Phenomenology for Therapists

Researching the Lived World

Linda Finlay

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9781119975120
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Clinical Psychology
• Index: Psychology

This book provides an accessible comprehensive exploration of phenomenological theory and research methods and is geared specifically to the needs of therapists and other health care professionals.

• An accessible exploration of an increasingly popular qualitative research methodology
• Explains phenomenological concepts and how they are applied to different stages of the research process and to topics relevant to therapy practice
• Provides practical examples throughout

Part I

The Phenomenological Project: Concepts, Theory and Philosophy

Introduction to Part I

Phenomenology invites us to slow down, focus on, and dwell with the ‘phenomenon’ – the specific qualities of the lived world being investigated. ‘Our world is our home, a realization of subjectivity’ (1972, p. 340), says the philosopher van den Berg. To understand another person, phenomenologists do not inquire about some inner, subjective realm. Instead, understanding comes from asking how the person's world is lived and experienced.

Unlike other research approaches, phenomenology does not categorize or explain behaviour nor does it generate theory. It seeks solely to do justice to everyday experience, to evoke what it is to be human. In his celebrated rallying cry, ‘Zu den Sachen selbst!’ (‘Back to the things themselves!’), Husserl exhorted phenomenologists to go all out to capture the richness and ambiguity of the ‘thing’. The process he laid down was one of reflecting on the visceral texture of experience, the sensuous perceiving of life, as it is ‘given’ to the experiencer, pregnant with layers of implicit meanings.

The introductory chapters which follow seek to present the key concepts as well as the philosophical base of phenomenology. Chapter 1 invites you into the world of qualitative phenomenological research, which I see as offering a bridge across the chasm between practice and research. From my own experience I know that while therapists are exhorted to carry out research and draw on evidence-based practice, many find the lofty world of research far removed from their work at the ‘coalface.’ Phenomenology, I argue, offers the opportunity to draw these two worlds together.

Chapter 2 lays out the basic principles of phenomenology, helped by illustrations from actual research projects. I define and explore what I see as the six essential features that make phenomenological research specifically phenomenological.

In Chapter 3, examples from everyday life, therapy, philosophy and research are used to explore the idea (central to phenomenology) that body and world are intimately intertwined.

The philosophical foundations of phenomenology are laid out in Chapter 4. I try to map the key names and main ideas relevant to research in order to give a feel of the richness and complexity of the field. Although the language is frequently dense and obscure, I hope your soul, like mine, will be stirred by what the philosophers in the phenomenological tradition have revealed.

The fifth and final chapter of Part I explores ‘the phenomenological attitude’: the special stance – open and non-judgemental – that researchers endeavour to adopt and maintain. In adopting this stance, researchers seek to put aside pre-existing ideas and assumptions (Husserl's ‘reduction’) and ready themselves to be filled with curiosity and wonder as they engage in what I describe as the ‘reductive-reflexive dance’.

Chapter 1

Phenomenology: Bridging the Practice–Research Divide?i

We need an imaginative, even outlandish, science to envision the potential of human experience … not just tidy reports. (Braud & Anderson, 1998, p. xxvii)

Therapists of all modalities are increasingly exhorted to undertake research. We are pushed to be accountable, to provide evidence of our effectiveness and to draw on ‘evidence-based practice’ to improve the quality of our services. We may even be threatened with funding cuts and the withdrawal of our services if we fail to use and produce research.

But research can seem remote from, even irrelevant to our practice. Dry language and impenetrable jargon can make academic journal articles confusing, even boring. Much research around seems to be carried out by postgraduate researchers far removed from everyday experiences of work with patients and clients. Clinicians are often short of time, research experience, support and confidence; and this makes the very thought of undertaking research a daunting prospect.

How can the chasm that lies between clinical practice and academic research be bridged? How can research be made relevant to practice so that clinicians actively rejoice in the integration of research findings into their practice? How can research benefit from the insight and understanding of experienced clinicians?

These are wide-ranging questions and only partial or provisional answers can be offered here. There is not the space to address the politics involved to do with money and power (such as the way that policy-driven research may be more about cost cutting and ideologically driven research may be more to do with defining one group as more deserving than another).ii Instead, this chapter seeks to demonstrate how phenomenology might build helpful bridges between practice and research.

I start by considering some general links between practice and research. The ‘chasm’ may be smaller than it sometimes feels. The following two sections discuss the implications of using qualitative research and phenomenology to bridge the divide. Phenomenology, I argue, focuses on issues of concern to therapists and therefore offers valuable knowledge to the profession. Also it nests easily with the skills and professional values of our practice. A research example is offered to demonstrate the potential of phenomenology as a research methodology for therapists.

Research For and In Practice: Linking Therapy and Research

I had a client recently who was challenged by chronic fatigue and struggling to cope with her life. In my effort to better understand her needs and experience, I investigated what current research was saying about the condition, with its profound interlacing of physical and emotional factors. My client was also seeing a complementary therapist and I wanted to learn more about how we could work together. I began by conducting a literature search, with the aim of finding out more about chronic fatigue.

My client had explained the impact of her condition on her daily life activities. She told her story and I listened – both to what she was saying and to her underlying meanings, to the things she was not saying. I checked out my own evolving understandings with her, and sought to help her describe the experience in richer detail.

