Phenomenology
Phenomenology
Phenomenology and contemporary psychology
The word “phenomenology” is derived from the Greek phainein, “to show,” from which came phainemenon, meaning “that which appears.” Thus, phenomenology in a general sense could be literally the orderly study of phenomena, or appearances, and could as such encompass much of traditional philosophy and science. In its restricted sense, however, it refers to the study of phenomena as phenomena and more specifically to a twentieth-century movement in German philosophy centered loosely on Edmund Husserl. A good English introduction to Husserl’s philosophy has been provided by Marvin Farber (1943), and the whole phenomenological movement has been reviewed by Herbert Spiegelberg (1960). The various forms of existentialism, which have developed particularly in France since World War ii, may be regarded as offshoots of the phenomenological movement but should not be identified with it. Phenomenology and existentialism, while primarily philosophical, have had important repercussions in psychology, psychiatry, theology, literature, drama, and the fine arts. The present article will limit itself to a brief sketch of the philosophical background and a somewhat fuller account of psychological phenomenology [seePsychology, article onexistential psychology, and the biography ofHusserl].
Philosophical phenomenology
Philosophical phenomenology is essentially a method of philosophical analysis rather than a school in the traditional sense of the term. The phenomenologist attempts to suspend or “place in brackets” (einklammern) all metaphysical and epistemological presuppositions, to identify and describe the essences of experience as they are intuitively apprehended (Anschauung, Wesensschau), and on this basis to provide a fresh approach to the classic problems of metaphysics, epistemology, psychology, logic, ethics, and aesthetics. Husserl believed that in this way philosophy could be rescued from unproductive speculation and re-established as a rigorously empirical discipline (strenge Wissenschaft). Phenomenology is thus empirical in its insistence on a continuous and unbiased scrutiny of experience, but not empiricist as the word is commonly used to refer to explanation through past experience. It shares the empirical emphasis of Locke and his successors and of some of the positivists—e.g., Ernst Mach—differing from these primarily on grounds that their analyses of experience were neither rigorous nor complete. Phenomenology is not to be confused with phenomenalism, the doctrine that knowledge is limited to the data of experience and that the knower is consequently incapable of transcending the world of phenomena, nor with psychologism, the contention that all philosophical problems can be reduced to terms of psychology.
History of modern phenomenology
Antecedents of modern phenomenology are to be found in the many classic attempts—e.g., that of St. Augustine—to found a philosophy on the data of intuition. The modern movement begins, however, with Descartes, whose “method” involved the suspension of all beliefs and the acceptance as true of only those ideas which are presented “so clearly and distinctly as to exclude all ground of doubt.” Although Kant’s distinction between the phenomenal and the noumenal world rests in part on phenomenological analysis, the post-Kantian (e.g., Hegelian) use of the term “phenomenology” and its loose use in the sciences to denote anything observable are not regarded as relevant. Husserl’s phenomenology goes back to Descartes for its inspiration and draws liberally from the psychological analyses of William James (1890) and Husserl’s teacher Franz Brentano (1874), particularly from the latter’s doctrine of intentionality. Husserl’s early interest was in the phenomenological basis of mathematics and logic, from which he moved to epistemology and eventually to a transcendental phenomenology, which is usually regarded as a form of metaphysical idealism. Among his publications the most important for psychology is his Logische Untersuchungen (1900–1901). The Jahrbuch für Phälosophie und phanomenologische Forschung, which he edited from 1913 to 1930, also contains contributions to psychology, and the Husserl archives at Louvain are yielding further material of psychological interest. His more strictly philosophical works, however, have had a profound influence on the existentialist psychologies [see the biographies ofames; Kant].
