Discusses the phenomenological foundations for qualitative research in psychology which operates out of the intersection of phenomenological philosophy, science, and psychology; challenges long-standing assumptions about the practice of grounding the science of psychology in empiricism and asserts that the broader philosophy of phenomenological theory of science permits more adequate psychological development"--Provided by publisher.

David Katz was an experimental psychologist who worked in the early years of psychology as an independent science. He performed many experiments on color vision and touch by means of what he called the “phenomenological method.” He claimed to have learned the method by attending Husserl’s lectures on phenomenological philosophy while the latter was teaching at Göttingen. However the method that Katz actually used was “description with an attitude of disciplined naiveté”. Consequently, while such a method was known as “phenomenological” (...) at the time Katz was working, the nomenclature reflects a historically dated meaning of phenomenology and not the sense of phenomenological method that Husserl developed later in his career. Katz’s method was actually qualitative and empirical. It was not phenomenological according to Husserl’s complete, mature philosophy. (shrink)

In adapting Husserl’s philosophical phenomenological method to conduct research in psychology I included Husserl’s two methodical steps, the epochē and the reduction, as part of the scientific procedure. Zahavi objected to my use of those steps. This article is a response to his objections and it is a reaffirmation of the necessity of the epochē and reduction for Husserlian phenomenological psychological research. A description of Husserl’s acknowledged types of psychology and a description of his transcendental phenomenology are also presented along (...) with two outlines of how Husserlian phenomenological research could be conducted. (shrink)

Empiricism had dominated scientific activities for about three centuries but beginning with the 20th Century a new philosophy, phenomenology, began to develop and certain scientists who conducted research with humans began to turn to phenomenology as the basis for their scientific work rather than empiricism. What was known as the Utrecht School in Holland just after World War II, psychologists at Duquesne University during mid-twentieth century, pedagogists in Canada at about the same time and nurses later in the twentieth century (...) all began to base their research on phenomenological philosophical principles rather than on empiricism. Certain philosophers criticized the approach of these scientists and offered their own praxis based directly on phenomenological philosophy. However, one of the members of the Duquesne University’s group strongly criticized the evaluation of his approach by the philosophers and demonstrated the significant errors of their criticism. The psychologist then clarified his scientific phenomenological approach toward psychological phenomena and emphasized the role of the phenomenological epoche’ and reduction for Husserlian scientific phenomenology. (shrink)

Recently, a book was published, the sole purpose of which was to discourage researchers from using the scientific phenomenological method. The author had previously been critical of nurses who had used the scientific phenomenological method but in the new book he goes after the originators of different methods of scientific phenomenological research and attempts to criticize them severely. In this review I defend only the scientific phenomenological method that is strictly based upon the thought of Edmund Husserl. Given the entirely (...) negative project of only critiquing phenomenologically grounded scientific research, one would expect the author to be sensitive to the cautions historians and philosophers of science speak about when one attempts to criticize concepts and procedures that belong to a different research community. Paley, an empiricist, uses empirical criteria to criticize phenomenological work.Moreover, given the entirely negative project of critiquing phenomenologically grounded scientific research one would expect the author to be knowledgeable about phenomenology and the innovative research practices used by a new research community. However, the author has only a thin, superficial understanding of phenomenology. One gets the impression that he only reads phenomenology in order to critique it. He displays an outsider’s understanding of it which means that his criticisms of it are faulty because he does not know how to think and dwell within the phenomenological framework; he does not understand “discovery-oriented” research and he keeps judging such research according to criteria from the “context of verification” perspective which are the wrong criteria for “discovery-oriented” research; he denigrates and reduces nursing research strategies because he interprets them to be based on pragmatic motivations only. He does not even grant that nurses can have authentic scientific motivations for seeking phenomenologically based methods; he uses unfair rhetorical strategies in the sense that he uses strategies himself that he criticizes when others use them. The review below documents what has been summarized here. (shrink)

In an earlier article, Edwards tried to establish that the Duquesne Phenomenological Research Method was simply a particular type of Case Study research method and he also reproached users of the DPRM for not developing theory. This article rebuts both of Edwards's theses. DPRM is radically different from CSRM in logic and in execution and the article demonstrates that the development of theory is not at all the intent of DPRM. The basic difficulty is that Edwards attempts to understand DPRM (...) from an empirical philosophical perspective whereas a phenomenological philosophical perspective is required to understand DPRM correctly. (shrink)

Phenomenology is a philosophy and it will always remain one. However, philosophies are also foundations for sciences and thus far in the West some form of empiricism or other has been the primary foundation for all sciences. Phenomenological philosophy has been developing for about a century now and is mature enough to serve as a basis for a science, especially the human sciences. This article articulates how phenomenological philosophy can serve as a foundation for the science of phenomenological psychology and (...) it indicates how its key concepts are better able to clarify and develop a proper understanding of human reality in a rigorous scientific way. (shrink)

This article points out the criteria necessary in order for a qualitative scientific method to qualify itself as phenomenological in a descriptive Husserlian sense. One would have to employ description within the attitude of the phenomenological reduction, and seek the most invariant meanings for a context. The results of this analysis are used to critique an article by Klein and Westcott , that presents a typology of the development of the phenomenological psychological method.

