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The historical representation of natural science as the experimental testing of causal hypotheses with reductionistic, mechanistic explanations has been rightly rejected as an exclusive approach for psychology. However, this representation of science is simplistic and misleading. Interdisciplinary science studies show how biology, physics, and empirical psychology include reflection, empathy, imagination, qualitative analysis, and the creative use of ordinary language in natural scientific practice. Beyond causal experimentation in research and mechanistic explanation in theory, practices across all sciences include intentionality, meaning, holism, values, teleology, temporality, and agency in phenomena. Psychophysical subject matter requires unique methodological norms that interrelate intentional meanings and their external physical, vital, and social realities. Understanding psychology's complex relation to natural science begs for a closer, more probing, comparative examination of the actual practices of scientists. Only on this basis will methodological norms adequately clarify, justify, and integrate the diverse, pluralistic approach required by psychology's paradoxical identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay is a review and critical analysis of Larry Davidson's volume, Overcoming Psychologism: Husserl and the Transcendental Reform of Psychology, which was originally the authors 1989 dissertation and was published by Springer in 2021. Davidson's important work is focused on Husserl's writings on the problem of psychologism from his first major publication in 1900–1901 – the Logical Investigations to his posthumously published Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology. This meticulous account, drawn from Husserl's published writings, recounts the great philosopher's mighty struggles, progress, and mature resolution with unique emphasis on the significance of the transcendental solution for the science of psychology. Davidson argues compellingly that psychology must reform itself by incorporating transcendental phenomenology if it is to properly contextualize its contributions, incorporate biological and socio-cultural insights into its phenomena, and humbly acknowledge the partiality and incompleteness of its knowledge. The final chapter documents the inadequacies of previous existential-phenomenological psychology, which failed to utilize the transcendental perspective and committed the error of psychologism. Davidson illustrates his thesis in clinical psychology and spells out how transcendental phenomenological analysis may be incorporated in Giorgi's psychological research method. This review essay closely summarizes Davidson's eight chapters and epilogue, distills the most important fruits of Husserl's struggles, focuses on contemporary relevance, and finishes with a critique. Overall, the essay critically affirms Davidson's thesis concerning the importance of both a transcendental philosophical foundation for psychology and the incorporation of transcendental phenomenological attitude and analyses of all psychological phenomena. However, it is suggested that prior existential-phenomenological psychology can be defended against the accusation of psychologism, given its implicit though unacknowledged inclusion of a transcendental perspective, which is already operative in Giogi's method when properly practiced. An argument is made for a fuller, more explicit, and self-conscious employment of transcendental phenomenology in the science of psychology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Husserl's (2023) "Paradox of the Psychological Reduction," with support and elucidation from Husserl's published writings, shows the necessity of employing the phenomenological epoché and reduction in order to perform valid psychological research. The relationship between the transcendental and psychological reductions, including their closeness, differences, and peculiar identity are explored. Although necessary, the phenomenological method does not guarantee true psychological knowledge but rather requires a reflexive, self-critical, self-corrective historical process that confronts and overcomes naturalistic prejudice and other misguiding assumptions and dogma as well as superficial and flawed research performances. Phenomenological psychology and philosophy are inseparable, in a bidirectional relationship that informs the socio-cultural sciences including empirical psychology and all disciplines that study persons, communities, human artifacts, and humanity. The implications and relevance of phenomenological method are spelled out in light of the history and contemporary challenges of psychology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding the experience of Attenuated Psychosis Syndrome (APS), apart from its risk for developing into psychosis, is important to evaluating and improving professional care for this population. Ten female participants who met the diagnostic criteria for APS were interviewed, and the interview descriptions were analyzed phenomenologically. Findings show that APS is experienced not as symptomatic parts, but as a constitutive whole, built on the foundation of distal childhood experiences and recent challenges in a person's individuation process. APS experiences carry the meanings of loss of control, self-alienation, self-reflexive sense of defect, isolation from the social world, and the fearful anticipation of future demise. The meaning of APS is akin to that of being in exile. Four pathways were identified in which the person aims to restore a world in which she can regain control, reclaim a sense of goodness, reestablish social connections lost to isolation, and secure a more viable future. Clinical and policy implications of the findings are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Growing interest in qualitative research methods and methodological pluralism in psychology since the 1990s is placed in the historical contexts of long-standing philosophical and scientific rationales and the more recent 'qualitative revolution' in other social sciences that began in the 1970s. An examination of areas in which qualitative methods have become most strongly established-applied, feminist, and multicultural psychologies-suggests practical and social motivations as primary and as energizing renewed expression of previously ignored ontological, epistemological, and scientific reasoning in the turn to qualitative methods. Methodological diversification in the arenas of human suffering, women's issues, and cultural politics is traced to psychologists' deeply rooted ethical obligations. The existential philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas articulates an implicit ethics at the heart psychology's increasing acceptance of qualitative methods and provides an understanding of how the emerging methodological diversity can contribute to social justice and human liberation as well as to an enhancement of rigorous scientific knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The first mixed methods dissertation in the Department of Psychology in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences of Fordham University is described. In research on pre-kindergarten through 3rd-grade school programs, the interplay of quantitative hypothesis testing and qualitative discovery was used to gain knowledge of how different educational outcomes are achieved. A narrative addresses such contemporary disciplinary issues as the growing interest in qualitative research methods; the effort to employ holistic, contextually sensitive investigations of complex social problems; and the need in graduate training to facilitate the learning of and an identity formation that includes multiple methods. This study highlights the value of dissertation research for learning qualitative methods and melding multiple methods into a unified research identity and stresses graduate students' need for coursework on qualitative research methodology and philosophy of science. The pragmatic approach (Fishman, 1999) is suggested as one methodological framework capable of successfully synthesizing multiple methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article familiarizes counseling psychologists with qualitative research methods in psychology developed in the tradition of European phenomenology. A brief history includes some of Edmund Husserl's basic methods and concepts, the adoption of existential-phenomenology among psychologists, and the development and formalization of qualitative research procedures in North America. The choice points and alternatives in phenomenological research in psychology are delineated. The approach is illustrated by a study of a recovery program for persons repeatedly hospitalized for chronic mental illness. Phenomenological research is compared with other qualitative methods, and some of its benefits for counseling psychology are identified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After reviewing Freud's 1909 case of the Rat Man, the form of the patient's psychological life is analyzed from existential-phenomenological and socio-historical perspectives.The predominant structure of the analysand's individual life is characterized by the image of an incarcerated criminal. Its constituents include power expropriation, devaluation of self, and epistemic disavowal and oblivion that are subject to intermittent overthrow by lightening strikes of disruptively revolting and irresponsible arrogance. This individual existential structure is traced to the collective structure of the panoptical institutions of modern society delineated by Foucault. An examination of anomalous data in Freud's case study, especially in his evening process notes, suggests a different though tentative and faint form of existence that is more proximally the patient's own, one based on authentic care in the sense of Heidegger. Freud's psychoanalytic treatment ingeniously extends and implements the panoptical social order. However, key modifications of modern discipline embodied in psychoanalysis undermine dehumanization and liberate the patient's subjectivity for a life of responsible action. Freud's interpersonal presence in this case shows such humanizing virtues as openness, respect, strength, mercy, trustworthiness, encouragement, and maternal acceptance at the heart of the therapeutic relationship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This lecture, delivered in the "Transcending Tragedy" series at Fordham University in New York City, in February, 2002, presents reflections on the recent experience of international terrorism. A temporal unfolding of meanings experienced during and after the September 11th attacks is described beginning with that fateful morning and concluding with the changed post-9/11 world. This analysis reveals the fragility and plasticity of the social dimension of individual experience as well as our responsibility to create a global order of peace in the face of inimical difference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article attempts to delineate various components of a sociology researcher's participation in reflection phase of descriptive psychology. Sociology researchers attempt to differentiate aspects of the psychological life under study. Distinguished constituents compose the complex structure of meanings immanent in the subject's lived situation. When the researcher, judges descriptive material to be relevant and the disclosed constituents of meaning to be relevatory of the phenomenon of interest, it may reflect upon this judgment. In this way the researcher delves into the preconceptual everyday familiarity with the described situation to question and articulate its sense. Attempts to describe human existence and to understand it psychologically have been going on for many years. However, there is still no generally accepted set of procedures which characterize these attempts. It seems likely that different researchers, in accord with their own styles and the specific demands of their subject matters, have employed divergent methods. Researchers using methods which have not been standard procedure in psychology can make a dual contribution to the discipline by also reflecting on their own research activities. Only on this basis can a comprehensive awareness of the typical variations and general imperatives of descriptive research methodology in psychology be instituted. The subject discussed here focuses upon an area which is most mysterious namely the movement from a naive description of events to a psychological description of those events.

Presents an empirical investigation of buying in order to demonstrate the potential contribution of phenomenological research methods in consumer psychology. Details on the methods used; Reference to raw data obtained; Findings of the investigation; Conclusion drawn from this investigation.

Explores the nature and the extent of the impact of humanistic psychology on psychology and United States culture by means of a review of history of psychology textbooks. Contents of psychology textbooks on its history; Relevance of philosophy for modern psychology; Criticism of dominant approaches to psychology.

Comments on an article published in the February 1992 `American Psychologist.' Battle between psychoanalysis and academic psychology; Constitution of psychological science; Psychoanalytic ground rules for science of psychology; Psychoanalytic constructions and theories as interim framework; Sigmund Freud and experimental method.

The article discusses a study to evaluate the real-life experiences of 12 parents of 10 children with an Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) living in Goa, India. The four main temporal phases that emerged from the data are described. The challenges and difficulties encountered by the parents while dealing with children with ASD are included. Policymakers need to work with communities to help build family relationships with local care systems in order to help families meet their needs locally.