I teach qualitative psychological research methods, with an emphasis on Husserlian phenomenology in dialogue with hermeneutic philosophy, particularly Ricoeur's work on narrative identity. Areas of interest include cultural psychology, consciousness studies, and organizational applications of phenomenological research.
The Routledge Handbook of Phenomenology of Mindfulness, 2024
This chapter models an approach to the phenomenological study of practitioners' experiences of mi... more This chapter models an approach to the phenomenological study of practitioners' experiences of mindfulness meditation. I draw primarily upon Husserl and Fink's phenomenological philosophy and the existential phenomenological method of qualitative research in psychology that originated at Duquesne University in the 1960's. The mindfulness practice examined is that of "meditative remembrance" or silent dhikr originating in classical Sufism, as practiced within a contemporary, traditionally authorized Sufi lineage. This study examines dhikr as a distinct form of mindfulness meditation, exemplifying how phenomenology can explore the meanings of meditators' narratives. In parallel I seek to convey the relevance of Husserl and Fink's exploration of self and world-constitution for the study of meditation: in particular, phenomenology's retracing of the generative flow of constituting consciousness which underlies-and is in a certain sense prior to-the personal ego.
This chapter seeks to contribute to answering the following question: How can a Husserlian phenom... more This chapter seeks to contribute to answering the following question: How can a Husserlian phenomenology, which at first might appear to focus exclusively on first-person meanings given to the consciousness of individual subjects, contribute to psychiatry’s understanding of and ability to work within the field of social interrelatedness – that which is lived by a we, not merely by an I? The approach I will take is to begin with first-person description in an interpretive dialogue with Husserl’s writings on egology and its relationship to the ‘you’ and thus the ‘we.’ In explicating the data so given, I will rely upon both Husserl’s static and genetic phenomenology. I will work with personal, experiential data because the data of phenomenological psychological research is intimate – and in seeking to bring Husserlian insights down into the soil and messiness of everyday psychological lived-experience, we work in a primary way with raw, first-person narratives. This chapter is not intended as a full-fledged psychological study – for example, eidetic findings are not sought – it is intended in part to exemplify how data opens to the phenomenological eye. In this case the narrative material is my own, but the data might just as easily come from an Other – in any case, our personal lives are the flesh without which the eidos would be disembodied, lacking life and warmth. For psychological researchers, the embodied lived-experiences given to us in the form of narratives are more than mere raw material for the scholarly ascription of essences – they are the human setting through which the eide are clarified in order to return to us, incarnate, pregnant with meaning for future living. This chapter aims to contribute to illuminating a Husserlian sense of the ‘we’ by exploring the layers of the ‘I’ and its origins and embeddedness, for Husserl, in I-You relations – that is, within the we-world of companionship (socius) and community.
Amedeo Giorgi has sought to offer an alternative to the scientism of psychology conceived as a po... more Amedeo Giorgi has sought to offer an alternative to the scientism of psychology conceived as a positive science, on the one hand, and the relativism implicit in many of the resarch approaches based on hermeneutic or postmodern philosophy on the other. Giorgi's body of work strives to articulte and defend a human scientific psychological research method that does justice to the human subject. Such an approach must demonstrate fidelity to psychological subjectivity as a lived phenomenon, and must be methodical, teachable, and yield intersubjectively verifiable knowledge. In other words it must yield scientific knowledge. The phenomenological tradition, broadly defined, includes an important tension between decriptive or Husserlian perspectives and the interpretive (hermeneutic) perspectives articulated by Heidegger, Gadamer, and Ricoeur. I argue that the meaning of the tension between Husserlian phenomenology and hermeneutics depends in large measure on whether one's motivating interest is primarily scientific or philosophical. I seek to describe Giorgi's contribution to psychology in terms of his insistence on the scientific status of phenomenological psychological research.
Mindfulness practices adapted from Theravada Buddhism have become widespread among many in Wester... more Mindfulness practices adapted from Theravada Buddhism have become widespread among many in Western societies who seek stress reduction and greater present-centeredness. Less well-known is the mindfulness practice in Sufism–the mystical path of Islam–known as meditative remembrance ( dhikr). While mindfulness is often understood as a self-help technique, the aim of Buddhist and Sufi meditative paths is not limited to enhancing the well-being of a self that is envisioned as strictly bounded. Rather, both meditative paths aim at unitive mystical experience, which is held to profoundly transform the meaning of the practitioner’s selfhood as such. Whereas Buddhism’s non-self-doctrine is generally understood to hold that personal selfhood is an illusion, this is not the case for Akbari Sufism. This inquiry takes a phenomenological approach, exploring the varied meanings of being or “having” a self in the context of mindfulness, and contrasting these with the humanistic psychology of Abrah...
