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Journal of Phenomenological Psychology 41 (2010) 145–179

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Phenomenological Psychology: A Brief History and Its Challenges Amedeo Giorgi Saybrook University

Abstract The phenomenology-psychology dialogue has been taking place for over 100 years now and it is still not clear how the two disciplines relate to each other. Part of the problem is that both disciplines have developed complexly with competing, not easily integratable perspectives. In this article the Husserlian phenomenological perspective is adopted and Husserl’s understanding of how phenomenology can help psychology is clarified. Then the usage of phenomenology within the historical scientific tradition of psychology is examined to see the senses of phenomenology that were employed in that tradition. The German literature of psychology between the founding of the discipline and the beginning of the Nazi regime indicates quite clearly that the phenomenological perspective was part of the mainstream psychology of that era. The article ends by listing four difficult challenges that have to be met if a viable psychology based upon Husserlian phenomenology is to be possible. Keywords phenomenology, psychology, history of psychology, introspection

At the outset, I want to mention the contextual limitations of this article with respect to the relationship between phenomenology and psychology. First of all, I will only refer to the efforts made by psychologists to understand or implement phenomenology and not the other way around. Philosophers (Husserl, 1977; Merleau-Ponty, 1964; Gurwitsch, 1966a; Mohanty, 2002) have also written about this relationship, but the nature of the dialogue there is quite different. The philosophers understand philosophical phenomenology well but the stretch they have to make is in © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2010

DOI: 10.1163/156916210X532108

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showing its relevance for psychology. Usually this demonstration is theoretically satisfactory, but for obvious reasons, how to convert the phenomenological insights into helpful practices for psychology is not spoken to. With respect to the psychological attempts to understand phenomenology that we will review, natural science psychology is well understood, but the understanding of philosophical phenomenology covers the complete range from no mention of it through partial understanding and erroneous understandings to a good understanding of what it is trying to do. The second limitation is that I will be speaking primarily about the Husserlian perspective in phenomenology. Certainly good and valuable insights concerning psychology can be found in other philosophical phenomenologists such as Heidegger, Sartre and so on but the evaluation of the effort by the psychologists under review will be in the light of Husserl. Finally, the third limitation is that I will be speaking primarily about academic psychology. I am neither a therapist nor a clinician so I will not go into areas of psychology where I do not have practical experience. Halling and Nill (1995) have given a historical overview about the influence of existential-phenomenological thought on psychiatry and clinical psychology and Cloonan (1995) has written about the impact of phenomenology on the development of research in psychology in America. In this article I want to include the European and American views of phenomenological psychology as understood by psychologists. Spiegelberg (1972) has made the initial exploration of this theme, and Ashworth (2006) has also provided a sketch of the historical background of phenomenological psychology. There was also an article (Giorgi and Giorgi, 2008) containing an outline of the history of the relations between phenomenology and psychology, but here I want to flesh out that outline a little bit more. The more that this history is accurately understood, the better will one understand how psychology and phenomenology can be appropriately related or integrated. It is important to remember that the term “phenomenology” was used in psychology before Husserl’s sense was introduced and in ways not equivalent with Husserl’s meaning. This circumstance applies to Husserl himself because of the developments that took place in his thinking between the publication of the Logical Investigations and that of Ideas I. I also want to state that the research on the theme of this article is far from being completed. I think that all of the relevant historical sources of phenomenological influence on psychology in Western Europe and the

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United States have been located, but I only have had time to do a preliminary analysis of how phenomenology has been understood by the psychologists who have used the term. I did not try to make a survey of all of the contemporary universities where phenomenological research is currently being conducted. That is another project and it would have unduly extended the length of this article. In addition, another motive for delving into the history of the use of phenomenology in psychology is in order to demonstrate that the phenomenological approach was once a part of the historical development of mainstream psychology. Today, the phenomenological approach is perceived to be a minority movement; as a marginalized perspective it is, in fact, rarely properly understood. It may be true that developments within phenomenological philosophy during the middle of the 20th century, and beyond, made the understanding of the approach more inaccessible, but at one time, it was a serious contender for dominance within psychology. Moreover, the contenders in the debate, those supporting objective facts as opposed to those seeking phenomenal givens, respected each other even if they disagreed with the opponent’s theoretical perspective. Why and how the phenomenological approach became separated from mainstream psychology is another concern of this article.

Some Misunderstandings Concerning Phenomenology-Psychology Relations Phenomenological philosophy has been with us now for about one hundred years. That means that there has been a century of discussion concerning the place and value of phenomenology, and a good bit of the discussion has to do with the relationship between phenomenology and psychology. Beginning with Husserl, the idea has been promulgated that phenomenology could help psychology become a well-founded and authentic science. When Husserl offered that idea, phenomenological psychology did not exist. It was a hope; a promise. One hundred years later, does phenomenological psychology exist? Only in a most fragmented, incomplete way, although in large part that depends upon how phenomenology is understood. There have been fits and starts but nothing like a sustained development by psychologists where later workers

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built upon the work of earlier ones. It never developed into a consistent school of psychology under that title, such as psychoanalysis or behaviorism. Gestalt theory, of course, is a consistent school and while it is evident that phenomenological themes were interspersed in that movement and phenomenal givens were investigated, the Berlin school did not accept all of the insights of post-Ideas I phenomenological philosophy. In this article, I want to look into the issues that blocked the facile development of phenomenological psychology, from the perspective of a psychologist, and to try to mention some of the challenges that must be confronted if phenomenological psychology is to become a fruitful discipline. Phenomenology has always had an intricate, complex and confusing relationship with the science of psychology. It began even before phenomenology was officially born because Husserl, as a student of Brentano, thought that he was doing descriptive psychology when he (Husserl, 1970) wrote the Philosophy of Arithmetic, but he understood by that nomenclature that he was doing philosophy. Descriptive psychology was a branch of philosophy just as ethics, metaphysics and logic were. Husserl came to understand that the term “psychology” was confusing the understanding of his project because readers often confused his philosophical analyses with the scientific psychology that was newly emerging at the same time. Consequently, Husserl chose the term “phenomenology” for his project, a term that also was already in use. It was first used by Lambert in 1764 and he meant by it “the theory of appearance fundamental to all empirical knowledge” (Cairns, 1958, p. 231). Both philosophically and non-philosophically the term was used in a variety of ways (Spiegelberg, 1982), but eventually it came to be associated with Husserl’s type of philosophizing, and that is the main meaning of the term today, although other senses are attached to “phenomenology” even today by some psychologists (e.g., Smith and Osborn, 2008; Rogers, 1964). The relationship between phenomenology and psychology is complicated even further because Husserl lectured on the theme of phenomenological psychology during the summer of 1925 and these lectures were eventually published (Husserl, 1977). However, in my interpretation, these lectures are still philosophy despite the possibly misleading title. Husserl did not think that the natural scientific psychology that was emerging as he was developing his phenomenology was on the right track. In the lectures of 1925 Husserl used a philosophical style of analysis in

