6 INTROSPECTING IN THE 20TH CENTURY Maja Spener Introspection in the 20th century is a vast topic Discussions involving introspection figured in the relatively new discipline of experimental psychology, as well as in various debates in philosophy of mind and epistemology Introspection has been a focus of interest as a method of investigation and as a psychological and epistemic capacity itself Over the course of the century, these theoretical interests did not always connect well, although they have intersected and influenced each other at different points But there is no helpful sense in which one might talk of ‘the history’ of introspection in the 20th century if by that one means a straight line of development across ten or so decades of psychological and philosophical theorizing with, and about, introspection Instead, there is a criss-crossing pattern of various storylines and what I shall here is track a couple of different strands in the overall pattern to the exclusion of many others.1 In particular, I shall concentrate on philosophers’ and psychologists’ use of introspection, and the discussions surrounding such use A story we are often told is that during the late 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, experimental psychology was synonymous with introspectionism, exemplified by the work of Wilhelm Wundt and E B Titchener According to the story, these early psychologists took the subject-matter of psychology to be conscious states only and their main method of investigation was introspection The new experimental science aimed to provide data about consciousness via introspection under scientifically controlled conditions We are told that this approach, while groundbreaking in its aim to make psychology thus conceived scientific, failed because it imploded from within while at the same time being superseded by a different approach to psychology: behaviourism Behaviourism rejected not only the idea that introspection could be conducted in scientifically respectable ways, but also the central assumption that the subject-matter of psychology concerned conscious states According to the story, introspectionism, and with it the use of introspection in theorizing about the mind, was pretty much annihilated after the behaviourists were finished with it (see, e.g., Braisby and Gellatlly, 2012) Behaviourists themselves might not have in the end successfully 148