The Interpreted world: Spinelli

 The Interpreted world: Spinelli

Contents

Introduction 2

Chapter 1 An introduction to phenomenological theory 3

The origins of phenomenology 3

Transcendental and Existential phenomenology 3

The Problem of ‘Correct’ Interpretations of Reality 3

The “Raw” matter of reality 4

Chapter 2 The phenomenological method 5

The Method 5

Existential Phenomenology a Epoche 5

Existential Phenomenology b Description 5

Existential Phenomenology c Horizontalization 5

Phenomenological invariants 7

Figure\ground 7

Phenomenological psychology 7

Chapter 3 The perception of objects 7

3 approaches 7

Innate biases in perception: wholeness and organisation 8

The effects of previous experience in perception 9

Phenomenological Theory and Object Perception 10

Chapter 4 The perception of Others 10

We perceive others by: 11

The effects of central traits 11

Phenomenology and the Perception of Others 12

Chapter 5 The Perception of self 12

Physical body as interpreted 12

Self as fixed 13

Interactionist model of self 13

The Phenomenology of Psychologically Compelling Situations 14

The phenomenology of multiple personalities 15

The fiction of self 15

Memory and the phenomenological self 16

Chapter 6 Existential phenomenology 16

Existentials 18

Thrownness\choice 18

Meaning\Meaninglessness 19

Angst 19

Sartre as a phenomenologist of freedom. 19

Bad Faith 20

Buber 21

Chapter 7 Phenomenological research 21

Chapter 8 Existential Psychotherapy 21

Yalom death anxiety 24

Ontological insecurity 24

Chapter 9 Phenomenological and humanistic psychologies: similarities and contrasts 27

Central tenets of humanistic psychology 27

Chapter 10 Phenomenology and the Major Systems in Psychology 28

Chapter 11 A Critical Overview of Phenomenological Psychology 29

Introduction

No study of consciousness in psychology apart from phenomenologists. Sought to show how there is no objective reality but rather consciousness is an interpretation. So, consciousness was studied to see how it interferes with study of objective reality.

Transcendental phenomenology=Husserl, to the thing itself, stripped of interpretation and effects of consciousness. Answers what is this thing

Existential phenomenology=exploration of the poles of human freedoms and limitations as being in the world (Heidegger). Answers what is being

 

Is there a tension in a phenomenological engagement as it seeks to look at the parts of experience against the totality of experience.

So, you might understand more about this moment by describing in more detail some part of it, for instance as you look from the café you might ask for a description of what is seen and more detail comes to light, how the waiter looks like he is moving more quickly than usual, the customer looks like they have a burden on their shoulders.

Do you lose in this drilling down the totality of this experience? As you drill down, should you always come back to get that overall sense of looking from the café?

 

Chapter 1 An introduction to phenomenological theory

Phenomenology questions the existence of objective reality to clarify it and sees the human species as meaning making.

The origins of phenomenology

Originally phenomenon=appearance (as opposed to reality), the world we experience is the experience of phenomena

Kant=phenomena\noumenal

Husserl =science of phenomena=rigorous ground for perception and philosophy=phenomenological method

 

Transcendental and Existential phenomenology

Phenomenology is a method of understanding objects of experience and removing our prejudice that we put on via our consciousness.

Transcendental phenomenology=Husserl, removing consciousness from objective reality

Existential phenomenology=Heidegger

Transcendental phenomenology= Reality as shared interpretation

The reality we have is the phenomenological interpretation we have of the noumena.

As things are mostly socially constructed realities, e.g. book\money, then if you are not in that society, you would notice a created thing but not a book, or money.

 

The Problem of ‘Correct’ Interpretations of Reality

Reality as consensus of dominant culture. All species have some shared invariant interpretations, object, causality, time\space, but this still leaves them as interpretations. Correct=in this social milieu most people (the dominant people) would define this as true.

Any behaviour that seems meaningless is disturbing to us. You need meaning, interpretation to reduce the tension caused by something that appears meaningless and significant. You might say the meaning is there, but I cannot find it. Or for me there is no meaning, which gives it meaning.

(!) It is a strange argument, everything that isn’t meaningful is painful, but because we describe it as without meaning therefore, we have given it meaning, so we cannot do without meaning. A better argument would be things we are interested in have meaning, although acid trips could be an argument against that.

This treats meaning as black\white rather than on a continuum.

Meaning goes with human creation. Random relation of objects isn’t meaningful. Nature goes with function; the functions of rain are to …. Meaning seems to be purposive; function seems to be consequential.

Our experience then seems an outcome of being humans, of our social reality and of our personal reality. So, there is a meshing of experience qua species, society and self.

Philosophers split into idealist’s vs empiricists, objective mind vs objective world.

The “Raw” matter of reality

There is a physical reality which remains separate from our consciousness, and which, in this sense, can be labelled objective reality. Equally, however, we do not have direct access to that reality, nor can we, in any sense, ever know it as it is. Science has its latest hypothesis, which will change as it has always done. It is also tainted by human bias, humans sense organ, so at most it could be objective for us, not all species.

This is Kants transcendental position, this is the description of the noumena, but there is a large jump going on here, as all we have is transcendence, there is a sense of givenness, not an objective reality which brings us to a  Cartesian position. Contradicted by We have no idea whether ‘things in themselves’ truly exist. P15

Intentionality is the central term of phenomenology. It is a stretching out of consciousness to something outside it.

Intentionality, noesis is the act noema is the referent, the object. Things refer to other things. The word “book” refers to the thing book.

They wrap together and can’t be extracted, whenever I look at an object, what that object is, is infused with how I am perceiving it, which will include, my history, my desires and what the object is next to. The noetic aspect will also be complex I am perceiving, judging, staring, I will have emotions towards the thing, which again are complex and relate to my values.

Humans are biased to thing-based interpretation. So, our natural interpretation of sensory data is to make it as if it were a referent to an object.

Through the term ‘intentionality’, then, phenomenologists point out a basic invariant relationship that exists between the real world and our conscious experience of it. Unable to bracket this relationship, we are forced to acknowledge, through it, the undeniable role of interpretation that lies at the heart of all our mental experience.

Again, this is Kant, he is pointing to the categories, unity, causality etc.

So, the foundational rule of Transcendental Phenomenology is a dualist split between subject and object, between signifier and sign. Intentionality draws subject and object together, i.e. no experience makes sense without both.

So, whilst there is invariant intra-species interpretation of experience, there is of necessity, the noetic component that makes each interpretation of experience unique.

Noematic is the thing pointed at, noesis is the act of interpretation, and splits into a common shared interpretation and a unique interpretation.

 

Chapter 2 The phenomenological method

Husserl wanted to strip away interpretations to get to the thing itself, therapists want to make explicit interpretations, such that self-understanding is improved. You can see your interpretation and therefore learn how you are; you can also challenge your interpretation too.