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order to try to determine and clarify the key concepts that a science of psychology would have to use in order to found a science of psychology in a proper way. What he presented then is a branch of philosophy and in my interpretation phenomenological psychology as Husserl conceived it would take the place of the rational psychology that Christian Wolff had distinguished from empirical psychology. The philosophical psychology that Husserl called phenomenological psychology was a program that needed to be actualized. I do believe that if the key, foundational concepts of psychology were to be clarified and if the clarifications were properly understood and seen as appropriate by psychologists, the work of establishing and conducting the science of psychology would be enhanced. Obviously, this task has not yet been achieved. I’m not sure that it has even been attempted by psychologists. In addition, a confusing factor for some people was Husserl’s critique of psychologism. Many interpreted this critique to be a criticism of psychology itself, whereas it was a critique of the idea that the natural science of psychology could be the foundation of all knowledge. For Husserl, no science could serve that role. A philosophical basis was always necessary to clarify the concepts that scientists implicitly and habitually used. The scientific effort at theoretical clarification, in his view, was never radical enough. Furthermore, Husserl was indeed actually critical of psychology as a natural science. But the thrust of his critique was foundational and theoretical. He did not probe the practices so much, as for example, MerleauPonty (1963) did. Husserl thought that the very idea that consciousness could be completely understood naturalistically was erroneous, even though it related to nature in some ways. If psychology was defined as the study of consciousness, which historically was the initial definition of psychology, then consciousness had to be comprehended in an essentially correct way, and the naturalistic understanding that psychology as a natural science was using was not sufficient according to Husserl (1983). That is why Husserl believed that scientific psychology needed theoretical clarification and a more adequate method. But Husserl was not against the very idea of a science of psychology. He was simply arguing that it had to be properly founded. These misunderstandings were a stumbling block in the dialogue between phenomenology and psychology. It took many years to straighten

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them out and they are probably still misunderstood today by many nonphenomenological psychologists. But these views can at least be dismissed as misunderstandings. However, the genuine problems that exist in attempting to integrate phenomenology and psychology, in my view, are even more daunting. But before getting to some of the genuine problems, despite all the difficulties that the misunderstandings introduced, phenomenology in some sense of the term did make an impact upon psychology. Or at least the term was used, but not always in the fully developed, continental, contemporary, philosophical meaning of the term. Before I turn to the historical examples of phenomenological psychology and briefly review them, I want to speak to the preHusserlian sense of the term as used in psychology, after which I will review the historical instances. Then I will describe the problems that I see that stand in the way of a sustainable phenomenological psychology as Husserl might have wanted to see.

PreHusserlian Origins of Phenomenology in Psychology If one simply uses the label “phenomenology” as an indicator, one can find quite a few examples of phenomenological psychology. The impact has been noticeable, even to the extent that, as Titchener (1921) noted, it became a serious challenge to the more elementistic or associationistic psychology that dominated German institutes since the introduction of experimental methods, but it has never achieved a solitary, dominant position in psychology whether correctly interpreted or not. It’s almost as though the term phenomenology is a blank slate into which the psychologists could project their own meanings. Of course, the projected meanings are not open-ended and usually are constrained to refer to subjectivity or experiences, but given that limitation, several meanings can be discriminated. The term phenomenology was introduced into psychology by two independent perspectives that later became intertwined. The first was the type of science introduced by Johann Goethe (1749–1832), the noted humanist. He worked out his theory in relation to work he was doing in botany and articulated it again when he opposed Newton’s theory of color vision. The second was the perspective introduced by Brentano’s emphasis

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on the psychology of acts. The Goethean tradition is the older of the two so we will begin there. Goethe’s understanding of color vision was based on a more directly perceivable, experiential perspective than was that of Newton. He did not so much seek explanatory concepts as an understanding of the phenomenon based upon its direct observation and its context. He chose to be descriptive and integrative in his approach rather than analytical and constructive. As is well-known, part of the beginnings of psychology emerged from physiology and J. Purkinje (1787–1869) was a physiologist at Praque whose life overlapped with Goethe’s. He dedicated the second volume of his book on vision to Goethe, and his book included many careful observations such as Goethe espoused (Boring, 1950). Today Purkinje is best known for the phenomenon named after him, the Purkinje shift, which is the difference in peak sensitivity between night and day vision. In the dark, the wavelength of maximum effectiveness is 505nm whereas with bright light it is 555nm. Purkinje reported this finding without knowing its causes which is characteristic of a phenomenological approach. Today we know that the difference is due to whether the rods or cones of the eye are primarily functioning. According to Boring (1950, p. 20), 70 years had passed before scientists solidly established that fact. For phenomenological researchers, careful observations and descriptions come first and the phenomenal givens obtained can then be the basis for a more thorough understanding that often follows their discoveries. However, seeking the cause of the phenomenon is not always the motive for a deeper understanding. Purkinje was succeeded by another well-known physiologist, Ewald Hering (1834–1918), who also conducted science in the Goethean tradition. Hering has been described as a nativist, that is, one who tended to interpret certain experiences as due to innate abilities on the part of the organism rather than due to learning on the basis of experience. His view was opposite to that of his chief contemporary rival, Hermann Helmholtz (1850–1909) who was empiricist in his approach. However, the labeling of the controversy as nativist-empiricist was a misnomer, for the differences were really about “conflicting philosophical commitments, styles of theorizing, and investigative strategies” (Ash, 1998, p. 52). Overall, Hering was a respected scientist who did not avoid empirical research and even invented many apparatuses and instruments that were used in

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psychological laboratories long after his death. In a way, the controversy between Hering and Helmholtz regarding color vision was a repetition of the controversy between Newton and Goethe. Boring (1950, p. 355) emphasizes that Hering was an important supporter of the phenomenological tradition which believed that “. . . the description of conscious phenomena is basic to the understanding of psychological fact.” With Hering, we get the beginnings of the intertwining of the two phenomenological traditions, so let’s turn to the other source of phenomenology prior to Husserl. As mentioned, the other source of the phenomenological perspective in psychology was Franz Brentano (1838–1917), a German philosopher who attracted many adherents to his views, influenced many more thinkers, including Husserl, and he was the founder of a school of philosophy. Brentano, although not a phenomenologist himself, influenced the phenomenological movement quite a bit because of the themes he espoused in his philosophy and because of the numerous individuals he influenced who became philosophers or psychologists in their own right. Philosophically, Brentano taught that the method of philosophy was the same as the method of the natural sciences (Ash, 1982). He embraced empiricism, tended to work on limited problems and eschewed system building. His philosophy contained many of the characteristics that phenomenology later also accepted such as the priority of description over theorizing, the emphasis on the careful analysis of examples and counter-examples, an openness to “ideal intuitions” (Spiegelberg, 1982) and a concern for philosophical evidence. Careful observation and description, he believed, had to precede explanation. Brentano influenced many scholars and with respect to phenomenology the most important ones were (a) Edmund Husserl (1859–1938) himself, the founder of phenomenological philosophy in the modern sense of the term; (b) Alexis Meinong (1853–1920) and Christian von Ehrenfels (1859–1932), who also interacted with each other and were members of the School of Graz. Meinong was the leader of that school, and he elaborated Brentano’s intentionality thesis and developed a theory of objects, including how to understand that one could be aware of nonexistent objects (Jacquette, 1996). Von Ehrenfels introduced the notion of “form qualities,” a new element to account for the perception of wholes that are immediately experienced. This idea was the basis of much debate

