In the introduction to hisAllgemeine Psychopathologie, published in 1913, Karl Jaspers stated that psychology has little value for the psychopathologist because it focuses on all kinds of interesting matters, but not on normal psychic life. In this article we argue that today, in the year 2013, little has changed in this respect. During the past century, normal psychic life has rarely been a topic of research. Clinical psychology has focused primarily on studying three other topics: the mind-body problem, the methodological (...) debate and the psychotherapy debate. Due to this focus, our knowledge in the above-mentioned areas has increased significantly, but the issue raised by Karl Jaspers about normal psychic life has still not been addressed. In this article, we propose that normal psychic life should indeed become the new focus of clinical psychology. We illustrate the importance of this new focus with three examples from clinical psychology: the Global Assessment of Functioning scale, empathy and the emergence of positive psychology during the past decade. We then explore the efficacy of phenomenology for studying this normal psychic life, thereby discovering a useful epistemological basis in Husserl’s systematic phenomenology. Various phenomenological research methods are evaluated in the light of this systematic phenomenology. (shrink)

This essay is a response to proposals to integrate patient-subjective or idiographic data into future versions of nosologies such as the DSM and the ICD. It argues that a nosology is not a suitable vehicle for disseminating psychopathological-phenomenological research results throughout the field. Drawing on the work of Ludwig Binswanger, it examines, on the basis of four postulates, how he applies the Husserlian concept of intentionality in psychiatry and thus arrives at a psychopathological phenomenology. For each individual postulate, we then (...) look in depth at the implications for the current debate around DSM. The conclusion we come to is that, both because of the objective of phenomenological research and because of the complexity of the kind of information involved in findings based on that research, it is impossible to integrate these findings into a nosology without deviating from either them or the nosology itself. (shrink)

A text written by a student in a Swedish comprehensive school, during a Biology test, is analyzed using a method based on Husserl's transcendental phenomenology. The method is presented in the article. The analysis results in an explicitation of horizons, which enables an access to the lifeworld opened by the text. In this case, the interplay of school Biology and "everyday life" is visible. The meaning constituted in the encounter with school Biology seems to lack natural science aspects. The visible (...) aspects pertain to the bodily situatedness of a student in school and to the character of school knowledge. The world as constituted by school Biology seems to be a place of disembedded, general people where school is a place of non-learning. (shrink)

Six individuals with experience of psychosis were interviewed about their psychotic experiences. The material was analyzed using the empirical phenomenological psychological method. The results consist of a whole meaning structure, a gestalt, entailing the following characteristics: The feeling of estrangement in relationship to the world; the dissolution of time; the loss of intuitive social knowledge; the alienation of oneself, and finally; the loss of intentionality/loss of agency. In brief, the results show that an altered perception of the self and the (...) world was an essential part of the psychotic experience where subjects described themselves as changed; something was sensed as being wrong as psychosis is perceptible but hard to communicate. The normal life-world experience was altered and reality seemed strange. Time perception seemed to be changed as temporality appeared dissolved and the experience of time was focused on the current moment excluding the future. The subjects described loss of intentionality, they were no longer agents in their actions but partly steered by others and they could feel as if their experiences were not theirs. The patients also describe problems regarding their ability to socialize and communicate with others. They seem to lose their intuitive social capacity and were prone to suspiciousness. (shrink)

This article is a continuation of the challenge begun by early phenomenologists of the reductionistic scientism of Natural Science Psychology. Inspired by five distinctions of Emmanuel Levinas, it seeks to bring a deeper interruption of the seemingly unalterable force of mainstream psychology to model itself after the hard sciences. Levinas distinguishes the experience of totality from infinity, need from desire, freedom as self-initiated and self-directed from freedom as invested by and for the Other, active agency from radical passivity, and the (...) said from saying. Five commonly accepted characteristics of science, objective, empirical, causal, reducible, and value neutral, are used to compare three approaches to psychology: Natural Science, Phenomenology , and Psychology for the Other. Using the definition of science, “knowing the phenomenon as it shows itself,” this paper argue that Natural Science Psychology is the least “scientific,” Phenomenological Psychology is more scientific, and Psychology for the Other is the most “scientific” with its ethical command to allow the Other to reveal her/himself. This extravagant but compelling claim is illustrated with descriptions of research and therapy. (shrink)

