Showing papers in "Journal of Phenomenological Psychology in 1997"

The Theory, Practice, and Evaluation of the Phenomenological Method as a Qualitative Research Procedure

Abstract: This article points out the criteria necessary in order for a qualitative scientific method to qualify itself as phenomenological in a descriptive Husserlian sense. One would have to employ (1) description (2) within the attitude of the phenomenological reduction, and (3) seek the most invariant meanings for a context. The results of this analysis are used to critique an article by Klein and Westcott (1994), that presents a typology of the development of the phenomenological psychological method.

The "Human" Voices in Hallucinations

Abstract: Schizophrenic hallucinations can be understood only as a function of the totality of the schizophrenic's personality, that is, only in the context of the person's entire being-in-the-world. For essential reasons, there is a predominance of auditory hallucinations in schizophrenia, and these typically take the form of human voices. This paper argues that the essential reasons here are human reasons. That is, hallucinations arise primarily on account of a human or personal deficit. We argue that the deficit in question is, most fundamentally, the radical one of a disturbed relation between the subject and the world in general. The schizophrenic slackens the normal "intentional arc" (Merleau-Ponty) that casts the subject out into a world. Our thesis is that this slackening has interpersonal roots and that hallucination can be understood as a desperate attempt to compensate for the impoverishment of being-in-the-world and, specifically, for the deficiency in human relations; hence, the "human" voices.

The Meaning of Participation

Abstract: 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" (though a non-cognitive understanding of this Schutzian term is necessary). 2. Emotional and motivational attunement to the group's concerns. 3. Taking for granted (and implicitly assuming the others take it 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.

The False Dasein: From Heidegger To Sartre and Psychoanalysis1

Abstract: The analysis of Dasein's struggle for authenticity will be the main focus of this article. By virtue of Dasein's ontological predispositions, selfhood is subjected to inauthentic existential modalities already constitutive of its Being. In the case of the false Dasein, fallenness is exacerbated in that Dasein constricts its comportment primarily to the modes of the inauthentic, thereby abdicating its potentiality-for-Being. The false Dasein results from ontical encounters within pre-existing deficient ontological conditions of Being-in-the-world that are thrust upon selfhood as its facticity. These deficient ontological structures predispose Dasein to develop intrapsychic psychological deficits that further contribute to Dasein's false existence. Through the medium of Heidegger's existential ontology, Sartrean bad faith, and psychoanalysis, I will demonstrate that the throes of selfhood encompass a dialectical course meandering through experiential modes of authenticity and falsehood, in which this very process itself is an authentic enterprise, that is, it is the necessary constitutional structure of Dasein itself as Being-toward-becoming its possibilities.

The Hallucinatory Epoché1

Abstract: This paper focuses on the phenomenological significance of schizophrenics' auditory hallucinations and begins with the face-to-face relationship in order to describe the schizophrenic experience. Following European psychiatrists like Blackenburg and Tatossian, the authors compare the bracketing of reality in the Husserlian phenomenological reduction with that of the hallucinatory experience. "Hallucinatory epoche" is used to refer to the schizophrenic way to experiencing auditory hallucinations. The problem of intentionality is then discussed, in addition to that of dialogue, internal time, living body, and intersubjectivity. In this way, "voices" appear as a modification of the own inner voice of the hallucinating person. The "other, " at the origin of the "voices, " is described in terms of transparence, the quality of being univocal, and the quality of being a priori in the perfect tense. This other is not an alter ego, "it" is an alius. Descriptions of hallucinatory voices at several levels of experience, that is, at the transcendental and empirical levels along with descriptions at the level of the life-world, may be at the basis of certain modern empirical theories of "voices. " Results obtained from the European phenomenological point of view and Hoffman's findings in the cognitive field are then compared. The authors finally discuss a case of "speech therapy" (based on Hoffman's work) and argue that a possible avenue for phenomenological research on schizophrenia is to explore narrativity on the basis of single case studies. One of the goals of phenomenological psychiatry is to assist empirical research in finding new relationships between the stories told by the hallucinator-relationships that are presupposed in clinical experience.

Concerning the Festive and the Mundane

Abstract: The festive and the quotidian offer two fundamentally different perspectives on the human world. The quotidian attitude opens to us a workaday world structured by mental and physical barriers which require to be leveled or removed. The festive attitude gives access to a world of the threshold in which we play the role of host and guest and in which it is possible for things and living beings to make their personal appearance. Modernity can be understood as an era in which a quotidian, work-oriented attitude was made to dominate and reconfigure all areas of human existence and in which the festive was progressively removed from public, and finally from private life. The renewal of psychology requires a re-understanding and a re-integration of the festive dimension in our lives.

Toward a Phenomenological Consumer Psychology: an Empirical Investigation of Buying

Abstract: An empirical investigation of "buying" is presented in order to demonstrate the potential contribution of phenomenological research methods in consumer psychology. The methods used illustrate the principles delineated by Giorgi (1997). Raw data is presented with an invitation for readers to carry out their own analyses in order to compare different researchers' results and procedures. One Individual Psychological Structure and one General Psychological Structure of "buying" are presented. The findings highlight the meanings of such essential constituents as temporality, desire, cognition, social relations, the buying act, and ownership.

Toward a Phenomenological Psychology of Cultural Artifacts

Abstract: Phenomenological psychology is shown as a means to examine implications of mass-commodity culture, through the presentation of a phenomenological analysis of a TV commercial. This advertisement plays upon the vicissitudes of fathers' experiences of their relationships with their pre-pubescent daughters. The findings disclose an image of a father's ambivalently lived inability to tolerate his daughter's first sexual attraction to another male, and his attempt to continue to control the satisfaction of his daughter's bodily desire through commodities. The significance of and alternatives to this variation are suggested.

The Structure, Basic Contents and Dynamics of the Unconscious in Analytical (Jungian) Psychology and Husserlian Phenomenology: Part I1

Abstract: This paper offers both a phenomenologically psychological and a phenomenologically transcendental account of the constitution of the unconscious. Its phenomenologically psychological portion was published in the previous volume of this journal as Part I, while its phenomenologically transcendental portion is published here as Part II. Part I first clarified the issues involved in Husserl's differentiation of the respective contents and methodologies of psychological and transcendental phenomenology. On the basis of this clarification it showed that, in marked contrast to the prevailing approach to the unconscious in the phenomenological literature, an approach that focuses on the emotive and aesthetic factors (rooted in Freud's theory of repression) in the descriptive account of the constitution of an unconscious, there are cognitive factors (rooted in Jung's theory of apperception) that have yet to be descriptively accounted for by phenomenological psychology. Part I concluded with a phenomenologically psychological account of the role these cognitive factors play in the constitution of an unconscious. Part II shows how Jung's claims regarding a dimension of unconscious contents that lacks genealogical links to consciousness proper, i. e., the so-called "collective unconscious," can be phenomenologically accounted for if: (1) Jung's methodological differentiation of empirical and interpretative (hermeneutically phenomenological) approaches to the unconscious is attended to and; (2) such attention is guided by the phenomenologically transcendental critique of the emotive and aesthetic limitations of both the Freudian and heretofore Husserlian accounts of the descriptive genesis of something like an unconscious.