Other influential German philosophers who shared in the phenomenological movement were Alexander Pfänder, Max Scheler, Nicolai Hartmann, and Moritz Geiger. Scheler in particular, although not a disciple of Husserl, became widely known for his extension of the phenomenological method into the fields of ethics and value theory. It was Martin Heidegger, however, Husser’s pupil and successor at the University of Freiburg, who perhaps unintentionally popularized the term “existentialism” and who, through his often baffling metaphors and neologisms, has been in some measure responsible for phenomenology’s reputation as an obscure and almost esoteric metaphysical system. Since the publication of Sein und Zeit (1927) Heidegger has moved steadily away from a straightforward phenomenology and has concerned himself more and more with the ontological problem–that of the fundamental meaning of being (Sein). In spite of his early enthusiasm for the National Socialist ideology he has been an influential figure in recent continental European philosophy, particularly in French existentialism and in the existentialist movements in theology and psychiatry. Since World War II the phenomenological movement in philosophy has been most active in France under the leadership of Jean-Paul Sartre and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Both men have accepted in principle Husserl’s phenomenological method but have pushed further in the direction of a detailed examination of the phenomena of human existence (the human situation) and thus toward a complete existentialist philosophy. Sartre’s more strictly phenomenological contributions are to be found in his studies of imagination and emotion; in his novels and plays and in his more systematic philosophical works, e.g., Being and Nothingness (1943), he presents existentialism as a philosophy of life. Merleau-Ponty is also known both as a phenomenologist and as an existentialist. His most important phenomenological contributions have been his analyses of perception (1945) and of language (1952).
Psychological phenomenology
Psychological phenomenology, too, is essentially an approach rather than a particular kind of theory or system, and it owes as much to Goethe, Purkinje, and the physiologist Ewald Hering as it does to Husserl. Whereas Husserl’s phenomenology is logically prior to all empirical science, concerned with essences rather than with “matters of fact,” psychological phenomenology is frankly and explicitly descriptive. It represents what David Katz called an attitude of “disciplined naivete,” the attempt to suspend all presuppositions (biases, implicit assumptions) and observe and describe the world of phenomena (consciousness, immediate experience, phenomenal world, psychological field) as it is naively apprehended. Husserl regarded this kind of psychology as an important empirical discipline, coordinate with the other empirical sciences but not to be confused with “pure” phenomenology. Psychological phenomenology is in the tradition of all the psychologies since Descartes which have accepted as their task the scientific study of consciousness, and it is thus to be distinguished from the faculty psychologies, the depth psychologies, and the psychologies which limit their subject matter to externally observed or logically inferred behavior.
Phenomenology and introspection
Phenomenological description must not be equated, however, with the introspective analysis of the Wundtian school, best represented in the English literature by Edward B. Titchener. For Titchener (1929), “existential” experience consists of the pure, irreducible, conscious content (sensation, feeling, image) which is left after all object reference or meaning context has been deliberately brushed aside. To confuse the sensation itself with the stimulus which arouses it—e.g., the color with the light wave—is to commit the stimulus error. The phenomenologist would accept introspective analysis as a legitimate technique for the establishment of correlations between the variables of physical stimulation and the dimensions of consciousness, as in psychophysics, but he would reject the assertion that the introspectively identified sensations are necessarily the elements of consciousness. He would also agree with the introspectionist that the physical, physiological, or other conditions which give rise to a phenomenon, or which can be correlated with it, should not be confused with the phenomenon itself. Just as color is not an array of light waves, so the person we perceive is not the person who may “really” exist; one is a phenomenal datum, the other an independently definable process, entity, or condition which may or may not be causally related to the phenomenon. The phenomenologist differs radically from the introspectionist in his insistence on the acceptance as legitimate psychological data of the very phenomena which the introspectionist emphatically rejects, namely, such phenomena as organization, directedness, attractiveness, or requiredness—phenomena which for the introspectionist are secondary outcomes of association or interpretation. If we suspend our presuppositions, the phenomenologist argues, and refuse to impose on the phenomena any theory as to their origin or their veridicality, we still find ourselves confronted with a meaningful world of things, events, and people, organized and interrelated in vastly complex ways.