This study investigated the experiences gained from a 20-minute shamanic-like drumming session. Twenty-two persons participated and made written descriptions afterwards about their experiences. A phenomenological analysis was applied which generated 31 categories, that were organized into six themes: 1) The undertaking of the drumming journey, 2) Perceptual phenomena: visual, auditory and somatic, 3) Encounters, 4) Active vs. Passive role, 5) Inner wisdom and guidance, and 6) Reflections on the drumming journey. A multitude of detailed experiences were described such as visual (...) imagery, hearing sounds, encountering animals, as well as gaining insights. Participants generally appreciated the drumming session and few negative effects were noted. The conclusion made is that shamanic-like drumming can be a valuable supplement to other psychotherapeutic techniques. (shrink)

This phenomenological-psychological study aims at discovering the essential constituents involved in congenitally blind people's spatial experiences. Nine congenitally blind persons took part in this study. The data were made up of half structured (thorough) interviews. The analysis of the data yielded the following three comprehension forms of spatiality; (i) Comprehension in terms of image-experience; (ii) Comprehension in terms of notions; (iii) Comprehension in terms of knowledge.Comprehension in terms of image experience is the form which is most concretely and clearly experienced. (...) It is important to notice, that this kind of image experience is not synonymous with a visually based image experience — a fact which is discussed in the article. The following three features, which are to be understood as a description of what characterizes congenitally blind people's image experience, are presented; (i) Experience of the whole; (ii) Synthesizing/Harmonizing; (iii) Spontanous presentation of the whole. Furthermore, comprehension in terms of image experience is made up of the following four constituents, which aim at specifying the conditions for the possibility of having an image experience; (i) The image experience is based on tactile experiences; (ii) The inner horizon of the object has to be limited in order for the tactile sense to constitute an image experience; (iii) The person must have reached a certain degree of familiarity with the object; (iv) The importance of the emotional investment in the object. (shrink)

This study aims at discovering the essential constituents involved in the experiences of guilt and shame. Guilt concerns a subject’s action or omission of action and has a clear temporal unfolding entailing a moment in which the subject lives in a care-free way. Afterwards, this moment undergoes a reconstruction, in the moment of guilt, which constitutes the moment of negligence. The reconstruction is a comprehensive transformation of one’s attitude with respect to one’s ego; one’s action; the object of guilt and (...) the temporal-existential experience. The main constituents concerning shame are its anchorage in the situation to which it refers; its public side involving the experience of being perceptually objectified; the exclusion of social community; the bodily experience; the revelation of an undesired self; and the genesis of shame in terms of a history of frozen now-ness. The article ends with a comparison between guilt and shame. (shrink)

Modern health care is inextricably bound up with technologically mediated knowledge and practice. It is vital to investigate its use and role in different clinical contexts characterized, on one hand, by face to face practitioner and patient encounters (where technology may be conceptualised as hindering therapeutic relations) and, on the other hand, by practitioners’ encounter with bodily parts in laboratories (where conceiving of patients may be thought of as confounding objectivity). To contribute to the latter, I offer an ethnographic analysis (...) of cytology laboratory practitioners’ work and microscopic assessment of normal and abnormal cells. First, I discuss the biomedical literature on cytology and the quest for a non-variational bodiless vision. Second, I discuss the concept of multistability, first developed by philosopher of technology Don Ihde, here used to analyse technologically mediated perception and how practitioners interact with technology. Combined with long term ethnographic fieldwork it enables access to, and analysis and articulation of the implicit multifaceted practitioner–technology–cell interface embedded in clinical practice and diagnostic processes. I will also address some implications of my analysis for clinical cytology. (shrink)