The Method

Existential Phenomenology:  Epoche

Bracket and open.

Bracket our assumptions and expectations, our prejudices, and stay with the data. Be open to the data.

Total epoche is impossible.

Existential Phenomenology: Description

Describe do not explain.

Explain as theory or hypothesis. Explanation goes outside what is given, it’s a hypothesis that would take a laboratory to justify it. Again, stay with and be open to the data. Absolute description is impossible but there is a continuum from description to explanation and indeed from concrete descriptive to abstract explanatory.

 

Existential Phenomenology c Horizontalization

Avoid a hierarchy of importance. Each bit of experience should be treated like parts of a giant jigsaw where all are important in making the picture.

 

It’s impossible to be without assumption, expectation of explanation, but it is possible to reduce the number of assumptions, there is a continuum between concrete description and abstract theory. Again, this continuum would be between the uniqueness of experience and the generality. The generality of experience would be that which would be amenable to theory.

 

The phenomenological method seeks to avoid the imposing of set beliefs, biases, explanatory theories and hypotheses upon our experience either at the very start of any examination or before it becomes useful to do so.

Client’s experience is a giant jigsaw where you don’t know the picture. When you have the data then you can draw a conclusion, an explanation.

So, there are limits on phenomenology.

We at some point stop equalizing, we at some point make a theory.

Phenomenology in psychology is useful as we confound the event with the interpretation of the event and consider in a unitary event, we don’t consider how we interpret.

You can only describe an event after it has happened, so now it is ineffable.  You might describe the difference between a straightforward experience and a reflexive experience.

Straightforward versus Reflective Experience

Straight forward experience is action based, it is the activity of experience as it occurs (which includes action-based interpretation, there is time in it, as action has a sequence a before and an intended after). Straightforward experience is the knowledge of the body.

Reflexive experience is that of the mind, its where meaning and temporality come in and where we look to explain. In reflective experience we can only communicate a small aspect of straight forward experience.

Assumption I must exist to have experience, as that’s how language is constructed, I am feeling x. However, the I only appears in many experiences once the experience has been completed. In intense or repetitive actions where focus is on the action there doesn’t appear to be an I at all, all there is, is a sense of doing.

The times we find are most vital; we are minimally aware of ourselves. It’s only when we return to give a description or meaning to the experience that the I return.  Husserl argues that self-consciousness is the basis of reflective experience.

Doing is present experience. It is ineffable, you have to stop doing it to describe it. To describe what has happened, we are reflectively describing.

Reflective experience allows us to communicate only a minute part of the sum total of any experience.

Attention is the opposite, generally, of equalisation. Attention, generally, has a hierarchy of significance, and pays attention to what it thinks is the most significant, and ignores everything else.

Given language and its subject predicate structure, this leads to an assumption in perception that there is an I, a subject that exists prior to perception, which is what has perception. But many times, in intense, repetitive, absorbing activity there is no awareness of me. It is only afterwards in reflection that we are aware of the I. The paradox is when we feel most alive, we are least unaware of ourselves.

So, in straightforward experience there is no I (rather there is consciousness in the objects, so the tennis ball is the thing that I can see I can hit down the tramline, because I am playing tennis) Its almost as if there is awareness, without self-awareness, the self is split amongst all the figure\ground.

I is the product of reflective awareness as is the not I (you).

So, there’s a doing in the world, where I am lost, and all you have is an instrumentality connected with a purpose, that you enter into this world. I want to make a cup of tea; I can get absorbed in this where I forget the world of I and anything outside the world of tea-instrumentality. It’s like we both live in the lebensworld and the object world of reflection. I construct me and you from reflection but we both live in the lebensworld of doing.

It is only when we reflect and make sense (objectify) that the self takes centre stage and appears the originator of experience. Phenomenology questions independent objects as they are only created in the reflected consciousness.

Feels like he moves between Transcendental Phenomenology and Existential Phenomenology here, we are all beings in the world, we all share intentionally derived constructs, within a shared but also unique interpretation. Each has a basis in material reality (Kant).

I can only define myself by comparing myself against others. So, I see the I and not I in other people to derivatively work out myself (mirror self).

So, in terms of polarity, I and you are joined, I only get to define one in terms of the other, and of course vice versa.

I guess this also relates to relational frame theory, whereby I understand things relatively, brighter than etc. I need the other to define myself.

Greenberg and Michell argue we start off in an unself-conscious world where there is no split between I and not I and then through the defensive (?) development leads to I and not I.

 

Phenomenological invariants

Figure ground, intentionality (noema, noesis), temporality/spatiality (thanks Kant), care (thanks Heidegger), thingness (thanks Newton, Descartes)

Figure\ground

(MP) Transcendental Phenomenology aims to find the shared invariants to experiences (IK categories), such that we can find the limits of experience.

 

Phenomenological psychology

This is applying the phenomenological method to an individual’s experience such that they can see their experience more systematically observed and remove their habitual\temporal bias of interpretation. Its aim is to reduce the biases within other psychological approaches. To remove bias, theory from experience, to show the experience as purely as possible.

Chapter 3 The perception of objects

3 approaches

1.      Stimulus

2.      Gestalt

3.      Inference

Stimulus : unique perception, unique stimulus. There is a physiological basis for every perceptual act, with no intervening mental variables.

Gestalt: emphasises innate properties in perception. Shows that the whole of an organisational unit of perception, is experienced differently from the parts and that there is an innate sense of experience of these organisational units.

Inference: applies empiricist perspective to perception, we receive stimulus from out there, from the object, however studies show we are not passive and associative, but rather also predictive and inferential, and projective! Our mind as a blank slate which receives, impression from the world (Locke\Hume). Empiricists=passive reception of perception on the blank slate of the mind.

 

Mind with innate properties.

Descartes: form and size, amongst others

Kant: Space\Time and the categories

 

Sensation\perception

Some see reflexive sensation as not having anything else mediating the action, the external stimuli create the reflex response without any other event. Others see sensation as the singular movement from receptor to cortical, whereas perception has many inputs.

Stimulus school is weakened by flashing letters up test for very small amounts of time, they did this in different areas, and there was repeated outcome that one area, top left was better read than any other, the stimulus theory would say it would be bottom right.         Top left made sense as that is the way that English is read, they confirmed this with Hebrew speakers who read right to left.  Likewise, the same stimulus can give rise to different experience, i.e. the vase\face. But this shows there is a something between the sensation and perception.

Brightness constancy, the more light is reflected is what determines an objects colour, all light of spectrum=white, none=black, but a lump of coal in sun reflects brighter than a piece of paper but yet is black, likewise in different shades of light, bright, dark, darker a piece of white paper still looks white. Could this be the difference between quantity and quality, so brightness is quantity, colour is the range of colours on the spectrum that are reflected. Context also plays a part here, as coal is reflecting less than the items around it.

