Abstract
What is phenomenology and how does one practice it? In this chapter I will attempt to answer these two questions in a nontechnical way and will also show that phenomenology is not esoteric but an approach that intuitively makes sense. However, by stating that this approach makes sense intuitively, I do not mean that phenomenology is in accord with common sense, understood as the array of opinions that a group or an individual takes for granted as being self-evidently true, that is, the clichés, prejudices, or assumptions that all of us carry around with us. Rather, by speaking of the intuitive, I am referring to insights or understandings that relate to our immediate experience of the world and of ourselves. Mainstream psychology textbooks also point to how research findings contradict common sense, but imply that our experience of the world is unreliable. In their classic social psychology textbook (1967), Edward Jones and Harold Gerard cite criticisms directed at a large-scale study conducted by Samuel Stouffer and his colleagues of the professional and psychological adjustment of American soldiers during World War II.3 The critics basically argued that the conclusions belabored the obvious. Jones and Gerard also quote at length the spirited defense of such studies by the sociologist Paul Lazarsfeld, who pointed out that many of the conclusions of Stouffer and his colleagues were contrary to what most people would have expected.4
The ultimate test of a study’s worth is that the findings ring true to people and let them see things in a new way
David A. Karp1
When we psychologists, perennially anxious about our identity as scientists, insist that science making is totally different in kind from other exercises of the human intellect, we are perpetuating a false dogma, the effect of which on the future of the field can only be pernicious.
William Bevan2
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Notes
David A. Karp, Speaking of Sadness: Depression, Disconnection and the Meaning of Illness. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 202.
William Bevan, “A Tour inside the Onion,” American Psychologist 46, no. 5 (1991): 478.
Edward E. Jones and Harold B. Gerard, Foundations of Social Psychology (New York: Wiley & Sons, 1967), 33–35.
Paul Lazarsfeld’s review is entitled, “The American Soldier—An Expository Review,” Public Opinion Quarterly 13, no. 2 (1949): 377–404.
Michael W. Passer and Ronald E. Smith discussed the same issue in their Psychology: Frontiers and Applications (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2001), 45–47.
Robert D. Romanyshyn and Brian J. Whalen, “Psychology and the Attitude of Science,” in Existential-Phenomenological Perspectives in Psychology, ed. Ronald S. Valle and Steen Halling (New York: Plenum, 1989), 17–39.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Colin. Smith (New York: Humanities Press, 1962), viii.
Miriam Waddington, in Call Them Canadians, ed. Lorraine Monk (Ottawa, Canada: Queen’s Printer, 1968), 229. Included with the kind permission of Jonathan Waddington.
Inger Alver Gløersen, Den Munch Jeg Møtte, 2nd ed. [The Munch I met] (Oslo: Gyldendal Norsk, 1962).
Helen Valentine, ed., Art in the Age of Queen Victoria: Treasures from the Royal Academy of Arts Permanent Collection (London: Royal Academy of Arts, 1999). The painting On Strike is shown on p. 121 of Valentine’s book.
George Steiner, Real Presences (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 226.
Kathleen Norris, Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith (New York: Riverhead Books, 1998), 17.
For an overview of the influence of phenomenological philosophy on psychiatry and psychology, see Steen Halling and Judy Dearborn Nill, “A Brief History of Existential-Phenomenological Psychiatry and Psychotherapy,” Journal of Phenomenological Psychology 26, no. 1 (1995): 1–45.
Walter Lowrie, A Short Life of Kierkegaard (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1970), 115.
Søren Kierkegaard, The Sickness unto Death, trans. and ed. Walter. Lowrie (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1941), 29.
Gabriel Marcel, “An Essay in Autobiography,” in The Philosophy of Existentialism, trans. Manya Harari (New York: Citadel Press, 1991), 121.
Gabriel Marcel, “Towards a Phenomenology and a Metaphysics of Hope,” in Homo Viator: Introduction to a Metaphysics of Hope, trans. Emma Craufrud (New York: Harper and Row, 1974), 29–67.
Peter T. Manicas and Paul F. Secord, “Implications of the New Philosophy of Science,” American Psychologist 38 (1983): 399–413.
Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962), rev. ed., 1970.
Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge: Toward a Post-Critical Philosophy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958).
Thomas Kuhn discusses this issue at length in “Second Thoughts on Paradigms,” Chapter 12, in his book, The Essential Tension: Selected Studies in Scientific Tradition and Change (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977).
Stephen Jay Gould, The Hedgehog, the Fox, and the Magister’s Pox: Mending the Gap between Science the Humanities (New York: Harmony Books, 2003), 114.
Stephen Toulmin and David E. Leary, “The Cult of Empiricism in Psychology and Beyond,” in A Century of Psychology as a Science, ed. Sigmund Koch and David E. Leary (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1985), 609.
Kuhn, Structure of Scientif c Revolution (1970), 162–163.
Susan Nolen-Hoeksema, Abnormal Psychology, 3rd ed. (New York: McGraw Hill, 2004), 69.
Edmund Husserl, The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology, trans. David Carr (New York: Humanities Press, 1970).
Herbert Spiegelberg, The Phenomenological Movement, 3rd ed. (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1982).
Halling and Dearborn Nill, “A Brief History”; Amedeo P. Giorgi, Psychology as a Human Science: A Phenomenologically Based Approach (New York: Harper and Row, 1970)
William James, Varieties of Religious Experience (New York: Modern Library, 1963)
Eugene I. Taylor, Jr., “On Psychology as a Person-Centered Science: Williams James and His Relation to the Humanistic Tradition,” in Donald Moss, ed., Humanistic and Transpersonal Psychology: A Historical and Biographical Sourcebook (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999), 301–313.
