Phenomenological psychology is a type of human science psychology that emphasizes close attention to, and rigorous, detailed description and understanding of, personal lived experiences within respective lifeworlds. One’s lived experience within one’s lifeworld is how one experiences and makes sense of everyday events as it is to the one experiencing those events or happenings. Entry into meaningful experiences is accessed by descriptive approaches, rather than explanative ones, and through intuitive, empathic resonance with the intersubjective meaningfulness of an individual’s enactments of significance in the world.
The formal discipline of phenomenological psychology was founded by Wilhelm Dilthey (1833–1911; 1989). Dilthey distinguished between the natural sciences (Naturwissenschaften) and the human sciences (Geisteswissenschaften), believing the latter to be the more appropriate approach to understanding human existence. He used hermeneutical theory, or the art and science of...
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DuBose, T. (2020). Phenomenological Psychology. In: Leeming, D.A. (eds) Encyclopedia of Psychology and Religion. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24348-7_508
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