Changing Art into Research: Soliloquy Methodology 9781138486768, 9781138486782, 9781351044752

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CHANGING ART INTO RESEARCH: SOLILOQUY METHODOLOGY

Changing Art into Research: Soliloquy Methodology presents a research methodology that enables inquiry into one’s personal experiences in an endeavour to reveal essential commonalities of human experience. Arts-informed research methods are becoming increasingly popular with scholars in Arts, Education and the Social Sciences, but there is often confusion about how to turn arts practice into rigorous inquiry. This book examines the theoretical perspectives needed to inform these research approaches, which are often missing in methods teaching and research. Soliloquy is a new methodology that interprets and applies Husserl’s philosophical concept of Transcendental Phenomenology. It marries together the synthesizing powers of the unconscious mind with the analytical capacities of conscious cognition and articulation. It further explores the possibility that both cognitive and intuitive ways of knowing are valid and appropriate for academic inquiry, provided these methods are aligned through a philosophically consistent, theoretical framework. This book will be of great interest to academics and postgraduate students engaged in arts-based qualitative research and those doing an arts-based practice dissertation. Jocene Vallack taught research methodologies at Monash University and James Cook University in Australia, and St John’s University in Tanzania. She was an invited editor for the Electronic Journal of Business Research Methods and held a Research Fellowship with CQUni. Jocene originally trained in theatre and lectured in Acting at Ballarat and RMIT Universities.

CHANGING ART INTO RESEARCH Soliloquy Methodology

Jocene Vallack

First published 2021 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2021 Jocene Vallack The right of Jocene Vallack to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record has been requested for this book ISBN: 978-1-138-48676-8 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-138-48678-2 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-351-04475-2 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by Taylor & Francis Books

CONTENTS

List of illustrations Acknowledgements Preface 1

A concise overview of Soliloquy

viii ix x 1

What is Soliloquy? 3 The philosophical phenomenology informing Soliloquy 5 Soliloquy – a collaborative exchange between conscious and unconscious knowledge 6 Philosophical alignment of the methodological framework 9 An example of Soliloquy in practice 14 Finally 17 2

The co-existing realities of the ephemeral and the eternal: Aristotle and Plato Art and transcendence 23 Intuition and the unconscious 25 Gebser’s evolution of consciousness 26 Archaic consciousness 29 Magical Consciousness 29 Mythical Consciousness 31 Mental Consciousness and Integral Consciousness 32

19

vi Contents

The limitations of Mental Consciousness 34 Sheldrake’s ‘science delusion’ 38 3

Intuition

43

Stansted Hall – Journal 2009 48 What is mediumship? 56 Same God – different names 60 4

The theoretical perspective of Soliloquy: Transcendental Phenomenology

62

Platonism and universal form 67 Knowledge and belief 69 The a priori object 71 The pregivenness of objects 73 The story of art 77 Transcendental Phenomenology in life and research 80 Is all Phenomenology Transcendental? 85 The alter ego, apodictic truth and eidetic reduction 87 Why is Phenomenology so misunderstood? 89 The historical context of Phenomenology 93 What did Heidegger do? 94 Darren works it out 104 Bracketing 105 Existential phenomenology 108 In summary 110 5

Soliloquy for the intuitive researcher: The methods Alignment in methodology 115 The methods for doing Soliloquy 121 Experience 121 Epoche 127 The Epoche and altered states of consciousness 129 Epiphany 132 Explication 135 Explanation 138 An example of Soliloquy in practice: Echo and Narcissus 139 The epiphany of the Wizard of Oz 141 A pictorial view of Soliloquy 142

115

Contents vii

A final metaphor for Transcendental Phenomenology: ‘The Lady of Shalott’ 143 Answering some critical concerns 151 Enhance your research: enhance your life 152 Glossary Index

154 161

ILLUSTRATIONS

Figures

1.1 2.1 3.1 4.1

Theoretical framework of Soliloquy methodology The parallels of Soliloquy and Gebser’s theory of consciousness Gembrook House, 1910 The drift of phenomenology

