{"id":896,"date":"2013-02-06T14:45:49","date_gmt":"2013-02-06T21:45:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/phenomenologyblog.com\/?p=896"},"modified":"2013-06-24T16:14:14","modified_gmt":"2013-06-24T23:14:14","slug":"moustakas-phenomenology-husserlian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/phenomenologyblog.com\/?p=896","title":{"rendered":"Moustakas\u2019 Phenomenology: Husserlian?"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/fb:like><\/span>

\"Applebaum<\/a>Students new to phenomenological psychology often ask me what’s the difference between Clark Moustakas’ and Amedeo Giorgi’s research methods, since both approaches are called “phenomenological.” In fact there are major differences: in this post I’ll examine\u00a0Moustakas\u2019 Phenomenological Research Methods<\/em><\/a> (1994) from the perspective of Husserl and Merleau-Ponty\u2019s phenomenological philosophy. Naturally I’ll also be speaking as someone grounded in\u00a0Giorgi\u2019s descriptive phenomenological psychological method (1970, 2009).<\/p>\n

Moustakas and Giorgi seek to develop qualitative research approaches that do justice to the human subject. They each make the claim that their methods are based upon Husserl\u2019s phenomenological philosophy. Hence both offer adaptations\u00a0<\/em>of Husserl’s philosophy for psychology.\u00a0\u00a0Moustakas seeks to articulate what he terms a \u201ctranscendental phenomenological\u201d approach while Giorgi presents an empirical-psychological approach.<\/p>\n

Moustakas’ reading of Husserl<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Moustakas<\/a>I would argue that a close reading of Phenomenological Research Methods<\/em>\u00a0(1994) reveals that\u00a0Moustakas’ approach is not grounded in a good grasp of Husserl\u2019s work–something a phenomenological philosopher would quickly realize in reviewing the book. \u00a0As a result, Moustakas’ renderings of key phenomenological terms like \u00a0transcendental subjectivity<\/em>, the\u00a0reduction,<\/em>\u00a0and the\u00a0epoch\u00e9<\/em>\u00a0are inconsistent with Husserl’s work, as is his account of the critical distinction Husserl makes between the empirical and transcendental ego.<\/p>\n

I think Moustakas’ 1994 book is best regarded as representing his own approach to working with people, one based upon a humanistic therapeutic perspective, rather than one well-grounded in Husserl’s philosophy. Moustakas’ statement that his approach not only follows Husserl but is at the same time “heuristic” suggests that Husserl is more a source of inspiration for Moustakas than an actual epistemological foundation.<\/p>\n

Examples of misreadings include Moustakas’ equating of transcendental subjectivity with presuppositionlessness (p. 60) and his description of the epoch\u00e9 and reduction as nothing more than the setting aside of personal prejudices. Moustakas describes the phenomenologist\u2019s research attitude in the following way: \u201cpresumably this person has set aside biases and has come to a place of readiness to gaze on whatever appears and to remain with that phenomenon until it is understood, until a perceptual closure is realized\u201d (p. 73). Moustakas emphasizes that in phenomenological research \u201cI, the experiencing person, remain present. I, as a conscious person, am not set aside\u201d and \u201cwith an open, transcendental consciousness, I carry out the Epoch\u00e9\u201d (p. 87). There is enough similarity between this representation and Husserl’s words for a beginning student to assume Husserl’s phenomenology is being carefully read and applied. Yet, for one better-acquainted with Husserl’s writings, problems are immediately evident, as will be seen.<\/p>\n

The first difficulty is that Moustakas neglects Husserl’s critical distinctions between the various modes of subjectivity, as well as between various types of phenomenological reductions. And whereas these are philosophical distinctions, they are fundamental to understanding what\u2019s meant by a \u201cphenomenological attitude,\u201d and therefore central for adapting Husserl\u2019s philosophy for psychological research.<\/p>\n

Why does this matter?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The heart of the matter is this: for Husserl, the empirical and transcendental modes of subjectivity are embodied in the same locus: the individual human being. However, Husserl does not intend to suggest that the transcendental \u201cI\u201d is merely the familiar \u201cme\u201d of everyday life, but with a more humanistic, open-minded attitude, as Moustakas\u2019 formulation implies. This would mean that we can \u201cbecome\u201d transcendental subjects merely by reflecting and setting aside biases\u2014in other words Moustakas reduces Husserl\u2019s sense of the transcendental to something like \u201cbecoming a more enlightened person\u201d\u2014a plain misreading of Husserl. Though this appears to be a more easily understandable, humanistically-rendered version of phenomenology, it contains important flaws.<\/p>\n