Mindfulness practices adapted from Theravada Buddhism have become widespread among many in Wester... more Mindfulness practices adapted from Theravada Buddhism have become widespread among many in Western societies who seek stress reduction and greater present-centeredness. Less well-known is the mindfulness practice in Sufism-the mystical path of Islam-known as meditative remembrance (dhikr). While mindfulness is often understood as a self-help technique, the aim of Buddhist and Sufi meditative paths is not limited to enhancing the well-being of a self that is envisioned as strictly bounded. Rather, both meditative paths aim at unitive mystical experience, which is held to profoundly transform the meaning of the practitioner's selfhood as such. Whereas Buddhism's non-self-doctrine is generally understood to hold that personal selfhood is an illusion, this is not the case for Akbari Sufism. This inquiry takes a phenomenological approach, exploring the varied meanings of being or "having" a self in the context of mindfulness, and contrasting these with the humanistic psychology of Abraham Maslow. I contrast Theravada and Akbari Sufism's understandings of the aim of meditation and the meanings of selfhood and compare both traditions with Abraham Maslow's view of self-transcendence.
This chapter seeks to contribute to answering the following question: How can a Husserlian phenom... more This chapter seeks to contribute to answering the following question: How can a Husserlian phenomenology, which at first might appear to focus exclusively on first-person meanings given to the consciousness of individual subjects, contribute to psychiatry’s understanding of and ability to work within the field of social interrelatedness – that which is lived by a we, not merely by an I? The approach I will take is to begin with first-person description in an interpretive dialogue with Husserl’s writings on egology and its relationship to the ‘you’ and thus the ‘we.’ In explicating the data so given, I will rely upon both Husserl’s static and genetic phenomenology. I will work with personal, experiential data because the data of phenomenological psychological research is intimate – and in seeking to bring Husserlian insights down into the soil and messiness of everyday psychological lived-experience, we work in a primary way with raw, first-person narratives. This chapter is not intended as a full-fledged psychological study – for example, eidetic findings are not sought – it is intended in part to exemplify how data opens to the phenomenological eye. In this case the narrative material is my own, but the data might just as easily come from an Other – in any case, our personal lives are the flesh without which the eidos would be disembodied, lacking life and warmth. For psychological researchers, the embodied lived-experiences given to us in the form of narratives are more than mere raw material for the scholarly ascription of essences – they are the human setting through which the eide are clarified in order to return to us, incarnate, pregnant with meaning for future living. This chapter aims to contribute to illuminating a Husserlian sense of the ‘we’ by exploring the layers of the ‘I’ and its origins and embeddedness, for Husserl, in I-You relations – that is, within the we-world of companionship (socius) and community.
Amedeo Giorgi has sought to offer an alternative to the scientism of psychology conceived as posi... more Amedeo Giorgi has sought to offer an alternative to the scientism of psychology conceived as positive science, on the one hand, and the relativism implicit in many of the research approaches based upon hermeneutic or postmodernist philosophy, on the other hand. Giorgi’s body of work strives to articulate and defend a human scientific psychological research method that does justice to the human subject. Such an approach must demonstrate fidelity to psychological subjectivity as a lived phenomenon. Additionally, the approach must be methodical, teachable, and yield intersubjectively verifiable knowledge. In other words it must yield scientific knowledge. The phenomenological tradition, broadly defined, includes an important tension between descriptive or Husserlian perspectives and the interpretive (hermeneutic) perspectives articulated by Heidegger, Gadamer, and Ricoeur. I will argue that the meaning of the tension between Husserlian phenomenology and hermeneutics depends in large me...