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and research in the 1890s (Boring, 1950) including the experimental work of his Graz colleague, Vittorio Benussi (1878–1927). Finally, (c) Brentano was close to Carl Stumpf (1848–1936) early in the latter’s career. Stumpf was a teacher of Husserl, was then his colleague at Halle and later he became the head of the Psychological Institute at Berlin where Koffka and Köhler earned their degrees under him and where Wertheimer also spent several years (Ash, 1982). Finally, Stumpf had spent 5 years at Praque while Ewald Hering was teaching there. Spiegelberg (1982, p. 56) states that Stumpf credited Hering for helping him to realize the idea of phenomenology as a prescience. With this influence, the two strands of preHusserlian phenomenology come together in the person of Stumpf. It was Stumpf who coined the term “experimental phenomenology” and initiated its practice in Berlin in 1905 (Spiegelberg, 1982). Stumpf considered phenomenology to be a prescience that had to be conducted before taking up the specific attitude of a researcher’s discipline. Spiegelberg (1982, p. 56) describes the idea of a prescience as follows: “Its task is the analysis and description of the immediately given contents of our acts or functions, the study of their relationships and of their structural laws preparatory to the study of their causal dependencies on factors other than the phenomena, which is reserved for the sciences proper.” For Stumpf, phenomenology was limited to the givens that phenomena present, and he postulated a certain lawfulness to their appearances. As a matter of fact, the research conducted in the Berlin lab mostly resembled psychophysical experiments, but in Stumpf ’s case the introspective reports were more important than the measurements that were taken (Ash, 1982). Historically, although Stumpf ’s use of the term “phenomenology” preceded Husserl’s and his understanding of it also differed from the way that Husserl articulated his philosophy, there are enough common points for each of them to lay claim to the title. Spiegelberg (1982, p. 62) notes that they both “wanted to start from an unbiased description of the immediate phenomena”; both sought “more than merely empirical generalizations and to study the essential structures in and between these phenomena, and both recognized the world of logical structures as something apart from mere psychological acts.” As noted, Stumpf founded his lab in 1905 and Husserl published his Logical Investigations in 1900 even

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though he did not yet label his philosophy “phenomenology” in that work. So Stumpf, in addition to being the person who combined the two streams of preHusserlian phenomenology, is also the person who marks the transition from preHusserlian phenomenology to articulations of phenomenology concomitant with Husserl’s early writings. In this first phase, several aspects of a phenomenological approach can be stated: (1) it implied a concern for a perception of a whole that is immediate and not built up from elements; (2) it acknowledged that the perception of a whole implies a distinctive quality (gestalt qualities) although the nature of that quality was a subject of great debate; (3) it valued a careful description of the immediately given and an analysis of the given in its own terms before seeking external explanations, and (4) it affirmed the presence of nonsensorial givens and ideal entities as necessary for a full understanding of experiences. Each of those emphases would be characteristics of a contemporary phenomenological approach.

Some Contextual Factors in the Initiation and Development of German Psychology Before moving on with the instances of phenomenological themes in the development of psychology, an important contextual issue has to be mentioned. It is generally accepted that psychology as an independent discipline began in 1879 with the founding of a lab by Wundt in Leipzig. But in an article written almost a half century later by Titchener (1921), the year 1874 was also important because, as he pointed out, that was the year that two major works of significance for psychology were published. The works he referred to were Brentano’s (1874) Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkte and Wundt’s (1874) Gründzuge der physiologischen Psychologie. Titchener’s article makes the point that these two works initiated traditions that were in competition with each other. The tradition started by Wundt was known as “content psychology” and its approach was experimental. The tradition that Brentano initiated was called “act psychology,” and although it was empirical in its approach, it was not experimental. The very definition of psychology was at the center of this dispute. Wundt and the content psychologists thought that a psychological process was the content that one experienced. For example, if

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one saw a red patch, the experience of redness was psychological even if there was a physical correlate. Brentano and the act psychologists maintained that the act of seeing redness was what constituted psychological subject matter even though the act referred to a content. In fact, for the act psychologists the very reference to a content is what made the act psychological because that was how Brentano defined the psychological: consciousness displayed an openness to something not itself. Brentano, based upon the scholastic philosophy he knew, called this direction of consciousness to an object an intentional relation. It was this Brentanian notion within the context of act psychology that was responsible for the emergence of certain phenomenological themes in late 19th and early 20th century German psychology. When phenomenological themes emerged within the context of content psychology and with experimental procedures, it was due to the Goethe and Hering tradition. As stated above, Stumpf synthesized the two views with his innovation of experimental phenomenology and with his novel idea of phenomenology as a prescience. After Stumpf, even experimental psychologists displayed Brentanian influences, e.g. the Würzburg school and the Gestalt theorists. It is important to note that as late as 1921, Titchener thought that psychology could still go either way: experimental or empirical. He (Titchener, 1921, 20) ended his article with a question; “Which of the two authors is in the right?” But he insisted that psychology could not follow both lines of thinking. One or the other would have to dominate. The reason was that the Wundtians approached psychological phenomena basically in terms of elements and association theory whereas the act psychologists were not analytic in the same way. They were descriptive and holistic. Of course, subsequent developments showed that the experimentalists and content psychologists won the struggle for dominance, at least for the time being, but without the Brentanian perspective entirely disappearing. In fact, even the American literature of the 1920s shows indications of a growing appreciation of the phenomenological perspective. Titchener (1924, 323), in reviewing the history of experimental psychology, acknowledged that the appreciation of the work of Hering was belated due to the strong influence of Helmholtz and added that “. . . Phenomenology . . . provides today a safe and sure mode of approach to the analysis of our psychological subject-matter. . . .” In addition, Young (1924, p. 296) wrote an article indicating that the phenomenological

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perspective was fundamental for psychology and wrote, “If the phenomenological point of view be assumed as a working basis for experimentation, eventually, I believe, a genuine science of psychology will arise which will link together in an adequate way the facts of experience and the facts of animal movement”. Finally, Helson (1925, p. 344), in his introduction to Gestalt psychology for an American audience, remarked that phenomenology (and Gestalt theory) were only two of several movements in Germany that were critiquing elementistic approaches and trying to found psychology on a different basis. Of course, it was during the 1920s that Gestalt psychology began to make an impact on American psychology and many features of research that phenomenology would have espoused began to be accepted under the label of “Gestalt”. My point here is simply to show that the act psychology alternative was still alive in the 1920s, primarily in Germany, but with tricklings into the U.S. as well, otherwise Titchener, who knew the literature of psychology as well as anyone, would not have raised his critical question. This means that at that time act psychology, or the phenomenological perspective, was part of mainstream psychology. There was the possibility that it could have become an alternative perspective in psychology, such as behaviorism or psychoanalysis, but history did not unfold in that way. It would be interesting to understand why, but the answer requires much more research. Of course, the emergence of the Nazi regime in Germany in the early 1930s played a role because it forced many (but not all) of the Gestalt theorists to emigrate. In any case, by the time World War II ended, the leading nation for the development of psychology was no longer Germany but the United States, and in the latter country the content psychology with experimental procedures was dominant. The counterpart of act psychology in the United States was functionalism, and it was quite different from what the Brentano school had been developing.

