Description of Event (150 words maximum): Descriptive phenomenology is a well-established approach to qualitative research in which the researcher develops the ability to carefully analyze participants’ descriptions of their experiences. Researchers learn to attend carefully to interview data, setting aside their preconceptions about participants’ experiences, and deepening their own ability to empathically listen and discover essential psychological meanings. This presentation accompanied a 2-day overview of the method and discussion of its applications. Students were introduced to the descriptive phenomenological method, which Giorgi, Wertz, Halling, and Englander have applied to a range of important psychological themes.

1. August 2012, Saybrook Residential Conference
Marc Applebaum, PhD
Associate Editor, Journal of Phenomenological Psychology
Founding Editor, PhenomenologyBlog
©2012 Marc Applebaum

2. Descriptive exercise
Have you had an experience of seeing an important
person in your life as a real person in his or her own
right, as if for the first time?
If yes, please describe what this was like, with as much
detail as possible

3. To introduce you to the phenomenological
tradition
To give you a sense of how researchers in
phenomenological psychology have approached
the study of intimacy, resilience, and empathy
To give you enough information to decide whether
to begin learning the method by taking RES 3130 at
Saybrook
3130 is the hands-on introduction to conducting
descriptive phenomenological psychological
research

4. My expertise is in the descriptive
phenomenological method pioneered by
Amedeo Giorgi at Duquesne and Saybrook
And its roots in the philosophy of Edmund
Husserl and Maurice Merleau-Ponty
I am Associate Editor of the Journal of
Phenomenological Psychology, and edit
PhenomenologyBlog
My interests include cultural and organizational
psychology, and consciousness studies

5. This seminar aims to introduce students to the
work of several contemporary
phenomenological psychologists…
My summary of and excerpts from their work
are partial and reflect my own perspective and
the limited time we have
I encourage you to read the publications of
Halling, Wertz, and Englander directly:
references are provided at the end of this
presentation

6. Descriptive Phenomenological Psychology
• Is one of the most carefully articulated qualitative
psychological research methods
• Envisions psychology as a human science, as
distinguished from a natural science

7. “Science” and “Human Science”
Scientia is Latin for “knowledge;” the word does not
imply a particular method or subject matter
Instead it refers to the outcome of inquiry: reliable
knowledge for a community of knowers
The meanings of science have been debated for
millennia--“science” is not a univocal term

8. Emergence of Natural Science
The origins of natural science predate Galileo’s
brilliant experiments in the 16th century. In the
course of conceiving of human being as the object
of scientific investigation, the human person came
to be defined in large measure as a natural object.
Therefore the human being came to be seen as
spatially and temporally bounded and subject to
material causality.

9. Achievements of Natural Science
We’re surrounded by evidence of the natural
science’s accomplishments—
• The computer showing this presentation
• The transportation that brought us here today
• The food, housing, and health care that sustain
us are in large measure due to natural science

10. Are human beings (only) natural objects?
Nevertheless, since the 17th century there has
been a debate within philosophy and the sciences
regarding whether human being should be viewed
as a natural object like chemical
compounds, plants or animals…
Or whether consciousness makes human beings a
unique sort of object for science—an object who is
also a subject, requiring a “human science.”

11. Human science
The human science movement took particular
shape the 19th century as an alternative to
positivism, which had become the dominant
philosophy of science.
Human science argues that
meanings, not just facts, are critical
in understanding human
phenomena. Dilthey was a founding
figure in this movement.
Wilhelm Dilthey (1833-1911)

12. The “human” in human science
For a human science approach, the fullness of lived
experience must be preserved in order to
understand human being
This is lost if we reduce human
being to only its measurable and
causal-mechanical dimensions
We’ll discuss examples of this
later…

13. Philosophers such as
Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau
-Ponty, and Gurwitch are part of
the phenomenological tradition--
It includes more than a century of
critical thinking about
science, scientific
methods, psychology, and the
meanings of technology in society
Edmund Husserl (1859-1938)

14. Science is based upon the lived-world
“The whole universe of science is built upon the world as
directly experienced, and if we want to subject science
itself to rigorous scrutiny…we must begin by reawakening
the basic experience of the world of which science is the
second-order expression.” (2005/1945, p. ix)
-Maurice Merleau-Ponty
Phenomenology of Perception

