This is a revision of my presentation from the August 2013 International Human Science Research Conference in Aalborg, Denmark. My objective was to convey the interrelationship of description and interpretation within phenomenological philosophy and upon Giorgi's descriptive research approach drawing upon Ricoeur's hermeneutic philosophy.

1. Phenomenological
Research:
Descriptive and Hermeneutic
Marc Applebaum, PhD
Saybrook Graduate School, San Francisco

2. Guiding question:
Can phenomenological psychological research
describe intersubjective structures of lived-
experiences with a hermeneutic awareness of
• The ways that such accounts, regarded as
narratives, are self-interpretive?
• The ways participants‟ accounts of their lived
experiences are situated within historical,
sociological, linguistic, gendered, and other
contexts?
Due to the limits of time, today I will focus on the
former question.

3. (a) A search for decontextualized, atemporal,
“Platonic” essences, or
(b) An interpretive relativism that rejects the
possibility of intersubjectively valid truth
claims—rendering psychological science as
such impossible
A false dichotomy can be posed between-

4. For Husserl, “being given and being
interpreted are descriptions of the same
situation from two different levels of
discourse. Hermeneutics and
phenomenology coexist in his
thought…intentional consciousness is
meaning bestowing, and therefore
interpreting...but at the same time Husserl
insisted that we do perceive things that are
nevertheless given.”
J. N. Mohanty (1984, p. 117)
Philosophical starting point

5. Mohanty (1984) can be understood
in terms of noema and noesis
vόημα vόησις
Husserl, Ideas III § 16-17: A description is a determination of what
is intuited.

6. A problem for researchers
Within philosophy the idea that the
descriptive and hermeneutic dimensions of
phenomenology are complementary is not
novel
But the methodological implications of this
complementarity for psychology have not
been carefully worked through by
researchers
Moreover, qualitative writers often subsume
description within interpretation while
neglecting to define either term

7. Difficulties for students
Neither “description” nor “interpretation” are
univocal terms
Students of psychology tend to assume that
“interpret” means to produce a novel and
causal-explanatory meaning on their own,
rather than attending to what‟s already
present in data
If all knowing is framed as interpretive then
the possibility of adopting a descriptive
attitude is foreclosed upon and students will
assume that only an interpretive attitude is
possible

8. Within research, descriptive and hermeneutic
approaches represent different attitudes with
respect to our relationship to interview data.
“Attitudes are different intentional perspectives that
one can have on an individual object and that will in
each case render a wholly different „understanding‟
or „interpretation‟ of that object. In this sense, all
experiencing is interpreting.”
Sebastian Luft (2011, p. 306)
Phenomenological argument

9. Proposition-
Husserl‟s “Principal of all Principals” is a valid
starting point for psychological inquiry
We can describe carefully what‟s given to us in a
given context, just as it is present to us, from our
chosen research perspective—
We can simultaneously acknowledge that every
experience is situated, and this “situatedness”
itself can be explicated

10. Describing description
To describe is: to put oneself at the service of and
seek to articulate a meaning that is already
intersubjectively present, from a given standpoint
This is a specifiable kind of intentional act: “To
translate into disposable significations a meaning
first held captive in the thing and in the world
itself” (Merleau-Ponty, 1968, p. 36)
In Husserlian terms, the researcher has a
constitutive, not a constructive relationship to the
given

11. Description in psychological
research
“The use of language to articulate the
intentional contents of consciousness or
experiences within the constraints of the
presenting evidence.”
Amedeo Giorgi (2000, p. 67)

12. Steps in the descriptive method
1. Bracketing one‟s prior theoretical and personal
knowledge about the phenomenon
2. Employing an epoché
3. Explicating what is present in the data, from the
chosen research perspective, with respect to the
phenomenon that is the focus of the study, using
free imaginative variation
4. Seeking a psychological structure that is “the
most invariant meaning for a given context.”
Giorgi, 2000, p. 69

13. Interpretation in descriptive
research
According to Giorgi, the researcher both interprets
and describes, but in specifiable ways:
The researcher constitutes the research situation
with “high-level” interpretive choices—for
example, choosing a psychological perspective
on the data
Having done so, she is free to adopt a
descriptive method to analyze data
After arriving at eidetic findings, she can then
reflect upon them interpretively

14. Excluded modes of interpretation
In employing the descriptive phenomenological
method, two specific modes of interpreting are not
engaged in during data transformation:
Theoretical explanation: The researcher does
not utilize a pre-existing theory or theoretical
concepts in explicating psychological meanings
in the data. For example, psychoanalytic,
cognitive-behavioral, or transpersonal concepts
are not invoked.
Quasi-theoretical explanation: The researcher
does not rely upon a personal, quasi-theoretical
understanding or “pet theory” to explicate the
data.

