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Amadeo GIORGI (Husserl was the first to articulate the phenomenological…

- - - - CONTEXTUAL & other factors need to be considered when implementing the phenomenological method in the human sciences:
        1) Fidelity to the phenomenon
        2) The demanding nature of the method
        3)The issue of meaning or linguistic transformation
        4) The question of qualitative research as exploratory
        
        1) Fidelity to the phenomenon "Capture as clearly as possible, the way in which the phenomenon appears in everyday life". It's not about recording every detail but "it implies that the essential dimensions of the phenomena are permitted to manifest themselves in an observable way" (1994, p. 207)
        
        2)Demanding nature of qualitative research: "It is because of this demanding character that efficiency rapidly asserts itself as an issue. My own response is to bracket the efficiency issues and to stick to what is theoretically sound and justifiable" (1994, p. 208) "New waters are being charted here, and one should not feel frustrated if the endeavour takes time."(1994, p. 208)
        
        3) Using disciplinary language: "Phenomenologically, there is no doubt that it is the meaning for the participant that must be captured, but it is equally certain that the meaning must be taken up and re-expressed in the language of the researcher's discipline (...) it is the meaning-for-the-participant insofar as it is relevant to and revelatory of the research question that matters." (1994, p. 208) "It is the duty of the researcher to express the "insofar as" aspect in disciplinary terms" (1994, p. 209)
        "The reduction process from the subject's everyday meaning to disciplinary meaning ought to be equally complex, and so the subject should not be expected to be the final arbiter if he or she cannot follow the reduction process.
        van Manen (1983) "distinguishes "first-order concepts" and "second-order concepts", the former belonging to the subjects in the field and the latter to the field worker". [He] explains the difference as follows: "Both the descriptive properties of the studied scene and the member interpretations of what stands behind these properties are first-order concepts...Second-order concepts are those notions used by the fieldworker to explain the patterning of the first-order data (van Manen, 1979/1983, p.40 as cited by Giorgi, 1994, p. 210)
        "THE MEANING FOR THE SUBJECTS AND THE MEANING FOR THE RESEARCHERS SHOULD NOT BE MINGLED OR CONFUSED"
        
        4) Qualitative research as substantive rather than exploratory Qualitative research is often considered as preparatory, however "there is a logic to qualitative research that guides the entire process from conception and planning all the way to report write-up, just as there is for quantitative research." (1994, p. 211)
      - "DESCRIPTION is the linguistic articulation of the intentional objects of experience" (1994, p. 211)
        "[van Manen] is right in saying that phenomenology gives priority to revelation and disclosure rather than explanation and prediction" (1994, p. 212)
      - PHENOMENOLOGICAL REDUCTION"Many contemporary researchers have difficulty with the idea of the phenomenological reduction, often because they feel that it has to be practiced at its ideal limit (i.e., everything given to consciousness has to be reduced at once) or that once having entered the attitude, one is frozen in the neutrality state (but the reduction may be limited to a phase of the research). (1994, p. 212)
        Taking on this idea from Giorgi I would suggest that the phenomenological reduction could stem from a phenomenological attitude where stripping away that which is not essential to the phenomenon is a gradual and arduous shedding process that does not need to be accomplished all at once. Also, and precisely considering its laboriousness, its implementation can (or needs) to be limited to those phenomena which are more prone to provide answers to the research question.
        
        "Also, what the reduction offers, without a guarantee, is that a fresh and different way of experiencing a phenomenon is possible that may be relevant for gaining new intuitions about the phenomenon being researched" (1994, p. 212)
        A good example of this is my own experience when, as a result of the phenomenological reduction I did of one of my encounters with a young child, in the end, what surfaced was my own need for contact and my desire to reach out to her skin as a way to connect with a child who seemed so inexpressive
        
        "Within the reduction, one simply refrains from positing altogether; one looks at the data with the attitude of relative openness: I wonder what the outcome will be there?" (1994, p. 212-213)
        And interesting mean to achieve this is proposed by Dabbs (1982) who argues for "technical devices such as film and videotape which "allow us to expand and compress time and make visible patterns that otherwise would move too slowly or too fast to be seen" (p. 38, as cited by Giorgi, 1994, p. 213).
        