I don’t understand the brightness constancy argument. As I understand it an object is red as it absorbs all light waves apart from those on the “red” wavelength. White reflects all, black reflects none. If I increase the amount of light on a white object then it’s going to reflect all this, again, if I reduce it then it’s going to reflect all this too, so it’s still going to be white, not another colour which would require it to absorb all but that colour.

 

Innate biases in perception: wholeness and organisation

A challenge on gestalt?

Do we have a species based, shared way of interpreting?

We unify sensations into objects=trees, cups of tea, are composed of parts but we see the whole on the basis of our utility.

Dr P: case from Oliver Sacks, can perceive parts, not wholes, concrete not abstraction, a glove= a continuous surface with 5 outing pouches

We perceive in terms of meaning, and in organisational wholes. Gestalt argues that we tend to perceive on similarity, continuity, proximity and closure.

3 basic types of organisations of perception.

1.      Form

a.      Shape

2.      Depth

a.      3 dimensions

3.      Constancies

a.      Stability of perception even though things change, a cat is still a cat, even with its hair shaved.

Some evidence that form perception is innate as 3-day old chicks peck at round things.

That there exist a few important innate factors in human perception seems beyond doubt. However, it would be wrong to conclude, as did the Gestalt school, that the basis for all perceptual processing is innate. Experience, too, plays a major role in human perception.

 

The effects of previous experience in perception

Any sensation we hear, we immediately associate it with something familiar (we like meaningful\familiar.) If we repeatedly interpret in the same way our interpretations become fixed\automatic.

Is the remembered past a determinant of perception?

Phenomenologists argue no saying it’s a determinant but not the only one and also, it’s a remembered past, not an objective past.

Rather the perceived object is a result of

1.      The sensation

2.      The remembered past

3.      The context, the world\self

4.      Desires

5.      Prior experience

 

Enrichment

We first experience a sensation according to our innate perceptual structure (and social context, and relationships e.g. Mum), we then enrich this with past association, present context and future desire.

 

Perceptual set

We organise a perception via sensation which reminds of previous experience which creates an expectation of the perception and enriches the forming perception. The initial perception plus the previous experience being a perceptual set.  Perceptual context affects perception; most clearly seem in ambiguous perceptions.

 

Phenomenological Theory and Object Perception

Perception directs attention (figure\ground). One of the main purposes of the brain is to filter out other sensations, so we can focus on what is significant to us.

First invariant=we interpret, Kants categories innate perceptual schema

Second invariant=figure and ground, we focus our attention on one figure amongst many, dependent on our desires/meaning. We need to bring one thing into the foreground and leave other things in the background.

The more sedimented your view to something the stronger your reaction to arguments against it\suggesting new possibilities.

Novelty which you produce come with excitement. Novelty from others, may provoke anxiety, then after time passes, anxiety reduces they may be accepted into a sedimented position.

Sedimented beliefs may provide the illusion of security, but novel beliefs\interpretation are both creative and encourage the cultural and personal advancement.

 

To see the possible interpretations of an experience you must suspend your sedimented beliefs.

So, there is a noematic boundary, only those noetic perceptions that fit within this boundary are accepted. There are some base interpretations that are shared within society that again provide boundary but within these limits there are a range of possibilities.

Two or limited interpretations are seen as natural, extensions from there the result of an overactive imagination.

Difference in laboratory conditions and real life, is objects in real life have emotional attachment and history.  It seems then in real life that we think less about an object the more we repeatedly use it in one way and define it in one way. So standardly we are taught to understand and re-interpret objects in the same way, sedimentation is our habitual existence, it is only when we have breaks in this sedimentation that we can be creative and develop realisations that can be mundane or startling. This would involve unique connections, of bringing items in the ground and connecting to the figure.

Our ability to reinterpret experience allows us to get closer to the experience of others, and to see how we interpret in the way that we do.

Chapter 4 The perception of Others

As we look at someone, we form ideas about them, to judge their motivations, personality, likes\dislikes.

All these ideas are generally not formed from the picture, they don’t come from the senses, rather they are the result of perceptual inferences from the observer.

We attempt to form a unified perception, a meaningful perception of the other. Our main concern is that it is unified and consistent/coherent, this helps us know what to expect from and how to act with the person.

We perceive others by:

1.      Physicality

a.      Clothing (glasses=intelligent)

b.      Attractiveness: liked, well behaved=attractive

c.      Weight

2.      Demeanour

a.      Facial expression

b.      Possessions

c.      Names

d.      Non-verbal behaviour

3.      Our explanations

a.      Friend helping as kind or manipulative.

b.      Fundamental attribution error

                                                    i.     Underestimate situational factors over estimate dispositional factors.

4.      Social context

a.      If we expect to see a certain effect because of the context, e.g. clinical interview, we will.

b.      We can also elicit what we expect to see, via interaction. Projective Identification.

5.      Halo effect

a.      Judge a person as bad or good based on one characteristic

6.      Personality

a.      Judging a person has a certain personality and based on seen characteristics and pre-judging them on this basis for unseen characteristics.

 

Our first impressions of people are as powerful as they are illogical.  Our expectations can also provoke that behaviour in another.

We tend to judge others in the same way as we judge ourselves, self and other being the same judgement.

The effects of central traits

We can judge people as having a central trait, warmth or coldness. These then are determinant in us creating an overall impression.

It looks like we want to understand people, so we grab onto one aspect, the central trait, the halo effect and imply a whole bunch of things that we can’t know. I guess as understanding means we can predict then if we can predict we can control our likes and dislikes better.

The effects of first impressions are pronounced if you aren’t phenomenological.

Criticism of many studies are they are static studies but in reality, its interactive, you act with me who acts with you. I perceive you as you are perceiving me, which reciprocally affects each perception.

 

Phenomenology and the Perception of Others

Shows that how we perceive the other is more about ourselves and how we perceive than them. We meet new people, we are strongly influenced in understanding them by how much they remind us of previous people, how they fit with our understanding of the world. So, a new experience fits with an old experience, so we understand the new experience in terms of the old, to give it meaning. We assimilate and accommodate new experiences in terms of old ones. Its comfortable we have coherence, there are no shocks in the world and its easy, we don’t have to think too much!

We are highly determined in judging the other based on our current affective state, our desires which then in turn affects our memories that we judge them in terms of. There is quite a flexibility in terms of how we judge the other person.

When we pay attention, we have filtered out all other experience to pay attention to that. This is motivated by our present affect that contains an echo from the past, our desires for the future and how we are feeling in the present. We then interact on this basis and therefore affect how the other reacts to us, sometimes provoking what we interpreted.