First and foremost, for Moustakas transcendental subjectivity represents an achievement of the empirical ego. As a result, Moustakas collapses the transcendental into the empirical: he wants to say that the researcher remains present as the person that he or she is, and that he or she has<\/em> or adds<\/em> a \u201ctranscendental consciousness\u201d to their personal presence by setting aside biases. Hence he claims that once a researcher has \u201cachieved\u201d transcendental consciousness, then \u201cthe perceiving self is an authentic self\u2026the self is actually present\u201d (p. 61).<\/p>\n

Revealingly, he uses clinical examples to illustrate what he means by authentic presence, and it is tempting to conclude that Moustakas is seeking a clinical and humanistic appropriation of Husserl\u2019s philosophy in order to represent it as a means of self-actualization. But this raises the question: is the interpretation sustainable? In other words, is it compatible with Husserl\u2019s phenomenology? Or instead, it is more accurately viewed as a humanistic, clinical approach to research that isn’t–and perhaps need not be–based upon phenomenology?<\/p>\n

Transcendental subjectivity–Gupta and\u00a0Koh\u00e1k on Husserl<\/strong><\/p>\n

In Husserl\u2019s philosophy transcendental subjectivity is not an achievement of the empirical ego. For Husserl, transcendental subjectivity is a non-personal mode of consciousness\u2014not<\/em> an accomplishment of empirical (personal) subjectivity.<\/p>\n

On the contrary, the transcendental dimension of subjectivity is always already present, and only stands out when the empirical mode has been bracketed. For Husserl this bracketing is a methodical practice of suspending na\u00efve conceptions of both world and<\/em> self. Furthermore, for Husserl bracketing is not just one thing\u2014there are many different kinds of bracketing in Husserl, relative to the specific context in which the bracketing is being practiced: the bracketing which yields the transcendental is a specific application of a general practice. Philosopher Bina Gupta (1998) describes the specific practice of phenomenological bracketing that provides access to the transcendental dimension in the following way:<\/p>\n

If we succeed in bracketing all presuppositions of our natural conception of the world and of consciousness as a part of the world, then there would result an experience of our own consciousness that is no longer understood as a part of nature in the sense of belonging to this body, or person, or psychophysical organism. Husserl calls consciousness so experienced \u201cpurified consciousness\u201d or \u201ctranscendental consciousness.\u201d\u00a0 (p. 154)<\/p>\n

As Erazim Koh\u00e1k wrote, \u201cI can and indeed must bracket myself as what Husserl will later call a \u2018natural subject\u2019\u201d (1978, p.\u00a0 45). In fact <\/em>Husserl wrote once the epoch\u00e9 has been effected, \u201cI am not an <\/em>ego\u201d in the sense of an empirical I (1970, p. 184).\u00a0 The researcher loses the validity (facticity) of the natural attitude and must suspend the \u201cdistinction and ordering of the personal pronouns,\u201d since the facticity of I-the-man, you, we, etc., has all been rendered phenomenal, not real.<\/p>\n

Hence Husserl wrote: \u201cThe \u2018I\u2019 that I attain in the epoch\u00e9\u2026is actually called \u2018I\u2019 only by equivocation\u2014though it is an essential equivocation since, when I name it in reflection, I can say nothing other than: it is I who practice the epoch\u00e9, I who interrogate, as phenomenon, the world\u2026[as] ego-pole of this transcendental life\u201d (1970, p. 184).\u00a0 This bare ego-pole, Husserl writes, \u201cis not a piece of the world; and if he says \u2018I exist, ego cogito,<\/em>\u2019 that no longer signifies, \u2018I, this man, exists.\u2019 No longer am I the man who, in natural self-experience, finds himself as <\/em>a man\u201d (1973, p. 25). In other words the transformation of perspective that Husserl’s positing, and indeed claiming as a lived-experience, is more profound and has far deeper implications that those acknowledged by Moustakas.<\/p>\n

