A Comment to Suspend the Introspection Controversy

Abstract

There is among psychologists a strong belief (some might say a prejudice) that holds that any method which might be labelled “introspectionistic” is unreliable and invalid. We wish to face that prejudice head on because we believe it is mistaken, and because sophisticated readers who hold it may reject our findings before they have considered them adequately. The risk of this prejudice to the present study becomes all the more acute because we will make the case that the phenomenon of Unsymbolized Thinking (which, as we have seen, is among the more important results of the present book) is the same phenomenon that the introspectionists called “imageless thought,” and the concept of image-less thought was the battleground on which early introspection was soundly defeated.