For more info go to http://phenomenologyblog.com/ My presentation at this year's International Human Science Research Conference in Montreal. My aim was to support discussion among hermeneutic and descriptive researchers and clinicians, and also to convey a sense of the descriptive phenomenological method, developed by Giorgi, which I teach at Saybrook Graduate School.

1. Marc Applebaum, PhD
International Human Science Research Conference
Université du Québec à Montréal
June 27, 2012

2. Phenomenology and hermeneutics
For Husserl, “being given and being interpreted are
descriptions of the same situation from two
different levels of discourse. Hermeneutics and
phenomenology coexist in his thought.”
“Intentional consciousness is meaning bestowing,
and therefore interpreting...but at the same time
Husserl insisted that we do perceive things that are
nevertheless given.”
(Mohanty, 1984, p. 117)

3. Implied complementarity
The implication of J. N. Mohanty’s observation is
that description and interpretation coexist within
Husserl’s phenomenological philosophy.
The challenge is how to work out what this means
for psychological research praxis? Moving from
philosophy to psychology requires an adaptation,
since their praxes are different.

4. Problem
Numerous qualitative researchers assert that
description and interpretation can be
complementary…
But this complementarity and its implications have not
been carefully worked through by psychologists

5. Why is this a problem for us?
If all knowing is framed as interpretive in an
overly reductive way, then a descriptive attitude
is nullified
If the issue is not clarified, the epistemological
foundation of our research will be incomplete
If description and interpretation represent
different attitudes, and we do not clarify the
difference, we risk muddying the waters for our
students

6. “Interpretation” and “description”
are not univocal terms
Next I will specify what I mean by description and
interpretation in the context of this talk

7. Two modes of interpreting (Giorgi)
A. Adopting a chosen perspective from
which to regard the given
B. Introducing non-given theoretical or
quasi-theoretical ideas into one’s
reflection upon the data in order to
develop the meaning beyond what’s
given in the data

8. Description can be defined as…
Using language to articulate the intentional
contents of consciousness (Mohanty, Giorgi)
By bracketing prior knowledge about the
phenomenon and then articulating the
psychological meanings that are present for us in
the participants’ words, within the limits with
which these meanings are present (Giorgi, based
on Husserl)

9. Implicit meanings are also present
Example: the American idiom, “the
elephant in the room”
Descriptive researchers claim to be able to
recognize and explicate not only explicit
psychological meanings, but implicit ones as
well

10. Argument
In descriptive phenomenological research there
are both interpretive and descriptive moments:
Descriptive researchers constitute the research
situation with “high-level” interpretive choices
(Giorgi)
Having done so, they are free to adopt a
descriptive method
And having arrived at findings, we can expand
upon them interpretively

11. Adopting a psychological attitude
Asking a specific research question, focused on
a particular phenomenon
Formulating one’s question within an
identifiable hermeneutic community: for
example, the community of qualitative
researchers
Similarly, in a descriptive study, one’s question
is offered to a describable intersubjective
community as well

12. Putting one’s prior theoretical and personal
knowledge about the phenomenon out of play
(bracketing)
Employing the epoché
Explicating what is present in the data, from
this chosen research perspective, with respect
to the phenomenon that is the focus of our
study, using free imaginative variation.
Seeking a least variant psychological structure
for the given context
(Giorgi, 2009)

13. Eidetic intuition is a discovery process and not a
mechanical one
No method can guarantee one’s success in
discovering a structure and expressing it
adequately

14. To describe means, in a certain way, putting
oneself at the service of what’s present and
seeking to act as a vehicle for the expression of
what’s present by engaging with it, but not
adding to it
“To translate into disposable significations a
meaning first held captive in the thing and in the
world itself” (Merleau-Ponty, 1968, p. 36).

15. Often seems to be heard and is perhaps
intended as a prompt to students to adopt a
constructive attitude toward data as a text,
viewed in a way as the raw material from which
the interpreter is meant to create something
novel…
Using both meanings of interpretation (A) and
(B) referred to earlier…
To “move the meaning forward”

16. But they imply different attitudes, and this matters
for our research

17. Giorgi, A. (2009). The descriptive phenomenological
method in psychology: A modified Husserlian
approach. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press.
Merleau-Ponty, M. (1968). The visible and the invisible (A.
Lingis, Trans.). Evanston: Northwestern University
Press.
Mohanty, J. N. (1984). Transcendental philosophy and the
hermeneutic critique of consciousness. In G. Shapiro &
A. Sica (Eds.), Hermeneutics: Questions and prospects
(pp. 96-120). Amherst: The University of
Massachusetts Press.
Mohanty, J. N. (1987). Philosophical description and
descriptive philosophy. In Phenomenology: Descriptive
or hermeneutic? (pp. 40-61). The First Annual
Symposium of the Simon Silverman Phenomenology
Center, Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, PA.