David L. Smith, Fearfully and Wonderfully Made: The History of Duquesne University’s Graduate Program (1959–1999) (Pittsburgh: Simon Silverman Phenomenology Center, Duquesne University, 2002).
Charles T. Onions, ed., The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology (London: Oxford University Press, 1966), 797.
Sylvia Nasar, A Beautiful Mind: The Life of Mathematical Genius and Nobel Laureate John Nash (New York: Touchstone/Simon & Schuster, 2001), 368.
See, for example, Gerald C. Davison, John M. Neale, and Ann M. Kring, Abnormal Psychology, 9th ed. (New York: Wiley, 2004).
See, for example, Karin Dahlberg, Nancy Drew, and Maria Nyström, Reflective Lifeworld Research (Lund, Sweden: Studdentlitteratur, 2001)
Constance T. Fischer, ed., Qualitative Research Methods for Psychologists: Introduction through Empirical Studies (New York: Academic Press, 2006)
Amedeo Giorgi, ed., Phenomenology and Psychological Research (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1985)
Gunnar Karlsson, Psychological Qualitative Research from a Phenomenological Perspective (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1993)
Clark Moustakas, Phenomenological Research Methods (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1994)
Clark Moustakas, Heuristic Research: Design, Methodology and Applications (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage,1990)
Steinar Kvale, Interviews: An Introduction to Qualitative Research Interviewing (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1996)
Jonathan Smith, ed., Qualitative Psychology: A Practical Guide to Research Methods (Thousand Oaks, CA: 2003).
Brittney Beck, Steen Halling, Marie McNabb, Daniel Miller, Jan O. Rowe, and Jennifer Schulz, “Facing up to Hopelessness: A Dialogal Phenomenological Approach,” Journal of Religion of Health 42, no. 4 (2003): 339–354.
The dialogal method is described in some detail in the following articles: Steen Halling and Michael Leifer, “The Theory and Practice of Dialogal Research,” Journal of Phenomenological Psychology 22, no.1 (1991): 1–15
Steen Halling, George Kunz, and Jan O. Rowe, “The Contributions of Dialogal Psychology to Phenomenological Research,” Journal of Humanistic Psychology 34, no.1 (1994): 109–131
Steen Halling, Michael Leifer, and Jan O. Rowe, “Emergence of the Dialogal Approach: Forgiving Another,” in Qualitative Research Methods for Psychologist, ed. Constance T. Fischer (New York: Academic Press, 2006), 247–278.
Amedeo Giorgi, “An Application of Phenomenological Method in Psychology,” in Duquesne Studies in Phenomenological Psychology, Vol. 2, ed. A. Giorgi, C. Fischer, and E. Murray (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1975), 84.
Constance T. Fischer and Frederick J. Wertz, “Empirical Phenomenlogical Analyses of Being Criminally Victimized,” in Duquesne Studies in Phenomenological Psycholog y, Vol. 3 , ed. A. Giorgi, R. Knowles and D. L. Smith (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1979), 135–158.
Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method (New York: Crossroads, 1975), 345.
Eugene T. Gendlin, “Experiential Phenomenology,” in Phenomenology and the Social Sciences, ed. Maurice Natanson (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1973), 294.
George Kunz, Daniel Clingaman, Renee Hulet, Richard Kortsep, Bruce Kugler, and Mineko-Sung Park, “A Dialogal Phenomenological Study of Humility” (paper presented at the Sixth International Human Science Research Conference, University of Ottawa, Canada, June 1987).
Michael Leifer, “The Dialogal Approach to Phenomenological Research” (paper presented at the Fifth International Human Science Research Conference, University of California at Berkeley, June 1986).
George Gusdorf, Speaking, trans. Paul. T. Brockelman (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1965), 116.
Robert Elliott, Constance T. Fischer, and David L. Rennie, “Evolving Guidelines for Publication of Qualitative Research Studies in Psychology and Related Fields,” British Journal of Clinical Psychology 38 (1999): 215–229.
Lisa L. S. Tsoi Hoshmand, “Alternative Research Paradigms: A Review and a Teaching Proposal,” The Counseling Psychologist 17, no. 1 (1989): 3–79. See also, Donald E. Polkinghorne, Methodology for the Human Sciences: Systems of Inquiry (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1983), as well as his “Phenomenological Research Methods,” in Existential-Phenomenological Perspectives, ed. Valle and Halling, 41–60.
Lane A. Gerber, Married to their Careers: Career and Family Dilemmas (New York: Tavistock, 1983).
Marc Briod, “The Young Child’s Sense of Time and the Clock,” Phenomenology + Pedagogy 4, no. 1 (1986): 9–19.
I. Lundgren and Karin Dahlberg, “Women’s Experience of Pain during Childbirth,” Midwifery 14, no. 2 (1998): 105–110.
Sandra M. Levy, “The Experience of Undergoing a Heart Attack: The Construction of a New Reality,” Journal of Phenomenological Psychology 12, no. 2 (1981): 153–171.
Larry Davidson, L. Hoge, M. A. Merrill, J. Rakfeldt, and E. E. H. Griffith, “The Experiences of Long-Stay Inpatients Returning to the Community,” Psychiatry 58, no. 2 (1995): 122–132.
Herman Coenen, “Improvised Contexts: Movement, Perception and Expression in Deaf Children’s Interaction,” Journal of Phenomenological Psychology 17, no. 1 (1986): 1–31.
Harry J. Berman, Interpreting the Aging Self (New York: Springer, 1994).
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Halling, S. (2008). On the Study of Human Experience. In: Intimacy, Transcendence, and Psychology. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230610255_6
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