Introduction to Existential‒Phenomenological Psychology: Methodology and Perspective in the Science of Living-Experience
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Book Overview
Existential-phenomenological psychology has long lacked a clear and comprehensive introduction-until now. With Introduction to Existential-Phenomenological Psychology, Eugene DeRobertis fills a crucial gap in the existential-humanistic literature. It familiarizes the reader with the methodological and general psychological concepts foundational to adopting an existential-phenomenological approach to research, theory, and practice. Texts written for psychology students typically focus on procedural detail or else move rapidly from phenomenological method to clinical application. Introduction to Existential-Phenomenological Psychology forges a different path. It introduces students of psychology to the conceptual foundations, methodological commitments, and experiential orientation that make existential-phenomenological psychology a distinctive "third way" beyond sense-empirical (positivist) and intellectualist (cognitivist) traditions. The first half of the text provides the reader with the conceptual fundamentals of phenomenology as a method for doing psychological research. Along the way, it clarifies long-standing controversies within the phenomenological psychology literature-debates that often overwhelm newcomers seeking to orient themselves within this tradition. These chapters culminate in an illustrative example showing how phenomenological concepts and procedures are already approximated within aspects of natural science psychology, giving readers a sense of both the boundaries and the expansive possibilities of the method. From there, the text broadens into the existential dimensions of the lifeworld-the meanings, tensions, and structures that shape human existence. Readers are introduced to the foundational existential themes that have animated decades of phenomenological inquiry: freedom and limitation, meaning and meaninglessness, encounter and isolation, being and nonbeing. Two chapters address topics especially relevant to clinically oriented students of phenomenology: the role of anxiety in human suffering and the place of the unconscious within an existential-phenomenological framework, particularly as it intersects with psychoanalytic thought. The concluding chapter examines the footholds and challenges that will guide existential-phenomenology's unfolding possibilities as psychology confronts the complexities of the twenty-first century.
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