Part of teaching the descriptive phenomenological psychological method is to assist students in g... more Part of teaching the descriptive phenomenological psychological method is to assist students in grasping their previously unrecognized assumptions regarding the meaning of “science.” This paper is intended to address a variety of assumptions that are encountered when introducing students to the descriptive phenomenological psychological method pioneered by Giorgi. These assumptions are: 1) That the meaning of “science” is exhausted by empirical science, and therefore qualitative research, even if termed “human science,” is more akin to literature or art than methodical, scientific inquiry; 2) That as a primarily aesthetic, poetic enterprise human scientific psychology need not attempt to achieve a degree of rigor and epistemological clarity analogous (while not equivalent) to that pursued by natural scientists; 3) That “objectivity” is a concept belonging to natural science, and therefore human science ought not to strive for objectivity because this would require “objectivizing” th...
The study seeks to answer the phenomenological question: What in essence is religious experience—... more The study seeks to answer the phenomenological question: What in essence is religious experience—specifically, the lived experience of “remembrance” (dhikr) in Sufi practice within the schools of Sufism shaped by the “Greatest Master,” Ibn al-'Arabi? The eidetic structure of remembrance is the awakening of the individuated human subject to recollecting the primordial ground of his or her identity as a dynamic instantiation of the Absolute. This is simultaneously experienced as the subject becoming the object of remembrance—that is, being remembered by the Absolute. This transforms the psychological ego's relationship to its own embodied, affective, and cognitive living, as the “center of gravity” of that ego shifts from an egocentric one—that is, an identification with the natural attitude standpoint of the personal ego—to progressively greater centeredness in the transcendental ego as a locus of ongoing world constitution and primordial self-presence, while nevertheless liv...
The study seeks to answer the phenomenological question: What in essence is religious experience-... more The study seeks to answer the phenomenological question: What in essence is religious experience-specifically, the lived experience of "remembrance" (dhikr) in Sufi practice within the schools of Sufism shaped by the "Greatest Master," Ibn al-'Arabi? The eidetic structure of remembrance is the awakening of the individuated human subject to recollecting the primordial ground of his or her identity as a dynamic instantia-tion of the Absolute. This is simultaneously experienced as the subject becoming the object of remembrance-that is, being remembered by the Absolute. This transforms the psychological ego's relationship to its own embodied, affective, and cognitive living, as the "center of gravity" of that ego shifts from an egocentric one-that is, an identification with the natural attitude standpoint of the personal ego-to progressively greater centeredness in the transcendental ego as a locus of ongoing world constitution and primordial self-presence, while nevertheless living as a unique individual.
According to Husserl scholars such as Mohanty (1989) description and interpretation coexist withi... more According to Husserl scholars such as Mohanty (1989) description and interpretation coexist within Husserl’s work and are envisioned as complementary rather than mutually exclusive approaches to inquiry. This essay argues that exploring the implications of this philosophical complementarity for psychological research would require distinguishing between the multiple meanings of “interpretation” and between differing modes of interpretation within qualitative data. Husserl’s model of passive and active intentionality and Ricoeur’s theory of narrativity are examined in order to explore their relevance for research. It is argued that interview data can demonstrate both actively and passively intended dimensions, and the psychological meaningfulness of this complexity points to the relevance of not only of Husserl’s static analysis but his genetic analysis as well. Likewise, it is argued that Ricoeur’s work on narrativity and narrative identity is invaluable in grasping ways in which narrative data is intrinsically self-interpretive, expresses self-identity, and is both situated within and responsive to the larger social horizon within which the interview is given.
This is my chapter in the festschrift volume celebrating Amedeo Giorgi's career in phenomenologic... more This is my chapter in the festschrift volume celebrating Amedeo Giorgi's career in phenomenological psychology. I pose the question, why should the scientific status of qualitative psychological researcher be a compelling issue for the next generation of scholars? I explore the criteria for science proposed by Giorgi, and discuss van Manen's hermeneutic method as an alternate, aestheticizing approach.
Over the course of the last fifty years Amedeo Giorgi has played a leading role in the movement t... more Over the course of the last fifty years Amedeo Giorgi has played a leading role in the movement to redirect psychological research from an imitation of the natural sciences toward a human science paradigm. He founded the first phenomenological psychological research program in the United Stated at Duquesne University, and continued his development of phenomenological psychology at Saybrook Graduate School. Giorgi’s descriptive phenomenological method is a rigorous approach to qualitative research that is founded in the philosophical phenomenology of Edmund Husserl and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. The descriptive phenomenological method makes use of the phenomenological epoché, reduction, imaginative variation, and search for essential psychological structures. Giorgi’s approach to conveying phenomenology embodies a wide-ranging and incisive critique of empirical psychology’s limitations, and seeks to establish scientific criteria appropriate for the study of lived, human subjectivity.