11 33 47 94

Tables

2.1 Explanation of the parallels between Soliloquy methodology and Gebser’s evolution of consciousness 5.1 Categories for building a research methodology 5.2 Epistemology and alignment in research design – some examples 5.3 An annotated theoretical framework of Soliloquy methodology 5.4 A comparative alignment: scientific method

37 117 120 122 124

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This book has been shaped by the impressions of three wise men: 





The late Dr Darrel N. Caulley (OAM), whom I sincerely thank for his solid support and bewildering belief in the extent of my abilities. He convinced me as a PhD student that I, too, have something worthwhile to say. I continue to aspire to the wisdom and humility of this great scholar. Professor Bernie Neville, whose kindness and spiritual depth have touched my soul and emboldened me to speak of intuition in academia, know that the Gods are real, and to write what I really mean. I thank him for enabling my student-self with room to grow. My psychotherapist, Dr Keith Lim, who walked with me through the valley of the shadow and showed me the power in my dreams.

PREFACE

A sagacious academic, and lecturer in methodologies at LaTrobe University, the late Dr Darrel Caulley, mentored my development as a student researcher. Having completed an undergraduate degree in Physics, he challenged his established truths and embarked on an investigation into epistemologies. He founded the Association for Qualitative Research (www.latrobe.edu.au/aqr) in 1999, which published an A grade (ERA) journal in its name. He edited the journal for six years and encouraged PhD students like me to submit articles to the referees for evaluation and comment. This rigorous and highly esteemed, academic journal became a platform for the budding arts-based methods that were emerging around the millennium. Darrel agreed with Professor Laurel Richardson (Richardson & Pierre, 2005) that qualitative research reports can be unnecessarily ‘boring’ (Caulley, 2008), and through his journal launched many new approaches and genres to challenge research conventions. I was honoured to have some of my plays about research methodology published here a couple of decades ago. Darrel had worked with Professors Robert Stake and Norman Denzin at the University of Illinois in the 1970s, when they were brave pioneers of qualitative research and related, subversive approaches such as Case Study (Stake), which of course is now well established and used widely as a mainstream approach. As a postgraduate student in 1990s, I recall the ongoing battle between post-positivism and the positivism of modern materialism. Like most revolutions, there was division prior to reconciliation. Now mixed-methods is popular in research. Thanks to the liberating work of these qualitative pioneers, an increasing number of students now choose to create their own methodologies for research. It is becoming particularly popular in the arts, with researchers who favour learning spatially, kinaesthetically or musically (Gardner, 1982), for example. I have seen research presented at conferences through dance (AERA 2015, Freemantle), and had two of my own plays about methodology performed at academic conferences

