THE PHENOMENOLOGICAL TEXT AS OBJECT OF TH E CONSCIOUSNESS PROCESSES ANALYSIS

Introspective first person reports constitute the only available sourc e of information about consciousness. Nevertheless, in order to develo p and standardize techniques of analysis of subjective reports which a re relevant to consciousness research, it is necessary to fulfill four requirements: (1) to demonstrate their reliability and relevance, (2) to establish criteria for selecting or obtaining the most appropriate reports, (3) to develop a system for detecting the items in the text which are indicative of conscious processes and, finally, (4) to devel op procedures to represent such items and their structure and dynamics with the aid of suitable formal devices. A narratological method whic h meets the first two requirements and criteria is advanced. Despite t heir obvious limitations, introspective reports can be considered to y ield relevant and reasonably reliable information about consciousness. Since certain introspective reports seem to be more relevant and reli able than others, the question arises of discerning the most reliable reports. The modern novel in the lines developed by Proust and joyce m ay constitute the best representation of consciousness available. Desp ite the fact that two examples from these novels show the extraordinar y capability of language to convey mental states, the interior monolog ue or the psychonarration of the modern novel are not optimally suitab le to infer actual streams of consciousness because they are simulatio ns. In some monologues, journals, autobiographies, and soliloquies the writer expresses conscious mental states directly from his/er awarene ss eliminating to a large extent the communicative intent. Thus, these narratives retain more authentic traces of experience and they become the most adequate targets for analyses of conscious processes. Carefu ly selected excerpts from the journals of Virginia Woolf, Anne Frank, Miguel de Unamuno and others show these characteristics. Other relevan t items are constituted by verbatim transcripts of psychotherapeutic o r self-experiment sessions. In all cases it can be asserted that these are the most faithful reports of conscious mental states, and they ar e called ''phenomenological texts''. Once a suitable phenomenological text is selected or obtained a method to analyze it is required. It is proposed that the text can be treated with some of the procedures dev eloped by quantitative ethology and which include as a central require ment an inventory of categories and a system of attribution and sampli ng. Nine mental category terms (sensation, perception, emotion, though t, judgment, reasoning, image, recall, intention) were used to analyze an excerpt from the journal of a patient studied by Pierre Janet. Car efully selected first person reports constitute ''phenomenological tex ts'' suitable as targets of analyses for consciousness dynamic structu re and process.