This methodological article explores issues related to having the ontological ground for phenomenological empirical research present throughout the research process. We discuss how ontology needs to be taken into consideration regarding the phenomena to be studied and how ontological aspects of phenomena need to be highlighted during various data collection and analysis procedures. Here, we discuss how philosophical works can be used in the context of specific research projects. In illustrating our statements, we present four empirical examples connected to the (...) themes of life changes and learning processes with the purpose of exemplifying and discussing how general lifeworld ontology can be integrated as an active resource in empirical phenomenological research. (shrink)

Though there are few more pervasive features of the social world than the ebb and flow of individual participation, the literature only provides hints as to its phenomenology. The phenomenological investigation of social participation presented in this paper indicates that it essentially entails: 1. Attunement to the others' "stock of knowledge at hand" . 2. Emotional and motivational attunement to the group's concerns. 3. Taking for granted that one can contribute appropriately. 4. Being able to assume that one's identity is (...) not under threat. Though the implications can only be touched on in this paper, the phenomenological clarification of participation is a valuable resource, grounding many lines of research of contemporary significance-for instance, in education and the other "person professions" and in social policy and political science-and suggesting fruitful new perspectives. (shrink)

The carer of the person with dementia is enjoined to maintain respect, and to reinforce this a bill of rights has been established . Of course, talk of rights does not guarantee respectful behaviour. In this paper it is argued that the discovery that the sufferer continues to be a person, with a unique lifeworld, can assist the carer to conform willingly to the demand that they act respectfully.The current research project makes central the idiographic description of the individual case.

Historically, the suspension of presuppositions arose as part of the philosophical procedure of the transcendental reduction which, Husserl taught, led to the distinct realm of phenomenological research: pure consciousness. With such an origin, it may seem surprising that bracketing remains a methodological concept of modern phenomenological psychology, in which the focus is on the life-world. Such a focus of investigation is, on the face of it, incompatible with transcendental idealism. The gap was bridged largely by Merleau-Ponty, who found it possible (...) to interpret Husserl's later work in an existentialist way, and thus enabled the process of bracketing to refer, not to a turning away from the world and a concentration on detached consciousness, but to the resolve to set aside theories, research presuppositions, ready-made interpretations, etc., in order to reveal engaged, lived experience. This paper outlines the history of the suspension of presuppositions and discusses the scope and limitations of bracketing in its new sense within existential phenomenology. The emphasis is on research practice and on the phenomenological quest for entry into the life-world of the research participant. It is argued that the bracketing of presuppositions throughout the process of research should be a cardinal feature of phenomenological psychology. Of equal importance is the investigator's sensitive awareness that the investigation of the life-world and the phenomena which appear within it is a thoroughly interpersonal process, necessarily entailing the taken-for-granted assumptions implicit in all social interaction. These presuppositions are not open to bracketing. (shrink)

Researching two different work settings, police work and hospice care, the authors experienced a strange sense of discomfort in their bodies during their fieldwork when investigating professional training and work situations, especially in encounters with citizens and patients. In some of those situations, the authors withdrew physically or mentally from the situation without wanting to do so, feeling emotionally affected by the uncertainty of the situations, not fully grasping the meaning of what was going on. In a strange way they (...) felt awkwardly detached from their research activities and their bodily involvement in their fieldwork. In this article, the authors seek to explore the meaning of awkwardness embedded in some kinds of ethical dilemma. Through a phenomenological analysis based on the concept of intentionality of the body and a model of inner dilemmas, they reach a renewed understanding on the phenomenon of awkwardness as a natural way for researchers to respond to challenging fieldwork situations. Finally, they propose and unfold mutual interviewing and cooperative analysis as methods of investigating researcher's subjectivity in facing such situations. (shrink)