As I perceive the other, I do so based on paying attention to them for a certain outcome, I have a desire from them, why do I perceive them, what do I want from this person?

Perception is then motivated by desire. There is an expectancy variable

We perceive based on familiar memories, future expectations, current context and current desire

We perceive others based on how we are. But if 100 people perceived in the same way, what would be saying, that the other is, or that we have cultural accord.

We perceive the other differently dependent on how we are. Couples counselling: a partner desires change the other partner sees them as a different person ,  rather than reinterpret them as they are with the new wish, the want them to go back to being the same person and want to end the relationship as they have changed.

Fromm: we love in terms of ownership, the other as an object we possess, when they don’t do what we want then rather than question our assumptions we look to discard them. We love in terms of definitional and behavioural control, what the other as an object, which is defined can do for us. Rather than a subject who can make fresh choices. Such circumstances arise when there is a hierarchy of self, where you must do for me.

If we take it that there is no fixedness in perception or the other, then this can provoke anxiety.

Chapter 5 The Perception of self

We want to be unique, special, standing out for status and awards, but doing this leads to isolation and loneliness.

Physical body as interpreted

Phantom limb /Losing sense in your body, your hand doesn’t belong to you under certain medical conditions, e.g. stroke.

Self as fixed

Self as a fixed thing, an object, comprised of components.

James=what are those components=social, ideal, psychological self.

From components of self to characteristics.

Self as originator of behaviour, restrictions of behavioural freedom as highly unpleasant and values the restricted.  People want to deny they are the originators of behaviour when the results are unpleasant.

Continuum of belief about how strongly people believe what they do affects what happens to them, or that what happens to them is a result of external factors.

So, the idea is that the self is the thing that is responsible for your behaviour, freewill, but what about advertising, what about people who want to blame external circumstances for their actions (I was forced), what about the readiness potential which is activated before you believe you make the decision.

 

Interactionist model of self

Self is a result of interactions with others, we compare\contrast ourselves with various reference groups.  

Comparison to others motivated by self-aggrandizement for people with low self-esteem.

Narrative view, self as the glue that makes sense of various episode, self as what enables the storying of various events.

Relationally dependent self means self as impermanent dependent on actions with others, so if everyone tells you that you’re great your LSE improves.

Deception implies a real self, competing views of self stays with the phenomena. We can act in ways that we don’t understand.

We have an invariant need to make meaning of the meaningless. I need to understand why something happened.

 

Invariants of perception

Figure ground

Causality

Object

Space\Time

Kants categories

Self-consciousness

If we’re only aware of ourselves as a self, when we reflect, then we will be intentionally engaged in a situation, with a past\present and future, with an expectation from the situation. This self will be unique from other selves, so we will be transient and fragmented, although of course we might interpret the self in reflection, in the same way we perceive, and link it to a past me.

 

The Phenomenology of Psychologically Compelling Situations

Extreme situations, people change how they behave! What you might expect of them

Definitions

Interoception, the feeling inside me

Proprioception, where my body is, my schema, my hands and legs

Exteroception, my experience from the outside world

 

 

Husserl => self as result of experience not the originator of it

Invariant 1: self as originator of action

Invariant 2: self-consciousness

 

Phenomenologists agree there is self-consciousness but not that the self is permanent.  This is justified by proprioception, multiple personalities and compelling psychological events.

Proprioception is the feeling we have of our bodies being ours and where or body is.  Strokes can wipe out ownership of parts of body; phantom limbs can keep ownership of the body when it has been lost.

If you lose proprioception, you lose the feeling that a part of your body is yours. This shows your body is an interpretation. Likewise, anorexics interpret their bodies incorrectly.  Our body is what we believe it to be.

Our notion of self extends beyond our body, our car bumper, when we hit something, we scrunch up our face, our tennis racquet.

Psychologically compelling situations, kidnap, riots, people stop being their regular self. Zimbardo experiment with guards and prisoners. The 2-week experiment was stopped after 6 days, severe depression, anxiety, brutal behaviour, psychosomatic rashes.

Milligram and teaching via electric shocks, got people to do enough to kill people because people were wearing a white coat. I did a psychologically abnormal thing as I was told to.

In these extra ordinary situation’s participants blamed external situation, if it was up to me, I wouldn’t have administered the shocks, but I had to follow my instructions.

Phenomenological view of self gives interpretative meaning to the chaos of experience, so varies over time but is stable at any given time.

The self-construct is the emergent interpretative structure that construes meaning from the chaos of experience, it is inherently impermanent over time while still appearing to be stable at any given point in time.

 

[Start Review]

The phenomenology of multiple personalities

Severe punishing moral upbringing, attempt to follow their desire but not be plagued by guilt=disassociate=create separate character

Whilst DID create separate characters to do the unacceptable and punishable things, we do the same, when we do something out of character, we invoke external agency, substance, extreme emotion which compel us to act in the way that we do.                We might also invoke memory lapses to reduce our guilt.

Basically, we have a range of acceptable personalities, when our action falls outside of this, we create a disassociate explanation for it, or an external explanation for it. I did it as I was drunk, stressed, forced…etc

If you have personality dissonant behaviour, you can either change yourself construct or make some understanding of the dissonant behaviour. Whilst the former seems more truthful, the effects are much larger.

 

The fiction of self

Difficult to talk about non-permanent thing like self-construct due to language, I am x.

If our self goes through continual revision, albeit having a sense of stability at any point, how come we have a sense of self identity, of continuity of the self through time.

Challenge to self as reinterpretation depending on intentional variables as core self who remembers and gives the self a narrative through time.

Contemporary theorists=sensory, short term and long-term memory. Memory as encoding and recall.  Based on studies remembering letters, most memory is short and lost in a second.

Function of memory as remembering things that help our survival, probably why experimental tests give the results they do.  Likewise, memory doesn’t aim to reproduce exactly, the sense of bear=bad is good enough.

Bergson=we can remember everything. Primary function of brain is to stop us getting overloaded. So, we perceive\remember\imagine in a hierarchy of importance

Brain filters out to stop us being overloaded, perception, attention and memory.

 

Memory can be triggered by any of the senses; the content of a memory can contain any of the senses.

Eidetic memory as a precursor to interpretative memory, as it is seen in young people and declines with age.  Problems we have with rote learning may be because we rely on importance to generate memory.

Penfield=brain surgery, stimulate part of brain, provoked an insignificant but eidetic memory, which seem to suggest that the brain has a memory of everything and can under certain circumstances recall it.  Critics say the memory could be fantasy, Penfield showed this wasn’t the case.

Brain being damaged or electrically stimulated allowing previously unremembered memories to return=>everything is stored, but only the significant are recallable?