In short, I engaged a process of reflective enquiry. Together we were ‘doing therapy’ but there was also a sense in which it was ‘re-search’, or searching again. McGuire (1999) well captures these twin dimensions:

Every counsellor is a researcher: for every time we form an understanding of what is going on for a client, and work with that, we are testing out a hypothesis, and altering our activity in the light of evidence (1999, p. 1).

Here McGuire is referring specifically to counselling but in my view the words apply to every therapy field. Every time we seek to know and understand more about our service users, we are doing research. Every time we reflect upon and evaluate our therapy practice, we are doing research. Every time we take part in auditing our service, we are doing research.

These therapy skills and qualities are directly transferable to the research domain – and vice versa. Both therapy and phenomenological research involve a journey of evolving self–other understanding and growth. They involve similar skills, values and interests, like interviewing skills; critical, reflexive intuitive interpretation; inferential thinking; bodily awareness; and a capacity for warmth, openness and empathy: these are all qualities needed in both therapy practice and qualitative research (Finlay & Evans, 2009). The spirit of the holistic goals we strive for, such as enabling people through rehabilitation to re-enter their ‘real world’ away from hospital or clinic, and our focus on an individuals’ everyday ways of being, doing and functioning are entirely phenomenological in spirit.

The reverse applies too. Some research approaches offer techniques and concepts that can be usefully imported back into therapy. For example, Moustakas (1990) sees his heuristic phenomenological research method, utilizing techniques of self-searching and self-dialogue, as being directly applicable to practice in the form of ‘heuristic psychotherapy’. Gendlin's concept of ‘felt-sense’ has a direct application in both therapy and research. Narrative-phenomenological methods have been applied as a form of enquiry in therapy (e.g. Angus & McLeod, 2003) and have influenced the evolution of occupational therapists’ clinical reasoning (Mattingly, 1998; Mattingly & Fleming, 1994). Also, practice in narrative research has morphed into the practice of narrative therapyiii (White & Epston, 1990).

Therapists like us, therefore, have distinct advantages over other professionals when it comes to learning about and doing research. With the valuable professional competencies we bring to qualitative or phenomenological research (Finlay & Evans, 2009) we are indeed wanted and needed in research. Further, research stands to be enhanced considerably by our contribution.

If you have been hesitating to cross the bridge between therapy practice and research, I urge you to stride forth. But be warned, you need to choose your route through research territory with care. As for any journey, you need to plan and perhaps get some advice before starting off as there are challenging choices to make (Finlay & Ballinger, 2006). Thinking through the following questions should help you plan your route: What kind of evidence would best show the value of the work you do? What type of evidence should service users and funders rely on to make their choices? Perhaps most importantly, what kind of research are you drawn to and do you want to do?

Choosing the Qualitative Route

The prevailing view of the evidence-based practice movementiv is that evidence should be ‘scientific’ and that the best – indeed the only – way to achieve this is through rigorous measurement of (observable) behaviour and the use of standardized protocols and quantification.

This view is erroneous; in fact there are other choices that can be made. While quantitative outcome studies have much to recommend them, they are not the only ways to evaluate our practice and explore the value of therapy. As therapists, we know instinctively that some things cannot be sensibly measured or quantified. Measured outcomes do not necessarily reflect the value of our work or inform our practice. Our interests go beyond simplistic behavioural evaluations and qualitative research provides a possible answer.

Qualitative research illuminates the less tangible meanings and intricacies of our social world. Applied to the therapy field it offers the possibility of hearing the perceptions and experience of service users. How do service users experience their health and well-being? What does their illness or disability mean to them? How do they understand and experience therapy? What factors do they see are beneficial? How can in-depth understanding of one patient's experience be presented so as to give insight that informs future practice? And, what do therapists think and feel? What is their experience? How do they understand the processes involved in therapy?

In order to better understand the value of qualitative research we need to begin by considering the ways in which it differs from research based on quantitative methods and approaches – see Table 1.1.

Table 1.1 Contrasting qualitative with quantitative research.

	Qualitative	Quantitative
Aims	Inductive and exploratory aiming to describe or explain experience and meanings of the social world	Investigates causal relationships and tests hypothesis aiming to prove or disprove scientifically
Method	Human science: interviews, participant observations, creative media, groupwork, etc.	Natural science: primarily experiments and surveys
Researcher's role	Research is more subjective: relationship between researcher, participants and the social world acknowledged	Researcher is objective, neutral and detached
Findings	Uses words and creative arts	Uses numbers

Qualitative research aims to be inductive and exploratory, typically asking ‘what’ and ‘how’, and posing questions related to description and understanding. Quantitative research, in contrast, seeks to explain and ‘prove’. Hypothesis-testing is used with the aim of proving or disproving: it asks, for example, ‘why’ or ‘whether’ one treatment is more effective than another.v

In method, too, there are important differences. Qualitative research is a human science rather than a natural science. It explores the textured meanings and subjective interpretations of a fluid, uncertain world. It uses interviews, participant observation, focus groups, creative/projective techniques, reflection and first person writing or diary studies. Quantitative research, in contrast, strives for objectivity. The methods employed are more straightforward and usually involve either experiments (for instance, comparing the results of treatment group A with control group B) or attitude surveys and questionnaires.

The researcher's role differs too. In qualitative research...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• About the Author
• Preface
• Part I: The Phenomenological Project: Concepts, Theory and Philosophy
• Part II: Phenomenological Research Approaches
• Part III: Phenomenological Methods in Practice
• Appendix
• References
• Index