Assignment 1 Phenomenological psychology focuses on the subjective experiences of individuals. The “founder” of phenomenology, Edmund Husserl presented a cohesive methodology and philosophical framework that laid the foundation for phenomenological psychology. One of the greatest challenges of phenomenological psychology is differentiating between the unique subjective experiences and perceptions of individuals and the need to discern an objective, shared reality. Phenomenological psychology is almost easier to define by what it is not: it is not about using the scientific method to study human behavior, and it is not about studying personality or psychoses. Rather, phenomenological psychology is about understanding the nature of reality itself, through an evaluation of both individual and collective human psychological experience. Husserl set forth principles for ontology in psychology as well as epistemology, which can be especially useful when studying the divergent experiences of those with psychotic disorders like schizophrenia, whose sense of reality is radically different from their peers and yet theoretically no less “real,” (Wertz, 2005).

Besides Husserl, the primary contributors to the evolution of phenomenological psychology include Amadeo Giorgi, who clearly explicated the contributions of existential philosophy to phenomenological psychology, claiming that, “phenomenological thought is important for all aspects of psychology,” (p. 6). Thus, phenomenological psychology...

A more humanistic direction was taken by Carl Rogers. Although known primarily for his contributions to humanistic psychology, Rogers also veered towards phenomenology as a method in some of his research on human relationships and the mutual construction of social meaning (Moreira, 2010). There are tremendous benefits in the theoretical viewpoint of phenomenology, but its abstraction and lack of scientific methodologies make it limited in scope and application.
References

Giorgi, A. (1971). Duquesne Studies in Phenomenological Psychology. DOI: 10.5840/dspp197114

Moreira, V. (2010). From person-centered to humanistic-phenomenological psychotherapy. Peson-centered and experiential psychotherapies 11(1): 48-63.

Scalambrino, F. (n.d.). Phenomenological psychology. Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://www.iep.utm.edu/phen-psy/

Wertz, F.J. (2005). Phenomenological research methods for counseling psychology. Journal of Counseling Psychology 52(2): 167-177.

Assignment 2

Qualitative methods like those used in descriptive phenomenological psychology can provide empirical results. In fact, one of the aims of the descriptive phenomenological method is to locate a verifiable, empirical truth based on an analysis of data. As Broome…