Preface xi

(Vallack, 2000, 2005), thanks to the brave and progressive mentorship of Dr Caulley. Arts-based methods are now more widely accepted by conservative associations, and in 2017, I was fortunate to be awarded for Innovation for the Teaching of Research Methodology Excellence, at the European Conference for Research Methodologies, in London. It was for an approach I created and developed with students at James Cook University in Townsville, Australia, called Theatre as Research (Vallack, 2017). Theatre as Research assumed a kind of cyclic, Action Research format using theatre and improvisation to present the stories of the co-researchers. It would not have been considered as a viable methodology last century. Nevertheless it is philosophically aligned and it was appropriate for the research we were then doing with co-researchers in schools. Evidently, I am supportive of innovative approaches to research, but I offer caution to any who might welcome the chance to fashion research methods of their own: I maintain research methodology must remain appropriate to the inquiry and ultimately rational, despite the value of any creative methods used for data collection, analysis and presentation. I have suggested that it is the responsibility of those who engineer their own research processes to ensure that the methodologies are philosophically aligned, because that is a rule of this game we call academic research. Artists, soothsayers and others who would put forward an interpretation of the human condition are not required to conform to any such alignment of design, as their games do not have the same rules of rationality. Research is scholarly. Fortune-telling is not. (I do not doubt that it is sometimes uncannily accurate, but it is magical rather than mental.) Research has a rational element, even if the methods draw on intuition. Research must be analysed, interpreted and tirelessly defended by the researcher. Art can be hung and left for the audience to make of it what they will. That is the difference between research and other ways of presenting knowledge. Once the researcher has set out the theoretical framework upon which the analysis and outcomes are based, the reader can decide whether to accept or reject the work as valid. So I argue there is ultimately much thinking to be done as a researcher who manufactures hir own pathways to knowledge. I trust that Soliloquy is well aligned because it is an adaptation of the philosophical phenomenology of Edmund Husserl. Husserl’s genius has perfected the theoretical correlation of Objectivism and Transcendental Phenomenology, and implicated the methods of subjective participation (experience), unconscious synthesis (epoche), conscious break-through of the object manifested via phenomenological reduction (epiphany) and understanding (explication) and finally, logical communication of the entire process (explanation). This book explains the legitimacy and philosophical alignment of these methods within the methodological framework. Soliloquy is an atypical methodology in that it combines intuitive ways of knowing with logical analysis. I think it is typical, however, of how we make sense of information in our daily lives, and how we have done so for centuries. It is informed by Husserl’s descriptions of pure, Transcendental Phenomenology.

xii Preface

Thanks to the work of philosophers like Husserl and Gebser in the 1920s, and the later efforts by methodologists like Caulley and Stake and Denzin in the 1970s and onwards, I believe we are now free to scrutinise the merits of a full range of research approaches, from the measurable and specific to holistic and intuitive ways of knowing. To do justice to progress, we must choose our methods carefully and think through the logic of the structure. Soliloquy has evolved over the past decade and has assumed various incarnations along the way. Like the phoenix, it has burned and renewed itself. I like to think that each incarnation has contributed new insights and refinements. During its development it has assumed the names of Subtextual Phenomenology (accurate but cumbersome), and Alchemy Methodology (now considered by the author to be too crowded with popular connotation). Soliloquy is the honed version of the approach as it stands today. Throughout this book I draw on some of the earlier publications created during its evolution, and I thank the relevant editors for their permissions. They are: 





Vallack, J. (2015). Alchemy for Inquiry: A Methodology of Applied Phenomenology in Educational Research. In: Proceedings of the Australian Association for Research in Education Conference (AARE 2015), 29 November–3 December 2015, Freemantle, WA, Australia, pp. 1–10. Vallack, J. (2016). Alchemy Methodology: Transforming Qualitative Research. In: Proceedings of the Australian Association for Research in Education Conference (AARE 2016), 27 November–1 December 2016, Melbourne, VIC, Australia, available from www.aare.edu.au/data/2015_Conference/Full_papers/ 349_Jocene_Vallack.pdf Vallack J (2017) Alchemy Methodology: Applying the Arts to Research. Electronic Journal of Business Research Methods, 15(2), pp. 134–141.

I wish to clarify that in recognition of gender-neutral language, in this book I use the following terms: hir (in place of him or her), and s/he (in place of she or he). As a (proud) working-class kid from Bayswater who had to fight her wellintentioned dad to be allowed to stay at school past the age of fifteen, I owe everything to the selfless teachers and mentors like Dr Caulley, who helped to reshape my identity into that of an academic. My way forward was enabled by the privileges of free education and scholarship systems, to which all should be entitled, but are no longer.

Bibliography Caulley, D. (2008). Making Qualitative Research Reports Less Boring. Qualitative Inquiry, 14(3). Gardner, H. (1982). Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences (2nd ed.). New York: Basic Books.

