Definition.
Phenomenology as a research methodology is the study of lived experience.
Phenomenological research asks, What is this phenomenon or event like and how does it show itself in or as experience?
footnote 1
Max van Manen posits three modes of phenomenology:
- the foundational,
- the exegetical, and
- the phenomenal. footnote 2
The foundational stream includes works by the philosophers who established phenomenology as we understand it today: Edmund Husserl, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Martin Heidegger, and others.footnote 3
Exegetical phenomenology is the dominant literature
in the field and addresses technical, historical, and theoretical issues of phenomenology.
footnote 4
Though some may disagree with me, I suggest these are largely works that are talking about phenomenology, rather than actually doing phenomenology.
Finally, the phenomenal approach to phenomenology features studies that return to and start out from experience.
footnote 5
Phenomenal work engages in the practice of phenomenology, drawing from, and engaging with, life-as-lived. Arguably, most phenomenological research hails from the phenomenal branch.
Phenomenological research is drawn and adapted from pre-reflective accounts of the phenomenon under study.
For instance, a phenomenological inquiry might ask, What is it like to type on a keyboard?
In that case, a phenomenological subject might type on a keyboard for twenty minutes.
After that typing experience, the subject would then write a journal entry about that experience. Such entries should be pre-reflective, meaning that they convey raw experience,
rather than engaging in reflections, thoughts or judgements about the experience. For example:
- Pre-reflective writing
-
There is the powerful sense of movement-sound, that I am moving and clacking all at once. A springing sensation. I imagine tiny people under the keys resisting me, pushing back.
- Reflective writing
-
With every click of a key, I became connected to a long line of typists, millions of people typing on typewriters and keyboards, since the typewriter was first invented in the 1800s. How incredible to be a part of such a long tradition!
Pre-reflective accounts may come from directly from the researcher’s experience or they may be collected from participants in a study. These accounts become the raw data of the study, which is then developed into phenomenological prose.
Phenomenology and the imaginal
Particularly relevant to the research on this website, is the fact that phenomenology is concerned with experiences as they present themselves to consciousness.
footnote 6
This makes phenomenology an excellent methodology for studying the phenomena of psyche.
Dreaming, imagining, interacting with ones’ complexes — all of these are part of the lived-experience of consciousness. From a phenomenological viewpoint, whether their content has any ‘reality,’ is a moot question. The distinctions between ‘real’ and ‘unreal’ are theoretical (ontological) points. Phenomenology trucks in experiences, not theories. In this way, a phenomenological methodology allows imaginal researchers to focus in on phenomena of interest without having to expend a lot of page-time expounding on the veracity of those experiences.