Historical Examples of Phenomenological Psychology Würzburg I will begin with the Würzburg school, which lasted from 1900 until about 1912. One could say that the Würzburg school was an experimental wing of act psychology even though act psychology was not primarily experimental. Husserl’s Logical Investigations came out in 1900 and it influenced some Würzburgers although others were more critical of Husserl. The

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primary purpose of the Würzburg investigations was to study the experience of thinking, but because they obtained “introspections” concerning what the thinkers were experiencing, certain phenomenological issues came to the fore. They called their method “systematic experimental introspection”—I shall return to the question of introspection later, and the school came to a dead-end because of two controversies that it precipitated. Today it is mostly known because of those controversies. Like act psychology in general, this style of research also ceased by the late twenties. One controversy had to do with one of its discoveries: they claimed that within the process of thinking one can discover imageless thoughts. No one outside of the Würzburg school wanted to accept this finding because it went against the prevailing wisdom that all the elements of thought had to be palpable. That is, they had to consist of something tangible like sensations, images or some other type of sensorial given. Secondly, Würzburg created a methodical controversy because it liberated introspection from close ties to physical stimuli, which was the way that Wundt thought that introspection should be used, so Wundt (1907) severely criticized how the Würzburg psychologists used introspection. More directly, some of the members of the Würzburg circle criticized Husserl’s affirmation of immanent perception, and Husserl argued for its possibility. Nevertheless, the whole basis of the Würzburg approach was the description of immanent conscious processes, and some members of the school appealed to phenomenology for legitimation for that procedure even though it was called introspection. Most of the controversial issues surrounding Würzburg were not really resolved, but the controversies, along with the advent of behaviorism, helped to discredit introspection as a method. The phenomenological insights used by the members of this school, mostly by Messer and Bühler (Ash, 1982), were drawn from the Logical Investigations. Louvain In Belgium, at Louvain, Albert Michotte, who was familiar with the work of the Würzburg school, also conducted some research that was called phenomenological. He (Michotte, 1963, p. 305) uses the term to refer to what is perceived by the subjects of an experiment, dependent upon their verbal responses. Because of the controversy surrounding introspection, Michotte took pains to make clear that he was not asking his subjects to

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introspect but to describe what they were perceiving in the experimental setting. His use of the term is similar to what will be encountered with other phenomenological psychologists of his era, namely, seeking the reports of phenomenal experiences on the part of experimental subjects. Michotte’s understanding of phenomenology was influenced more by the Hering tradition and David Katz than by philosophical phenomenology. While Michotte is primarily known for his work on the perception of causality, in his long career, he also worked on many other problems such as the phenomenal identity and phenomenal permanence of objects, apparent reality, studies on types of visual structures, and the role of language in the description of perceptual objects (Thinès, 1988). Michotte was succeeded by Georges Thinès, who also fostered a phenomenological approach and who wrote several theoretical books and articles in favor of phenomenology (e.g., Thinès, 1970; 1977; 1991). Early in his career Thinès followed the line of research begun by his mentor, Michotte, on the perception of causality but he later turned to other problem areas, including animal research. Thinès (1988) was not simply a follower of Michotte for he offered some critical remarks about the latter’s work and certainly his understanding of phenomenology differed from that of his mentor because Thinès incorporated some Husserlian ideas in his understanding whereas Michotte did not. Thinès seemed not to have had a consistent empirical research program based on a phenomenological perspective. His main contributions were theoretical. In any case, at Louvain, there was a sympathetic successor to the founding phenomenological psychologist. Historically speaking, this rarely happened. Berlin We also have to mention the school of Gestalt psychology that was centered in Berlin, although it would take a separate chapter to do justice to the complex relationship between Gestalt psychology and phenomenology. The Gestaltists rarely attached the term “phenomenology” to their research efforts, but they were clearly influenced by it. Koffka (1935, p. 73) remarked in the 1930s that one could not easily find phenomenological descriptions in America, but they were rather prevalent in Europe. He argued for their use and he defined phenomenology as a “naïve and full a description of direct experience as possible.” The many descriptions of the phenomenal world by the Gestalt psychologists surely had a great

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impact in making other psychologists somewhat receptive to what phenomenology had to offer. Gurwitsch (1964) even claimed that the dismissal of the constancy hypothesis on the part of the Gestaltists was an incipient phenomenological reduction, even though the Gestaltists themselves never made that claim. Gurwitsch (1966b ) also claimed several other convergences between phenomenology and Gestalt psychology. Scandinavia Mention also has to be made of the Copenhagen school and the work of David Katz. The Copenhagen school was headed by Edgar Rubin, and he did work that was similar to the Gestaltists, although he was not a genuine member of that school. When I visited Copenhagen, three members of the school were still alive: Edgar Tranekjaer-Rasmussen, Ib Moustgaard and Franz From. My discussions with them indicated that while they were aware of Husserl’s works, they did not seem to have followed him closely. Rather, it seemed to me that they were much more aware of the phenomenological approach as practiced by Ewald Hering, who seemed to operate more in the descriptive scientific tradition of Goethe. They seemed to be interested in developing a descriptive psychology, but it seemed not to be based on the ideas of Husserl. David Katz, of course, did phenomenological analyses of color and touch while at Rostock in Germany, but he left Germany because of Nazism and went to Stockholm. However, I am not aware of any phenomenological work that was done at Stockholm and discussions with his son indicated that there were no followers. The same was true at Copenhagen. The new students rejected the descriptive approach of the preceding generation. Utrecht One of the stronger representatives of phenomenology in psychology was the so-called “Utrecht School” in Holland. I say “so-called” because it was so loosely organized that there are disputes about whether it was in fact a genuine school (van Hezewijk and Stam, 2008) and because it seems that many other factors in addition to phenomenology influenced the values that the “school” maintained (Dehue, 1995). A discussion of the issues related to Utrecht could also take a chapter but I have to limit the discussion to the following few remarks.

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The founder and leader of the school was F. J. J. Buytendijk (1887– 1974), who was a physiologist and physician, but he was nevertheless appointed professor of psychology at Utrecht University. Other prominent members were the pedagogist and psychologist Martinus Langeveld, the theologian and psychologist David J. van Lennep, the psychiatrist Henricus C. Rümke, the legal scholar Willem Pompe, the criminologist Gerard Kempe, the psychiatrist J. H. van den Berg, and the psychologist Johannes Linschoten (1925–1964). I mention these more prominent names so that one can see the diversity of disciplines encompassed by the “school”. However, we will limit our discussion to the impact that the Utrecht school had upon psychology. Dehue (1995, pp. 62–64) and van Hezewijk and Stam (2008, 189) both emphasize that the main psychologists at Utrecht belonging to the school did not come from typical psychological backgrounds. It was already mentioned that Buytendijk was a physiologist-physician; van Lennep was a theologian and successful applied psychologist for many years before he quickly got his doctorate so that he could be appointed professor at Utrecht (Dehue, 1995, p. 63); and Langeveld was an educator and developmental psychologist who also espoused a philosophy of “personalistic socialism” (Dehue, 1995, p. 80) that was prevalent in Holland at that time. Dehue (1995) makes the point that a certain intertwining of personalism and phenomenology characterized the view of the Utrecht school. She also stated that no one could clarify the nature of the phenomenological method that the members used. In part this was because of the strong influence of personalism on the Utrecht school’s members and Dehue (1995, p. 76) even makes the claim that “personalistic psychology’ would therefore seem to be at least as accurate as “phenomenological psychology” as a label for the Utrecht school. She (Dehue, 1995, p. 76) even got a qualified confirmation of this statement from Langeveld. Her research led her to conclude that “The methodological unity of the Utrecht School existed in the agreement on the precedence of anthropology and morality above method. The goal of psychology was to lead people to full humanity”. It is important to remember this intertwining when one speaks of the demise of the Utrecht school. In a certain sense, the Utrecht school members were doing what was necessary if psychology was to be transformed in line with their vision. They did not agree with the trajectory mainstream psychology was pursu-