Elimination of biases and presuppositions
Our first phenomenological task is to observe, describe, and analyze the structures, properties, dimensions, and interrelations of phenomena as they are naively apprehended. This, the phenomenologist contends, is a highly disciplined activity, fully as rigorous as introspection, analogous to but not identical with the phenomenological reduction of Husserl [see the biographies ofTitchener; Wundt].
The various biases or presuppositions which must be placed in brackets have been variously classified and need not be detailed here. Some of these stem from the reductive atomism of classical Newtonian physics and can be recognized as implicit in the associationist psychologies developed since the work of John Locke; others stem from the Darwinian emphasis on explanation by reference to origins, evident both in behaviorist learning theory and in Freudian psychoanalysis; and still others reflect the confusion of logical implication with psychological content so frequently encountered in theories of motivation. Without denying the value of reductive analysis or of developmental studies, the phenomenological psychologist would argue that these and other biases involve a prejudgment of the phenomena and the consequent risk that significant phenomena, such as the melodic property of a series of tones or the physiognomic properties of a face, will be dismissed as of no consequence because they disappear in reductive analysis or seem to be the products of past experience. He would argue further that in the recent history of psychology this deliberate bracketing of implicit assumptions and the acceptance of all data of experience, however subtle or evanescent, as intrinsically valid, has led to significant extensions of psychological knowledge and advances in psychological theory.
Phenomenology and contemporary psychology
The phenomenological method has been applied to many areas of psychology, most systematically perhaps in the experimental study of perception, particularly in connection with the traditional problems of space, time, motion, color, sound, and touch. These are obviously the phenomena most readily accessible to observation under conditions of experimental control. The phenomenal world contains much more, however, than things and events with their properties and interrelationships. It also contains the phenomenal self and phenomenal “other selves/’ with their feelings, emotions, and desires; and it contains a whole welter of phenomenal structures, states, and processes which have been traditionally classified as memories, fantasies, choices, beliefs, and the like. These phenomena also invite the interest of the phenomenologist, and even though they are difficult to bring into the laboratory, they are steadily yielding to other techniques of investigation. Some of the most promising of these techniques are being developed by the clinician, whose patient may be incapable of giving a full and free account of his experience and must consequently be induced through indirect devices to reveal what is there for him. The range of phenomenological investigation is thus steadily broadening to include what have been traditionally thought of as noncognitive processes. As facts are being accumulated and techniques refined, more and more attention is being devoted to the reconstruction of the phenomenal world of the “other person,” including that of the child, the deviant, the person who has grown up in a culture radically different from one’s own, even members of other species. Basic to the investigation is always the attempt to establish the “what” of experience. To explain the “why” one must transcend phenomenology and become a systematic psychologist or even a philosopher. Most of the phenomenologists have gone beyond their phenomenology, but phenomenology has produced no single psychological theory. In the available space only a few of the most significant contributors to psychological phenomenology can be mentioned.
Experimental psychology of perception
The pioneer in the experimental phenomenology of perception is undoubtedly David Katz, whose The World of Colour appeared in 1911. Before him, Goethe (1810) and Purkinje (1819–1825) had published detailed descriptive analyses of the world of color, and Hering in Outlines of a Theory of the Light Sense (1872–1875) had countered Helmholtz’ empiricist theory of color constancy with a nativist theory based on the acceptance of naively apprehended object color as psychologically valid. Karl Stumpf in his Tonpsychologie (1883–1890) had also made use of the phenomenological method, but Stumpf–s interest in phenomenology was as much philosophical as it was psychological. Helmholtz had explained the approximate constancy of object color as the interpretation of primary, physically bound sensation elements by unconscious inference. Katz bracketed Helmholtz’ physicalistic assumptions and proceeded to explore the world of color in all its modes of appearance (Erscheinungsweisen), demonstrating that while film colors (Flächenfarben) vary simply and directly with changes in retinal stimulation, the same does not hold true for surface colors (Oberfächenfarben), which are phenomenally inherent in the perceived object. Impressions of surface color and of illumination are phenomenally covariant, changes in total retinal stimulation being registered, within very wide limits, as changes in impression of illumination, with the consequence that object color tends to remain phenomenally constant. As a result of Katz’s phenomenological studies of color and of his similar studies of the world of touch in Der Aufbau der Tastwelt (1925), the facts of phenomenal constancy have become basic to a reconstructed psychophysics and psychophysiology of perception. [SeePerception, article onPerceptual Constancy; Vision, article onColor Vision and Color Blindness; and the biographies OfHering; Katz; Stumpf.]