Preface xiii

Richardson, L., & Pierre, E. S. (2005). Writing: A Method of Inquiry. In N. Denzin & Y. Lincoln (Eds.), The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research (3rd ed., pp. 959–978). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Sheldrake, R. (2014). Morphic Resonance. London: London Real. Vallack, J. (2000). Qualitative Research: The Musical. Melbourne: Association for Qualitative Research. Vallack, J. (2005). Performance Text Review: The Play. Melbourne: Association for Qualitative Inquiry 2005 Biennial Conference. Vallack, J. (2015). Alchemy for Inquiry: A Methodology of Applied Phenomenology in Educational Research. In Proceedings of the Australian Association for Research in Education Conference (AARE 2015), 29 November–3 December 2015, Freemantle, WA, Australia, pp. 1–10. Vallack, J. (2016). Alchemy Methodology: Transforming Qualitative Research. In Proceedings of the Australian Association for Research in Education Conference (AARE 2016), 27 November–1 December 2016, Melbourne, VIC, Australia, available from www.aare. edu.au/data/2015_Conference/Full_papers/349_Jocene_Vallack.pdf. Vallack, J. (2017). Theatre-as-Research: A Dynamic Methodology for Arts-Based Inquiry. In Innovation in the Teaching of Research Methodology Excellence Awards: An Anthology of Case Histories 2017. (pp. 39–48). Sonning Common: Academic Conferences & Publishing International. Wilber, K. (2015). Integral Spirituality. Kosmos Journal for Global Transformation (Winter).

1 A CONCISE OVERVIEW OF SOLILOQUY

Image, symbol, archetype and metaphor are the language of the unconscious mind. Through a process with many names and many manifestations – phenomenological reduction, archetypal awareness, mythical consciousness, epiphany and intuition, to name a few that will arise throughout this book – unconscious knowledge is able to surface and be cognitively interpreted and articulated. Our everyday experiences are the data, which enter the unconscious and are then made sensible through dream and its symbols, allowing reasoning consciousness to understand that which we already instinctively know. Artists are familiar with the process and are able to work seamlessly between intuition and logic. The methodology I call Soliloquy attempts to channel this natural procedure for research. Soliloquy is research methodology, informed by the masterwork of Edmund Husserl, which he called Transcendental Phenomenology. Husserl developed phenomenology over the decades he worked as an academic mathematician and philosopher, but Transcendental Phenomenology was his magnum opus. I have used this theory to inform the research methodology I call Soliloquy. It may suit practitioners who need to research things outside of the scope and limitations of the scientific way of understanding reality as materialistic and mechanistic. It invites a liaison between the rationality of positivism and the intuitive knowledge that can be elicited from an unconscious, metaphoric awareness. On a rational level, I believe it is important for researchers to make themselves aware, at least to some degree, of the philosophies that inform their chosen approach to an inquiry. They need to understand why their methodology is the one which can best address their particular research question. The difficulty for many researchers is that philosophers do not usually write for the average, intelligent reader. Some have suggested that philosophers write only for themselves (McLellan et al., 2019), which is understandable because much of what they discuss mandates a command of elite terminology with which the rest of us struggle. I