 

Memory and the phenomenological self

If we can remember everything, then how does this bear on us making a unified narrative in memory of the self. If memory isn’t fixed, then we draw our memory dependent on current significance which depends on interpretation.  So how we currently interpret the world\ourselves then this leads to the memories we use to support this. So, there isn’t a fixed self that memory represents.  So, our memory can be used to validate our current interpretation, or refine it, it is interactive.

The feelings of memories change over time, if you were jilted as a kid, that would feel dreadful and likely to have different feelings for it over the years. So, your interpretation changes.

The self is understood, in part, as all your memories of yourself. Your current perception is enabled through your interpretation of events in the world, that are understood in terms of their relation to previous remembered events which are interpreted based on your current experience and desires. This is a bit complicated and convoluted but seemingly true as well. I think this is Hedegger ecstatic time.

 

Chapter 6 Existential phenomenology

Transcendental Phenomenology focuses on essence

Existential Phenomenology focus on existence, a practical philosophy with social\policial\psychological aspects

 

Existence themes

·        Freedom

·        Care

·        Temporality

·        Others

·        Meaning

 

Roots of existential phenomenology

Kierkegaard and Nietzsche

Kierkegaard=we are free,  it provokes anxiety; anxiety shows that we are free and should be moved into

Nietzsche=we should create our own values and not follow the herd

Heidegger took great pains to insist that like Being, Dasein cannot ever be fully contained, captured, defined or objectified.

 

The ontological aspect refers to the universal ‘givens or structures of Being; the ontic aspect refers to the specific and particular means by which any universal given is expressed or embodied.

 

The ontological is expressed ontically, temporality is expressed in this way by Dasein, or care that way, or being-with like this.

 

Neither of these guys sees the inter-relational aspect of existence, it’s about individuals

They both thought it matters less what you believe, and more how you believe it.

Heidegger.

Existentials=givens

Ontic=thing, particular instance

Ontological=Being, that things\people can be

Dasein is in a with world.

A particular reveals a universal, being=>Being

Ontological=temporality

Ontic=fear of death

Existential Phenomenology looks to understand the ontic in relation to the ontological.

Humans exist, that is their being is of issue for them.

Humans can make things, e.g. computers, and give them being, but humans are, and also what their being is, is a question for them, they are a subject that can create themselves.

Being as the universality of being, of the existential givens, of which being can be a manifestation.

Being as time, with Dasein of being with and in the world, of having a world, of facing death.

With objects of being in a world of instrumentality.

Ontological is what enables the ontic. We can see objects because of light, so to answer the question what enables existence that is the ontological question, that used to be answered by God or spirit.

What allows this table to exist, or me and sure I made the table but both of them exist as they can stand out of their background, so you need a world and standing out.

Ontic, how do I express the temporal ontological aspect, it might be in a fear of death, or procrastination.

Being is the condition of the possibility, what makes it possible to have beings.

 

Understanding=descriptive

Explanation=causal

Authentic=owning my being

Inauthentic=disowning my being

It is a strange thing though, to own my being, as what it means to be me is derived from my engagement with you.

We move between inauthentic and authentic states, they are impermanent, indeed, to strive for authenticity would be inauthentic.

 

Authenticity and Inauthenticity

Heidegger’s word for authentic is better translated as ownership or not owning.

If I open myself to my experience of existing, I own that experience in that it expresses my particular way of engaging with Being.

This inauthentic way emerges when I cut myself off from my engagement with Being

Inauthentic, I can live forever, time doesn’t affect me, I have no choice, I don’t take my choice, I am grounded, there is solid meaning.

As inauthentic beings, we interpret ourselves as reactive victims to experience.

Existentials

Thrownness and Choice

Temporality

Authentic\inauthentic

Angst\Anxiety

Groundlessness

Meaning\Meaninglessness

 

Thrownness\choice

We can choose how to live, in that we choose how to react, give meaning to the things we experience.

It remains our choice to ascribe a particular meaning to any behaviour. Sometimes, due to culture, there is only one choice, and I must choose this. Then how am I with this, there is a sense of freewill to choose meaning, but there is only one choice. What do you do, accept, rail against how unfair it is, seek to create another meaning that no one else subscribes to.

On the other hand, what do you do where there is too much choice, the food in the supermarket, 50 types of cereal, look for the best, look for what you usually have, the advertised, or the first one?

Thrownness=no choice to come into existence at this place and time, in this body. I do have choice in terms of how I react to my thrownness.

Thrownness may dictate how something is interpreted. You may have no choice to the meaning but how do you engage with that, are you angry, accepting, do you believe it strongly\weakly. If you have no choice, do you engage with the having no choice, or do you imagine that you could have had a choice, if …

Meaning\Meaninglessness

We have a choice to what meaning we can give something, it could be a choice of one, it could be more something I choose for myself, or more something I think must happen, should happen so is less owned. I guess there might be a choice of one, but how then do I engage with that meaning, flippantly, comedically, insincerely etc.

Several factors determine how we interpret, so events are interpretively open or meaningless. So, there is no absolute truth, no objectivity. Meaning changes over time, it is not fixed.

The meaning I give to an event, depends on how I see myself at the time, what projects I have.  If my cat dies, I might feel that I have been left by a loved one, or challenged to tolerate the depth of pain, or moved to get another such cat, or to find other such relationships in the world

The certainty of Existential Phenomenology are the thrownness which we experience.

Existential Phenomenology believe that thrownness is the source of all beliefs we may have about the world. (???!!!)

Angst

To be more authentic is to realise the unfixed, uncertain and finite life (although we don’t know when it will end) and the emotional relation to this is one of angst.

Authentic acceptance of uncertainty can be achieved via a religious achievement, a drugs achievement through altered consciousness.

It’s a strong argument either you can accept uncertainty and finitude, and you will feel angst and be authentic or you cannot accept then and be inauthentic without angst.                  

So, to be certain avoids angst but at a cost.

If life must be meaningful, we need to avoid things that cause doubt. If life needs to be certain we need to avoid things that cause uncertainty. So, to avoid angst we become anxious in case we don’t avoid certain things, so what does this mean? I must be successful so avoid things that threaten that, be anxious if that isn’t the case. So, to have meaning and no angst I need success but then become anxious if that isn’t the case.

So, the idea that to maintain a truth that isn’t: I could publish a book, or that one of my truths e.g. you must be successful=, is absolute, leads me to anxiety should this be threatened, and I avoid situations that would provoke this, but the reason I have these inauthentic truths is to protect me from the angst of meaninglessness.

Sartre as a phenomenologist of freedom.

Humans don’t possess freedom, they are freedom, any attempt to avoid this leads to despair and anxiety. Man is a useless passion.

Conflict between the a priori indefinableness of being, and the desire for humans to define it.  This is the conflict between being for itself and being in itself. Freedom vs essence. Freedom transcends and is anguish as it loses substantive, stable meaning.

Freedom is not at an event level, we cannot control events, but we do control how we interpret them.

