Insight

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses insight and its conceptualization and assessment. Insight refers to the various cognitive functions and mental phenomena. Insight is an understanding of the motivations behind an individual's thoughts or behaviors. It is the recognition of the sources of an individual's emotional or mental problems. Terms— such as insight, judgment, knowledge, and metacognition are often used interchangeably in academic and clinical settings. The phenomena of blindsight and the phantom limb highlight the differences when these concepts operate relatively independently. Blind sighted individuals learn over time to orient toward light, identify the presence and absence of stimuli, discriminate shapes and edges, and can avoid obstacles while walking or running. It appears that blindsight, or unconscious vision, is made possible as the brain recruits intact pathways of the primitive subcortical mammalian visual pathway that are not normally used in humans and monkeys. Insight remains a somewhat vague and certainly complex construct that appears multi-determined and, likewise, influenced by many more internal and external factors.