Phenomenological psychology is concerned with understanding lived experience, and consequently dove-tails well both with my world view and a critical realist ontology that believes we can only know the social and often the physical world through the descriptions and discourses of individual experience. Founded by Husserl, phenomenological psychology was later developed by Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty and Sartre amongst others (Langdridge, 2007) insights relevant to my epistemology are included below.
Husserl’s original focus moved away from the traditional, positivist one of subject and object, towards what is experienced and the way it is experienced. He argued for the need to go back to the essential features of human experience and to “bracket” or put to one side our assumptions, the things we take for granted, in order to experience a purer perception of the word (Smith, et al., 2009). The term bracket is borrowed from the mathematical function. Just like the contents of the brackets within equations are treated separately, so too are the assumptions and preconceptions of the participant; for example, bracketing out the perceived, remembered, judged and valued aspects of consciousness. Husserl suggests these progressive reductions or “epoché” of an experience lead towards the essence of the experience of a given phenomenon.
Heidegger, on the other hand, emphasised an existential view of a person as always being in context, or as he termed it “dasein” (often translated from the German as “being in the world”) and questioned the possibility of gaining knowledge free from interpretation. Heidegger believed it was impossible to separate out the different semantic and somatic entities of which our world consists. He believed that we can only be understood in the context of our meaningful world and moreover, that our meaningful world is also an essential
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part of us (Larkin, Watts, & Clifton, 2006). Furthermore any discoveries that social researchers make are the result of the interaction between themselves and their subject matter, a phenomenon Heidegger described as inter-subjectivity (Heidegger & Stambaugh, 1996).
I share Heidegger’s and Husserl’s interest of individuals in their context, but support Heidegger’s focus on the interpretative nature of knowledge. Sartre and Merleau-Ponty also view knowledge as inextricably interpretive. Sartre is significant to my epistemology because he adds a focus on the developmental nature of consciousness. In an existential way, he views humans as continually in the process of becoming (Sartre & Mairet, 1948). Sartre suggests humans strive to create a sense of self and meaning from their lived experiences, rather than acting from an unchanging core self. An individual is seen as having the freedom of choice and the associated responsibility for their actions. However, this freedom of choice needs to be viewed within the context of an individual’s life, their history and the society in which they live, which influences things greatly. Merleau-Ponty also focuses on individual freedom but adds another important dimension, believing that it is our actions which make the world meaningful. He suggests we create our own freedom as we become committed to our actions. Both Sartre and Merleau-Ponty also stress the embodied nature of our freedom. Merleau-Ponty views the human body not as an object but rather a means of communicating with the world (Merleau- Ponty, 2002, p. 18). Thus the world becomes meaningful only through our perception of it and we can never share the entirety of another’s experience, we can only observe and experience empathy for another.
In summary like Heidegger, Sartre and Merleau-Ponty I take the view that we can never completely share an individual’s experience and that it is impossible, as Husserl thought, to reduce this down to a pure experience through “epoché”. Rather than attempt to bracket off my assumptions, I accept that, in research, I can only aim to get “experience close” (Smith, et al., 2009, p. 33). What I can know is as a consequence interpretative in nature. Accordingly I aim to utilise and develop skills of reflexivity, self-awareness and empathy in order to get as “experience close” as effectively as possible. It is to the important area of interpretation (hermeneutics) that I now turn.
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3.3.2H
ERMENEUTICSHermeneutics was traditionally used for the interpretation of Biblical scripture, in phenomenological psychology it is concerned with the need to interpret and apply specific scientific method in that interpretation rather than just to describe. Heidegger along with Gadamer (1900 - 2002) and Ricoeur (1913 - 2005) have made important contributions to hermeneutic thinking that have relevance to this research.
For Heidegger, hermeneutics includes written, verbal and non-verbal forms of communication; it pertains to “an interpretation that is designed to grasp the understanding of the research participant” (Langdridge, 2007, p. 44). Heidegger emphasises that a researcher will bring a fore-structure based on prior experiences, assumptions and preconceptions, consequently self- awareness and reflexivity are important elements to consider in research. Following on from him, the philosopher Gadamer stressed that understanding is historically and culturally influenced. “For him, [ ] meaningful existence is a conversation leading towards mutual understanding” in a “fusion of horizons”(Langdridge, 2007, p. 42). As such speech and conversation are essential for mutual understanding. For Gadamer, like Heidegger, the focus needs to be on hermeneutic empathy and how language can be used to reveal something previously obscured. Ricoeur adds the concept of the “hermeneutics of suspicion” to the “hermeneutics of empathy”. This concept parallels that of a model of interpretation often used in psychotherapy, an “attitude of curiosity”, which seeks understanding by uncovering the layers of meaning, which may then lead to new insights. Ricoeur was also cautious about assigning the centrality of language in hermeneutics, suggesting that discourse cannot simply be reduced to the words that make it up and to do so would obscure its meaning. Finally Ricoeur extends Gadamer’s idea of tradition (history and culture) to incorporate the possibility of a critique of ideology held in opposition to, yet interacting with that of tradition.
An important concept both in this study and in the bigger picture of hermeneutic psychology is that of the “hermeneutic circle” which is utilized by most hermeneutic phenomenologists. A fusion of the horizons is seen as moving
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in a circular fashion (the hermeneutic circle) between the part and the whole, in a dynamic way:
For example, meaning on the word level is influenced by the meaning of the whole sentence and the meaning of the whole sentence is influenced by the collective meanings of individual words of which it consists.
There has been a significant increase in phenomenological research in the past 25 years, and many different approaches are used including, Descriptive Phenomenology, Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA), Grounded theory, and Ethnography. This study adopts IPA as its methodology.