15. From description to hermeneutics
“Experience is not only surrounded by a pre-
thematic historical horizon as the background for
concrete experience; the background also
determines the way I conceive of myself in the
present and from there the past.”
“Explicating what it means to be in a situation
transforms it into a hermeneutic situation…”
Sebastian Luft (2011, p. 316)

16. Next: self-interpretation
I want to give an example of the varied ways in
which self-interpretation occurs in spontaneous
narratives
Ricoeur‟s (2002) idea of “narrative identity”:
narrating an experience is an intrinsically
interpretive act that both shapes and is shaped
by a subject‟s sense of themselves as the
protagonist of their life-story
However, “interpretation” occurs in
psychologically varied ways…

17. In descriptive data, self-interpretation
comes in varied forms:
a) Narratives given in a “natural attitude”—self-
interpretation is present, but it is almost entirely
spontaneous and implicit
b) Narratives demonstrating a reflective attitude
that is not self-consciously theoretical
c) Narratives that demonstrate a quasi-theoretical
attitude

18. Natural attitude description:
From a description of deciding to leave a job:
“Before this, I had never worked with so many
bright people who were open to listening to my
ideas and trusting me to make them happen.”

19. Reflective but not consciously
theoretical:
From a description of deciding to leave a job:
“In the weeks after quitting my job, when I came
down with the worst cold I have ever had, it was
those comments from my team members and
tears from the head of HR that helped me realize I
made the right, albeit difficult, decision.”

20. Consciously quasi-theoretical:
From a description of dreams influencing one‟s
artistic work:
“I compare my experience of the phenomenology
of the creative process to, something like what
Campbell calls „the involuntary call‟? Heroes have
either „voluntary‟ or „involuntary callings.‟”

21. Self-interpretive modes
a) In a natural attitude self-interpretation doesn‟t
thematize itself—one is simply “telling what
happened” to the other
b) In a reflective attitude there is an awareness
of trying to convey the sense of one‟s
experience to the other—but the sense-making
interpretation is lived in a mostly spontaneous
way, in contact with the lived-meaning of the
experience itself
c) In a quasi-theoretical attitude, there is an
effort to actively “come up with” the meaning of
one‟s experience for the other—the sense of
the experience as it was lived is largely

22. Self-interpretive attitudes
None of these attitudes are exclusive—they
often occur side-by-side in data
They are all relational modes, expressing the
way the participant is relating to the interviewer
and their task in relation to him or her

23. Alternate paths
A descriptive approach privileges the lived
psychological meanings present in the natural
attitude, and explicates them
Self-consciously interpretive approaches
privilege the conscious construction of new
meanings by encouraging participants and
researchers to come up with novel
interpretations
One might explicate the lived-meaning of a
given phenomenon in participants‟ narratives,
then reflect hermeneutically upon the already-
existing self-interpretations in the data—this is
particularly useful in clinical or consulting work

24. References
Giorgi, A. (2000). Psychology as a human science
revisited, Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 40 (3) 56-73.
Giorgi, A. (2009). The descriptive phenomenological method in
psychology: A modified Husserlian approach. Pittsburgh:
Duquesne University Press.
Luft, S. (2011). Subjectivity and lifeworld in transcendental
phenomenology. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.
Merleau-Ponty, M. (1968). The visible and the invisible (A.
Lingis, Trans.). Evanston: Northwestern University Press.
Mohanty, J. N. (1984). Transcendental philosophy and the
hermeneutic critique of consciousness. In G. Shapiro & A.
Sica (Eds.), Hermeneutics: Questions and prospects (pp.
96-120). Amherst: The University of Massachusetts Press.
Mohanty, J. N. (1987). Philosophical description and descriptive
philosophy. In Phenomenology: Descriptive or hermeneutic?
(pp. 40-61). The First Annual Symposium of the Simon
Silverman Phenomenology Center, Duquesne
University, Pittsburgh, PA.
Ricoeur, P. (2002). Life in quest of narrative. In J. Wood (Ed.).