Psychological Science ›› 2017, Vol. 40 ›› Issue (6): 1524-1530.

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Empirical Phenomenological Psychology: Inheritance and Development of Giorgi to Husserlian Phenomenology

1,WANG Lijun2   

  • Received:2017-05-18 Revised:2017-09-05 Online:2017-11-20 Published:2017-11-20
  • Contact: WANG Lijun

经验现象学心理学:乔治对胡塞尔现象学的继承与发展

包小红1,王礼军1,2   

  1. 1. 南京师范大学心理学院
    2. 绍兴文理学院
  • 通讯作者: 王礼军

Abstract: Abstract Amedeo Giorgi,an American phenomenological psychologist,inherited and modified Husserlian Phenomenology from scientific and psychological perspective, which is mainly shown in the following three aspects: First, on the subject of criticism, Giorgi takes in Husserlian phenomenology in terms of naturalism and spiritualism, which holds that they can’t bring people any truth owing to their own shortcomings, and they even prevent people from accessing to the truth. Basing on this, Giorgi further points out that natural science psychology has a long history and has been dominating this field for over one hundred years,but it is obvious that natural science orientation is unsuited to psychology due to the totally different nature between object and human. In addition, he urges that phenomenological principles are valued and considered as an important approach in psychology to investigating the full range of behavior and experience of human as a person, which is also scientific. Second, on the starting point and basic principles, Giorgi takes it seriously the concepts of Husserlian phenomenology such as the lifeworld, intentionality, reduction and important others, and he accepts that consciousness was intentional, which means that an act of consciousness always directs towards an object. In this way, researchers can get essence of experience rooted in lifeworld by reduction and description. For psychological and scientific purposes, Giorgi transformed them from transcendent level to experience level. For example, he adopted concepts of usual lifeworld, bracketing and eidetic reduction rather than transcendental lifeworld and reduction. Third, on the research methods, Giorgi partially agrees with Husserl’s theory that researchers can get the essence by methods of reduction and description. Nevertheless, considering that psychology is different from philosophy, basing on former studies, Giorgi built up a specific and operational descriptive phenomenological psychology method, which contains four stages: reading for overall meaning, identifying meaning-units, assessing the psychological significance of meaning-units, and getting the general structure of the experience. As a result, a large number of specific studies are born to follow him. Empirical phenomenological psychology can be traced to Husserlian Phenomenology in essence, and considered as the most perfect exhibition of the theory. What’s more, it enriches and goes beyond the latter in specific concepts and applications. Besides, it develops a rigorous and scientific phenomenological psychology approach. The emergence of empirical phenomenological psychology means that American phenomenological psychology has already completed its propaedeutic phase and turned into the phases of concrete action. It is the first phenomenological psychology method in American and the most mature method of phenomenological psychology nowadays. We should fully recognize empirical phenomenological psychology. On the one hand, it possesses many advantages: It adds a completely new method to psychology and achieves a thorough breakthrough in methodology, and raises a series of thinking on the basic theory of psychology, as well as realizes the combination and mutual promotion of psychology and philosophy; on the other hand, difficulties also exist. For example, the research depends too much on the researcher’s individual ability, findings are not always adopted properly in practice, researchers can’t use it correctly due to the lack of phenomenological knowledge, internal views vary and mainstream psychology brings much stress to it. In a word, the development of empirical phenomenological psychology is fraught with difficulties, but we should still believe that it and psychology of the humanities will continue to advance in future.

Key words: Key words: Empirical phenomenological psychology, Husserlian phenomenology, Lifeworld, Intentionality

摘要: 摘 要 美国现象学心理学家阿米多·乔治基于科学和心理学视角所提出的经验现象学心理学是对胡塞尔现象学的继承和发展。这表现为:在批判对象上,从胡塞尔的反二元论细化为反自然科学心理学;在出发点和基本原则上,将胡塞尔的生活世界、意向性、还原等概念从超验层面放置到经验层面;在研究方法上,从胡塞尔的描述还原过程转向具体的描述现象学心理学方法。本质上,乔治的经验现象学心理学与胡塞尔的现象学一脉相承,不仅完美地展示了后者的基本原理,更在具体概念和操作应用上充实且超越了后者。

关键词: 关键词:经验现象学心理学, 胡塞尔现象学, 生活世界, 意向性