Within the Husserlian phenomenological philosophical tradition, description and interpretation co... more Within the Husserlian phenomenological philosophical tradition, description and interpretation coexist. Teaching the practice of phenomenological psychological research, however, requires careful articulation of the differences between a descriptive and an interpretive relationship to what is given in qualitative data. If as researchers we neglect the epistemological foundations of our work, or avoid working through difficult methodological issues, our work invites dismissal as inadequate science, undermining the effort to strongly establish psychology along qualitative lines. The first article in this two-part discussion is a Husserlian investigation of the meaning of “method” for psychology as a human science. This investigation is undertaken in the light of some researchers’ appropriations of Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics in the service of non-methodical praxes. The second article will address some implications of the attempt to structure qualitative psychological research along “Gadamerian” lines, taking seriously the references to Gadamer’s work made by researchers such as van Manen and Smith.
Husserl framed his phenomenological inquiries as a response to the historical moment in which he ... more Husserl framed his phenomenological inquiries as a response to the historical moment in which he found himself—a period of crisis in which, he argued, a pervasive attitude of skepticism threatened to undermine peoples’ trust in their capacity to discover meaning in individual and communal life through reasoned inquiry. Today, a range of naïve assumptions regarding the meaning of science present challenges to conveying a Husserlian approach to psychological research. This paper is intended to address a variety of assumptions which can be encountered when introducing students to Giorgi’s phenomenological psychological research method. These assumptions are: 1) That the meaning of “science” is exhausted by empirical science, and therefore qualitative research, even if termed “human science,” is more akin to literature or art than methodical, scientific inquiry; 2) That as a primarily aesthetic, poetic enterprise human scientific psychology need not attempt to achieve a degree of rigor and epistemological clarity analogous (while not equivalent) to that pursued by natural scientists; 3) That “objectivity” is a concept belonging to natural science, and therefore human science ought not to strive for objectivity because this would require “objectivizing” the human being; 4) That qualitative research must always adopt an “interpretive” approach, description being seen as merely a mode of interpretation. These assumptions are responded to from a perspective drawing primarily upon Husserl and Merleau-Ponty, but also upon Eagleton’s analysis of aestheticism.
The Routledge Handbook of Phenomenology of Mindfulness, 2024
This chapter models an approach to the phenomenological study of practitioners' experiences of mi... more This chapter models an approach to the phenomenological study of practitioners' experiences of mindfulness meditation. I draw primarily upon Husserl and Fink's phenomenological philosophy and the existential phenomenological method of qualitative research in psychology that originated at Duquesne University in the 1960's. The mindfulness practice examined is that of "meditative remembrance" or silent dhikr originating in classical Sufism, as practiced within a contemporary, traditionally authorized Sufi lineage. This study examines dhikr as a distinct form of mindfulness meditation, exemplifying how phenomenology can explore the meanings of meditators' narratives. In parallel I seek to convey the relevance of Husserl and Fink's exploration of self and world-constitution for the study of meditation: in particular, phenomenology's retracing of the generative flow of constituting consciousness which underlies-and is in a certain sense prior to-the personal ego.
This chapter seeks to contribute to answering the following question: How can a Husserlian phenom... more This chapter seeks to contribute to answering the following question: How can a Husserlian phenomenology, which at first might appear to focus exclusively on first-person meanings given to the consciousness of individual subjects, contribute to psychiatry’s understanding of and ability to work within the field of social interrelatedness – that which is lived by a we, not merely by an I? The approach I will take is to begin with first-person description in an interpretive dialogue with Husserl’s writings on egology and its relationship to the ‘you’ and thus the ‘we.’ In explicating the data so given, I will rely upon both Husserl’s static and genetic phenomenology. I will work with personal, experiential data because the data of phenomenological psychological research is intimate – and in seeking to bring Husserlian insights down into the soil and messiness of everyday psychological lived-experience, we work in a primary way with raw, first-person narratives. This chapter is not intended as a full-fledged psychological study – for example, eidetic findings are not sought – it is intended in part to exemplify how data opens to the phenomenological eye. In this case the narrative material is my own, but the data might just as easily come from an Other – in any case, our personal lives are the flesh without which the eidos would be disembodied, lacking life and warmth. For psychological researchers, the embodied lived-experiences given to us in the form of narratives are more than mere raw material for the scholarly ascription of essences – they are the human setting through which the eide are clarified in order to return to us, incarnate, pregnant with meaning for future living. This chapter aims to contribute to illuminating a Husserlian sense of the ‘we’ by exploring the layers of the ‘I’ and its origins and embeddedness, for Husserl, in I-You relations – that is, within the we-world of companionship (socius) and community.
