Definition of "introversion"

A turning inward, particularly:  quotations

1. The action of turning one's thoughts upon internal or spiritual matters.  quotations  examples

   Quotations

   • ...their... Fastings, Prayings,... Introversions,... Humiliations, Mortifications...

     1654, Thomas Gataker, A Discours Apologetical, page 68

   • The attending to the voice of Christ within you is what [mystics] term Introversion.

     1788, John Wesley, Works, volume VI, page 451

   • ... Hamlet, who so perfectly typifies the introversion and complexity of modern thought as compared with ancient...

     1870, James Russell Lowell, My Study Windows, page 214

2. (psychology) A personality orientation towards the self and mental abstraction; behavior expressing such orientation.  quotations

   Quotations

   • ...so that when in later life there occurs an introversion (in the sense of Jung), it consists of a harking back to regressive, reminiscent, infantile material.

     1912, Trigant Burrow, "Conscious and Unconscious Mentation from the Psychoanalytic Viewpoint", Psychological Bulletin, No. 9, p. 159

   • I called the hysterical type the extraversion type and the psychasthénic type the introversion type.

     1915, Carl Jung, “On Psychological Understanding”, in Journal of Abnormal Psychology, number 9, page 396

   • Patients with this disease are at times completely withdrawn from the world around them and give the picture of the very extreme of introversion.

     1955 March 19, Science News-Letter, page 185

   • Eysenck has suggested the three dimensions of neuroticism, psychoticism and introversion-extraversion.

     1964, John Michael Argyle, Psychology & Social Problems, page 75

3. (poetry and literature) Arrangement of two similar words, lines, etc. to form the middle part of a structure.  quotations  examples

   Quotations

   • Such introversion is merely a matter of form.

     1896, Richard Green Moulton, The Literary Study of the Bible, page 50