<P> Edward Titchener was an early pioneer in experimental psychology and student of Wilhelm Wundt . After earning his doctorate under the tutelage of Wundt at the University of Leipzig, he made his way to Cornell University where he established his own laboratory and research . When Titchener arrived at Cornell, psychology was still a fledgling discipline, especially in the United States, and Titchener was a key figure in bringing Wundt's ideas to America . However, Titchener misrepresented some of Wundt's ideas to the American psychological establishment, especially in his account of introspection which, Titchener taught, only served a purpose in the qualitative analysis of consciousness into its various parts, while Wundt saw it as a means to quantitatively measure the whole of conscious experience . Titchener was exclusively interested in the individual components that comprise conscious experience, while Wundt, seeing little purpose in the analysis of individual components, focused on synthesis of these components . Ultimately Titchener's ideas would form the basis of the short - lived psychological theory of structuralism . </P> <P> American historiography of introspection, according to some authors, is dominated by three misconceptions . In particular, historians of psychology tend to argue 1) that introspection once was the dominant method of psychological inquiry, 2) that behaviorism, and in particular John B. Watson, is responsible for discrediting introspection as a valid method, and 3) that scientific psychology completely abandoned introspection as a result of those critiques . Yet, introspection has not been the dominant method . It is believed to be so because Edward Titchener's student Edwin G. Boring, in his influential historical accounts of experimental psychology privileged Titchener's views while giving little credit to original sources . Introspection has been critiqued by many other psychologists, including Wilhelm Wundt, and Knight Dunlap who in his article "The Case Against Introspection", presents an argument against self - observation that is not primarily rooted in behaviorist epistemology . Introspection is still widely used in psychology, but under different names, such as self - report surveys, interviews and fMRIs . It is not the method but rather its name that has been dropped from the dominant psychological vocabulary . </P> <P> Partly as a result of Titchener's misrepresentation, the use of introspection diminished after his death and the subsequent decline of structuralism . Later psychological movements, such as functionalism and behaviorism, rejected introspection for its lack of scientific reliability among other factors . Functionalism originally arose in direct opposition to structuralism, opposing its narrow focus on the elements of consciousness and emphasising the purpose of consciousness and other psychological behavior . Behaviorism's objection to introspection focused much more on its unreliability and subjectivity which conflicted with behaviorism's focus on measurable behavior . </P> <P> The more recently established cognitive psychology movement has to some extent accepted introspection's usefulness in the study of psychological phenomena, though generally only in experiments pertaining to internal thought conducted under experimental conditions . For example, in the "think aloud protocol", investigators cue participants to speak their thoughts aloud in order to study an active thought process without forcing an individual to comment on the process itself . </P>

To emphasize the active nature of the human mind wundt called his system