2 A concise overview of Soliloquy

have struggled with it for at least twenty-five years now, and although I do not pretend to be as eloquent in these matters as those who write for philosophers, I aspire now to present a clear and accurate account of the thinking, which has informed phenomenology and this methodology I call Soliloquy. The book aims to present an approach to research, which allows the practitioner to use personal experience to inform research. Through a kind of personal psychoanalysis, wisdom drawn out from one’s own unconscious is then able to be rationally analysed to inform the inquiry. Unlike some emerging arts-based methodologies, which appear to be more about personal, emotional expression than a relatable outcome, Soliloquy relies on both the intuitive unconscious and rational logic to work together to marry creative insight with tangible research results. The intuitive expression is the way to the final product of the research, not the outcome itself. As I have argued on other occasions, research should be able to make the implicit explicit. It is a way of creating language for tacit knowledge. I maintain that unlike art, research is always a partially cognitive activity that must be comprehended and articulated by its creator, but that the data used to inform the analysis is better for the addition of intuitive knowledge drawn from the unconscious. Throughout this book, I invite the reader to explore the philosophies that inform the theoretical framework of Soliloquy. It is primarily based on the later work of Edmund Husserl (1859–1938), specifically, his much maligned (Hopkins, 2001) and misunderstood concept of Transcendental Phenomenology, which emerged at the end of his career and became the capstone of his life’s work in phenomenology. It was before its time, as its time is now. When Husserl was writing back in the early part of the twentieth century, modernism was unable to deal with notions of intuition and the unconscious. Freud, a contemporary of Husserl, was only then creating psychoanalysis. It seems that the two were on a dynamic wavelength that had not yet impacted on the modern world. As it will sometimes happen, Husserl’s insights were part of a community of thoughts that were coinciding and altogether evolving at that time, at the start of the twentieth century. We can see that now with the benefit of hindsight. Husserl, along with certain of his contemporaries – Jean Gebser (1986), Carl Jung (1953), Sigmund Freud (1959), Pablo Picasso and Ruldof Steiner (1911), to name a few, were collectively moving beyond the grand but limited, scientific view of the world, towards a wonder and appreciation of ideal objects and spiritual dimensions that are best accessed through philosophy or theosophy. It is in these domains that newcomers are likely to become lost, so this book seeks to act as a map and a guide for the new and intrepid phenomenologist who would dare to follow Husserl down the trajectory of transcendentalism. The most difficult task for me, when I began my reading into the works of these great scholars, was that the terminology was foreign and ambiguous. I discovered that (especially in phenomenology) various writers used the same terms in starkly different ways, which can be initially frustrating and confusing. Therefore, I refer the reader again to the glossary of terms at the end of this book, which may indicate the perspective from which I am using the terminology. I do not purport that

A concise overview of Soliloquy 3

the definitions here are finite. I merely aim to clarify how, after much consideration, I am understanding and using the vocabulary in this work at this time. This is my truth as I currently understand it. I intend that the style of language in this text should be candid and direct. It is one of my preferred strategies for clear communication. Whereas scientific genres use passive voice, I will talk directly to you. I agree with Sheldrake, who points out that ‘the passive voice is still employed to maintain the illusion of disembodied objectivity’, and ‘(before quantum physics was discovered) … physicists tried to pretend they were not involved in their own experiments’ (Sheldrake, 2013, p. 295). He goes on to make a strong argument as to why this objectivity in Science can sometimes be illusionary. We will consider Sheldrake’s thesis in some detail in the next chapter. Soliloquy is not a positivist methodology and this is not a book informed exclusively by modernism, so let us speak plainly. Some of you may be inspired to work with the methodology of Soliloquy in a practical way and avoid the arduous debate on phenomenology. May I advise caution here. I believe that each researcher should understand the approach s/he has chosen to investigate hir research question and be able to articulate why it is the most appropriate methodology to use. It is very important. This introductory chapter will give an overview of Soliloquy and argue that it aligns philosophically with phenomenology and theoretically with the intuitive methods used. Once this has been grasped, I see nothing wrong with trialling the methods, providing you accept and understand that you are proceeding within the context of a theoretical research framework. The remainder of this chapter sets out a concise description of that framework. It outlines the basic procedure of how to use the methodology. Hold it up against your research project and see if it looks like an appropriate fit. However, if you dare to journey beyond these steps, and venture further into the theoretical reasoning that informs the research methodology, I invite you to continue with me beyond this summary chapter and into the crystal cave that is the philosopher’s domain. Come and see if you agree that it is truly glorious.