        van Manen (1982b as cited by Giorgi, 1994, p. 214) in describing the participant observer's role while partaking of a specialized subworld, states, "I believe I have learned to think like a cop and yet I am able to stand back and critique that particular frame of reference as well as describe it.(...) Phenomenological training helps one to do that with respect to oneself; stand back attitudinally and discover one's own "taken-for-granted" assumptions" (1994, p. 214)
      - SEARCHING FOR ESSENCES means to find out "the most invariant meaning for a context" by using, as recommended by Husserl, "free imaginative variation as a means of achieving this goal" (1994, p. 214)
        "A true nature can easily be interpreted as an essence" (1994, p. 215)
        "There are statements indicating that the processes of imaginative variation are implicitly being used. van Manen (1979/1983 as cited by Giorgi, 1994, p. 215) writes as follows (...) As Emerson...so pointedly demonstrates, the notion of normality can only be described in reference to what is considered deviant. (p.48)"
        One possible use then, of imaginative variation could be to apply it to those children who are being labeled as "traumatized" or "misbehaving" to find out what their actual essence is. By doing this one would go even beyond the diagnose or classification of trauma to actually meet the essence of the child as a person, as an-Other whose incommensurability, when able to glimpse at her essence is the only thing that I perceive
      - "Description, reduction, and the search for essence are not the exclusive practice of phenomenological researchers even though other labels tend to obscure the fact that other styles of qualitative research also use these practices" (1994, p. 216)
  - - - "The insight into essences rests simply on the fact that in our experience we can distinguish the fact that we are living through something from what it is we are living in this fact (Merleau-Ponty (1964, p. 54, as cited by Giorgi, 2006, p. 38)
      - It seems pertinent to distinguish "essences" in a phenomenological sense, from the categories which aim to facilitate objectivity and are more manageable than larger descriptions. **Furthermore, it's important to ask " Do such categories really preserve those aspects of the raw data that are essential to and vital for the understanding of the phenomenon? (1994, p.195)**
- - - - Talking about INTENTIONALITY Giorgi highlights how important it is to establish an "explicit recognition of the intentional relationship" (1994, p. 217) particularly if we claim to be doing phenomenology. Confusion regarding, for example, the type of reports a fieldworker produces could be sorted out "by keeping clear the intentional objects to which the fieldworkers' acts were to be directed" (1994, p. 217)
        In that sense, it is important to specify TO WHAT GOAL THE RESEARCH IS DIRECTED. IS IT THE PERSON OR THE PHENOMENON?
        "The consequences of the process of research (e.g. developing personal growth, insight, and change) and the GOAL of the research would have to be distinguished" (1994, p. 217)
    - - It's important to clarify that the meaning that Husserl gives to the term INTUITION is far from our everyday understanding. "For Husserl, intuition refers to the presence of any object, understood as broadly as possible so that the sky or a hallucination could also be included, to consciousness in any modality whatsoever (e.g., perceived, imagined, etc.) (1994, p. 216) #
    - - By recommending the use of the REDUCTION, "which means an attitude in which [the researcher's] hopes and dreams may be temporarily disengaged so that the phenomena can manifest themselves "as they are" to the temporarily "disinterested" human subject who is the researcher." (1994, p. 205)
        THe REDUCTION is a means of rendering oneself as noninfluential as possible during the process of research (neutral) in order to come up with valuable (value) findings
      - This idea of how the subject is present is critical. It also connects with the idea of "from where" the subject is present which Derrida mentions is reference of a place from which (cf. Biesta's article) This is relevant not only to the extent to which it speaks of a way of being which strips layers of "knowledge" and "information" which instead of raprocher/bringing closer, deter the Other but also because it is from getting to that place, without baggage/ or it is because to get to that place we need to arrive without baggage and because to see the other we need to use our own eyes. In that sense, the phenomenological attitude supports us to lighten up our view (both in terms of adding light to it and in terms ok freeing it from weight) and to get to the real place where we can indeed receive the other into the world, with Love. #
- - - - Giorgi, answering to the objection MEANINGS ARE NOT UNIVOCAL OR UNIQUE and commenting on the example of the woman crying in therapy said: "a descriptivist does not answer the question of priority because to do so would force him or her to depart from the evidence (...) the descriptive researcher finds it both interesting and likely that from within an intense emotional experience one cannot keep track of whether tears and thoughts come first.2 (1992, p. 126)
      - INTERPRETATION IS NECESSARY TO GO BEYOND THE DATA
        "The descriptive researcher would say that one need not go beyond the data. (1992, p. 126) (...) So the issue with this objection once again becomes the question of motivation: Why would one want to go beyond the data? Why would one want to force a closure on something that announces itself as nonclosed?" (1992, p. 127
      - INTERPRETATION IS NECESSARY BECAUSE OF THE UNCONSCIOUS "But remember, we are interested in research, not therapy. (...) In research situation, I would be interested in the structure of the researcher's consciousness when he or she is motivated to appeal to the unconscious. It should be recalled that descriptive phenomenology's data are not limited to the consciousness of the experience but to whoever's consciousness grasps the phenomenon." (1992, p. 127) "The descriptive researcher is content to describe what is there, however it may present itself." (1992, p. 127-128)
      - **HUMANS ARE SELF-INTERPRETING BEINGS"Of course humans are self-interpretive, and the task of the descriptivist is to describe the self-interpretations or any other type of interpretation, regardless of their form or complexity. The client's interpretation does not have to be interpreted by the therapist or researcher; it can be described" (1992, p. 128) "It is clear that in life, interpretation and description get confused; persons often live interpretations as descriptive realities or try to do away with certain inevitable realities through interpretation. These confusions more often than not show up in therapeutic settings, but my point is simply that the confusion wouldn't exist if there weren't two different modes of responding to the world. Thus, both descriptions and interpretations have to be tracked and often confronted. " (1992, p. 129) **
        
