How to Develop Phenomenology as Psychology: from Description to Elucidation, Exemplified Based on a Study of Dream Analy
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How to Develop Phenomenology as Psychology: from Description to Elucidation, Exemplified Based on a Study of Dream Analysis Tsuneo Watanabe 1 Accepted: 20 October 2020/ # Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract The purpose of this paper is to introduce a methodological concept of phenomenological elucidation to promote the development of phenomenology as psychology. After offering a minimal review of the historical relationship between phenomenology and psychology, the first section gives a brief overview of the descriptive phenomenological approach developed by A. Giorgi and other psychologists. However, for phenomenology to evolve as a human science, the method should not remain descriptive. One needs to be able to answer the question of “why”. The second section outlines the process of phenomenological elucidation on the topic of dream analysis. This process answers the question of “why” based on identifying differences between the fundamental phenomenological structure of the dream experience and that of the real experience. Husserl’s classification of intentionalities is used as a heuristic for this identification. In the final section, phenomenological elucidation is defined as a way to answer the “why” question by treating the differences between the experiences in question as specific cases of more fundamental differences in phenomenological structure. This method is expected to be effective in the development of phenomenology as psychology, that is, as an empirical human science. Keywords The relationship of phenomenology and psychology . Descriptive
phenomenological approach . Phenomenological elucidation . Analysis of dreams . Husserl’s classification of intentionalities Historically, the relationship of phenomenology and psychology has not been a happy one. Brentano, the founder of the whole “Phenomenological Movement” (Spiegelberg * Tsuneo Watanabe [email protected]–u.ac.jp
1
Faculty of Science, Toho University, Miyama 2-2-1, Funabashi, Chiba Prefecture 274-8510, Japan
Integr Psych Behav
1982), published a major book in the genre of psychology in the same year (1874) as a publication of Wundt’s masterpiece1 and continued to have a great influence on European continental psychology from the late nineteenth century to the early twentieth century. However, the two fields have developed along increasingly separate lines since then.2 It is true that Husserl (1962/Husserl 1977, 1968/Husserl 1997) advocated two types of phenomenology: transcendental phenomenology and psychological phenomenology (or, more frequently, phenomenological psychology).3 However, most of his followers placed importance only on the former. In particular, the leading phenomenological psychiatrists (Binswanger, Blankenburg, etc.), arguing that their phenomenological psychiatry was exclusively transcendental, paid little attention to their contemporaries in psychology (see Tatossian 1979). Gestalt psychology, which initially appeared as part of the phenomenological movement, became self-misu
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