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ing but did affirm that a more adequate psychology was possible. Consequently, they would have to hire like-minded people to pursue their goal. Moreover, the concern for anthropological philosophy was also legitimate if one believed, as they did, that natural scientific psychological procedures were reductionistic and not sufficient for studying persons as they appeared in the everyday world. This fact also accounts for their interest in personalism: They wanted an understanding of humans that was authentically human and richly personal. However, these legitimate concerns do not justify the lack of a clarified methodology, however holistically it may have been conceived. Dehue (1995, p. 73) makes much of the influence that Scheler had on Buytendijk. She thinks that Scheler’s personalism influenced him greatly. She also contrasts Husserl’s idea of phenomenology to the notions that the Utrecht school upheld concernimg phenomenology and finds many differences. The contrast between Husserl’s more rigorous and methodical articulation of phenomenology and Scheler’s personalistic views were great enough for Husserl not to consider Scheler to be one of his followers. Dehue (1995, p. 71) finally summarizes the differences by stating, “For Scheler phenomenology was more of a stance than a method”. Perhaps that is why there is so little talk of method by the Utrecht school psychologists. However, it has to be noted that in an article intended to demonstrate the value of phenomenology for psychology, Buytendijk (1967) relies almost completely upon Husserl. Scheler is mentioned but only in passing and with respect to implications of his work for psychopathology. In this article, Buytendijk shows that he really has understood Husserl and he has drawn out the implications of the latter’s philosophy for psychology. The same article also praises Husserl for the phenomenological method he developed. I do not know why Buytendijk did not refer to Husserl’s method more directly in his other writings. It should be noted however that this article appeared after Buytendijk retired so perhaps it was a late development for him. Buytendijk retired in 1957 and his former student, Johannes Linschoten, took over as Chair of the psychology department at Utrecht University (van Hezewijk & Stam, 2008, p. 189). To call Linschoten a former student of Buytendijk’s is probably literally correct since over time a strain developed between them and they hardly spoke to each other by the time Linschoten died at the untimely age of 38 in 1964. However, before he

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died, Linschoten (1964) wrote the Idolen van de Psycholoog (Idols of the Psychologist) (although published posthumously) in which he made many criticisms of the phenomenology of the Utrecht school. For Dutch psychology this book was a great turning point because it was interpreted to mean the end of the Utrecht school and it was used by Dutch psychologists to return to positivistic and natural science approaches to psychology. It should be recalled that the Utrecht school did deliberately choose nonmainstream psychologists to do its work, so when one of its alleged members criticized its nontypical orientation, the Dutch mainstream psychologists breathed a collective sigh of relief. At least that was the public reaction. Van Hezewijk and Stam (2008, p. 203) however indicate that Linschoten’s view of phenomenology was “subtle” and “sophisticated.” His (Linschoten, 1968) book on James was strongly phenomenological, but it was also not an experimental work, and his Idolen was critical of Utrecht phenomenology. But he always kept a role for phenomenology even if it was not the role envisioned by the other members of the Utrecht school. Perhaps he deliberately kept this tension between the two perspectives. I spent the summer of 1961 in Utrecht as Linschoten’s guest in order to see how the phenomenological method was applied in psychology. I was surprised to learn that none of his psychology students were doing phenomenological research. Yet, when we met, we always spoke about phenomenology. Also, during my last visit to Utrecht, in the summer of 1963, when I heard rumors about Linschoten’s critical stance towards phenomenology in the coming Idolen, I asked him why he turned against phenomenology and he said “Well, I really didn’t. My next book will be phenomenological again. I like to keep people guessing.” While I perceived his answer to be partly evasive, I also got the feeling that he was serious. Perhaps he himself was struggling to arrive at the proper relationship between phenomenology and psychology. My own interpretation is that Linschoten was criticizing certain aspects of Utrecht phenomenology and not phenomenology as such. Perhaps that is what his next book would have made clear. In any case, the Utrecht school was a significant moment in the development of phenomenological psychology. It took place mostly during the 1950s and early 1960s, a time when phenomenology had practically disappeared from German psychology because of Nazism and World War II. The members of the Utrecht school provided examples for determining

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what phenomenological psychological results looked like and they were an inspiration for psychologists in other parts of the world. How they practiced phenomenological psychology was not a model for all others, but they showed that rich results could be obtained by following phenomenological precepts. Heidelberg I first met the German phenomenological psychologist Carl Graumann in 1961 when he was at Bonn University, but soon after that he became the Chair of the psychology department at Heidelberg where he remained until he retired. Graumann was personally phenomenological in a theoretical way but not exclusively so. His Habilitationschrift (Graumann, 1960) was phenomenological and he wrote several articles on various psychological issues from a phenomenological perspective and even co-edited a book (Herzog & Graumann, 1991) demonstrating the application of the phenomenological method in psychology. However, Graumann never developed a phenomenological research program all the time that he was at Heidelberg. This fact often puzzled me, but he never explained to me why that was so. My guess is that the phenomenological perspective in psychology was such a minority perspective, despite the pre-World War I tradition, that he never saw an opening to develop it. In any case, very few of his students conducted research along phenomenological lines. As noted before, this was also true of Linschoten and Thinès. Thinès’s students had a few phenomenological research publications, but I would say too few for the amount of time he was chair. Thinès once explained to me that money was not available for phenomenological research, but it was for animal studies. In any event, all three of these men were chairs of their respective departments and in the European context, at least in those days, such men had the power to influence the line of research being conducted, but none were sponsoring phenomenological research. I never understood why. Grahamstown Before turning to the United States I should mention Rhodes University in Grahamstown, in the Republic of South Africa. Dreyer Kruger was the inspiration for its development there. He had come across Binswanger’s

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book while he was still at Fort Hare University and introduced phenomenology there. Later he met van den Berg, who gave him a fuller picture of the whole phenomenological movement, so when Kruger began teaching at Rhodes, he brought the phenomenological approach with him. While Kruger himself was a therapist—thus influenced by Binswanger and Boss—he nevertheless introduced a program at Rhodes in which students could write dissertations based upon phenomenological research. Kruger has retired, and recently died, and I am informed that there is no longer a phenomenological presence there. United States In the United States there was what has been called a “grassroots” phenomenological psychological movement initiated by Snygg (1941) and developed by Snygg and Combs (1949). This movement had nothing to do with continental philosophy. Basically, they argued for a subjective frame of reference for psychology, which they called phenomenological, but they inserted it into a cause-effect context. Later, Combs and Anne and Fred Richards (1976) revised the text and modified the approach again, calling it perceptual psychology as Combs and Snygg (1959) had done in their revised text but also aligning it with the humanistic psychology movement that had emerged in the U.S. in the early sixties. However, since the retirement of the Richards, I’m not sure how well this version of phenomenological psychology fares. Another American who argued for a phenomenological approach to psychology was Robert MacLeod. MacLeod had spent time in Rostock with David Katz, and he learned phenomenology from him. MacLeod did not establish a center or have many disciples, but he did argue rather strongly for a place for phenomenology in psychology. He (MacLeod, 1948) argued for the possibility of a phenomenological perspective soon after World War II ended. He held the view that phenomenology was propaedeutic to science, but not actually scientific. We were good friends, but I differed with him in respect to the role of phenomenology in psychology. He also told me that his colleagues in his department told him that after he retired, there was to be no more phenomenology at Cornell. The last situation that I will cover is the one with which I am most familiar because I participated in its development. I am referring to the

