Dr. Ferrarello co-taught a graduate seminar in phenomenological psychology in January 2014 for doctoral students at Saybrook. She led students in a day-long reflection on the steps in qualitative data gathering and analysis to which they had been introduced over the course of the preceding days, reflecting on their own experience of the moments in the research process through the lens of Husserl's phenomenological psychology, especially Ideas I and Cartesian Meditations.

1. PHENOMENOLOGY
as a psychological method
Susi Ferrarello Phd
Saybrook University
Loyola University

2. Some QUESTIONS TO
unfold the SENSE of the
phenomenological method

3. What‟s happened during the
analysis?

4. …
YOUR QUESTIONS? WHY
SHOULD YOU HAVE
QUESTIONS?

5. QUESTIONS RAISED DURING
THE SEMINAR
Can I claim that something is universal?
Does universality exist?
- Who is the other? How can I reach the
other?
- What is objectivity?
- What is intentionality?
- What‟s the truth on which we base our
analysis?
- When do interpret and when do we
describe?
- How does phenomenology study time?
-

6. My questions..
How would you describe what you did?
Were you describing or interpreting the data?
What were the tools of your analysis?
What‟s the difference between intution, perception
and interpretation?
How would you describe the lived-experience before
and after the data-analysis
Did your attitude change during the reflection on the
data?

7. My questions..
What was the intention at the basis of your analysis?
Are you a scientist?
Did you need philosophy to do that?
Does psychology need philosophy?
What‟s the difference between the meaning, the
sense and the value of your research?

8. How would you describe what
you did?
Phenomenology
Λόγος τών
φαινομένων
(logos tōn
phenomenon)
Reflection on
what is given
(φένομένον)

9. PHENOMENOLOGY
AS A SCIENCE
How to ground an
infallible
knowledge?
(Husserl, MerleauPonty, Heidegger,
Neurosciences)

AS A METHOD
How do we convey
the sense of what
we know?
(Giorgi: descriptive
psychological
method)


10. Synthesis and a step ahead
“It is plain that I (…) since I am striving
toward the presumptive end, genuine
science, must neither make nor go on
accepting any judgment as scientific
that I have not derived from evidence,
from experiences in which the (…)
actual giving of the affairs themselves
are present to me” (Husserl, Cartesian
Meditations, p. 13)

11. HOW CAN YOU AVOID TO
„ACCEPT ANY JUDGMENT‟?
Did your attitude change
before and after the data
analysis?

12. DESCARTES AND HUME
Cogito ergo
sum (I think
therefore I am)
Perception is
the beginning of
our knowledge

13. The radical DOUBT or the
change of attitude
Epoché (witholding, suspension,
parenthesize)
Reduction (emphasizing the intuition, going
back to the primordial lived-experience)
Imaginative variation

14. What was your mental attitude
before and after the analysis?
Intentionality
Tendere in = aiming at (Beziehung auf)
Intention of Meaning Bedeutungsintention (L. I.)
Instinctive or blind Intentionality (Yamaguchi, Hart)
Intentionality as an instinctual presence of the other (Lipps)
Intentionality without object (Bernet)
Horizontal intentionality (Dan Zahavi)
Narrative way of givenness (Ricoeur)

15. How would you describe the lived-experience
of the participant before and after the dataanalysis?
Phenomenon
Percept
Essence

16. What were the tools of your
research? (a synthesis)
Description or Interpretation (Aufassung)
Epoche and Reduction
Imaginative Variation
Seeing essences

17. Were you describing or
interpreting during your
analysis?

…

18. What‟s the difference between the
meaning, the sense and the value of
your research?
Meaning
Sense
Essence
Truth
Eidos
Validity

19. Phenomenological and Natural
Attitude: a synthesis
Natural Attitude
(Ideas I, 30)
 Empirical
experience
 Presentive Intuition
 Percept or real
object

Phenomenological
Attitude (Ideas I,
30)
 Reflexive
experience
 Eidetic intuition
 Essence


20. Does psychology need
philosophy and vice versa?
Formal and Material
Ontology
Ontological Region

21. Science, essences and
psychology
“Any concrete empirical objectivity finds its place
within a highest material genus, a ‘region’ of
empirical objects. To the pure regional essence,
then, there corresponds a regional eidetic science
or, as we can also say, a regional ontology”. I, § 9,
18En/19Ge
Any science of matter of fact (any experiential
science) has essential theoretical foundations in
eidetic ontologies”. I, §9, 18En/19 Ge

22. BIBLIOGRAPHY






Dodd, J. (2005) Crisis and Reflection: An Essay on Husserl’s
Crisis of the European Sciences. Dordrecht: Kluwer
Academic Publishers.
Luft, S. (2012) “Husserl‟s Method of Reduction”, in Routledge
Companion to Phenomenology, London.
Luft, S. (2007) “From Being to Givenness and Back: Some
Remarks on the Meaning of Transcendental Idealism in Kant
and Husserl,” in: International Journal of Philosophical
Studies 15/3, pp. 367-394.
Husserl, (1982) Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology
and to a Phenomenological Philosophy. First Book: General
Introduction to a Pure Phenomenology. Translated by F.
Kersten. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Sowa, R. (2012) “The Method of the Eidetic Science”, in
Routledge Companion to Phenomenology, London.
Kern, I. (2004) “Les trois voies de la réduction” in Annales de
la phénoménologie.

23. THANK YOU!