inner experience
What feelings feel
Inner experience is the stream of mental activity—thoughts, feelings, sensations, images—that constitutes subjective awareness.
It encompasses everything happening in consciousness: the internal monologue, emotional states, bodily sensations, daydreams.
Psychologists study inner experience through introspection and self-report: Her inner experience during meditation was surprisingly turbulent.
The term emphasizes the private, first-person quality of mental life that others cannot directly observe.
- consciousnessState of sentient awareness
- qualiaSubjective character of experiences
- felt senseBodily awareness before words
- gut feelingInstinctive sense about something
- introspectionObserving one's own mind
reflection · ache · sentience · self-awareness · belief · emotion · anger · thought · self talk · train of thought · phenomenology · mindfulness · anxiety · intuition · still small voice · psyche · identity · mental
- perceptionsee, vision, seeing, senses, observing
- viewpointsviewpoint, standpoint, perspective, point of view, outlook
- emotion illustrationemotional tone, emotional intensity, sad face, happy face, angry face
- ExpressionismEdvard Munch, The Scream, Der Blaue Reiter, German Expressionism, woodcuts
- GoetheFaust, Mephistopheles, Gretchen, Mephisto, Weimar
- humanistic psychologyAbraham Maslow, self-actualization, hierarchy of needs, congruence, genuineness
inner experiencepublic conduct
Behavior among others
public behavior · social interaction · performance · body language · facial expression
inner experienceobjective reality
Existence independent of minds
external world · physical reality · empirical data · external stimuli · sensory input
inner experienceunconscious processes
Mental functions without awareness
automatic response · reflexive action · cognitive processing