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psychology department at Duquesne University. The man who conceived of this department was Adrian van Kaam, a Dutchman who emigrated to the United States with an M.A. in psychology and completed his doctorate at Case Western University in Cleveland. After what he was exposed to in Europe, he was quite shocked at what passed for psychology in the U.S. He studied psychology with an existential-phenomenological perspective in Holland and expected more of the same in the U.S. but found nothing like it in Cleveland. When he arrived at Duquesne there was only an A.B. program in psychology, so he started an M.A. program in 1958 and the Ph.D program in psychology began in 1962, which is when I joined the department. Van Kaam was obviously European in his thinking, so he brought some ideas from the continent that were strange on the American scene. First of all, he thought that the department should emphasize one approach, but do it well. Almost all other American universities are eclectic and try to cover all major theories or perspectives. When van Kaam emigrated in the mid-fifties, existential-phenomenological thought was in its heyday in Europe, so he decided to let that perspective be the guideline for the development of the psychology department. This emphasis was also somewhat alien to the American temperament, but not necessarily at Duquesne because the philosophy department was also existential-phenomenological in outlook due to the efforts of another Dutchman, a philosopher named Henry Koren. In addition there was a press that published a philosophical series consisting mostly of books on existential-phenomenological philosophy. So, despite the extraordinary circumstances, the program was successful. Initially, the students had to take philosophy as well as psychology courses, but over time it became burdensome for the students, and so eventually the philosophy courses were dropped. After some 25 or 30 years and with a changeover of faculty, the specific phenomenological orientation was dropped. The department now fosters psychology with a human science perspective with a mixture of postmodern influences. A phenomenological approach is not ruled out, but it lost its exclusivity. If we stop for a moment and examine the type of phenomenology being practiced by these historical psychological schools, I think that only a few of them, if any, would have received the approval of the Husserl of Ideas I or beyond. This is not to say that some good work has not been done. The two consistencies seem to be the emphasis on the subjective frame of reference

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and the collection of phenomenal data. For example, the phenomenal or experiential world has certainly been well explored by these schools. The variety of phenomena explored is pretty large: The Gestaltists worked on perception and also learning; Katz explored the worlds of color and touch; Michotte singled out the perception of causality; Snygg emphasized the subjective factors in experience rather than the objective or statistical facts; the Utrecht school provided many concrete descriptions of the everyday world; and the Copenhagen school advanced not only the perception of things but also the perception of others, and so on. But the frame of reference for understanding such worlds was not phenomenological philosophy; more often than not it was empiricism. With few exceptions, the primary meaning of phenomenal description with these schools was the one given by Koffka: “a naïve and full description of direct experience as possible”. The idea of the adoption of a phenomenological attitude in the philosophical sense of the term is rarely mentioned, but a careful description of the given as given may have implicitly achieved the same result. The reason that Koffka’s definition had as much currency as it did is because it was in contrast with the schools of introspection—such as Titchener’s—that required that the descriptions be in terms of the hypothesized elements of the experience. The work that I did at Duquesne University did consciously introduce the notion of the phenomenological attitude and the phenomenological reduction. This fact was due more to naivete and circumstances than anything else. I say naivete because when I went to Duquesne I knew very little about phenomenology. I was trained as an experimental psychologist specializing in the psychophysics of vision and I had worked as an applied research psychologist. I had never heard of phenomenology throughout my psychological training except what I read in the history books, and when I raised questions about it, the questions were dismissed. I only became aware of phenomenological philosophy after I got my Ph.D. It was also due to circumstances because the purpose of my hiring was to try to develop a method of research that would be more compatible with the existential-phenomenological orientation of the department. I was a methodologist within the context of the natural sciences, but phenomenology was a whole new thing to me. So I asked about and was told that Husserl was the founder of phenomenology and that Sartre, MerleauPonty and Heidegger, among others, were important members of the

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movement. I began by reading the philosophers, especially Husserl, but the others as well. I studied what Husserl said about method and then read Merleau-Ponty’s comments on it. The idea of the phenomenological reduction was critically important to them so I knew that it had to be incorporated in some way. However, since they were philosophers, I figured that some modifications had to be made to the philosophical method in order for it to meet scientific and psychological requirements. I mention all this because unlike all of the other historical schools, except possibly the act psychologists, I came to articulate a method by going through philosophical phenomenology, not by any grassroots approach or by trying to tackle a specific psychological problem. I had to develop a generic method that was flexible enough to meet all of the diverse problems that students seeking to do dissertations could use. In the early years, I was not too concerned because I kept being told that in Europe there were research psychologists who were using a phenomenological method. So I spent my first sabbatical scouring Western Europe looking for such psychologists, but when I found them, no one communicated to me anything about method. I realized that often—not always—what passed for phenomenological psychology was a critique of mainstream psychology, but the constructive alternative implied by the critique was not spoken to. That fact motivated me to speed up the development of a method. Now, the one sobering fact about this history that I want to emphasize is this: wherever phenomenology appeared in a psychology department it did not last more than one generation, with one or two exceptions, or it was the effort of a single individual who did not manage to attract many disciples. I do not know the reason for this state of affairs and certainly many reasons can be imagined. I once asked the phenomenological psychiatrist Erwin Straus, when he was in his 80s, why he didn’t have any disciples. His answer was that phenomenology was too difficult for scientists to learn. I was young when I asked that question, so I didn’t believe him. However, today, I am more inclined to agree with Straus. The survey I just spoke about has been pretty thorough, but it is not exhaustive. One would still have to probe each of the places where phenomenology had arisen in order to see the precise meanings of phenomenology that were operating in them. One would also have to track the cross-influences that took place and to what extent philosophical

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phenomenology played a role in determining the meaning of the term. Finally, one would have to examine other literature from that era in order to see what other spontaneous developments might have taken place in the direction of phenomenology without the term actually being used. I have been emphasizing the historical schools, not the present ones. There are still, perhaps, some dozen places where phenomenological psychology is being taught. Except for Seattle University, which has a concentrated phenomenological faculty, but also only a terminal M.A. program, in the other schools the presence of phenomenology is dependent upon one or two key professors. It is not clear what will happen when these professors retire. It is critical that such places continue their traditions, otherwise, how will the future generations receive their training? This last point leads to the next big question.

Can Phenomenological Philosophy and Scientific Psychology be Integrated? The key question then is: can one integrate transcendental phenomenology and the science of psychology? The answer from the perspective of transcendental phenomenology seems to be “yes.” Phenomenology is an a priori discipline that will clarify the fundamental theoretical concepts that necessarily will belong to any consciousness, and on the basis of those clarified concepts psychologists can conduct research on empirical phenomena in a guided way rather than blindly. As indicated above, the history of psychology seems to be “no” because it probes the phenomenal realm in its own way as though it didn’t need philosophers to tell it what to do or how to interpret its findings. Is this impasse a finality or can it be mediated? If it is to be mediated, as I indicated above, a number of daunting difficulties will have to be resolved. Obviously, I cannot enumerate all of the problems, but within the space allotted I can mention a few of them so that the nature of the difficulties can clearly emerge. Let me start with how consciousness is understood within psychology. Its perspective is naturalistic, and so psychologists try to determine the causes of consciousness and sometimes what effects consciousness has on behavior. As an aside, we must mention Wundt (Boring, 1950, p. 370) as