What is Soliloquy? Soliloquy is a research methodology grounded in pure phenomenology. Here I echo my endeavour to make it accessible for all, who in the name of research are prepared to reflect bravely and openly on their personal experiences. It is an application of the transcendental phenomenology of Edmund Husserl (1981). The mandate of pure phenomenology is that the researcher must personally experience the phenomena under investigation. Unlike other first-person approaches that focus on description, such as Autoethnography (Ellis, 2004; Ellis, Jones & Adams, 2013) or that which has come to be known as ‘new’ phenomenology (Crotty, 1996), Soliloquy seeks a definite research outcome in the form of an a priori (metaphysical or archetypal) object. This object is the research essence and it sums up what the whole research is about. Arts practitioners are particularly suited to using Soliloquy, as these archetypal insights frequently present themselves

4 A concise overview of Soliloquy

intuitively and symbolically through arts practices such as writing, painting, performing or film-making. Consequently, arts-based researchers could excel with this approach, because the experience of staying brave throughout the apparent void, which is really the incubation period for creativity, is familiar to them. Yet it is the very thing that most disturbs traditional researchers. Artists have learned to trust these potentially unnerving periods of doubt as preludes to innovation. It is the pain before the birth. Similarly, practitioners of psychoanalysis know that insights can eventually surface from the chaos of free-association and dream analysis, while their patients may initially feel overwhelmed by the complexity. It becomes easier when we trust that these are the ways through which the unconscious informs consciousness. Soliloquy is based on three principles:   

that the unconscious mind is far superior to logic and cognition when it comes to seeing patterns and meaning in apparent chaos; that the foundations of psychoanalysis can be wellsprings, reaching deep into the collective unconscious for reflective research inquiry; and that it can take the researcher from the most subjective reflections to the most intersubjective, universal outcomes.

Using analytical tools akin to those of the psychotherapist and the transcendental philosopher, the researcher first embarks on an experience of the research in question. For example, I developed and used the approach on two separate occasions, while investigating two very different phenomena: that of play directing and that of one’s ability to relate to technology. Progressing, then, through the five phases of the methodology, which I call the Methods – experience, epoche, epiphany, explication and examination – the researcher finishes with the answer to the research question in the form of an image, myth or metaphor. These cryptic clues from the unconscious are then analysed logically to reveal and explain the research result. Just as through psychoanalysis, an uncertain and complex dream may eventually provide the dreamer with profound insight, so too may subjective, lifeworld complexities lead the researcher to universal insights and solutions. The unconscious mind, skilled at making patterns from chaos, can inform research logic. Soliloquy is housed within a philosophically aligned research framework of phenomenology, which can take inquiry from subjective complexity to a single, ‘intersubjective’ (Husserl, 1964/1929), archetypal research outcome. What does this mean? It means that my most basic human experiences can be known universally by humankind. The researcher uses hir own experience as data and hir unconscious mind as a catalyst or melting pot. S/he works (in the early stages at least) intuitively rather than cognitively. Later, hir logical consciousness will elucidate and explain the meaning that has been presented by the unconscious. That is the research cycle of Soliloquy – intuition then iconic representation of meaning, then articulation of meaning.