Being for itself

Transcends, is freedom is anguish loses meaning and stability, it is without foundation.

Being in itself

Meaning is a property of this. Dogma, certainty, avoid angst but connect to shame as we are not free. I think what he is talking about here, is absolute meaning, fixed meaning, objective meaning, rather than transient, the meaningful choice to me is x, could be y, but in this situation its x.

We are nothing pretending to be something.

Others:

I want to be a for itself, be free, transcend but so does the other. Each wants to be the subject but to do that the other must become an object. Sartre softens this to understand I as a not I, so I define myself in terms of other people. So, we rely on others to make sense of ourselves, and yet conflict is still the base relation of self to others.

Fundamental Christians and Islamists are in conflict because of their shared assumptions about being right, deity, being religious dogmatists. So, because they are in fundamental agreement, so they are in conflict.  So, there could be co-operation through mutual recognition of inevitable conflict.

Bad Faith

Sartre though found no evidence of our being for others relation, rather he saw more of bad faith. Bad faith where I treat myself as an in itself, with musts\shoulds because I’m an x. Bad faith is avoiding taking responsibility by claiming to be, or pretending to be a thing that doesn’t chose.  Bad faith as playing a role.

Could you ever be in good faith. Whatever I decide to do, I have learnt from others, I have chosen and within this choice is a influence of others.  As soon as I start doing it, digging the garden I am influenced by how I learnt from others how gardens can be digged, I have no original action, my whole digging of the garden is performed via a script from others. Bad faith seems an extent of degree, rather than something that can be negated. But then bad faith is about not acknowledging the choiceness of it, I can be a waiter but also, I could be in good faith if I realise that I could be otherwise, so ironically, we can do anything and be in good faith. He says surprisingly little about good faith, and I wonder why that is.

Nausea

As the acknowledgement that we are responsible for all the bad things we do, bad faith for instance.  By how much we restrict ourselves. Heidegger sees angst relating to authenticity and Sartre sees nausea relating to bad faith

Challenge to love others as others, not as objects for you.

Does acting towards yourself as a subject make others objects?

As a subject I can define values, I have decided it’s good to wear pink and not work. As a subject we do what I say not what you say, so you can’t act as a subject to me. I can of course be a subject without subjecting you, I can react in ways that I want, but I don’t need to make demands of you.

 

Buber

We become ourselves through relation

Difference between individual and person. Person, and inseparable relationship to the world, a real relationship of reciprocity with the world, in all the points it can meet. An individual is a disconnected scientific unit.

I-it I can interpret you as a fixed object, a lazy person, a person to serve me. I-it relation to the other, is about separateness, objectification, judgement, manipulation and control.

I-Thou I engage with you dialogically where I see you as a subject, a meaning creator and someone who engages with me as meaning creator and given we are in relationship this meaning will happen between us as we are flexible.

To practice I-Thou you must experience your relationship both from your side, and from the others (inclusion).

Empathy as an ego centric explanation, rather than trying to enter into otherness

In a I-it relationship, the I-it is merely a projection of the I.

I thou, we are both meaning creators and meaning is created in relation and we are in relation. So, in this relation then I both take my perspective and I take yours.  I respect the other in their otherness

 

4 main themes of Existential Phenomenology

1.      Uncertainty in the face of a world with no fixed meaning

2.      Freedom to choose action\belief in the face of a meaningless situation

3.      Existential givens, we are constrained, by our thrownness

4.      We cannot avoid being responsible

5.      The above 4 are grounded by inter-relationality

Chapter 7 Phenomenological research

Of no interest

 

Chapter 8 Existential Psychotherapy

Core features

1.      Humans develop meaning of their lived experience

2.      Meaning emerges from humans’ inter-relation with the world

3.      As meaning is intentionally derived no meaning can ever be complete

4.      To either accept there is no fixed meaning, or to avoid this fact provokes anxiety.

5.      We are time limited in our meaning making

 

 

Existential therapy is not technique led, it is understanding led and technique comes after that.

 

Existential therapy’s sees that what are standardly deemed as disorders can often be the outcome of trying to avoid the angst of living authentic lives in the face of their worldview.

Existential therapy as examining client’s life, way of seeing themselves, their worldview, to enable them to live a life that is more in tune with themselves and so they feel more alive.

Existential therapy sees a client’s problem as part of their overall way of being in the world, so part of a wider problem.

Existential therapy seeks to clarify the world view of the client

Existential therapy seeks to clarify the disowned beliefs\behaviours etc.

 

One way to explore a client’s worldview is via Binswanger’s umwelt, Mit welt and eigen welt

 

Physical world

With world

Personal world: the close relations we have with self and others.              

Van Deurzen: Uber welt: the ideological world

 

 

 

Spinelli: Inter-relational realms

I focused: my experience of being myself in relation: so, beliefs, demands, motivations

You focussed: what beliefs, demands and motivations you put on others

We focussed: how do you engage with what emerges between you, it is immediacy with the therapist

They focussed: how do you engage with other relationships in his life

 

 

Attuning to, staying with the client’s world view. Hearing the other and allowing them to hear themselves.  This can allow the client to become aware of their sedimented stances to self\world\other that may be causing their symptoms.

 

Existential therapy’s look at the what and how of the client experience and not the whys.

 

Therapist originally means attendant, so a therapist should be a specialist in awareness and attention.

 

Being with the client, accepting\respecting their world view

Being for the client, elucidating, describing their assumptions, beliefs, rules for living, values and their corollary emotions. So, their worldview of self\world\other, their meaning making apparatus. FM2, I like that because of my worldview.

 

No explanations, no interpretations, just descriptions. But connecting things is some explanation, if you don’t connect things don’t make wholes and we think in wholes.

 

Have the integrity and the humility to allow a client to arrive at their own ideas about how to live. (MP hopefully)

 

Not asking why questions, rather what and how, which touches on the noematic, and noetic. Why is asking a causal question. What is asking a descriptive question of the thing that’s intended, how is asking a descriptive question of the relation to that thing. How are you eating that apple, lustily.

 

So, the arguments are the existential givens provoke anxiety, which can be intolerable. The defences against these anxieties are the symptoms clients want curing.

Existential givens

1.      Temporality

2.      Meaningless

3.      Freedom

4.      Isolation?

 

We are born and face certain existential givens: freedom (I can react in any way), responsibility (I am responsible for my life), temporality (we will die, my experience is temporal), meaninglessness (there is no objective certainty) and isolation (no one else has my experiences). Facing these givens can provoke intolerable anxiety (angst), to manage these rules, beliefs and behaviours are used by people to defend against this angst. Any time these defensive rules\beliefs\behaviours are threatened it provokes anxiety which is what the client present with.   So, the work is to find with the client in their symptom what way of being\believing is threatened that provokes their anxiety.  This then gives access to what the defensive strategy their symptom is towards, and what conceivable existential given they are trying to manage. So, I must be strong, might be trying to manage death anxiety, or meaninglessness...

