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The descriptive phenomenological method in psychology [1] [2] was developed by the American psychologist Amedeo Giorgi in the early 1970s. Giorgi based his method on principles laid out by philosophers like Edmund Husserl and Maurice Merleau-Ponty as well as what he had learned from his prior professional experience in psychophysics. [3] Giorgi was an early pioneer of the humanistic psychology movement, [4] the use of phenomenology in psychology, and qualitative research in psychology, and to this day continues to advocate for the importance of a human science approach to psychological subject matter. [5] [6] Giorgi has directed over 100 dissertations that have used the Descriptive Phenomenological Method on a wide variety of psychological problems, and he has published over 100 articles on the phenomenological approach to psychology. [7]
Giorgi promotes phenomenology as a theoretical movement that avoids certain simplified tendencies sustained by many modern approaches to psychological research. [8] According to the phenomenological psychological perspective embraced by Giorgi, researchers are encouraged to "bracket" their own assumptions pertaining to the phenomenon in question by refraining from positing a static sense of objective reality for oneself and the participants whose experiences are being studied. This allows the researchers to attend to the descriptions of the participants without forcing the meaning of the descriptive units into pre-defined categories.
An important aspect of the descriptive phenomenological method in psychology is the way by which it distinguishes itself from those approaches that are strictly interpretive. [9] In this, Giorgi closely follows Husserl who proposes that "being given and being interpreted are descriptions of the same situation from two different levels of discourse." [10] As such, in the Descriptive Phenomenological Method there are both descriptive and interpretive moments, but the researcher remains careful to attend to each type of act in unique ways. Through a sort of empathic immersion with the subjects and their descriptions, the researchers get a sense of the ways that the experiences given by the participants were actually lived, which is in turn described. During this process, however, theoretical or speculative interpretation should be avoided so as to flesh out the full lived meaning inherent to the descriptions themselves (Giorgi, 2009, p. 127). Interpretation may then occur to various extents during other phases of the research process, but only as it relates to implications of the results rather than the lived meaning of the participants' experiences.
Another form of Descriptive phenomenological method in psychology was proposed by Paul Colaizzi. This method follows a distinctive seven step process that stays close to the data while providing strong analysis. [11]
The Descriptive Phenomenological Method involves neither deduction nor induction in order to find meaning, but instead asks the researcher to intuit what is essential to the phenomenon being studied. [12] Intuition, in this sense (going along with the philosophy of phenomenology), simply means that an object (or state of affairs, structural whole, proposition etc.) becomes presented to consciousness in a certain mode of giveness. In the context of this research method, therefore, intuition is used in order to get a sense of the lived meaning of each description so as to relate them to what is known about the phenomenon of interest in general [12] These types of generalities are not statistical probabilities nor universally posited, but are dependent upon the lived meaning of the descriptions and the meaning of the phenomenon being studied.
The phenomenological psychological attitude is to be assumed while analyzing the data in order to ensure that "the results reflect a careful description of precisely the features of the experienced phenomenon as they present themselves to the consciousness of the researcher" (Giorgi, 2009, pp. 130–131). In the phenomenological psychological attitude, the psychological acts of the participants are affirmed to be real while the objects at which those acts are directed are reduced to what appears as psychologically relevant to the particular experience being attended to. In this sense, the researcher attends to the phenomenon in its "own appropriate mode of self-givenness, thus [meeting] the demand for scientific objectivity concerning the subjective: the method of phenomenological reduction" (Scanlon, 1977, xiv) [13] With this method, this is done so as to reach a level of understanding that is appropriate for psychologists, while also helping the researcher to reach a sort of empathically sensed intuition of the experiences, in the sense used by Eugene Gendlin [14]
Each description given by the participants is first read through in its entirety in order to get a better sense of the whole situation in which the experiences occurred. [15] Then each description is attended to individually as the researcher goes through and marks off different units of meaning within the data in order to make the descriptions more manageable. After a single description is broken down into separate units, each unit can then be transformed from the language through which it was given into "psychologically sensitive" meaning units, which is done with the help of imaginative variation. This process is meant to flesh out the horizons of the lived meaning more fully in order to expand the possibilities inherent to the phenomenon being studied. Finally, after all the descriptions have undergone these steps, general psychological structures, in the sense described above, are sought. For Giorgi (2009), "essential psychological structure" refers to: "[A depiction] of the lived experience of a phenomenon, which may include aspects of the description of which the experiencer was unaware. The psychological structure is not a definition. It is meant to depict how certain phenomena that get named are lived, which includes experiential and conscious moments seen from a psychological perspective. A psychological perspective means that the lived meanings are based on an individual but get expressed eidetically, which means that they are general."
The final structure is meant to serve as an ideal representation of the phenomenon being studied, based upon actual instantiations of it within concrete lived experiences. It may be the case that such structures turn up many times again, or their relevance may be limited to the cases studied in a particular study. Either way, they have the potential to reveal a lived understanding of a certain phenomenon without first requiring a certain theoretical framework in order to comprehend it.
The Colaizzi method for data analysis proceeds as follows:
This last step in particular has been criticized by Giorgi who stated that the researcher and the participant will have different perspectives. [17]
Edmund Gustav Albrecht Husserl was an Austrian-German philosopher and mathematician who established the school of phenomenology.
