Meaning & use
self-retrospection
Last updated
Meaning
noununcountable
The act of carefully examining your own thoughts, feelings, and past actions to understand yourself better.
Grammar: Uncountable; no plural form is used.
Patterns
- do some self-retrospection
- a moment of self-retrospection
- self-retrospection about/on something
After the project failed, she spent a week in quiet self-retrospection.
Therapy gave him a structured way to do self-retrospection.
A little self-retrospection can help you see patterns in your behavior.
Common combinations
- deep self-retrospection
- Deep self-retrospection led her to change careers.
- honest self-retrospection
- Honest self-retrospection is uncomfortable but useful.
- encourage self-retrospection
- The workshop encourages self-retrospection through journaling.
- a period of self-retrospection
- He took a period of self-retrospection after graduation.
Synonyms and how they differ
- introspection
- More formal and often used in psychology; it does not always include looking at past events, only current inner experience.
- reflection
- Broader and more everyday; it can be about anything, not just yourself.
- self-examination
- Slightly more formal and often suggests judging your own moral or professional conduct.
Word family
- introspection noun
- The process of examining your own thoughts and feelings.
- introspective adjective
- Tending to think deeply about your own feelings and thoughts.
- self-reflective adjective
- Inclined to think carefully about your own behavior and motives.
Commonly confused: self-retrospection or retrospection? self-retrospection or self-reflection?
self-retrospection vs retrospection
Retrospection means looking back at past events in general, not necessarily at yourself. Self-retrospection is always directed at your own mind and actions.
self-retrospection vs self-reflection
Very close in meaning, but self-reflection is more common and less technical; self-retrospection often sounds more clinical or deliberate.
Practice
Which sentence uses 'self-retrospection' correctly?
Choose one answer.
'Self-retrospection' is an uncountable noun, so it fits after 'did some' in option 0. The other options wrongly use it as a verb or as a plural countable noun.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “self-retrospection”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.