Amedeo Giorgi has sought to offer an alternative to the scientism of psychology conceived as a po... more Amedeo Giorgi has sought to offer an alternative to the scientism of psychology conceived as a positive science, on the one hand, and the relativism implicit in many of the resarch approaches based on hermeneutic or postmodern philosophy on the other. Giorgi's body of work strives to articulte and defend a human scientific psychological research method that does justice to the human subject. Such an approach must demonstrate fidelity to psychological subjectivity as a lived phenomenon, and must be methodical, teachable, and yield intersubjectively verifiable knowledge. In other words it must yield scientific knowledge. The phenomenological tradition, broadly defined, includes an important tension between decriptive or Husserlian perspectives and the interpretive (hermeneutic) perspectives articulated by Heidegger, Gadamer, and Ricoeur. I argue that the meaning of the tension between Husserlian phenomenology and hermeneutics depends in large measure on whether one's motivating interest is primarily scientific or philosophical. I seek to describe Giorgi's contribution to psychology in terms of his insistence on the scientific status of phenomenological psychological research.
Mindfulness practices adapted from Theravada Buddhism have become widespread among many in Wester... more Mindfulness practices adapted from Theravada Buddhism have become widespread among many in Western societies who seek stress reduction and greater present-centeredness. Less well-known is the mindfulness practice in Sufism–the mystical path of Islam–known as meditative remembrance ( dhikr). While mindfulness is often understood as a self-help technique, the aim of Buddhist and Sufi meditative paths is not limited to enhancing the well-being of a self that is envisioned as strictly bounded. Rather, both meditative paths aim at unitive mystical experience, which is held to profoundly transform the meaning of the practitioner’s selfhood as such. Whereas Buddhism’s non-self-doctrine is generally understood to hold that personal selfhood is an illusion, this is not the case for Akbari Sufism. This inquiry takes a phenomenological approach, exploring the varied meanings of being or “having” a self in the context of mindfulness, and contrasting these with the humanistic psychology of Abrah...
Mindfulness practices adapted from Theravada Buddhism have become widespread among many in Wester... more Mindfulness practices adapted from Theravada Buddhism have become widespread among many in Western societies who seek stress reduction and greater present-centeredness. Less well-known is the mindfulness practice in Sufism-the mystical path of Islam-known as meditative remembrance (dhikr). While mindfulness is often understood as a self-help technique, the aim of Buddhist and Sufi meditative paths is not limited to enhancing the well-being of a self that is envisioned as strictly bounded. Rather, both meditative paths aim at unitive mystical experience, which is held to profoundly transform the meaning of the practitioner's selfhood as such. Whereas Buddhism's non-self-doctrine is generally understood to hold that personal selfhood is an illusion, this is not the case for Akbari Sufism. This inquiry takes a phenomenological approach, exploring the varied meanings of being or "having" a self in the context of mindfulness, and contrasting these with the humanistic psychology of Abraham Maslow. I contrast Theravada and Akbari Sufism's understandings of the aim of meditation and the meanings of selfhood and compare both traditions with Abraham Maslow's view of self-transcendence.
