introspection

Observing or examining the contents of one's own mind or consciousness. For example, ‘looking’ at and describing a ‘picture’ or image in the ‘mind's eye’, or trying to examine what is happening when one performs mental arithmetic.

Its use as an approach to the study of the mind has a history dating back, at least, to Socrates. It was first proposed as an experimental method by Wilhelm Wundt and employed routinely in his laboratory, established 1879, in accord with his view that psychology is ‘the science of inward and immediate experience’. The method was further developed by Wundt's pupil Edward Bradford Titchener (1867-1927) and by members of the Wurtzberg School around the turn of the century. Wundt eventually became dissatisfied with this method of enquiry and, following severe criticism as to the reliability of introspective data, the method fell into disuse. So grave were the problems with its methodology that, following the advent of behaviourism, the systematic study of mental processes was largely eschewed by psychologists for half a century, only returning as a course of serious study in the 1960s.