The Open University

PSYCHOLOGY DE300

Part 1.1 The phenomenological approach aims to understand each aspect of individual personal and subjective experience. This approach also considers the ‘shades in the scene’ such as other people and material objects, the narratives and ways of talking. There are four core principles in the phenomenological research; the natural attitude; the ‘epoché’; the intentionality and the lifeworld. The natural attitude, introduced by Husserl, expresses the way the individuals process their experiences that build their external reality. Everyone does not share the same perception of reality but each individual has its own perception. Experience is personal and subjective; therefore, it is not an event itself that is relevant for this approach but the way of living it. ‘Epoché’ means the fact of taking a step back or bracket the external reality beyond our experience. Intentionality describes more the relationship of the objects with our reality that create the experience. Brentano referred to it as psychical acts such as remembering a subject that relates to an object which is the experience itself (Stenner and Lazard, 2016). Intentionality is about the meaning rather that the ‘aim’ of mental acts and is relevant while studying the narrative of a person about an experience. Lifeworld is, rather than subjective experiences, socially constructed with various intersubjective experiences, which means that the lifeworld changes over time and experiences