This chapter seeks to contribute to answering the following question: How can a Husserlian phenom... more This chapter seeks to contribute to answering the following question: How can a Husserlian phenomenology, which at first might appear to focus exclusively on first-person meanings given to the consciousness of individual subjects, contribute to psychiatry’s understanding of and ability to work within the field of social interrelatedness – that which is lived by a we, not merely by an I? The approach I will take is to begin with first-person description in an interpretive dialogue with Husserl’s writings on egology and its relationship to the ‘you’ and thus the ‘we.’ In explicating the data so given, I will rely upon both Husserl’s static and genetic phenomenology. I will work with personal, experiential data because the data of phenomenological psychological research is intimate – and in seeking to bring Husserlian insights down into the soil and messiness of everyday psychological lived-experience, we work in a primary way with raw, first-person narratives. This chapter is not intended as a full-fledged psychological study – for example, eidetic findings are not sought – it is intended in part to exemplify how data opens to the phenomenological eye. In this case the narrative material is my own, but the data might just as easily come from an Other – in any case, our personal lives are the flesh without which the eidos would be disembodied, lacking life and warmth. For psychological researchers, the embodied lived-experiences given to us in the form of narratives are more than mere raw material for the scholarly ascription of essences – they are the human setting through which the eide are clarified in order to return to us, incarnate, pregnant with meaning for future living. This chapter aims to contribute to illuminating a Husserlian sense of the ‘we’ by exploring the layers of the ‘I’ and its origins and embeddedness, for Husserl, in I-You relations – that is, within the we-world of companionship (socius) and community.
Amedeo Giorgi has sought to offer an alternative to the scientism of psychology conceived as posi... more Amedeo Giorgi has sought to offer an alternative to the scientism of psychology conceived as positive science, on the one hand, and the relativism implicit in many of the research approaches based upon hermeneutic or postmodernist philosophy, on the other hand. Giorgi’s body of work strives to articulate and defend a human scientific psychological research method that does justice to the human subject. Such an approach must demonstrate fidelity to psychological subjectivity as a lived phenomenon. Additionally, the approach must be methodical, teachable, and yield intersubjectively verifiable knowledge. In other words it must yield scientific knowledge. The phenomenological tradition, broadly defined, includes an important tension between descriptive or Husserlian perspectives and the interpretive (hermeneutic) perspectives articulated by Heidegger, Gadamer, and Ricoeur. I will argue that the meaning of the tension between Husserlian phenomenology and hermeneutics depends in large me...
Part of teaching the descriptive phenomenological psychological method is to assist students in g... more Part of teaching the descriptive phenomenological psychological method is to assist students in grasping their previously unrecognized assumptions regarding the meaning of “science.” This paper is intended to address a variety of assumptions that are encountered when introducing students to the descriptive phenomenological psychological method pioneered by Giorgi. These assumptions are: 1) That the meaning of “science” is exhausted by empirical science, and therefore qualitative research, even if termed “human science,” is more akin to literature or art than methodical, scientific inquiry; 2) That as a primarily aesthetic, poetic enterprise human scientific psychology need not attempt to achieve a degree of rigor and epistemological clarity analogous (while not equivalent) to that pursued by natural scientists; 3) That “objectivity” is a concept belonging to natural science, and therefore human science ought not to strive for objectivity because this would require “objectivizing” th...
The study seeks to answer the phenomenological question: What in essence is religious experience—... more The study seeks to answer the phenomenological question: What in essence is religious experience—specifically, the lived experience of “remembrance” (dhikr) in Sufi practice within the schools of Sufism shaped by the “Greatest Master,” Ibn al-'Arabi? The eidetic structure of remembrance is the awakening of the individuated human subject to recollecting the primordial ground of his or her identity as a dynamic instantiation of the Absolute. This is simultaneously experienced as the subject becoming the object of remembrance—that is, being remembered by the Absolute. This transforms the psychological ego's relationship to its own embodied, affective, and cognitive living, as the “center of gravity” of that ego shifts from an egocentric one—that is, an identification with the natural attitude standpoint of the personal ego—to progressively greater centeredness in the transcendental ego as a locus of ongoing world constitution and primordial self-presence, while nevertheless liv...
The study seeks to answer the phenomenological question: What in essence is religious experience-... more The study seeks to answer the phenomenological question: What in essence is religious experience-specifically, the lived experience of "remembrance" (dhikr) in Sufi practice within the schools of Sufism shaped by the "Greatest Master," Ibn al-'Arabi? The eidetic structure of remembrance is the awakening of the individuated human subject to recollecting the primordial ground of his or her identity as a dynamic instantia-tion of the Absolute. This is simultaneously experienced as the subject becoming the object of remembrance-that is, being remembered by the Absolute. This transforms the psychological ego's relationship to its own embodied, affective, and cognitive living, as the "center of gravity" of that ego shifts from an egocentric one-that is, an identification with the natural attitude standpoint of the personal ego-to progressively greater centeredness in the transcendental ego as a locus of ongoing world constitution and primordial self-presence, while nevertheless living as a unique individual.
