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Introspection has been at the heart of an intense ideological struggle since the beginnings of experimental psychology. Some simple ideas were retained in the history of the field: first, psychology was originally driven by introspection; second, behaviorism put an end to its use; and third, as a consequence, introspection was in effect banned from the psychological laboratories. In this paper, I try to show that such a view not only oversimplifies the ambivalence toward introspection of early experimentalists; it also misconstrues the intents of behaviorism; and lastly it ignores the fact that introspection has been used without any real interruption during the 20th century, and that it was often instrumental in the progress of experimental psychology.