Gestalt theory. Perhaps even more rewarding has been the phenomenological approach to perceptual organization represented by the Berlin group of gestalt psychologists. The reality of gestalt qualities had been recognized by Christian von Erenfels in his article “Über ‘Gestaltqualätaten’” (1890) and by Stumpf, but it was Max Wertheimer’s experimental studies of apparent movement (1912) which set the stage for the gestalt movement. The older theories could not admit as psychologically valid an experience of movement when there is no physical movement in the stimuli; phenomenal movement had to be explained away as an illusion. Wertheimer, like Katz, simply accepted the phenomenal fact as valid, insisting that movement as such must have its direct neural correlate; hence the controversial principle of isomorphism. Wertheimer’s pioneer experiments led to a long series of studies of gestalt phenomena in perception, memory, thinking, and motivation, many of which have been reviewed by Koffka (1935). While the gestalt theories which emerged, notably the physiological and the psychological field theories, go beyond phenomenology, the basic approach is in each case phenomenological. It should be noted that this approach, although prominently associated with the gestalt group, has been broadly characteristic of experimental psychology in western Europe. Examples of this approach are to be found in the work of Albert Michotte on phenomenal causality, Jean Piaget on developmental psychology, F. J. J. Buytendijk on expressive movement, and Geza Révész and Albert Wellek on the psychology of music. [SeeGestalt theory.]
Verstehende psychologic
Related to the experimental movement but not to be identified with it is the “understanding” psychology (verstehende Psychologie) of Wilhelm Dilthey, Max Scheler, Eduard Spranger, Karl Jaspers, and Ludwig Binswanger. Distinguishing broadly between the Naturwissenschaften (natural sciences) and the Geisteswissenschaften (mental or humanistic sciences), Dilthey (1883) placed in the former category the reductive or “explaining” psychology of the laboratory and in the latter the psychology which seeks an intuitive understanding of man’s value orientations as revealed both in individual life and in history. This kind of psychology, systematized by Spranger as a sixfold value typology in his Types of Men (1914), has had considerable influence on the study of personality, both in Germany and elsewhere. Although the verstehende Psychologie is not strictly phenomenological, it represents the attempt at an intuitive, nonanalytic penetration of the inner life of the other person; a somewhat shaky phenomenological basis for it is to be found in Scheler’s The Nature of Sympathy (1913). Scheler’s descriptive analysis of the various forms of sympathy is part of his attempt to lay the phenomenological groundwork for a broadly inclusive philosophical anthropology. The relevance of the verstehende Psychologie to psychopathology is perhaps best demonstrated in Jaspers’ General Psychopathology (1913) and Binswanger’s Grundformen und Erkenntnis menschlichen Daseins (1942); both authors are to be ranked among the leading existentialists. [SeeSympathy and Empathy.]
The phenomenological movement is still distinctively European. In the United States, leading interpreters of philosophical phenomenology in the Husserl tradition are Marvin Farber and Herbert Spiegelberg. The phenomenological emphasis in experimental, developmental, and social psychology is recognizable in what has come to be known as “cognitive theory,” a useful summary and evaluation of which was made by Martin Scheerer (1954). In the psychology of personality and in psychotherapy there is a vigorous and growing existentialist movement, influenced greatly by Binswanger’s Daseinsanalyse.
Robert B. Macleod
[Directly related are the entriesPsychology, article onexistential psychology; Thinking. Other relevant material may be found inMental disorders, treatment of, article onclient-centered counseling; Perception; and in the biographies ofHusserl; Katz.]
BIBLIOGRAPHY
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