious-ness which might well have beencalled animal introspection. Nowherehas this problem been more clearlystated than by Washburn in herhandbook of 1908 on the animal mind(88, p. 13). She wrote:

If an animal behaves in a certain man-ner, what may we conclude the conscious-ness accompanying its behavior to belike? . . . At the outset of our discussion. . . we are obliged to acknowledge thatall psychic interpretation of animal be-havior must be on (he analogy of Humanexperience. We do not know the meaningof such terms as perception, pleasure,fear, anger, visual sensation, etc., exceptas these processes form a part of the con-tents of our own minds. Whether wewill or no, we must be anthropomorphicin the notions we form of what takesplace in the mind of an animal.

There is an implication here thatyou learn about human conscious-ness by direct observation of it inintrospection, but that animal con-sciousness is known only indirectlyby analogical inference. Not every-

one held to that difference, however.Max Meyer put forward what hecalled the psychology of "the otherone," an argument that your ownpersonal consciousness is not mate-rial for science, being particular andnot general, and that psychologystudies always other organisms—•other people, other animals (52). Inthis sense both the animal's conductand man's words are introspection ifthey are taken as meaning somethingabout the subject's consciousness.Even Titchener can be found sayingof this argument from analogy: "Theanimal is thus made, so to say, to ob-serve, to introspect; it attends tocertain stimuli, and registers its ex-perience by gesture" (79, pp. 30-36).

It is interesting to see how Watson,before he had thought out behavior-ism, accepted the current belief ofthis first decade of experimental ani-mal psychology that knowledge ofanimal consciousness is the ultimategoal in comparative psychology.Watson was still at Chicago, thehome of systematic functional psy-chology, which held that conscious-ness is to be understood psychologi-cally in terms of its use to the or-ganism. He had entitled his mono-graph of 1907: Kinaesthetic andOrganic Sensations: Their Role in theReactions of the White Rat to the Maze(89, pp. 90-97). In this investigationhe eliminated vision, hearing, taste,smell, and certain cutaneous factorsfrom the repertoire of the rat who stillremembers how to run the maze, andhe concluded that "intra-organicsensations-—the kinaesthetic sensa-tions coupled with the organic prob-ably, and possibly with the static"are what the rat uses in following thecorrect path. Watson even discussedthe possibility of the rat's use ofvisual imagery, which "in our owncase would play a preponderatingrole." He suggested that success for

184 EDWIN G. BORING

the rat as it runs may reassure it:"If the turn is made at the properstage (and it has been shown thatblind rats deprived of their vibrissaecan make these turns without allow-ing their bodies to touch the edges ofthe openings at the turns), the animalmay be supposed thereby to get a'reassuring feeling' which is exactlycomparable to the experience whichwe get when we touch a familiarobject in the dark."

Later, of course, Watson repudi-ated this supererogatory concern withconsciousness and asked psycholo-gists to get closer to their data ofstimuli and responses. That was amove toward positivism, but Watsondid not think of that. Indeed, it ispossible to regard animal behavior asa kind of language which meanssomething about consciousness, justas it is also possible to strip intro-spection of its meanings and regard itas mere verbal motion. Certainly,if Max Meyer's "other one" can in-trospect, the animals can too and didbefore behaviorism made their con-sciousnesses unimportant.

VERBAL REPORTWatson's reaction in 1913, away

from the pedantry and unreliabilityof introspection, as he saw it, towardthe more positive psychology ofstimulus and response, was an at-tempt, not so much to create be-haviorism as a new psychology withconsciousness left out, as it was toreformulate the old psychology innew terms (90). For the imagery ofthinking, he suggested that we cansubstitute incipient subvocal move-ment. Feeling, he believed, mightturn out to be endocrine. Associationhad already been shown by Pavlovso be a conditioning of reflex re-tponses and not necessarily a con-nection among ideas. Watson for-mally ruled introspection out of psy-

chology but he left in the morereliable results of introspection, no-tably in psychophysics (91). Thusit was necessary for him to leave inintrospection as verbal report. Didhe thus embrace the bath with thebaby? Is introspection anythingmore than verbal report?