15. Edmund Husserl (1859-1938) founded
phenomenological philosophy
Philosophers such as Sartre, Merleau-
Ponty, and Gurwitsch explored psychological
implications of phenomenology, but no
research method had been articulated by
psychologists
In the late 1960’s Amedeo Giorgi, trained as a
quantitative psychologist, began to develop a
qualitative research method based upon
Husserl’s philosophical method

16. Re-envisioning psychology as a human
science
“When I articulated the idea that psychology
should be a human science, it was because, for
me, the discipline of psychology was essentially
missing its target. It was not truly capturing
psyche…I realized that it wasn’t a patch-up job
that psychology required so much as radical
reform.”
-Amedeo Giorgi (2000)

17. What does it mean psychologically when time
seems to “slow down” or “speed up”?
How is connectedness or disconnectedness
experienced between members of a team?
What are the various meanings of feeling
“distant” from a loved one?
How does empathy, or lack of empathy, occur?

18. For more than a quarter of a century Saybrook
has been a home for phenomenological
psychology, thanks to the work of Amedeo Giorgi

19. Is a depth approach that requires intensive
work with interview transcripts
For a dissertation 3-4 subjects are interviewed
regarding their experience of a phenomenon
The researcher seeks to discover whether a
shared psychological structure unites the
subjects’ accounts of the phenomenon
You will see examples later…

20. Pivotal moments in psychotherapy
The experience of living with hallucinatory
psychosis
The experience of precognitive dreams
The experience of the body in multiple
personality disorder
Unconscious reaction to culture change as it is
expressed in dreams

21. RES 3130: The Descriptive Phenomenological
Method
HTP 3140: The Phenomenological Critique of
Psychological Systems
8100: Independent Study (theory or praxis)
such as—
Edmund Husserl: Crisis of European Sciences
Maurice Merleau-Ponty: The Phenomenology of
Perception
Conduct a study with 3-4 subjects
RES 1100: Phenomenological Research
Practicum

22. The phenomenological path at Saybrook
1. Introduction to Phenomenological
Psychological Research
2. Independent study using the method (both
theory and praxis)
3. Research practicum using the method
4. Candidacy essays
5. Dissertation

23. Halling, Wertz, and Englander
Steen Halling, Seattle Fred Wertz, Fordham Magnus
University University Englander, Malmö
University

24. The researcher sets aside her previous
experiences and theoretical knowledge in order
to encounter the other’s experience freshly
(bracketing)
Neither affirming nor denying the factual
content of the data (epoché)
Seeking to explicate the lived-meanings in the
data from a psychological perspective

25. Steen Halling: Intimacy, Transcendence, and
Psychology (2008)

26. Halling: research question
“Describe as specifically as possible a time when
you came to see someone of real significance in
your life more as a real person in his or her own
right.”
(2008, p. 16)

27. Interview and analysis
How we interview
Transcribing and dividing data into “meaning
units”
Transforming the data (explication)
Seeking the least variant psychological
structure, among the descriptions gathered

28. Seeing the other as a real person
As we analyze data, we “dwell” with it
Insights arise unpredictably—it’s not a mechanical
process
Time, patience, and care are required
Halling (2008)

29. Halling—grasping the phenomenon
“This reaching out *to the other+ does not come
about as we make a deliberate effort to bring
about a…transformation.” (2008, p. 24)
Why might this be important, psychologically?

30. Halling
“The awakening of the self to encounter or
embrace more of the being of the other person is
indeed a movement of creativity. In being
receptive and responsive, the self changes, and
image of the other alters, and the relationship
changes in ways that were unanticipated.”
(2008, p. 32)
What does this imply about “seeing the other”?

31. Halling: psychological constituents
(1) Surprise and wonder,
(2) participation in the perspective of the
other, (3) recognition of separateness,
(4) awakening of the self, and
(5) a horizon of hopefulness.
(2008, p. 23)
How do these constituents relate to your own
spontaneous descriptions of the phenomenon?

32. Halling’s second study: Forgiveness
Reductionism is an issue phenomenologists often
confront--
“Overall psychologists discuss forgiveness in
rather reductive terms. By ‘reductive,’ I mean
that this process, which is subtle and profound, is
frequently described in ways that are simplistic
and one-dimensional.” (2008, p. 102)

33. Halling
Psychologists have called forgiveness “’a promising
therapeutic tool,’” describing it as a willed
action, while other psychologists “encourage
clinicians to ‘consider the use of forgiveness’ as if
it were a medication or technique.” (2008, pp.
102-103)
What’s problematic about framing forgiveness
as a technique?