The Transcendental Onlooker, or Witness<\/strong><\/p>\n

Turning to Husserl\u2019s words we see that transcendental reflection is not a mere noting and setting aside of biases. Rather, it requires a mode or dimension of consciousness termed the \u201ctranscendental onlooker\u201d which is not equivalent to or subsumed by the empirical ego. As Eugen Fink (1970) wrote, Husserl\u2019s transcendental phenomenology describes three egos in the context of the reduction: \u201cthe ego which is preoccupied with the world,\u201d which he terms \u201cI, the human being,\u201d the transcendental ego, and the \u201conlooker\u201d who performs the epoch\u00e9 (p. 115-116). The ego preoccupied with the world is the empirical \u201cI,\u201d the self of the natural attitude. This \u201cI\u201d does not perform the epoch\u00e9 but rather is bracketed by<\/em> the epoch\u00e9. Summarizing the Husserlian position Gupta (1998) writes:<\/p>\n

Prior to transcendental reflection, a human ego\u2019s reflection upon himself is confined to human self-apperception, and it moves within the parameters of the natural attitude. Bracketing of the world implicitly implies that, for the first time, an attempt is made to establish a reflective ego that is outside human perception from the very beginning. (p. 155)<\/p>\n

So when Husserl emphasizes that I am still present, performing the epoch\u00e9, he does not mean I am present as an empirical self, the \u201cexperiencing person\u201d in Moustakas\u2019 words. Rather, I am present in the transcendental mode of subjectivity, which transcends personal modes. The empirical person is, of course, still present\u2014but one is witnessing from within a specific research attitude that places one\u2019s empirical self and life \u201cin brackets.\u201d<\/p>\n

From the perspective of my discipline, psychology, we can say that the epoch\u00e9 implies a very important and chosen psychological shift in one’s lived-perspective, a mode of being present that (whether or not one accepts its validity) has much more far-reaching consequences than merely becoming more open-minded.\u00a0\u00a0More than setting aside personal prejudices, Husserl\u2019s epoch\u00e9 requires a qualitatively more substantial bracketing, the setting aside of my habitual mode of being-an-I, that is, one\u2019s empirical ego, what Husserl terms \u201cI the man.\u201d<\/p>\n

The personal ego in transcendental phenomenology<\/strong><\/p>\n

We see that the empirical ego, \u201cI the man,\u201d is the point of departur<\/em>e for transcendental phenomenology, not the object of transcendental phenomenological praxis. Having enacted the reduction I discover that I am witnessing, \u201cI the man\u201d from a different standpoint. Phenomenology obliges us to take this shift in perspective seriously, to recognize that the I who can bracket his empirical self does so from a standpoint beyond the facticity of the empirical ego, <\/em>and it is this standpoint Husserl terms transcendental<\/em>.<\/p>\n

As I\u2019ve noted, Moustakas mistakenly equates transcendental subjectivity with the presuppositionless state aimed at through performance of the epoch\u00e9, defining the transcendental mode of consciousness as the \u201cperson who is open to see what is\u201d (p. 45).\u00a0 In fact this statement makes an ontological and psychological claim that\u2019s diametrically opposed to Husserl\u2019s philosophy, properly understood: the epoch\u00e9 requires setting aside the question of \u201cwhat is\u201d in order to explore how<\/em> presences are present. Moustakas\u2019 aim seems to be self-actualization, personal openness, and authenticity. Moustakas\u2019 discussion of phenomenology as a means of rendering the individual authentically present in their personal self-hood can only<\/em> refer to the psychological, not the transcendental mode.<\/p>\n

Of course phenomenology is not opposed to personal openness and authenticity! But once the transcendental reduction has been employed one is not in the \u201cpersonal\u201d realm in the sense normally meant by contemporary clinical psychology\u2014and in fact the magnitude of that shift is unaddressed by Moustakas. Nor, as Moustakas seems to imply, is transcendental subjectivity a possession or a tool of the empirical self; as Koh\u00e1k (1978) remarks in his commentary on Husserl\u2019s Ideas I<\/em>, \u201cI do not \u2018have a transcendental ego\u2019\u201d (p. 181).\u00a0 Rather, one recognizes the transcendental mode of subjectivity by means of a disciplined, systematic practice of bracketing.<\/p>\n

Husserl describes not one but multiple kinds of phenomenological reductions, each with a specific and nuanced meaning: for example, eidetic, phenomenological-psychological, intersubjective, and transcendental reductions. Moustakas neglects to acknowledge these differences and therefore blurs Husserl\u2019s distinctions between the various modes of consciousness. For example, according to Husserl in order to examine psychic subjectivity the researcher must perform a phenomenological-psychological<\/em> reduction, suspending the \u201ctaking-for-grantedness\u201d of psychological<\/em> phenomena. In the psychological reduction, Husserl wrote, \u201cpsychic subjectivity, the concretely grasped \u2018I\u2019 and \u2018we\u2019 of ordinary conversation, is experienced in its pure psychic owness\u201d (1927\/1973, p. 62). <\/strong>But for Husserl it is the \u201ctranscendental\u201d reduction that allows transcendental<\/em> subjectivity to stand out. By omitting the distinction between the psychological and transcendental reductions from his discussion and characterizing his work as transcendental, Moustakas not only misconstrues the transcendental dimension of Husserl\u2019s phenomenology, but mixes this misunderstanding with a more broadly humanistic clinical perspective.<\/p>\n