Actually there is a difference.Verbal report viewed simply as be-havior is capable of physical specifica-tion, in which the writing and speak-ing of words appear as very differentkinds of movements until they havebeen shown to be equivalent in anexperimental situation. On the otherhand, verbal report as introspectionis not response but observation anddescription and therefore reference,an indication of objects of observa-tion in the sense of the meanings ofthe words used.

Another way of expressing thissame matter is to write two formulas:[1] Introspective observation:

E—»0 = S—>facts of consciousness[2] Behavioristic observation:

0 = E —>S —>f acts of psychology

The corresponding sentences are: [1]In introspective observation, the ex-perimenter notes the facts of con-sciousness which the observer, who isthe subject, has observed. [2] Inbehavioristic observation, the ob-server, who is the experimenter, ob-serves the behavior of the subject inrespect of its implications for thefacts of psychology. In classical in-trospection the subject is the ob-server. He has responsibility for thecorrectness of his descriptions of con-scious data and thus he had atLeipzig, Cornell, and elsewhere to betrained, for introspection is morethan having experience. Behaviorismshifts the locus of scientific responsi-bility from an observing subject tothe experimenter who becomes theobserver of the subject. In this wayit is possible to bring to psychological


observation irresponsible and un-trained subjects-—-animals, children,the feebleminded, the mentally ill,and also the untrained normal humanadult. Thus all the mental testscome into psychology because mostlythey involve verbal responses fromnaive subjects. And the animal ex-periments come in because ordinarilythe discriminative behavior of theanimals is a language devised by theexperimenter and taught to the ani-mal so that he can tell the experi-menter about his abilities and capac-ities. Are we to say that the animalis not introspecting because he is notcommunicating to himself what he iscommunicating to the experimenter?Perhaps. The important thing is tosee that Watson, in attacking in-trospection, was objecting, not to theuse of words by the subject, but totrusting the subject to use the wordsonly with those meanings that theexperimenter wishes the words tohave.

INTROSPECTION AS AN OPERATION

Watson, in substituting verbal re-port for introspection, was moving inthe positivistic direction, but theculmination of this movement camelater with the acceptance of opera-tional definitions as providing themost secure specification for psycho-logical concepts. Operationism isperhaps a movement toward greaterprecision in scientific thinking, bub itis not a school. American psycholo-gists first picked up this modernform of the old positivism from thephysicist, P. W. Bridgman, who wasusing the technic to explain relativitytheory (14). Then it was found thatlogical positivism, as the movementcame to be called later, was develop-ing at the same time among thelogicians in Vienna (23, pp. 1-52).Presently it became clear that thetwo movements were logically the

same. Stevens undertook to be theexpositor to American psychologists(74). Bridgman was content to letoperational definition go back ulti-mately to experience, but for psy-chologists that regression would notdo at all. For them experience was aconcept in special need of definition,since the availability of conscious-ness to scientific observation was themain problem dividing the schools(72, 73). The effect of a great deal ofdiscussion along these lines in the1930's was a change in the status ofconsciousness from (a) the reservoirof experience upon which all empiri-cal science draws to (b) a conceptbased upon observation and specifiedby the observational operations thatmake conscious data available toscience. That is a large change fromthe introspection that cannot lie be-cause the having of experience is theknowing that you have it.

Nowadays the word introspectionhas dropped out of use. Conscious-ness or phenomenal experience orsensory datum or some other equiva-lent mentalistic term indicates apsychological construct which is gotby inference from the observations.A comparable concept is the inter-vening variable, and a case could bemade for Tolman as a phenomeno-logical operationist, directly observ-ing purpose and kindred entities inhis data. Do you truly observe con-sciousness or an intervening variable?Do you observe any construct, or doyou infer it? Do you look at theammeter and observe the strength ofthe current or is what you observemerely a pointer on a scale?

Thus the answer to the question"What became of introspection?"seems to be this. Introspection as aspecial technic has gone. The objectof introspection-—sometimes calledconsciousness, sometimes somethingelse—is a construct like an ability, or

186 EDWIN G. BORING

an intervening variable, or a condi-tioned response, or any of the other"realities" out of which a generalpsychology is formed. The modernequivalent of introspection persists inthe reports of sensory experience inpsychophysics, in the protocols ofpatients with psj'chological diffi-culties, in the phenomenological de-scriptions of perception and otherpsychological events as providednotably by Gestalt psychologists, andalso in a great deal of social psychol-ogy and psychological philosophywhere the Cartesian dualism is stillfound to be convenient.

