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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]

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.

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 [...]

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.

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 [...]

A review of history of psychology textbooks shows that humanistic psychology is in crisis. Although well understood and respected by some, it is inadequately understood and dismissed by many. The value of the movement is shown to hinge on whether it faithfully embodies the historical tradition of humanism, provides an appropriate philosophical foundation for psychology, asserts relevant critiques of contemporary psychology, affords the discipline theoretical unity, offers rigorous research methodologies, bridges the gap between psychology and the humanities, and assumes leadership in socially reforming the depersonalizing tendencies of modern culture. It is argued that the best work in humanistic psychology has achieved these virtues, and that the major criticisms of the movement do not apply to this work. The contemporary crisis is attributed to sociological factors--inadequate institutional establishments necessary to gain historical impact., When humanistic psychology emerged in the middle of the 20th century, psychology was dominated by behaviorism and psychoanalysis. As this century draws near its end, the historical picture of psychology [...]

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 [...]

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]