THE EARLY HISTORY OF PHENOMENOLOGICAL PSYCHOLOGICAL-RESEARCH IN AMERICA

This article on the early history of phenomenological psychological re search in the academic context in America focuses on the four approach es of the following respective psychologists: 1) Donald Snygg, Arthur W. Combs, and Anne C. Richards and Fred Richards; 2) Robert B. MacLeod ; 3) Adrian L. van Kaam; and 4) Amedeo P. Giorgi. It begins by first a ddressing the ''context'' for this early history namely, the European origin of philosophical phenomenology and the connection of it with th e psychology of its times in Europe, and then the American background for the development of a sensibility for phenomenology and an eventual connection of phenomenology with psychology. Each of the four positio ns was examined in terms of basic approach to the study of human exper ience and behavior. That is, examination was directed toward whether t he respective position was under the aegis of psychology as a human sc ience or as a natural science. Also examined were the research posture s and the methodologies of the four positions in terms of their respec tive degrees of reflecting either the human science or the natural sci ence approach, and in terms of their approximation to a phenomenologic al psychology. It was found that syncretism characterized the approach es of the first three positions, and that there was either an absence of phenomenological psychological method in the psychologies of those positions or, in the case of MacLeod, an undeveloped and non-worked-ou t method. Only the work of Amedeo Giorgi presented I) a human science approach that was radical and not compromised by natural science syncr etions, and 2) an articulated phenomenological psychological method ba sed on Husserl's concept of intentionality and on mediation of Merleau -Ponty's philosophical phenomenological method.