This PowerPoint presentation was developed for the first meeting of a seminar introducing psychology students to phenomenological psychological research, and assumes no prior knowledge of Husserl or continental philosophy. The descriptive phenomenological research method itself is introduced in depth over the course of the semester–this presentation is a “first taste” of Husserlian terms for students. Naturally, I added

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This is the first in a series of our posts on central ideas in phenomenology—please add your observations, additions, or questions in the comments section! I’ll begin with what Husserl calls “the natural attitude.” In everyday life we see the objects of our experience such as physical objects, other people, and even ideas, as simply

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In August 2011 Amedeo Giorgi was interviewed at Saybrook’s graduate conference on themes related to his life’s work in phenomenological psychological research. The panel was comprised of four former doctoral students of Giorgi’s at Saybrook: Drs. Lisa K. Mastain, Adrienne Murphy, and Sophia Reinders, and was moderated by Marc Applebaum. This transcript was edited by

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During the current global recession rising suicide rates have being witnessed across Europe; this is echoed by American data on increases in suicides and depression.  I invited philosopher Susi Ferrarello to reflect upon the rash of suicides amid Italy’s social crisis. –Marc Applebaum  Phenomenology and the Representation of Personal Identity  I am writing and working in a language

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Here is the presentation I gave in Montreal at the 31st International Human Science Research Conference. My aim was to encourage dialogue between interpretive and descriptive researchers, and clinicians whose work is informed by these perspectives. My premise about the complementarity of description and interpretation is based on Jitendra Nath Mohanty’s work on Husserl’s phenomenology.

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        Husserl’s phenomenology is epitomized in his call for a return “back to the things themselves,” “Zurück zu den Sachen selbst.” We view this “return” as a shared project. The return, in other words, is intersubjective and not solipsistic: we return to the things in order to dialogue together about them together

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As a phenomenological psychologist, I participate in the tradition of human science (Ger: Geisteswissenschaften). Since the foundation of this movement in the pioneering work of Giambattista Vico in the 18th century and Wilhelm Dilthey in the 19th, human science researchers have claimed that the study of human beings demands a radically different approach from that

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I teach and mentor graduate psychology students in Descriptive Phenomenological Psychology. Learning how to practice phenomenological research, students gain a lived-sense of the feature of consciousness that Edmund Husserl, drawing on the work of his teacher Franz Brentano, termed “intentionality”. Within Husserl’s phenomenology intentionality signifies (in part) that everything we can experience and know is

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“Husserlian phenomenology, in its search for meanings, is guided by respect for the given.”  –Jitendranath Mohanty Practicing phenomenological psychology, whether as a researcher or as a clinician, means learning a craft. Its raw materials are the descriptions given to us by interview participants—or, if we are psychotherapists, by our clients. Our “tools” derive from the

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Community: from the Latin communis, meaning common, public, general, shared by all or many. Phenomenological psychology as expressed by Maurice Merleau-Ponty is an exploration intended to illuminate the shared psychological meanings and structures that we live pre-reflectively in daily experience. He offers an elegant example at the beginning of the essay Science and the Experience

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