How is this handled in Giorgi’s research approach?<\/strong><\/p>\n

For Husserl the psychological reduction is the means of access to psychological structures of consciousness, whereas the transcendental reduction is the means of access to transcendental structures. In Giorgi\u2019s approach (2000) this issue is handled through a choice to seek psychological and not transcendental structures and hence to employ the psychological, not the transcendental reduction. What this means is that \u201conly the objects of the experience are reduced, not the acts\u201d (Giorgi, 2000, p. 65). Using the psychological reduction, the facticity of the empirical objects described by the participant is bracketed, but not the facticity of the psychological subject. That is to say, \u201cthe acts are considered to be correlated with an existing, world subjectivity\u201d (p. 65). The approach remains a psychological <\/em>one because the participant\u2019s empirical ego, the individual psyche, is regarded as a fact <\/em>rather than bracketed and regarded as an instance of transcendental subjectivity.<\/em><\/p>\n

Moustakas\u2019 driving interest appears to be psychotherapeutic work with individuals. But Husserl\u2019s investigations are philosophical rather than therapeutic-psychological. Husserl\u2019s work requires painstaking study and then careful modification in order to be applied in clinical or scientific contexts. For an example of a carefully thought-through clinical application, I would direct readers to Davidson<\/a> and Solomon\u2019s\u00a0 (2010) chapter, \u201cThe Value of Transcendental Phenomenology for Psychology: The Case of Psychosis\u201d in The Redirection of Psychology: Essays in Honor of Amedeo P. Giorgi<\/em>.<\/p>\n

References<\/strong><\/p>\n

Davidson, L. & Solomon, L. A. (2010). The value of transcendental phenomenology for psychology: The case of psychosis, in The Redirection of Psychology: Essays in Honor of Amedeo P. Giorgi, <\/em>T. F. Cloonan and C. Thiboutot (Eds.). 99-130. Circle Interdisciplinaire de Recherches Ph\u00e9nom\u00e9nologiques.<\/p>\n

Fink, E. (1970). The phenomenological philosophy of Edmund Husserl and contemporary criticism. In R. O. Elveton (Ed.) The phenomenology of Husserl: Selected critical readings. <\/em>pp. 73-147. Chicago: Quadrangle Books.<\/p>\n

Giorgi, A. (1970). Psychology as a human science: a phenomenologically based \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 approach.\u00a0 <\/em>New York: Harper & Row.<\/p>\n

Giorgi, A. (2009). The descriptive phenomenological method in psychology: A modified Husserlian approach. <\/em>Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press<\/p>\n

Gupta, B. (1998). The disinterested witness: A fragment of Advaita Vedanta phenomenology. <\/em>Evanston: Northwestern University Press.<\/p>\n

Moustakas, C. (1994). Phenomenological research methods. <\/em>Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.<\/p>\n

Husserl, E. (1970). The crisis of European sciences and transcendental phenomenology: An introduction to phenomenological philosophy<\/em>. (D. Carr, Trans.). Evanston: Northwestern University Press.<\/p>\n

Koh\u00e1k, E. (1978). Idea & experience: Edmund Husserl\u2019s project of phenomenology in ideas I. <\/em>Chicago: University of Chicago Press.<\/p>\n

tree photo credit: JourneyVerse<\/a> via photo pin<\/a> cc<\/a><\/p>\n

thanks to SAGE publications for permission to use an image of the book\u00a0Phenomenological Research Methods<\/em><\/p>\n<\/fb:like><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Students new to phenomenological psychology often ask me what’s the difference between Clark Moustakas’ and Amedeo Giorgi’s research methods, since both approaches are called “phenomenological.” In fact there are major differences: in this post I’ll examine\u00a0Moustakas\u2019 Phenomenological Research Methods (1994) from the perspective of Husserl and Merleau-Ponty\u2019s phenomenological philosophy. Naturally I’ll also be speaking as

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