Paper cutting by Bettina von Arnim. Saybrook faculty members Drs. Magnus Englander, Susi Ferrarello, and Marc Applebaum collaborated in presenting a panel, “Phenomenological Research: Philosophy and Psychology in Dialogue” at the 32nd annual International Human Science Research Conference in Aalborg, Denmark in August 2013. Englander’s presented his reflections as a qualitative psychological researcher on philosophical… Read more »
Photo by Adam Jones adamjones.freeservers.com. The way we creatively embody and express the traditions we inherit, whether philosophical or psychological, is inevitably shaped by our own history, background, and values. In my case, before I began my study of phenomenology, I had already worked as a teacher and counselor. I’ve been a teacher of one… Read more »
Ramapo College Jitendranath Mohanty is one of the preeminent living phenomenological philosophers, an expert in Husserl’s phenomenology. He studied and taught in Germany, France, and the US with key people in the tradition including Hans Georg Gadamer, Paul Ricoeur, Hanna Arendt, Aron Gurwitsch, and Alfred Schutz. Amedeo Giorgi is one of the pioneers of qualitative… Read more »
Merleau-Ponty (1993) wrote, “For the speaker no less than for the listener, language is definitely something other than a technique for ciphering or deciphering ready-made significations” (p. 80). He is ever insistent that being-in-the-world is an embodied event, an ongoing discovery, and he relentlessly examines the ways in which experiences are given to us, prior… Read more »
Edmund Husserl I love Teo and Febbraro’s (2002) pointed observation that “Psychology’s history can be studied as a history of fads” (p. 458). Teo (1996) has written that psychologists “have tended to value meta-theoretical constructions from outside their discipline more than those from inside their disciplines,” with the popularity of these constructions shifting as one… Read more »
Reading J. N. Mohanty’s essay “Husserl’s Concept of Intentionality” in Analecta Husserliana I (1971), the following passage, discussing the Logische Untersuchungen, stood out to me: The static analysis lays bare the structure of what is called an intentional act whereby the word ‘act’ has to be taken not in its ordinary usage as meaning an… Read more »
Edmund Husserl Students new to phenomenological psychology often ask me what is 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 Moustakas’ Phenomenological Research Methods (1994) from the perspective of Husserl and Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological philosophy. Naturally, I’ll… Read more »
Paolo Veronese’s Happy Union (c. 1575) The historical roots of humanistic psychology are firmly planted deeply in the European traditions of existentialism, phenomenology, and personalism. Most humanistic psychology scholars readily acknowledge a debt to existentialism and phenomenology, yet the contributions of thought within personalism are often unacknowledged. In part, personalism often is forgotten because the… Read more »
Maurice Merleau-Ponty Since Husserl, phenomenological philosophers have dialogued with the empirical sciences in an attempt to contribute to a more complete human science—a science that speaks to the fullness of being human. The job of our philosophers, in this context, is to invite an opening up of an epistemological conversation that renews the sciences’ exploration… Read more »
How does one become a phenomenologist? First and foremost, phenomenology is a way of seeing—it is a style of perceiving the world, others and one’s self. This style of seeing is a sensibility that can be cultivated by drawing upon the liberal arts in all their glory—not only the natural sciences, but especially literature, the… Read more »