I think the irony here is that we all as humans face this and as a therapist you sit with your client, and you have your ways of managing these things. So, for instance, to avoid the angst of meaninglessness you might resort to habitual ways of interpreting clients with the client you currently sit with. Your anxiety with temporality is that there is never enough time so you may try to pack a lot into a session.  You might think success is an antidote to meaninglessness, so you look to succeed in every session….

There is an excellent journal article on Existential understandings of anxiety by Nick Kirkland-Handley here

https://journal.existentialanalysis.org.uk/ea/issue/view/417/349

 

Yalom death anxiety

Protect against death by being special, irreplaceable, powerful, engaging with an ultimate rescuer e.g. religious leader.

Symptoms of anxiety can be the outcome of trying to defend against existential anxieties, so drugs only numb the secondary symptoms. Likewise, symptoms of anxiety can be the way to defend against problems of living.

 

Ontological insecurity

Connection with Laing, symptoms of schizophrenia are a defensive reaction to an impossible situation, the double bind. Existential givens as an impossible situation.  

Ontological insecurity: where one part of you can’t accept another part of you, likewise there can be a split between self and other, what the other tells you and what you want to do.

3 basic questions are raised for the ontological insecure, that one is, what one is, and who one is.

Implosion: taken over by something inside me (alien, dr Jeckell)

Engulfment: taken over by another (devil)

Petrification: the fear of being turned into something lifeless (zombie)

 

Schizophrenia: the symptoms of the defence against ontological insecurity

Schizoid

A part of you is deemed unacceptable. You are a bad child. To cope with that, that part of you that can’t exist, you fragment, by denying that part of you.  Which can lead to DID. Can also lead to paranoia, as the denied part shows itself, well it can’t be me, must be controlled by external forces.

For Laing, good=agrees with family code, bad the opposite.

The problem is not the rule per se, but the lack of distinction between bad behaviour and bad being.

Young children make very little distinction between mental acts and physical ones.

The you are bad, and I don’t love you, cut to the very core of existence for a young child, the family then get to define their existence based on their behaviour which can be equated with either mental or physical acts.

Children then can attempt to deny their “bad” self to manage, as it can’t be expressed as it threatens their being.

The ability to integrate this “bad” self is the key to moving from adolescence to adulthood, the schizoid individual hasn’t made this integration. The “bad” self represents a threat to their existence

The effect then is if I am good, I am loved if I am bad then love is removed. Development then is either never bad to significant others by denying that part of you, or to develop yourself to manage competing demands and be generally good.

Children fear monster under the bed, if an adult denies\punishes their experience then you have two monsters.

Theres something in this. Client does things that don’t make sense to you from your position\world, but from there’s absolutely do. They might say I know its silly (a nod to others world) but I do it (a recognition of their world). So, the first point is to understand their world to make sense of their behaviours.

As a result of the family’s injunctions and rewards, we learn to define who we are and whether we have a right to be. The family, then, becomes not only the source of our ‘good’ or positive definitions of self, but it also serves the function of defining those ‘bad’ or negative aspects of self which must not be allowed to be expressed (mentally or behaviourally) because to express them threatens not only our relations with the family (and others in general) but also our internal relations, that is, our very being.

Schizoid, as arrested development, not being able to integrate their bad self into themselves and trying to be good all the time to family\friends.  Losing existence to the family can be understood as family withdrawing love if you are bad, likewise the internalised family operating in the same way. The family might also act as if the bad self didn’t exist the person didn’t exist.

Schizoid has feeling and erratic moments of both good and bad

 

Spinelli argues that it’s the interpretation of chemical\genetics that results in behaviour and that’s why people respond different to drink, drugs etc.

Hmm this is tricky, the interpretation to biology or chemistry, to drugs or genetics.  True people respond differently but interpretation. I can get behind some level of implicit memory with drugs. Association with the feeling and other states\memories\neural pathways.  With genetics, I have a gloomy predisposition, will I be depressed, well it depends how this works out within your context, and how you choose to respond. I suppose within the noetic, there is an interpretation, I am gloomy I don’t like this, I will go and sing. I don’t like this because the experiences I have had in my life, say that I don’t want to be a gloomy person for instance.

 

Rogers

Rogers=all humans strive for actualisation but due to fragmentation, denial, disassociation from our being can be hampered, so therapy means noticing out defences and then integrating them.  Therapists can’t attend to theory and client so attend to client to reflect their world to them.

Don’t ask questions, don’t interpret, stay with the client’s frame of reference, don’t make causal links. I can imagine PCT done badly is awful for clients.

 

The core conditions

Prize the client as a parent prizes a child, their being not their current behaviour.  To accept unconditionally means focussing on the process, the noesis. So have a story, what happens in the world, I perceive x, and my feelings about it are it conflicts with y, it’s something that my dad wants, I want to break free of dad.

UPR: it can be bad behaviour but it’s not a bad person.

Our differing ‘stories’ demand judgements that can either unite or separate us. But the effects that are linked to each are shared by all members of our species. In focusing on these unifying effects, both story-teller and listener acknowledge their humanity, recognize each other’s being and are at least more likely to accept it unconditionally.

Accurate empathy: getting the clients frame of reference. AKA active listening.

 Congruence:  therapist be present without façade.  Be a model of integration.

Some see the core conditions as therapeutically lacking, more doing needed, but core conditions offer being.

PCT theory is simple, provide the right relationship, client will develop.

PCT practice is complex, client bias=be defenceless victim that therapist fixes.  Therapists trained in number of theories then will try to offer what the client wants

PCT relationship difficult as it runs counter to other relationships learnt in society, so it is a relationship that sees both as defenceless.

Rogers is not existential because

1.      He’s a dualist, good self-actualising, false self

2.      Humans are naturally good.

3.      He is not relational; there is objective truth

 

Bateson: schizogenesis complementary and symmetrical, how in relationship there can be an opposite symmetry.  Complementary each part supplies what the other lacks. Symmetrical the two sides match each other perfectly.  This enables the self to be defined whilst distinguishing it from the other.

 

 

Chapter 9 Phenomenological and humanistic psychologies: similarities and contrasts

Phenomenology moves away from deterministic bio social models that see human behaviour as conditioned. Human free will, creativity, motivation by meaning, are all attempted to be explained away by the reductionists.

Humanistic psychology came out of encounter groups, counterculture, and the dissatisfaction with psycho analysis and behaviourism.

