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COMPS 2 (AR & HP (INFINITUDE/SPIRALITY ("In an often quoted…

- - - - Phenomenology encourages us to "Setting aside one’s own preconceptions and seeing something in a new way is no longer a mere slogan." (Halling, 2012, p. 4)
  - - - An example of the transformational power of shared attunement: "Then she turned the tables on me. "What's that?," she'd ask. Sometimes I'd be able to answer. At other times, I had no idea.I was hearing new sounds myself! Slowly, I discovered my own perception changing just as Pat's was changing.(...) For me, as for her, the learning was irreversible. This seems a good example of achieving a stance of wonder ... I went beyond my usual being. Yet did I leave myself behind? I don't think so. I was there with Pat. [I was still experiencing myself as existing in the forest with Pat, I was just experiencing myself in a new way.] I wanted to connect with her; I wanted to empathize; I wanted to show her I was trying. I felt for her and I was fundamentally involved in our shared interaction." (Finlay, 2008, p. 8) The last fragment of this quote seems problematic to me. In a way, it seems that Finlay is focusing here on the relationship rather than on the phenomenon. An issue highlighted by Giorgi: "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)
  - - - (T)he perspectives combine in an advancing enrichment of meaning and a continuing development of meaning ... To inquire into the ... subjective manners of givenness, i.e., into how an object ... exhibits itself as being and being such, we enter a realm of more and more involved and very remarkable expositions. (Husserl,1936/1970, p. 158-159 as cited by Finlay, 2008, p. 8-9).
        
        Conceiving the phenomenological attitude as a spiraling experience seems/feels liberating. This implies that there's no point of arrival, that there's no attainable end. The very nature of the exploration highlights the organic aspect of the exploration which ensues/distills from the living human nature of those enacting it/of the participants.
      - "My research encounter with Kenny raised several issues relating to the use of the phenomenological attitude in research practice. Firstly, it highlights how the process of engaging the epoche is intertwined with reflection which can occur both during and after the research encounter. It is a moot point whether this reflection is a necessary part of the epoche or a separate process.(...) For one thing, researchers need to be reflexive to ensure their reflections are also subject to the reduction. In this sense, the reduction is more a stance or tone which permeates the phenomenological reflection and research process as a whole."(2008, p. 10) This quote reminds me of another where Finlay mentions that she is more inclined to consider both processes reflection and reduction as happening simultaneously (Pending to find that quote...) The other aspect in relation to spirality has to do with the idea of movement and with acknowledging that between reduction and reflection there's also a back and forth movement which is constant, inevitable, embodied and organic.
        
        Is it possible not to "co-constitute meanings"? (2008, p. 10)
        
        It would seem to me from what she described that the first thing she drew from in her interpretation was her own bodily sensation and not "the accepted psychological knowledge positions (2008, p. 10)". Indeed, she says: "I suddenly realised that I was reacting quite strongly to him and became aware my own bodily responses. I remember noticing how my arms were folded tightly across my stomach. I was protecting myself, but also 'holding my self in' and somehow 'holding myself together' (2008, p. 9)
        There was a bodily/embodied mirroring of the emotion that happened here (or happens in every case??) which is what might make the phenomenological exercise so challenging...?
- - - - Is it maybe that when we suspend or interrupt our pre-understandings we might be able to enter the spiritual dimension in the encounter if we let the other interpellate us? In other words, is that space of intertwined experience only possible when we make ourselves available for the other?
        "Reflecting on the encounter, it seems I stumbled upon the very moment of wonder the reduction seeks to achieve. There was a spiritual dimension to this moment with Pat, enabling me to grasp what Husserl might have had in mind when he likened the personal transformation needed in the reduction to a religious conversion. It is worth asking if in this special moment of experience, I approach Husserl's transcendental phenomenological reduction--his more radical version of the epoche where we stand "above the world ... at the gate of entrance to the realm, never before entered" (1936/1970, pp. 152-153). On reflection, I believe that I had not left myself nor had I bracketed my whole being-in-the world. I was still experiencing myself as existing in the forest with Pat. I was just experiencing myself in a new way, expanding my being-in-the-world. I was thus still in the phenomenological psychological reduction dancing between my experiencing and my empathy for Pat's experience, between my habitualities and fresh modes of being." (Finlay, 2008, p. 8)
    - - "Engaging in reflexive analysis after the interview, I realised there was much that I was not bracketing in the process of exploring Ann's lifeworld. My professional knowledge and background might have been the source of some prejudice, but it also gave me a platform from which to view Ann's struggle and empathise. I understood more than a lay person might have done of her condition and experience. Further, I would not have been able to appreciate Ann's therapist understandings had I not shared her professional background. I had the possibility of communicating with, empathising with and understanding Ann by virtue of our belonging to the same world (the world of therapy; the world of women). I was able to reflect Ann's experience on the basis of a sharing common experience. As Husserl says: "A first step is explicitly to be vitally at one with the other person in the intuitive understanding of his [sic] experiencing" (1936/1970, p. 328)." (Finlay, 2008, p. 7)
        This passage reflects that the pre-understandings we have not only exist but are active, we are, indeed, meaning-making creatures. So, being aware of that which brings us closer to understand the other, either because we share a common background or an identity, is a powerful and double-edged tool. It can help us make sense of the other's experience but there's also the risk of assimilating it to ours. A shared experience might give us the illusion of understanding and discourage further explorations. A lack of shared experience might either disconnects us or challenge our attention and engagment.
      - "The phenomenological attitude has been explicated as the process of retaining an empathic openness to the world while reflexively identifying and restraining pre-understandings so as to engage phenomena in themselves." (2008, p. 10)
        It's important to explore how the idea of empathy is conceived by Husserl in the first place. Empathy is the translation of the german word Einfühlung...(Maybe to be developed or not later)