This is the presentation I used to set the philosophical context for students in my graduate seminar in descriptive phenomenological psychological research--it is an outline of some central Husserlian concepts, and assumes no prior acquaintance with Husserl's work. Naturally, I supplemented the slides with many experiential examples!

1. Marc Applebaum, PhD
Faculty of Psychology and Interdisciplinary Inquiry
Associate Editor, Journal of Phenomenological Psychology
Founding Editor, PhenomenologyBlog

2. Acknowledgment
This presentation is deeply indebted to the many
lectures of Amedeo Giorgi’s I have been fortunate to
attend over the years…

3. An attitude of open expectancy
Phenomenology is not simply an approach to
philosophy, but more than that, as Giorgi has said, it is a
way of seeing.
This course is an introduction to this way of seeing, an
invitation to what Gendlin (1982) might term a “felt
sense” of phenomenology.

4. What is phenomenology?
Introduction to some core concepts in Husserl’s
phenomenological philosophy

5. Phainomenon + Logos
Φαινόμενoν that which appears or is seen
Λόγος a discourse or reasoned account

6. A provisional definition…
Phenomenology is a practice of carefully
describing and unfolding what is given to us in
perception

7. Consciousness—our means of access to
the world
For phenomenology, consciousness is privileged
because it is the medium through which
anything whatsoever is known
Consciousness is not “thing-like;” it is that by
means of which we encounter the world and
others

8. For phenomenology…
The fundamental attribute of consciousness is
that it presents
Attention to lived perception is the foundation of
phenomenological praxis

9. Perceptual presence
Phenomenology offers a presentational theory
of consciousness, not a representational theory
For Husserl, we perceive the “things
themselves,” not representations of things
Of course, perception is fallible and always in
the process of self-correcting…

10. “Intuition”—the presentational faculty of
consciousness
The German term for intuition, Anschauung,
can also be translated as “perception”
The Latin root of intuition is intueri, “looking
upon”
In philosophy this means that an object is
present in perception for a subject

11. Intentionality
For phenomenology, consciousness “reaches out”
to an object—this quality of reaching out is called
the intentionality of consciousness
The Latin root of intend is intendere, “stretching
out toward”
This stretching out is a
distinctive activity of
consciousness…

12. Objects of consciousness
Anything we can be conscious of is referred to as
an “object of consciousness”
We can distinguish between different types of
objects--
For example, there are objects that transcend the
conscious acts that grasp them
And there are objects that
are immanent in the
conscious acts

13. Real and irreal objects
Likewise phenomenology distinguishes between
real and irreal objects—
Real objects are located in space, time, and
causality—like this table, Abraham Lincoln, or
Chicago
Irreal objects lack one or
more of these attributes—a
unicorn, a triangle, or the
idea of justice

14. Real and irreal objects
Though they are different kinds of objects, both
are genuine objects for consciousness

15. The natural attitude
The natural attitude is the way in which we
encounter the world in everyday life—objects
are assumed to be real and the world is
assumed to be the way we grasp it…
The natural attitude is usually not recognized as
an attitude
This is contrasted to chosen, reflective attitudes
such as a scientific attitude

16. Facticity
An object’s factual attributes are those that
locate it in space, time, and causality
Positivist philosophy seeks to ground science in
only these attributes
Phenomenology rejects reducing human
phenomena to (only) their facticity
Because this would imply viewing human
phenomena as merely thing-like

17. To investigate a phenomenon, we adopt the
attitude of the phenomenological reduction,
which means—
We bracket past knowledge of that
phenomenon, and
We withhold affirming existentially that that
the phenomenon “is” as it appears, in order to
carefully describe how it appears

18. The reduction--
Is a shift in attitude that frees the researcher from
the natural attitude
Reduction means returning something to a more
primordial mode
We set aside the facticity of
the object, and describe it just
as it appears to us, as a
presence

19. In doing this we employ an epoché
ἐποχή means suspending or “withholding from”
We withhold from making the habitual
existential affirmation regarding what we
perceive
By doing this, we become free to linger with
and examine the perceptions themselves as
presences instead of as facts

20. Review of methodical steps so far…
1. We employ the reduction and epoché,
2. We view the given as a phenomenal
presence,
3. We next seek to identify the essential
structure of the phenomenon using
imaginative variation

21. Free imaginative variation
We use our imagination to change any aspect
of the phenomenon we’re examining, in order
to discover what’s essential and what isn’t
The test for what’s essential is: if we remove
an essential constituent, the phenomenon is
no longer be recognizable as itself—

22. This methodical varying---
Demonstrates that for phenomenology,
possibilities are as important as facts
Husserl didn’t claim to be inventing this
technique, he was relying upon and clarifying
something consciousness does all the time…

23. The psychological research method
We will be working with the research method
developed by Giorgi (2009)
As you will see, the descriptive method closely
follows Husserl’s methodical steps for
phenomenological inquiry

24. Gendlin, E. T. (1978). Focusing. (first edition). New York:
Everest House.
Giorgi, A. (2009). The descriptive phenomenological
method in psychology: A modified Husserlian
approach. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press.
Giorgi, A. (2000). Psychology as a human science
revisited. Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 40 (3): 56-
73.
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.