Central tenets of humanistic psychology

1.      Conscious experience is the primary source of data

2.      Humans are beings with many different facets which added together makes them who they are, you can’t break them down into bits=>holism

3.      Even with the givens, humans are free, to interpret and react how they see fit

4.      Human conscious experience is genuine and not amenable to reductionism

5.      No complete theory of human experience\ behaviour is possible

 

Humanism sees humans as good and will develop that given the right conditions, Existential therapists see that we can be good or bad dependent on our choices.  Likewise Existential therapists see dialogue and relationship as core to human existence.

 

Humanistic approaches emphasise the individual, self-development, empowerment, but doesn’t consider the effect on others, and therefore the returning effect on self

As a result, rather than promote co-operation, humility and shared responsibility, the great majority of humanistic techniques (if unwillingly) have fostered competition, self-aggrandizement and disdain for others’ inter-relationally derived experiences.

 

Key Differences between Phenomenological and Humanistic Psychologies

Four key divergences between humanistic and phenomenological psychologies:

1) the centrality of experience;

2) the issue of actualization in general or self-actualization in particular;

3) the hypothesis of ‘wholeness’ and ‘integration’;

 4) the status of ‘the self’.

 

Experience

Humanistic think it’s given and doesn’t need theory.

Existential think it needs to be explored, Ive chosen to pay attention to this experience, this experience is informed by my context.

 

Self-actualisation

Existential therapists talk of phenomenologically derived notions of inter-relational openness, disclosure and dialogue, to explain human engagement and progressive experience.

 humanistic authors have altered the meaning of ‘authenticity’ so that it now expresses a person’s subjectively felt experience of self-congruence and integration.

Heidegger sees authentic as ownership of being, what shows itself

 

The Self

John Rowan asserts that ‘the real self – the self which is to be actualised in self-actualisation – is not a concept but an experience. It is not something to be argued at a philosophical level, it is thing to be encountered at an experiential level’

But existential therapy argues there is no concept, culture free experience as with the self.

 

Chapter 10 Phenomenology and the Major Systems in Psychology

Three critical philosophically derived obstacles stand in the way of any substantive rapprochement between psychoanalysis and phenomenology: psychoanalysts’ :

1.      linear causality

2.      the accessibility of past events

3.       unconscious mental system whose functions can be distinguished from, and impact directly upon, conscious experience.

Phenomenologists question the very possibility, much less its value, of understanding and predicting human behaviour based on a notion of causality that is both linear (from A to B to C to D, and so forth) and unidirectional (from the past onto the present).

while phenomenological psychologists would certainly agree that past experience plays a major, even central, role in the person’s current psychic life, they would also take the view that the past is a far more flexible construct, undergoing continual reassessment and reinterpretation.

The psychoanalytic function of the unconscious is the same in phenomenology, where there may be an unreflection, a forced interpretation on the world, to protect from the raw being in the world, e.g. taking truths from on high, seeing yourself as a certain person, even when there is evidence to the contrary

‘An unconscious desire is a desire which a person experiences, but which the person does not recognize for what it is’

Similarities between free association and the phenomenological method. Free association: say whatever comes into your mind without censorship, Phenomenological method: just describe without prejudice.

 

How could you ever meet someone if all there is, is transferential relationship?

 

Phenomenology and CBT

Behaviourism’s claims that we are primarily passive reactors to directly experienced stimuli.

Phenomenological psychology’s stance, on the other hand, is to argue that we are active interpreters of the stimuli in that our response to them is intentionally determined through both innate invariants and individual experience.

 

CBT Problems

(a) the current lack of any coherent, integrated theory that links the various sub-theories united by their emphases on mediational processes;

(b) the over-reliance on information-processing metaphors which, though partially useful, remain incapable of providing models of human behaviour that accurately represent human (as opposed to machine) information-processing;

(c) the failure to give proper consideration to the emotional content underlying human decision making.

 

Piaget: assimilation of world to existing structures, accommodation, changing those structures in relation to the world’s effects=dialogue

 

Chapter 11 A Critical Overview of Phenomenological Psychology

Husserl’s central argument was that we do not experience the physical world as it actually is in its ‘pure’, or ‘real’, state, but that the world we experience is an interpreted world that has been shaped both by in-built biological invariants and by the experience-based values, beliefs, attitudes and biases and the embodied effects which accompany them.

The ‘real’ world, though it exists independent of our consciousness of it, remains obscure and is, ultimately, unknowable.

Intentionality explicitly refers to the directional nature of consciousness insofar as consciousness is always of something. Natural science has intentionality as the subject and object, phenomenology sees these as being interrelated, indivisible.

We are a combination of shared meaning and interpretations and unique (not sure how much though!).

The phenomenological method aims to get this unique interpretation, through bracketing our assumed meanings.

Phenomenology isn’t a reductive approach. It has assumptions, intentionality, invariants, the givens, but it isn’t reductive to an essence. It sees humans as active creators of their lives, through their perception and behaviour, and the social constructions that they are part of.

 

Challenges to phenomenology

Are all mental phenomena intentional

They argue that awareness of feeling and sensing is intentional in that it is the experience of something, but the phenomena themselves need not be. This is murky this gets into the noumena. There is a feeling in my body (the tree falling in the wood) and this isn’t intentional; it is only intentional when I am aware of it. But did it exist for me prior to my awareness. Is it a phenomenon, I’d say no, and this feels like a waste of time these thoughts.

 

The Problem of Non-existent Objects

Present king of France idea, that exists as an experience of it that the words the thoughts point at.

 

The problem of infinite regress

If we are aware of our thoughts, e.g. I am thinking, then there is another though that is aware of this, I am aware that I am aware that I am thinking. So, like with the consciousness being a man watching a tv in our head these regresses to someone watching that on a tv.

Counter argument we are not aware of the act of experiencing. So, we have a thought, I experience it, but this experiencing, isn’t a mental act, almost the experiencings of thought stands outside it but you can’t stand outside the experiencing as that is you

 

Psychological Criticisms

Phenomenology is seen as not having observable, generalisable rules, it is subjective so therefore not scientific.

Is introspectionism the same as phenomenological psychology?

Moreover, while in an introspective report, objects and meanings were excluded, in a phenomenological study they are essential.

People interpret their world given the socio\cultural influences, plus their individual experiences and current desires. So, phenomenology says we create the world, behaviourism says we are passive to it.

Phenomenologists believe in a world out there (that is ultimately unknowable) but it is our interpretation of it, that makes the world that we engage with.

There is also the criticism of how can we talk of a world, if we all have individual experiences (and we do, so we can’t) . But we have a shared framework and unique perspectives, we might both being talking about red, we can point it out in the world, but it might look slightly different to each of us.

 

Phenomenology denies the possibility of truly objective observation and analysis.

There aren’t objective facts, these are only seen in relation to meaning imbuing subjects.

 

Postmodernity and Beyond

Phenomenology can lapse into full blown relativism, then Terry Eagleton 20041, how can we have universals and some sense of the objective