34. Excerpt from a phenomenological description
“The experience of forgiving the person who has
injured oneself is a complex multidimensional
process that moves from a tearing of one’s lived
world through feelings of
hurt, anger, revenge, confusion to an opening up
to a larger experience of oneself and the world.”
(Halling, 2008, p. 106)

35. Descriptive exercise
Describe in writing a situation when something very
unfortunate happened to you

36. Frederick Wertz: “A Phenomenological Psychological
Approach to Trauma and Resilience”, in Five Ways of
Doing Qualitative Analysis (2011)

37. Wertz (2011): a case study
In this case the method was used with a single
case
The data was gathered in a slightly different
way, due to the structure of the collaboration

38. Wertz: full research question
“Describe in writing a situation when something
very unfortunate happened to you. Please begin
your description prior to the unfortunate event.
Share in detail what happened, what you felt and
did, and what happened after, including how you
responded and what came of this event in your
life.”
(2011, p. 104)

39. Wertz: research attitude
“The overall attitude I adopted in this work was
first to put aside my knowledge of scientific
theories and research on trauma and resilience in
order to focus on the concrete example in
Teresa’s life….” (2011, p. 136)
What challenges can you imagine in adopting a
phenomenological attitude?

40. Wertz: examples of psychological constituents
• “Initially, trauma is passively suffered. It
happens to a person, was not intended, and
therefore is experienced in cognitive shock
and disbelief…in which a previously active
agent becomes an acute sufferer.
• Trauma is lived bodily by way of
numbness, paralysis, diminishment, contractio
n, shrinkage, or withdrawal in relation to the
world.” (2011, p. 154)

41. Wertz: other examples
• “The individual’s stance toward trauma and
strategies of living through and coping with
trauma are…continuations of habitual ways in
which he or she has coped with past
adversity…”
• “Trauma is individualizing, isolating, lonely—
the traumatized person is singled out and
separated from others.” (2011, p. 154-155)

42. Magnus Englander
“

43. Englander
• Draws upon phenomenological philosophical
explorations of empathy in the work of
Husserl, Stein, and others (see Zahavi, 2010)
• Questions the predominant psychological view
of empathy as a kind of simulation
• Seeks to explore lived-empathy as an
experience of opening to intersubjectivity

44. Englander (forthcoming)
Drawing on phenomenological philosophy, he
argues: “Empathy is a distinct form of
intentionality and is not to be confused or
fused with closely related phenomena such as
sympathy, caring…providing service, helping
someone solve a problem, et cetera.”

45. Empathy training
• Englander’s training (forthcoming) is an
experiential workshop
• Participants work in dyads and are introduced
to the descriptive phenomenological
perspective--
• As a way of learning to discriminate between
their experiences of empathizing and, for
example, problem-solving in relation to an
other…

46. Conclusion: becoming a researcher
“Using Giorgi’s method involves judgment and
imagination, and there is a sense in which one
does not really appreciate the method until one
has worked with it for a while, ideally with the
guidance of an experienced phenomenological
researcher. As Kuhn pointed out, you do not
become a competent member of a scientific
community just by reading texts and manuals.”
(Halling, 2008, p. 164)

47. Englander, M. (forthcoming). Empathy training from a phenomenological
perspective. Journal of Phenomenological Psychology.
Giorgi, A. (2009). The descriptive phenomenological method in
psychology: A modified Husserlian approach. Pittsburgh: Duquesne
University Press.
Giorgi, A. (2000). Psychology as a human science revisited. Journal of
Humanistic Psychology, 40 (3): 56-73.
Halling, S. (2008) Intimacy, transcendence, and psychology: Closeness and
openness in everyday life. New York: Palgrave MacMillan.
Merleau-Ponty, M. (2005). The phenomenology of perception. C. Smith
(Trans.). London: Routledge. (original work published in 1945)
Wertz, F. (2011). A phenomenological psychological approach to trauma
and resilience. In Five ways of doing qualitative analysis, F. Wertz et
al. (Eds.). (pp. 124-164). New York: The Guildford Press.
Zahavi, D. (2010). Empathy, embodiment, and interpersonal
understanding: From Lipps to Shutz. Inquiry, 53(3): 285-306.
Photo credit: anatomy of the brain from Curious Expeditions