Wilhelm Wundt - Consciousness Quotes

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The endeavour to observe oneself must inevitably introduce changes into the course of mental events,—changes which could not have occurred without it, and whose usual consequence is that the very process which was to have been observed disappears from consciousness.

Wilhelm Wundt
Philosophical reflection could not leave the relation of mind and spirit in the obscurity which had satisfied the needs of the naive consciousness.

Wilhelm Wundt
The whole task of psychology can therefore be summed up in these two problems : (1) What are the elements of consciousness ? (2) What combinations do these elements undergo and what laws govern these combinations ?

Wilhelm Wundt
If we take an unprejudiced view of the processes of consciousness, free from all the so-called association rules and theories, we see at once that an idea is no more an even relatively constant thing than is a feeling or emotion or volitional process. There exist only changing and transient ideational processes ; there are no permanent ideas that return again and disappear again.

Wilhelm Wundt
We call that psychical process, which is operative in the clear perception of a narrow region of the content of consciousness, attention.

Wilhelm Wundt
Psychology, on the other hand, seeks to give account of the interconnexion of processes which are evinced by our own consciousness, or which we infer from such manifestations of the bodily life in other creatures as indicate the presence of a consciousness similar to our own.

Wilhelm Wundt