According to Husserl scholars such as Mohanty (1989) description and interpretation coexist withi... more According to Husserl scholars such as Mohanty (1989) description and interpretation coexist within Husserl’s work and are envisioned as complementary rather than mutually exclusive approaches to inquiry. This essay argues that exploring the implications of this philosophical complementarity for psychological research would require distinguishing between the multiple meanings of “interpretation” and between differing modes of interpretation within qualitative data. Husserl’s model of passive and active intentionality and Ricoeur’s theory of narrativity are examined in order to explore their relevance for research. It is argued that interview data can demonstrate both actively and passively intended dimensions, and the psychological meaningfulness of this complexity points to the relevance of not only of Husserl’s static analysis but his genetic analysis as well. Likewise, it is argued that Ricoeur’s work on narrativity and narrative identity is invaluable in grasping ways in which narrative data is intrinsically self-interpretive, expresses self-identity, and is both situated within and responsive to the larger social horizon within which the interview is given.
This is my chapter in the festschrift volume celebrating Amedeo Giorgi's career in phenomenologic... more This is my chapter in the festschrift volume celebrating Amedeo Giorgi's career in phenomenological psychology. I pose the question, why should the scientific status of qualitative psychological researcher be a compelling issue for the next generation of scholars? I explore the criteria for science proposed by Giorgi, and discuss van Manen's hermeneutic method as an alternate, aestheticizing approach.
Over the course of the last fifty years Amedeo Giorgi has played a leading role in the movement t... more Over the course of the last fifty years Amedeo Giorgi has played a leading role in the movement to redirect psychological research from an imitation of the natural sciences toward a human science paradigm. He founded the first phenomenological psychological research program in the United Stated at Duquesne University, and continued his development of phenomenological psychology at Saybrook Graduate School. Giorgi’s descriptive phenomenological method is a rigorous approach to qualitative research that is founded in the philosophical phenomenology of Edmund Husserl and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. The descriptive phenomenological method makes use of the phenomenological epoché, reduction, imaginative variation, and search for essential psychological structures. Giorgi’s approach to conveying phenomenology embodies a wide-ranging and incisive critique of empirical psychology’s limitations, and seeks to establish scientific criteria appropriate for the study of lived, human subjectivity.
Within the Husserlian phenomenological philosophical tradition, description and interpretation co... more Within the Husserlian phenomenological philosophical tradition, description and interpretation coexist. Teaching the practice of phenomenological psychological research, however, requires careful articulation of the differences between a descriptive and an interpretive relationship to what is given in qualitative data. If as researchers we neglect the epistemological foundations of our work, or avoid working through difficult methodological issues, our work invites dismissal as inadequate science, undermining the effort to strongly establish psychology along qualitative lines. The first article in this two-part discussion is a Husserlian investigation of the meaning of “method” for psychology as a human science. This investigation is undertaken in the light of some researchers’ appropriations of Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics in the service of non-methodical praxes. The second article will address some implications of the attempt to structure qualitative psychological research along “Gadamerian” lines, taking seriously the references to Gadamer’s work made by researchers such as van Manen and Smith.
Husserl framed his phenomenological inquiries as a response to the historical moment in which he ... more Husserl framed his phenomenological inquiries as a response to the historical moment in which he found himself—a period of crisis in which, he argued, a pervasive attitude of skepticism threatened to undermine peoples’ trust in their capacity to discover meaning in individual and communal life through reasoned inquiry. Today, a range of naïve assumptions regarding the meaning of science present challenges to conveying a Husserlian approach to psychological research. This paper is intended to address a variety of assumptions which can be encountered when introducing students to Giorgi’s phenomenological psychological research method. These assumptions are: 1) That the meaning of “science” is exhausted by empirical science, and therefore qualitative research, even if termed “human science,” is more akin to literature or art than methodical, scientific inquiry; 2) That as a primarily aesthetic, poetic enterprise human scientific psychology need not attempt to achieve a degree of rigor and epistemological clarity analogous (while not equivalent) to that pursued by natural scientists; 3) That “objectivity” is a concept belonging to natural science, and therefore human science ought not to strive for objectivity because this would require “objectivizing” the human being; 4) That qualitative research must always adopt an “interpretive” approach, description being seen as merely a mode of interpretation. These assumptions are responded to from a perspective drawing primarily upon Husserl and Merleau-Ponty, but also upon Eagleton’s analysis of aestheticism.
