In the early 20th century, scholars of the so-called Würzburg School departed from the conventional approach of psychological enquiry and developed a unique type of introspection that uncovered promising findings and paved the road for important developments in experimental psychology. Despite their early success, introspection was subsequently criticized and the Würzburg School disappeared soon after its protagonists had died or separated. The classical explanation for this development is that introspection has ultimately been a subjective and flawed endeavor. In the current paper we argue, by contrast, that the way the Würzburgers conducted introspection was in fact more of an extended type of third-person observation, not a genuine form of first-person research. Hence, their approach did not constitute a strong counterweight to the emerging third-person doctrine of the time and there was thus little need to maintain introspection as an independent paradigm. Such methodological aspects, as well as, biographical and historical factors contributed to the decline of introspection more so than the claim that introspection is a flawed approach per se. We suggest that a more direct form of introspection is needed to explore important phenomena within psychology which so far have been often approached one-sidedly.

中文翻译：

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内省与维尔茨堡学派

20世纪初，所谓的维尔茨堡学派的学者们摆脱了传统的心理探究方法，发展出一种独特的内省型，这种内省型发现了令人鼓舞的发现，并为实验心理学的重要发展铺平了道路。尽管早期取得了成功，但内省遭到了批评，维尔茨堡学派的主人公去世或分居后不久就消失了。对于这种发展的经典解释是，内省最终是一项主观且有缺陷的努力。相反，在本文中，我们辩称，维尔茨堡人进行内省的方式实际上更多是扩展的第三人称观察，而不是真正的第一人称研究形式。因此，他们的方法并不能与当时兴起的第三人称学说相提并论，因此几乎没有必要将内省作为一种独立的范式。这些方法方面的因素，以及传记和历史因素，导致内省的下降比认为内省本身是一种有缺陷的方法更为重要。我们建议，需要一种更直接的内省形式来探索心理学中的重要现象，而到目前为止，这些现象通常是单方面的。