While it is heartening to see that more researchers in the field of the social sciences are using some version of the phenomenological method, it is also disappointing to see that very often some of the steps employed do not follow phenomenological logic. In this paper, several dissertations are reviewed in order to point out some of the difficulties that are encountered in attempting to use some version of the phenomenological method. Difficulties encountered centred on the phenomenological reduction, the use (...) of imaginative variation and the feedback to subjects. Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology , Volume 8, Edition 1 May 2008. (shrink)

Historically, when psychology broke away from a philosophical mode of scholarship it strove to become a natural science. This meant that it largely imitated the concepts and practices of the natural sciences which included the use of abstract terms to designate many of its phenomena with the consequence that psychology is often more abstract and generic than it ought to be. Husserl has emphasized the role of the life-world as the ultimate basis of all knowledge and a serious consideration of (...) its role implies that psychology’s manner of labeling its phenomena should be less abstract and closer to the way the phenomena are experienced in the lifeworld. If so, this means that psychology’s primary data should be physiognomies or the expressive characteristics intrinsic to objects and situations. However, the complexities involved in the perception of physiognomies create difficulties for the practice of science. It is suggested that certain Husserlian phenomenological contributions concerning categorial modes of experiencing could be helpful in meeting scientific criteria. (shrink)

The study of the moral sense was neglected for a long time in psychology until recently when Kohlberg, following the work of Piaget, constructed a scale for studying moral judgments. In this article the more scientific and empirical approach to the moral sense is questioned and an argument is made that a qualitative approach would yield more meaningful results. The work of Coles is cited as one example of a qualitative approach, and this article suggests a phenomenological approach. Five brief (...) descriptions describing learning, resentment, decision-making, and the experience of autonomy were used for both analyses of the moral sense and psychological concomitants. The results indicate that the moral sense is a meaning that refers to an "ought" and that the awakening of the moral sense is frequently associated with negative emotions or feelings. (shrink)

The author explains that his background was in experimental psychology but that he wanted to study the whole person and not fragmented psychological processes. He also desired a non-reductionistic method for studying humans. Fortunately he came across the work of Edmund Husserl and discovered in the latter’s thought a way of researching humans that met the criteria he was seeking. Eventually he developed a phenomenological method for researching humans in a psychological way based upon the work of Husserl and Merleau-Ponty. (...) This article briefly describes the method. (shrink)

Whenever one reads internal histories of psychology what is covered is the establishment of a lab by Wundt in 1879 as the initiating act and then the breakaway movements of the 20th Century are discussed: Behaviorism, Gestalt Theory, Psychoanalysis, and most recently the Cognitive revival. However, Aron Gurwitsch described a perspective noted by Cassirer and first developed by Malebranche, which dates the founding of psychology at the same time as that of physics in the 17th Century. This external perspective shows (...) the dependency of psychology upon the concepts, methods and procedures of physics and the natural sciences in general up until the present time. Gurwitsch argues that this approach has blocked the growth of psychology and has assured its status as a minor science. He argued that the everyday Lifeworld achievements of subjectivity are the true subject matter of psychology and that a phenomenological approach to subjectivity could give psychology the authenticity it has been forever seeking but never finding as a naturalistic science. Some clarifying thoughts concerning this phenomenologically grounded psychology are offered, especially the role of desire. The assumption of an external perspective toward the history of psychology fostered the insights about psychology’s scientific role. (shrink)

The use of rights based arguments to justify claims that donor offspring should have access to information identifying their gamete donor has become increasingly widespread. In this paper, I do not intend to revisit the debate about the validity of such rights. Rather, the purpose is to examine the way that such alleged rights have been implemented by those legislatures that have allowed access to identifying information. I will argue that serious inconsistencies exist between the claim that donor offspring have (...) a right to know the identity of their gamete donor and the way such a right is currently met in practice. I hope to show that in systems where non‐anonymous donation is practised, an understanding of the proclaimed right of donor offspring to know their genetic identity is one composed of two different rights – the right to know the circumstances of their conception and the right to information identifying the gamete donor – can provide important insights into this important area of public policy. (shrink)

This Chapter aims to present a very preliminary exploration of the role and functioning of some ‘leading ideas’ that represent the most consistent attempts to balance freedom of scientific research with the need to protect participants and the community as a whole. To this end, we searched two databases, a scientific and a legal one, for some keywords (Freedom of research, Precautionary principle, Risk-based approach, Responsible research and innovation), to check the consistency of their presence and evolution over time. Without (...) aiming to in-depth investigate the precise connotations of each term and the context in which they are used from time to time, the core idea is to provide a very first quantitative exploration, which lays the foundations for further future investigation. (shrink)

Four research strategies currently employed by mainstream psychologists in researching the experiences and behaviors of human subjects are criticized for diminishing the presence of subjectivity. Two perspectives that tend to exaggerate subjectivity are also criticized. A balanced approach to subjectivity is offered that: acknowledges a theoretical perspective that recognizes that there are invisible or nonsensorial characteristics of subjectivity that have to be theoretically appropriated, and that emphasizes the intersubjective dimension as being critical for properly assessing a balanced approach to human (...) subjectivity. A subject-dependent perspective that can efface its own interests is the attitude that is required for the achievement of objectivity. (shrink)

J.H. van den Berg was a member of the Utrecht school of phenomenology that flourished in Holland during the 1950s and early 1960s. He was a psychiatrist who had a private practice and he taught at the University of Leiden. Along with other members of the Utrecht school, not all of whom were psychiatrists, he was among the first to apply the insights drawn from existential-phenomenological philosophy to psychology and psychiatry. As with the philosophers, he emphasized that subjectivity was engaged (...) with the world and its activities had to be described. He emphasized that insights into experience as lived, or the phenomenal level, was what was critical for psychologists to understand. (shrink)