Husserl framed his phenomenological inquiries as a response to the historical moment in which he ... more Husserl framed his phenomenological inquiries as a response to the historical moment in which he found himself—a period of crisis in which, he argued, a pervasive attitude of skepticism threatened to undermine peoples’ trust in their capacity to discover meaning in individual and communal life through reasoned inquiry. Today, a range of naïve assumptions regarding the meaning of science present challenges to conveying a Husserlian approach to psychological research. This paper is intended to address a variety of assumptions which can be encountered when introducing students to Giorgi’s phenomenological psychological research method. These assumptions are: 1) That the meaning of “science” is exhausted by empirical science, and therefore qualitative research, even if termed “human science,” is more akin to literature or art than methodical, scientific inquiry; 2) That as a primarily aesthetic, poetic enterprise human scientific psychology need not attempt to achieve a degree of rigor and epistemological clarity analogous (while not equivalent) to that pursued by natural scientists; 3) That “objectivity” is a concept belonging to natural science, and therefore human science ought not to strive for objectivity because this would require “objectivizing” the human being; 4) That qualitative research must always adopt an “interpretive” approach, description being seen as merely a mode of interpretation. These assumptions are responded to from a perspective drawing primarily upon Husserl and Merleau-Ponty, but also upon Eagleton’s analysis of aestheticism.
My objective in this paper is to reflect critically on Max van Manen’s Researching Lived Experien... more My objective in this paper is to reflect critically on Max van Manen’s Researching Lived Experience (1990) and Clark Moustakas’ Phenomenological Research Methods (1994) from the standpoint of Amedeo Giorgi’s phenomenological psychological method. Moustakas grasp of the central tenets of Husserl’s phenomenology is interrogated, including his representation of what the psychological and transcendental realms signify for Husserl’s phenomenology. Van Manen’s presentation is questioned as it appears to leave unclarified important differences between hermeneutic and descriptive phenomenology with the result being a variety of epistemological inconsistencies in the research approach as presented.
This study investigated the attitude toward connection with the Prophet Muhammad among Muslim lea... more This study investigated the attitude toward connection with the Prophet Muhammad among Muslim leaders. Three participants described their connection with the Prophet in the context of their leadership roles as traditionally authorized Sufi guides. The data were analyzed using the phenomenological psychological method of Amedeo Giorgi. The results indicated a common psychological structure comprised of eight constituents: (a) motivation by a divinely inspired, gnostically informed, other-directed interest, (b) linkage of one’s personal qualifications to lead with one’s understanding of the Prophet’s role as leader, (c) struggle over time to adequately fulfill the leadership role, (d) perceiving one’s inadequacies in doing so as the result of an inflated sense of one’s autonomy and agency, (e) shifts to a more modest self-understanding, (f) such shifts eventuating in a less ego-burdened and more integrated mode of leading, (g) this change being validated by the Prophet’s example and presence, and (h) the view that disposability to this process was predicated upon altered states of consciousness experienced in spiritual practice. The findings contributed to a psychological understanding of both the meanings of the Prophet for Muslim leaders and of an Islamic envisioning of leadership as a relationship of simultaneous servant-hood to the Divine and to a community of others.
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The data were analyzed using the phenomenological psychological method of Amedeo Giorgi. The results indicated a common psychological structure comprised of eight constituents: (a) motivation by a divinely inspired, gnostically informed, other-directed interest, (b) linkage of one’s personal qualifications to lead with one’s understanding of the Prophet’s role as leader, (c) struggle over time to adequately fulfill the leadership role, (d) perceiving one’s inadequacies in doing so as the result of an inflated sense of one’s autonomy and agency, (e) shifts to a more modest self-understanding, (f) such shifts eventuating in a less ego-burdened and more integrated mode of leading, (g) this change being validated by the Prophet’s example and presence, and (h) the view that disposability to this process was predicated upon altered states of consciousness experienced in spiritual practice. The findings contributed to a psychological understanding of both the meanings of the Prophet for Muslim leaders and of an Islamic envisioning of leadership as a relationship of simultaneous servant-hood to the Divine and to a community of others.