INTRODUCTION

For more than thirty years, the psychology department at Duquesne University has been exploring the significance of phenomenological thought articulated by such philosophers as Husserl (1913/1962, 1937/1970), Heidegger (1927/1962), Sartre (1945/ 1956) and Merleau-Ponty (1942/1963, 1945/1962); by such psychiatrists such as Boss (1957/1963), Binswanger (1938/1963), Straus (1937/1963, 1966) and Frankl (1946/1962); and by psychologists such as Van Kaam (1959, 1966), Giorgi (1970) and Fuller (1990). In all, the phenomenological-psychological research methods developed at Duquesne have been integrally involved in the accomplishment of 144 dissertations, as well as 77 books and 745 articles. As one might expect, the influences of the phenomenological-psychological mode of thinking upon both the teaching and scholarly activity of the faculty has been, and continues to be, significant. In fact, it is effectively summarized in this description of the department's project (1970-71 Duquesne Univeristy Graduate Bulletin):

The Psychology Department at Duquesne University aims to develop and articulate, in a systematic and rigorous way, psychology conceived as a human science. Far from adopting the position that a human science is impossible, the Department believes that the conception of psychology as a human science is a positive attempt to incorporate the insights of Twentieth Century thinking into psychology. At Duquesne, the program is focused upon developing a specific type of human science psychology, one that flows from insights established by existential-phenomenological philosophy. As such, it is committed to discovering, applying, articulating, and developing these insights in such a way that a viable science of the human person emerges (p. 63).

In the present paper, I would like to describe three distinguishable, yet clearly related ways in which phenomenological thought has informed the faculty's efforts to develop effective research methods. They are: phenomenology's critique of the research methods of natural scientific psychology; existential-phenomenological pre-psychological understandings of human beings as persons; and phenomenology's description of the meanings and modes of implementation of the phenomenological attitude.

PHENOMENOLOGY'S CRITIQUE OF THE RESEARCH

METHODS OF NATURAL SCIENTIFIC PSYCHOLOGY

There are many articulate and cogent critiques of conventional, or natural scientific psychology (e.g., Husserl, 1937/1970; Fuller, 1990; Giorgi, 1970; Merleau-Ponty, 1942/1963, 1945/1962; Strasser, 1963; van Kaam, 1966; and Straus, 1935/1963, 1966). Among the issues which they raise, one that is both fundamental and immediately pertinent to the topic of this paper is the relationship of a psychology's research methods to its fundamental assumptions concerning the nature or basic reality of the situated behaviors it investigates.

Giorgi, in particular, has discussed this issue in detail. More specifically, he has described how the commitments of natural scientific psychology to atomistic, physicalistic, realistic, and objectivistic pre-psychological understandings of human processes and events determine, in advance, that it can research these processes and events only in ways that reduce them to quantitative, typically mechanistic or biologistic happenings. Hence, phenomenological critiques of the foundations of natural scientific psychology are, at the same time, critiques of its research methods.

To exemplify this assertion, since the days of Freud's provocative monograph (1926/1959) some 64 years ago, anxiety has been a topic that has interested researchers almost as much as it fascinated clinicians. Few have doubted its significance in human life. Still, when one reviews the assumptions and methods with which it has been researched, one is taken aback. Almost invariably anxiety is equated in advance with fear, or further defined as a species of the latter. Moreover, consistent with conventional psychology's empiricist transformation of Cartesian metaphysics, it is grasped as the effect of some external, stimulus situation. Finally, depending upon the particular predilections of the researcher, anxiety as a hypothetical construct may be defined operationally in terms of test scores, reported experiences of the stimulus situation, and/or physiological indices. All of this occurs before a single subject is run. In other words, the nature or basic reality of anxiety as a human possibility is presumed in advance. What actually is researched is if, when, and to what extent it will occur, as operationally defined, in the experimental situation.

Because it leads to research situations where the possibility of adequately revealing some phenomenon of human life is precluded in advance, the faculty of the psychology department at Duquesne have rejected natural science psychology and its methodologies as a misguided attempt to complete the Galilean-Cartesian objectification and mathematization of nature.

EXISTENTIAL-PHENOMENOLOGICAL PHILOSOPHY'S

PRE-PSYCHOLOGICAL UNDERSTANDINGS OF

HUMAN BEINGS AS PERSONS

From the preceding discussion of natural scientific psychology's philosophical anthropology and the ways in which it prefigures both research methodologies and the results of experiments, it should be clear that the pre-psychological understanding of human being, which each psychology appropriates and builds upon, is foundational to that psychology. This understanding suggests, as well as limits, both the content and the methodology of the discipline. One example is an investigation of the meaning of acceptance by a doctoral student. As a former nurse, she wanted to understand the process through which people learned about, struggled with, and perhaps eventually accepted, their diagnosis of terminal cancer. When she tried to determine what the psychological literature had to say about this phenomenon, she was somewhat amazed to find--with the exception of Goldstein's (1963) concept of "coming to terms,"--little, if any, theoretical interest or research. The idea that we are entities who may not be able to determine what befalls us, but who have no choice but to take some stand with regard to whatever comes our way, cannot be derived from a guiding preconception of human beings as things, mechanisms or even organisms.