In its most common sense, philosophical methodology is the field of inquiry studying the methods used to do philosophy. But the term can also refer to the methods themselves. It may be understood in a wide sense as the general study of principles used for theory selection, or in a more narrow sense as the study of ways of conducting one's research and theorizing with the goal of acquiring philosophical knowledge. Philosophical methodology investigates both descriptive issues, such as which methods actually have been used by philosophers, and normative issues, such as which methods should be used or how to do good philosophy.
Phenomenology is the philosophical study of objectivity – and reality more generally – as subjectively lived and experienced.
Franz Clemens Honoratus Hermann Josef Brentano was a German philosopher and psychologist. His 1874 Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint, considered his magnum opus, is credited with having reintroduced the medieval scholastic concept of intentionality into contemporary philosophy.
Alfred Schutz was an Austrian philosopher and social phenomenologist whose work bridged sociological and phenomenological traditions. Schutz is gradually being recognized as one of the 20th century's leading philosophers of social science. He related Edmund Husserl's work to the social sciences, using it to develop the philosophical foundations of Max Weber's sociology, in his major work Phenomenology of the Social World. However, much of his influence arose from the publication of his Collected Papers in the 1960s.
Philosophy of psychology is concerned with the history and foundations of psychology. It deals with both epistemological and ontological issues and shares interests with other fields, including philosophy of mind and theoretical psychology. Philosophical and theoretical psychology are intimately tied and are therefore sometimes used interchangeably or used together. However, philosophy of psychology relies more on debates general to philosophy and on philosophical methods, whereas theoretical psychology draws on multiple areas.
Humanistic psychology is a psychological perspective that arose in the mid-20th century in answer to two theories: Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytic theory and B. F. Skinner's behaviorism. Thus, Abraham Maslow established the need for a "third force" in psychology. The school of thought of humanistic psychology gained traction due to key figure Abraham Maslow in the 1950s during the time of the humanistic movement. It was made popular in the 1950s by the process of realizing and expressing one's own capabilities and creativity.
Ethnomethodology is the study of how social order is produced in and through processes of social interaction. It generally seeks to provide an alternative to mainstream sociological approaches. In its most radical form, it poses a challenge to the social sciences as a whole. Its early investigations led to the founding of conversation analysis, which has found its own place as an accepted discipline within the academy. According to Psathas, it is possible to distinguish five major approaches within the ethnomethodological family of disciplines.
Munich phenomenology is the philosophical orientation of a group of philosophers and psychologists that studied and worked in Munich at the turn of the twentieth century. Their views are grouped under the names realistphenomenology or phenomenology of essences. Munich phenomenology represents one branch of what is referred to as the early phenomenology. One of their contributions was the theory that there are different kinds of intentionality.
Existential psychotherapy is a form of psychotherapy based on the model of human nature and experience developed by the existential tradition of European philosophy. It focuses on concepts that are universally applicable to human existence including death, freedom, responsibility, and the meaning of life. Instead of regarding human experiences such as anxiety, alienation and depression as implying the presence of mental illness, existential psychotherapy sees these experiences as natural stages in a normal process of human development and maturation. In facilitating this process of development and maturation existential psychotherapy involves a philosophical exploration of an individual's experiences while stressing the individual's freedom and responsibility to facilitate a higher degree of meaning and well-being in his or her life.
Eugene Tovio Gendlin was an American philosopher who developed ways of thinking about and working with living process, the bodily felt sense and the "philosophy of the implicit". Though he had no degree in the field of psychology, his advanced study with Carl Rogers, his longtime practice of psychotherapy and his extensive writings in the field of psychology have made him perhaps better known in that field than in philosophy. He studied under Carl Rogers, the founder of client-centered therapy, at the University of Chicago and received his PhD in philosophy in 1958. Gendlin's theories impacted Rogers' own beliefs and played a role in Rogers' view of psychotherapy. From 1958 to 1963 Gendlin was Research Director at the Wisconsin Psychiatric Institute of the University of Wisconsin. He served as an associate professor in the departments of Philosophy and Comparative Human Development at the University of Chicago from 1964 until 1995.
Interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) is a qualitative form of psychology research. IPA has an idiographic focus, which means that instead of producing generalization findings, it aims to offer insights into how a given person, in a given context, makes sense of a given situation. Usually, these situations are of personal significance; examples might include a major life event, or the development of an important relationship. IPA has its theoretical origins in phenomenology and hermeneutics, and many of its key ideas are inspired by the work of Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. IPA's tendency to combine psychological, interpretative, and idiographic elements is what distinguishes it from other approaches to qualitative, phenomenological psychology.
Phenomenology or phenomenological psychology, a sub-discipline of psychology, is the scientific study of subjective experiences. It is an approach to psychological subject matter that attempts to explain experiences from the point of view of the subject via the analysis of their written or spoken words. The approach has its roots in the phenomenological philosophical work of Edmund Husserl.
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Phenomenology within sociology, or phenomenological sociology, examines the concept of social reality as a product of intersubjectivity. Phenomenology analyzes social reality to explain the formation and nature of social institutions. The application of phenomenological ideas in sociology is distinct from other social science applications of social science applications.
Amedeo P. Giorgi is an American psychologist known for his contributions to phenomenology and humanistic psychology. He developed the Descriptive Phenomenological Method in Psychology.
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Leopold Blaustein (1905-1942/1944) was a Polish-Jewish philosopher, aesthetician, and psychologist. He was among the last generation of Kazimierz Twardowski's students and is also noted for his critique of Edmund Husserl's philosophy. His philosophical works are based on a combination of phenomenology and the analytical approach of the Lwów-Warsaw School of logic.
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