        The risk with interpretation is that it inevitably draws from personal experience. Sticking to description, in contrast, could instead provide a "neutral" or "objective" take on the phenomenon which could then be accepted for what it is and not confronted because of its possible match or mismatch with our individual interpretations
      - ALL MEANINGS ARE BY DEFINITION INTERPRETATIONS "IT IS OFTEN ASSERTED THAT EVERY MEANING ATTRIBUTION IS AN INTERPRETATION OR, WHAT AMOUNTS TO THE SAME THING, THAT DESCRIPTIONS ARE A FORM OF INTERPRETATION (e.g. Heidegger, 1927/1962) That is one theory of meaning, of course, but it is not the only one, nor is it transparently obvious.Presumably, the argument for this theory rests on the fact that other possibilities can always be awakened for any human situation. That is, interpretation means here the possibility that situations can always be reconstructed by humans." However, "few, if any situations can be given univocal interpretations. This means that most human situations can be described as neither univocal nor arbitrary. It is the lack of arbitrariness that leads to description and the lack of removal of arbitrariness that brings out interpretative statements. In other words, it is possible to describe the range of meanings that can fit a situation, and such boundedness can help determine the legitimacy of a meaning attribution.* (1992, p. 129)
        
        "It is often objected that one cannot get a perfect description, that all descriptions are limited and therefore flawed. (...) My response, again, is that perfect descriptions are not so much required as are adequate ones. Moreover, interpretive science is not freed from the problem if one will grant that there can be good and bad interpretations." (1992, p. 129)
        
        "A researcher, in other words, can in principle afford to wait out that inconclusive aspect of his or her research. NOT SO THE PRACTICING PROFESSIONAL. PRACTICAL AFFAIRS FORCE PEOPLE TO MAKE DECISIONS DESPITE INCONCLUSIVE OR AMBIGUOUS RESULTS. IN SUCH CASE, INTERPRETATION IS JUSTIFIABLY CALLED FOR. " (1992, p. 130)
        
        "A kind of complementarity begins to emerge: description from basic research and interpretation for praxis. I would like to affirm the following correlation: DESCRIPTION IS TO INTERPRETATION WHAT SCIENCE IS TO THE LIFEWORLD. Thus, interpretation precedes and surrounds us and is far more prevalent than description but in situations of basic research, description should have epistemological primacy because of its consistency with respect to evidence" (1992, p. 131)
        
        "The interpretive scientist is reluctant to accept description because of the fear that there might be a univocal description as "The Truth" imposed upon scientific practice. (But as already indicated, the descriptive scientist can only present and argue for what is evidently given; if it is ambiguous, it is described as such; if it is clear, then the descriptivist describes it clearly and invites the critical other to confirm it." (1992, p. 132)
        
        "To claim that one interpretation is better than its competitors is to state that there are some grounds for making such claim. The descriptivist calls that evidence. <To say that certain practices are correct, or better than others, is to say that they lead to a certain quality of achievement that is desirable. To value practices differentially assumes what the descriptivist wants to make explicit, namely that certain identical meanings can be communicated intersubjectively through language." (1992, p. 133-134)