Phenomenology

Phenomenology is an approach to psychological subject matter that has its roots in the philosophical work of Edmund Husserl. Early phenomenologists such as Husserl, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty conducted their own psychological investigations in the early 20th century. The work of these phenomenologists later influenced at least two main fields of contemporary psychology: the [[phenomenological psychological approach of the "Duquesne School", Amedeo Giorgi, Jonathan Smith, Frederick Wertz, Steinar Kvale, Köhler and others (Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis); and the experimental approaches associated with Varela, Gallagher, Thompson, and others (Embodied cognition). Phenomenological psychologists have also figured prominently in the history of the humanistic psychology movement.

The experiencing subject can be considered to be the person or self, for purposes of convenience. In phenomenological philosophy (and particularly in the work of Husserl, Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty) "experience" is a considerably more complex concept than it is usually taken to be in everyday use. Instead, experience (or being, or existence itself) is an "in-relation-to" phenomenon, and it is defined by qualities of directedness, embodiment and worldliness which are evoked by the term "Being-in-the-World".

The quality or nature of a given experience is often referred to by the term qualia, whose archetypical exemplar is "redness". For example, we might ask, "Is my experience of redness the same as yours?" While it is difficult to answer such a question in any concrete way, the concept of intersubjectivity is often used as a mechanism for understanding how it is that humans are able to empathise with one another's experiences, and indeed to engage in meaningful communication about them. The phenomenological formulation of Being-in-the-World, where person and world are mutually constitutive, is central here.

Difficulties in considering subjective phenomena

The philosophical psychology prevalent before the end of the nineteenth century relied heavily on introspection. The speculations concerning the mind based on those observations were criticized by the pioneering advocates of a more scientific approach to psychology, such as William James and the behaviorists Edward Thorndike, Clark Hull, John B. Watson, and B. F. Skinner. However, not everyone agrees that introspection is intrinsically problematic, such as Francisco Varela, who has trained experimental participants in the structured "introspection" of phenomenological reduction.

Philosophers have long confronted the problem of "qualia". Few philosophers believe that it is possible to be sure that one person's experience of the "redness" of an object is the same as another person's, even if both persons had effectively identical genetic and experiential histories. In principle, the same difficulty arises in feelings (the subjective experience of emotion), in the experience of effort, and especially in the "meaning" of concepts. As a result, many qualitative psychologists have claimed phenomenological inquiry to be essentially a matter of "meaning-making" and thus a question to be addressed by interpretive approaches.

Psychotherapy and the phenomenology of emotion

Carl Rogers' person-centered psychotherapy theory is based directly on the "phenomenal field" personality theory of Combs and Snygg (1949). That theory in turn was grounded in phenomenological thinking. Rogers attempts to put a therapist in closer contact with a person by listening to the person's report of their recent subjective experiences, especially emotions of which the person is not fully aware. For example, in relationships the problem at hand is often not based around what actually happened, but instead is based around the perceptions and feelings of each individual in the relationship. The phenomenal field focuses on "how one feels right now".

Dennett's heterophenomenology

Daniel Dennett has developed a phenomenological philosophical approach which he calls heterophenomenology. It provides a philosophical basis for a scientific psychology of subjective experience.

Other approaches

The psychotherapeutic and scientific approaches to the phenomenology of subjective conscious experience do not seem to exhaust the possibilities. In some realms of psychotherapy and self-help, different phenomenological approaches continue.

In the early 1990s, the work of Francisco Varela and collaborators developed complementary research programs in cognitive science known as embodied cognitive science, and in cognitive neuroscience or clinical neuropsychology as neurophenomenology.