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an exception here because he posited a psychic causality that held in the phenomenal realm that was different from physical causality. Otherwise, psychologists generally search for cause-effect relationships within consciousness and between consciousness and the body or the world. The one place where we can see how consciousness was understood in psychology is with the phenomenon of introspection because that is where consciousness was probed to see what it would reveal about itself. The history of introspection in both philosophy and psychology is messy and complex, but fortunately there are two reviews in psychology which can ease our task. The first was written by E. G. Boring (1953), the most illustrious American historian of psychology during his lifetime. While Boring (1953, p. 169) called his article “A History of Introspection,” in his introduction he states that the title of his article could easily have been “The history of the availability of consciousness to observation in scientific psychology.” One of Boring’s points is that while it seems as if introspection has disappeared, in fact it is still being used under the heading of “verbal report” (1953, p. 169). Sometimes these verbal reports deal with external situations and sometimes with conscious processes themselves. This distinction leads me to the second history of introspection. Danziger (1980) had read Boring’s review of introspection, and he objected to some of the points Boring had made. Boring mentioned the distinction that Wundt had made between innere wahrnehmung (inner perception) and Selbstbeobachtung (self observation) but he did not emphasize the difference and translated both of them as “introspection”. Danziger (1980) however argues that the distinction is critically important and that both expressions should not be called “introspection”. Brentano had stressed the idea of inner perceptions, and Wundt recognized them. However, Wundt held that, as perceptions, they were not a sufficiently solid basis for science and so he introduced self observations, which he believed gave the inner perceptions a more solid basis. Consequently, Wundt tied internal observations to experimental conditions and he limited the subjective report of the participant to an almost immediate response. In other words, Wundt believed in introspection so long as it was tied to experimental conditions. Danziger (1980, p. 24) summarizes Wundt’s introduction of Selbstbeobachtung as follows: “For a scientific psychology, Wundt thought, it would be necessary to manipulate the conditions of internal perception so that they approximated the conditions of

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external perception. This manipulation was accomplished in the psychological experiment, and it was the goal which gave to the experiments their specific form and their characteristic prescriptions.” A second feature that Selbstbeobachtung implied was the possibility of replication. That is, a scientific criterion came into play here. As Danziger (1980, p. 24) states, “The Wundtian rationale for the validity of introspection under experimental conditions rested on the assumption that identical or nearidentical perceptions could be produced deliberately and reliably by the repeated presentation of known external stimuli.” As opposed to the Würzburg school, the Wundtian approach had a very limited role for introspection. It was on this strict basis for the use of introspection that Wundt criticized the “systematic experimental introspection” of the Würzburg school. His critique helped bring about the demise of introspection in psychology. It is interesting that neither Boring nor Danziger describe consciousness or its characteristics while discussing introspection. It is taken for granted that it means awareness and most of its other characteristics come to the fore negatively, that is, that consciousness cannot hold steady to be observed because it keeps moving, that it cannot be sensorially observed, and that it belongs only to one person and so on. Phenomenology is more positive with respect to its description of consciousness, and although we cannot give a complete inventory, we would like to indicate how insights concerning consciousness from phenomenology can be helpful to psychology. So I will now review what I said about introspection and I will indicate the differences between scientific psychology’s understanding of consciousness and that of phenomenology.

Phenomenological Consciousness We first indicated that mainstream psychology understood consciousness naturalistically and so it analyzed its operations within the context of cause-effect analyses. Of course, such a perspective is not all wrong. The question is whether it is sufficient to understand all of the operations of consciousness. Following Brentano, Husserl accepted the idea that consciousness was intentional. He modified Brentano’s understanding of the term and used it as one of the cornerstones of his analysis of consciousness. As most people know today, intentionality means that an act of con-

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sciousness is directed towards an object that transcends the act in which it appears. If the object belongs to the same stream of consciousness as the act, it is an immanent object. If the object transcends the stream of consciousness, it is known as a transcendent object. Intentionality is not conceived to be a real relation. It is irreal and so a shift in attitude is required to understand its proper function. One must perform the phenomenological reduction and assume the phenomenological attitude in order to do intentional analyses.

The Reliability of Descriptions In covering part of the history of introspection we noted that Boring claimed that officially introspection is not used anymore, but many researchers are resorting to “verbal reports”. Thus the whole question of the reliability of descriptions comes to the fore. It is a complex issue with adherents on both sides of the dispute: descriptions are trustworthy and descriptions are completely unreliable and everything in between. Phenomenology is on the side of trust; scientific psychology is mixed with respect to this issue. For scientific psychology, the issue comes down to the fact that when one describes one’s own mental processes, no one else can check the description. With the description of a transcendent object, others are able to check the validity of the description. But of course, they check the description of the transcendent object with conscious processes. However, since the object is public, there is acknowledgement that agreement is in principle possible. Reflection on one’s own mental processes is available only to the experiencer. This is the basis of most objections. Watt, a member of the Würzburg school, as cited by Husserl (1983) raises the following objections to the validity of reflection, and to phenomenology in general: One can indeed scarcely even inquire into the likelihood of how one arrives at the cognition of immediate mental living. For it is neither knowledge nor the object of knowledge; it is rather something else. It is not to be discerned how a report about the mental living of mental living, even when it is there, could be put down on paper . . . . . it all turns on the importance of the whole discussion of, namely, the derivation of the concept of immediate mental

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living which is not knowledge. One must be able to observe. Finally, each of us lives mentally. Only he does not know it. (pp.162–163, italics in original).

Watt is here using the distinction that Wundt made between mere awareness of something and the knowing of it which is dependent upon observation understood as a higher class of apprehension. The best response to this and other objections to the validity or reliability of descriptions of internal mental processes that I have come across is the one provided by Husserl. First of all, Husserl (1983, p. 79) describes the awareness of an immanent object as follows: “. . . by intentive mental processes related to something immanent, we understand those to which it is essential that their intentional objects, if they exist at all, belong to the same stream of mental processes to which they themselves belong” and he (Husserl, 1983, p. 95) adds, “anything that is perceivable immanently is perceivable only immanently” (italics in original). Husserl adds further characterizations. He (Husserl, 1983, p. 99) states: “We see that the sort of being which belongs to the mental process is such that the latter is essentially capable of being perceived in reflection” (italics in original). And then he (Husserl, 1983, p. 100) adds, “Every perception of something immanent necessarily guarantees the existence of its object”. There is no time to present all of the arguments Husserl gives to support his bold statements. Instead, I will simply present Husserl’s argument against those, like Watt, who doubt his claims. Husserl (1983, pp. 185–186) writes: All genuine skepticism of whatever kind and persuasion is indicated by the essentially necessary countersense that, in its argumentations, it implicitly presupposes as conditions of the possibility of its validity precisely what it denies in its theses . . . . . he who says: I doubt the cognitive signification of reflection, asserts a countersense. For as he declares his doubt, he reflects, and setting down this statement as valid presupposes that reflection actually and without doubt . . . . has the cognitive value doubted, that it does not change the relation to something objective, that the reflectionally unmodified mental process does not forfeit its essence in the transition to reflection. (Italics in original)

When Husserl writes in this way, and I think about what he says, he always convinces me. However, I must confess, that whenever I try his arguments with real skeptics, scientists who are not phenomenological, I am rarely

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able to convince them with these arguments. So I suppose that the only solution is to keep doing positive, constructive work and perhaps eventually those holding other positions may become convinced or else will present better objections. In any case, in the dispute between internal perception and self observation, Husserl certainly comes down on the side of internal perception. It should also be noted that it is dubious if Wundt’s manner of transforming internal perception into observation is really workable. Remember, he tried to tie internal perception to external conditions, but if the internal perception recorded was truly of the external stimulus, then it was no longer an internal perception. As Husserl noted, what is immanently perceived can only be immanently perceived.

