Part #2

Founders and Founders and ContributorsContributors

• Edmund Husserl

• Alfred Schutz

• Leo Strauss

• Binswanger

• Martin Heidegger

• Max Scheler

• Karl Jaspers

• Brentano

•Merleau-Ponty

•Immanuel Kant

•Hwa Yol Jung

•Harold Garfinkel

•Don Zimmerman

•David Sudnow

•Leveque-Lopman

Founders and Founders and ContributorsContributors

• Moynihan

• McLane

• Kockelmans

• Casey

• Clifton

• Heritage

• Castaneda

•Davis

•Fischer

•Laing

•Ihde

•Seamon

•Mugerauer

•Sartre

The Philosophers...The Philosophers...• Edmund Husserl is know to be the founder of Phenomenology

• Influenced and trained Max Scheler, Eugene Fink, Alexander Pfander, Alfred Schutz, and Martin Heidegger Studied psychology but found it only describes how we think but not why we think a certain way

• Believed epistemology was the real starting point for all philosophical reflection

• Interested in the subjective experience

• Came up with the notion of intentionality and wanted to study inner experiences as if they were objects of consciousness

• Developed the notion of lifeworlds and how we all have our own experiences of internal reality

• Hoped Heidegger would carry on the phenomenological perspective but he did not

• (Burston & Frie, 2006)

• Martin Heidegger

• Influenced by Jaspers, Husserl, Leibniz, Kant, Bultmann, Hartmann, Natorp, and more

• Fundamentally impacted the development of theory and practice in psychotherapy

• Provided the foundations for phenomenology in his famous “Letter on Humanism”

• Member of the Nazi party and highly involved in politics leading to much critic of his theories

• Studied the relation of language and Being

• (Burston & Frie, 2006)

• Max Scheler

• “the first in a long series of existential phenomenological thinkers who subjected Freud’s ideas to sustained and sympathetic scrutiny, creating a fertile climate of discussion at the interstices of philosophy and psychotherapy.” (p.130)

• Influenced by Dilthey, Freud, Nietzsche, and Henri Bergson

• Started exploring mental illness from a phenomenological frame but later strayed into a more biological approach

• (Burston & Frie, 2006)

• Karl Jaspers

• Influenced by Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Dilthey, Husserl, Heggel, Scheler, Weber, Freud, Kant, Heidegger and more

• Approach to psychotherapy was based on human freedom and responsibility

• Studied human experience and saw it as being transcendent

• (Burston & Frie, 2006)

• Alfred Schutz

• Influenced by Husserl’s notion of the lifeworld and expanded on this

• Analyzed the structures of people’s lifeworlds and discussed the multiple realities that exist within humans

• Developed the notion called the we-relationship to describe the relationships we share with others and how they change overtime

• (Bentz & Shapiro, 1998)

• Leo Strauss

• Expanded on the phenomenological critique from a political science viewpoint

• Harold Garfinkel

• Developed the notion of Ethnomethodology from Phenomenological theories

• Don Zimmerman

• Used conversion methods to study how people handle emergencies

• (Bentz & Shapiro, 1998)

Aspects of Phenomenology Aspects of Phenomenology that may enhance your that may enhance your

researchresearch

• Pay attention to context, perception and subjective experience

• Understand one’s own consciousness prior to research

• Get beneath your subject and take a look at the structures that underlie experience

• Pay attention to cultural assumptions

• Use empathic understanding when interacting with participants

Aspects of Phenomenology Aspects of Phenomenology that may enhance your that may enhance your

researchresearch

• Act to prevent the data from being prematurely structured into existing categories of thinking

• Question your own judgement

• Use empathic immersion – slow down the process and dwell on the topic; magnify and amplify the situation

• Keep a research journal for your own reflections and insights.