UNCONSCIOUSNESSAny study of the history of the

availability of consciousness to scien-tific observation, like the presentone, gains significance as we consideralso the availability of unconscious-ness to science. A is specified clearlyonly with respect to not-A. It wouldnot, however, be proper to undertakenow the consideration of all themeans whereby a knowledge of un-conscious psychological events hasbeen brought into science. Neverthe-less we may use a paragraph to listthe outstanding fields which con-tributed to what nowadays we callpsychology and which got along,nevertheless, without any observa-tion that might be called intro-spection.

The reflexwas thought almost fromits discovery to be unconscious,largely because it could occur withoutthe brain, although Pfliiger was ofthe opinion that its purposivenessimplies that it is conscious. WasLotze, who disagreed with Pfliiger,relying on introspection to be surethat reflexes are unconscious? In-stinct was ordinarily opposed to in-telligent action and often supposedto be unconscious. Unconsciousness,however, was not ordinarily involved

in its definition; the criterion forinstinct was that it was unlearnedand usually involuntary, Loeb'stropism was defined with conscious-ness irrelevant. Herbart's ideas in astate of tendency were defined as un-conscious, as were Fechner's negativesensations. Although the Wtirzburgschool was developing systematicintrospection, it seems clear now thatits great discovery was the existenceand effectiveness of unconscious tend-encies-—the determining tendency,the Aufgabe, etc. Freud made theconcept of the unconscious familiarto everyone and also started the de-velopment of the technics of observa-tion that now replace introspection,but the test of unconsciousness (sup-pression, repression) remained in partintrospection, the fact that ideas thatmight have been expected to be inmind were conspicuously absent.Thus dynamic psychology carries onwith the basic assumption that youcannot trust the subject's personalbelief (introspection) for the trueassessment of his motives.

In all these cases consciousness isseen to have been important in anegative manner, for its absence is amatter of interest and sometimeseven an essential specification'—aswould, indeed, be expected in apsychology that was originallyformed on the dualistic pattern. In-deed it is only in a dualism that con-sciousness has a distinctive meaning.

CONCLUSIONNow let the writer say what he

thinks has become of introspection.There have been in the history of

science two important dichotomiesthat have been made with respect tointrospection, (a) The first is animalpsychology vs. human psychology:human beings are supposed to be ableto introspect, and animals are not.(&) The second is the unconscious


mind vs. the conscious mind, withintrospection the means of observingconsciousness. These two dichot-omies reduce, however, to one: in-ference vs. direct experience.

Operational logic, in my opinion,now fuses this single dichotomy be-cause it shows that human conscious-ness is an inferred construct, a con-cept as inferential as any of the otherpsychologists' realities (32, p. 184),and that literally immediate observa-tion, the introspection that cannotlie, does not exist. All observationis a process that takes some time andis subject to error in the course of itsoccurrence.

Introspection's product, conscious-ness, appears now in the bodies of itsprogeny: the sensory experience ofpsychophysics, the phenomenal dataof Gestalt psychology, the symbolicprocesses and intervening variablesemployed by various behaviorists.the ideas, the manifest wishes, thehallucinations, delusions, and emo-

tions of patients and neurotic sub-jects, and the many mentalisticconcepts which social psychologyuses. The newest usage is this latterone, social perception, a term whichrefers both to the perception of socialphenomena, like anger and danger,and the perceptions which are under-stood by reference to their social de-terminants; but here the introspec-tion is not different in kind from thephenomenological description thatthe Gestalt psychologists still use.In general, however, it seems to thewriter that there is no longer to befound any sharp dichotomy setting offthe introspectable from the uncon-scious. That once fundamental dis-tinction disappeared with the dissolu-tion of dualism. Consciousnessnowadays is simply one of manyconcepts which psychology employs,usually under some other name,whenever it finds the category usefulfor the generalization of observations.

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edwing boring, "a history of introspective psychology"

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