Contributions of the Phenomenological Understanding of Consciousness We have briefly described the history of introspection and some of its vicissitudes and some of the work done by the phenomenological psychology schools of the past. We have emphasized that a thorough theoretical understanding of phenomenology and its main theme, consciousness, was often not present. I now want to indicate how a fuller knowledge of phenomenology could have avoided some of the difficulties the psychologists encountered. For example, we indicated that one of the findings of the Würzburg school was controversial, viz., that their participants reported the discovery of imageless thoughts. Well, one of the abilities of consciousness within phenomenology is that it is capable of perceiving irreal objects, such as ideas. The subjects of the study were required to report their experiences of thinking and thinking often takes place utilizing ideas. Why should that be so controversial? Because the received wisdom based on theoretical speculations was that all contents of consciousness had to be palpable elements. But it is also characteristic of the phenomenological approach that all notions not coming from direct intuition should be bracketed and weight is only given to what appears precisely as it appears. So the intuitive givenness of an imageless thought should have carried more weight than the theoretical constructions against which it was tested. But phenomenological principles were not adhered to, so the theory took precedence and the research program was eventually terminated.

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Another finding by the Würzburg psychologists went against their best interests. In another set of tasks that had to be performed by the subjects they were given words, and then they were asked to give the genus to which the word belonged, or another species or a coordinate and so forth, and when it came time to describe what took place, there wasn’t anything to be described. It became apparent that the directedness of thinking was predetermined by the instructions given to the subjects or by the nature of the task itself, and so the goal to be achieved was actually unconscious during the actual performance of the task. So a “determining tendency” that was basically unconscious was posited. Thus it was said that introspection had nothing to report. This too then became a reason for discrediting introspection because the most important things were taking place unconsciously. Freudian ideas were also in the air at this time and so they too contributed to the end of introspection. However, it seems peculiar that such a result should come about since it was the introspective method itself that revealed the fact of determining tendencies. Moreover, it is often the case in first person descriptions that the motive for the action that is taking place is not mentioned. What the Würzburgers found seemed to be a rather ordinary thing and yet it, along with several other factors that we have mentioned, helped to end the research program. Another debate that took place within introspective circles was whether introspection was immediate or whether, in fact, retrospection was involved. If retrospection was involved then the introspective method was considered to be even more unreliable because everyone knew that memories could be inaccurate. That is one reason that Wundt limited his use of introspection to immediate descriptions; to increase their reliability. However, if we bring to mind some aspects of Husserl’s ideas on the experience of time, it might help us better understand how introspection might work. Husserl (2001) stated that the present was not a point, but that it was constituted by a certain spread: retention-present-protention. Thus being reflectively present to an ongoing experience could involve a certain degree of retention, which belongs to the present. Of course, the retention recedes as well, but it gives the prereflective experience a better chance to be apprehended. Therefore, being present to an ongoing experience did not have to be quite as slippery as the introspectionists assumed. Finally, there is also the question of whether or not one has to use introspection. Phenomenologists in their research use phenomenological

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descriptions and they are not the same as introspective reports. For one thing, in the strong sense, phenomenological descriptions take place within the phenomenological attitude while introspective descriptions are within the natural attitude. Secondly, introspective descriptions seek facts concerning internal experiences whereas phenomenological descriptions seek to describe the essence of an intentive mental process. Consequently, although they are often confused, they are not identical. In addition, if introspection means searching for what has taken place, then another differentiating point is that phenomenologists claim that immediate experience is directly accessible because of the reflexivity of consciousness. It is part of the very nature of consciousness to be concomitantly aware of what is happening. These few brief examples indicate how a phenomenological understanding of consciousness can bring better interpretations to some of the difficulties that introspective methods ran into. However, this procedure is still inserting phenomenological findings into an unsympathetic framework. The larger and more significant task would be to change the framework so that a phenomenological theory of science could comfortably describe its findings in its own way. This leads to another challenge, so let me end by summarizing the challenges as I see them.

Challenges Facing the Science of Phenomenological Psychology I think that there are at least four key challenges facing the successful development of phenomenological psychology as a science. 1) I mentioned that wherever phenomenology influenced psychology, mostly it died within one generation, and if it lasted a bit longer, it terminated all the same. Why do these influences not persist? It’s true that the style of scholarship and the type of research is different from mainstream psychology, but is that a reason to terminate? Also, why does it keep popping up again in different places at different times? Many reasons can be imagined, but the real challenge is: Can we get phenomenological psychology as a science so well institutionalized that it does not disappear? How is that to be done? 2) Another challenge is: How do we train psychologists to do transcendental phenomenological analyses? Davidson (1989) has argued for

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transcendental analyses to be done before psychological analyses so that the transcendental constitution of the psychic can become transparent. But is it necessary for psychologists to enter into the transcendental perspective? Or, do we train philosophers to do psychological analyses? In my experience, these are very different talents and they are not easily combined in one person. Is it simply a matter of a division of labor? Each time phenomenology influences a psychology department, should a phenomenological philosopher or two also be retained so that an integrated effort can be forthcoming? Is such a solution realistic? 3) Another huge challenge is that phenomenological psychology would not fit comfortably into a natural science perspective. It would keep challenging most of the standard criteria. An attempt has been made by Petitot, Varela, Pachout and Roy (1999), but it seems to me to be a futile task. The effort should go the other way: One should phenomenologize nature. The very idea of science has to be broadened to accommodate a phenomenological perspective, but that broadened science does not yet exist either. It has to be developed as we are developing phenomenological psychology. Phenomenological psychology requires a strict nonreductionistic science that would respect all of the subtle characteristics of consciousness. Different criteria for an intersubjective method and for a flexible criterion for rigor would be necessary for a phenomenological psychology to thrive. This is probably an interdisciplinary effort. How is it to be accomplished? Another way to understand this challenge is to ask: Can phenomenological philosophy found a science? After all, empiricism was once only a philosophy. In the 17th century a science emerged from the premises of that philosophy, but its subject matter was nature. Cannot phenomenology, also a well-developed philosophy, serve as the basis for a science? But for a different kind of science, one that would take consciousness or personhood as its theme. How does one start, foster and maintain such a science? 4) Another big challenge is: How does one sustain a program that is at odds with dominant cultural values? I mean here not only the culture at large but also culture in the more restricted sense—the culture of science or the immediate professional culture within which one has to live. Our culture is highly technical, but phenomenology is more

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experiential. Phenomenology is descriptive, but I find that scientists expect theories and conjectures. With respect to the professional culture, departments fostering a phenomenological approach often have to compromise with certain imposed criteria from the American Psychological Association with which they do not agree, in order to receive approval for their work. For example, sometimes certain contents are prescribed in order to have a degree recognized whereas phenomenologically, one would prefer to avoid such content or study different perspectives on the same content. One has to realize that mainstream psychology is so well established and powerful that it is practically impervious to criticism. There are many criticisms of mainstream psychology available, but it just keeps rolling along as though the criticisms didn’t exist. There is even a dissident history of psychology, i.e., a list of thinkers who have protested the naturalistic development of psychology, but it is never taught. How do we get around this huge cultural problem? These are serious challenges that I believe can in principle be overcome. But how?

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