What understanding of human beings have we appropriated from existential-phenomenological philosophy? How has this informed not only what we may research, but also how we may interrogate it? It is important to state at the outset that existential-phenomenological philosophy has not presented us with an already completed, univocal characterization of human being. Neither individually nor collectively do the writings of Husserl (1937/1970), Heidegger (1927/1962), Sartre (1945/1956), Merleau-Ponty (1945/1962, 1968), Scheler (1954), and Schutz (1962, 1964, 1966)--and the list could go on for some time--amount to a completed understanding. What we have then are themes, or better yet, clusters of themes, each revolving around certain fundamental issues, e.g., the nature and significance of human embodiment.

The following is a schematic characterization of some of those themes. It is not meant to be exhaustive. I present them not just to reiterate what is already known, but to prepare the way for asserting that an existential-phenomenological understanding significantly facilitates our efforts as psychologists to research and characterize the psychological meanings of various human situations and behaviors.

As finite and intrinsically incarnate entities whose being is not given to us in advance, nor able to be decided once and for all, we are abidingly concerned with who we are. Hence, we attempt, through our projects of the world-with-others, to co-create ourselves. As intentional beings, entities whose being is to be-in-the-worldwith-others, we are active participants in the coming to pass of meaning. That is to say, in engaging certain states of affairs of the world, we cocreate, make sense of, take up, live through, and live out, the unfolding situations of our respective existences. As beings who continually find ourselves already there in situations whose aspects are often determined without our consent, we have the possibility of letting them be what they are and taking them up in their already beckoning significances. Finally, as essentially incomplete, desirous beings, we seek each other in friendship, love and sensual union.

Although this characterization is incomplete, it enables one to realize that existential-phenomenological psychologists need not objectivistically or quantitatively reduce the phenomena in which they are interested in order to research them. Whether it be anxiety or acceptance, learning or motivation, psychotherapeutic interpretation or handedness, the existential-phenomenological psychologist is free to comprehend these possibilities as human ways of participating in the imminent meanings of situations. As such, their meanings, as they are and/or have been experienced by subjects of whatever characteristics can be solicited, described, and explicated.

To state the matter rather succinctly, in appropriating existential-phenomenological philosophical characterizations of human beings, the effort in psychology has been to constitute psychology as the study of how human beings as persons, rather than as things or organisms, participate in the imminent meanings of the situations of their respective existences. Moreover, they have also been free to interrogate and investigate a wide range of phenomena without feeling constrained to ignore or otherwise to violate aspects thereof for lack of a way to do them justice.

THE MEANING AND IMPLEMENTATION OF

THE PHENOMENOLOGICAL ATTITUDE

What is a phenomenological attitude and how does it inform research in psychology? When Husserl (1937/1970) described the Crisis of European Science and the ways in which its fundamental concepts were in danger of losing touch with their sources, he urged a return to the things themselves, "to the world which precedes knowledge, of which knowledge always speaks, and in relation to which every scientific schematization is an abstract and derivative sign-language, as is geography in relation to the countryside in which we have learnt beforehand what a forest, a prairie, or a river is" (Merleau-Ponty, 1945/1962, p. ix). A return to the things themselves is a return to the life-world. It is a commitment to investigate phenomena as people actually experience and live them. As Giorgi (1970) has asserted, "the significance of the life-world for the approach of psychology is that psychology must account for its phenomena in terms of how they appear, or how they are experienced, and not in terms of some idea of how they ought to appear" (p. 139).

In other words, it is necessary to situate ourselves vis a vis our phenomena of interest in such a way that they most fully show themselves in themselves, from themselves, and in their own ways of showing themselves. Moreover, it is necessary to protect research endeavors, more specifically, the subjects' descriptions, from the investigator's own typically cherished beliefs about his or her phenomena of interest, as well as from the subjects' assumptions of the natural attitude. How can this be done? Husserl tells us that we must try to bracket, i.e., hold in abeyance that which we presume to know about the phenomena. Moreover, in explicating the subjects' descriptions, we must be sensitive to their culturally fostered, realistic assumptions about the existence in-themselves of the meanings of their situations and behaviors. Instead, we must try to explicate these in their phenomenality, i.e., in their being for the subjects themselves. We must try to understand how subjects participated in the imminent meanings of their situations such that they experienced their ways of participating as instances of this or that particular phenomenon.

Still, there exist a number of fundamental issues which require further thought. For example, when I suggested that it is necessary to protect the specific meanings of phenomena as these have been signified in our subjects' descriptions, I implied that in enacting the phenomenological reduction it is possible to accomplish this. But is this really true? Can researchers actually bracket all they know or believe that they know about their phenomena of interest? According to Merleau-Ponty, "the most important lesson which the reduction teaches us is the impossibility of the complete reduction" (1945/1962, p. xv).

To be more specific, how can one ask subjects to describe their modes of participating in phenomena without implying that they should orient their descriptions to certain aspects of that participation? Moreover, when explicating their descriptions, how can one let them speak their meanings in themselves and from themselves if one does not pose questions to them? But then, can those questions remain uninformed by one's already operative beliefs? Can one really make explicit all that one believes about anything?

Finally, both the subjects' descriptions and the psychologist's own characterizations of their general psychological meanings are articulated in language. That is to say, they are already encrusted with the presuppositions and preconceptions of a culture. Is it possible really to surpass that horizon of meaning? Are not our findings fundamentally bound by cultural as well as by historical perspectives?

Duquesne University

Pittsburgh, PA

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