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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]

Shaun Gallagher's Phenomenology is a welcome reflection on the historical development of phenomenology including its contemporary relevance to cognitive science and neuroscience. The text has multiple audiences--seasoned phenomenologists in various [...]

Giorgi, A. (2009). The descriptive phenomenological method in psychology: A modified Husserlian approach. Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 233 pp., ISBN 978-0-8207-0418-0, $25.00 (paper). In the interest of transparency, I [...]

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., One mark of Freud's greatness is that his writings have been reconsidered again and again not only by subsequent generations of psychoanalysts but from each new perspective that the broader [...]

For some time, we have hoped to offer a series of special issues, each dedicated to a particular area of phenomenological psychology and assembled by a guest editor who is [...]

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]