A concise overview of Soliloquy 5

The philosophical phenomenology informing Soliloquy How do we know what we think we know? How do we find our truths? As human survivors, we trust in our hunches, in information from our personal experiences and in our reasoning powers to make sense of the world. So why then, as researchers, do we traditionally recognise only the latter? The methodology I call Soliloquy is informed by the philosophy of phenomenology, written one hundred years ago by Edmund Husserl, and misunderstood by many ever since. Husserl said that phenomenologists must firstly know a phenomenon through subjective experiences and intuition (Husserl, 1964/1929, pp. 34–36), before realising its transcendental and universal quintessence. Modern science could not frame this notion, so although Husserl’s terminology was somehow retained and arguably plagiarised by Heidegger, and then consequently misused by others who followed him, Husserl’s meaning was ultimately disfigured and then lost to many. Popularly, phenomenology has come to mean many things to many researchers, and mostly these new incarnations do not logically align with Husserl’s original thinking. Soliloquy draws again on the original gist of the terminology used by Husserl and sets out a radical process for making sense of it and applying it to research. Various versions of the methodologies, which go by the name of ‘Phenomenology’ have been widely used in qualitative research for the past few decades. Spawned by Heidegger, something which Crotty (1996) calls ‘new’ phenomenology, grew out of the American Humanist Movement and claims to be based on the work of Husserl. Like Crotty, I maintain it is not, and I will argue this allegation in detail in Chapter 4. The jargon is Husserl’s but its interpretation is skewed. The philosophical lens of twentieth-century modernism was too narrowly scientific in perspective to appreciate Husserl’s Transcendental Phenomenology. The latter seemed abstract and somewhat metaphysical. Rationality and logic cannot manifest a priori forms or archetypes as does the unconscious, yet in pure phenomenology these become the key components. I will argue that Transcendental Phenomenology provides a sound theoretical perspective on which to erect the research paradigm of Soliloquy, and I will offer for the reader’s appraisal and possible use, a step by step approach for doing Soliloquy as an empirical adaptation of Transcendental Phenomenology. In the last few hundred years, positivist protocols, directing us more to the quantities rather than the qualities of matters, have served us well in many regards. Scientific reasoning champions a way to approach questions about the physical world, which require answers that can be measured. Scientific Method sets out the rules for research, and each of us who attended high school last century may recall that it was widely considered to be the only valid approach to inquiry. It is still, in some circles, recognised as the only rigorous paradigm for research. However, most will now concede it is not so well suited to investigations into less tangible questions about feelings, ethics and values. In order to research these sorts of essential questions, in such areas as the Social Sciences, Psychology and Education, we need to seek other ways. Qualities such as empathy and intuition resist quantification.

6 A concise overview of Soliloquy

Just as I may use both my intuitive and my analytical skills to make lifeworld judgments, so too may I approach research in this holistic way, provided my inquiry is informed by an aligned and consistent theoretical framework. The fair criticism levelled at some more ad hoc approaches to qualitative inquiry is that the researcher does not show clear understanding of the philosophical thinking that is meant to inform and justify the chosen methods. In Chapter 5, I will detail how Soliloquy is informed through an appropriate alignment of the four elements of research design – Epistemology, Theoretical Perspective, Methodology and the actual Methods for data collection and analysis.

Soliloquy – a collaborative exchange between conscious and unconscious knowledge All methodologies, including Scientific Method, are informed by a perspective on how we know what we know. Soliloquy is informed intuitively, and trusts in both logical and instinctual ways of knowing. It aligns with the philosophical theories of Jean Gebser (1905–1973), who was writing at about the same time as Husserl. Gebser questions the limitations of modernist thinking in his masterpiece on the evolution of consciousness (Gebser, 1986). We will examine Gebser’s thesis in detail later, but in short, he explains the twentieth century, dominant view that our world should be seen through a consciously scientific lens as materialistic and mechanistic (Sheldrake, 2013), Gebser (1986) argues that since the beginning of life, consciousness has evolved through various stages, which are ‘ever present’ in humankind. These stages are as follows:    



Archaic Consciousness– that is, a vague awareness and responsiveness that we might associate with single celled organisms. Magical Consciousness – this is humankind’s tribal, ritualistic belief-based way of knowing. We believe but we don’t know why. We just know things intuitively. Mythical Consciousness – when we understand the patterns of existence through story and parable. Mental Consciousness – which began about the time of Aristotle, when reason and Scientific Method became the gatekeepers of scholarship. An idiosyncrasy of this phase, which still dominates academia today, is that it disregards all other forms of consciousness, and asserts itself as the only valid way of knowing. Integral Consciousness – this is the way of the future, Gebser says. As we move beyond the modernist, Mental Consciousness of the last few hundred years, we appreciate all past ways of knowing as legitimate and useful – the archaic, the magical and the mythical modes. Husserl’s phenomenology, ahead of its time, asks us to ‘intuit’ the essence of a phenomenon. Through attention to dreams, feelings and impressions (Magical Consciousness) and story-writing and artworks (Mythical Consciousness) we can harness information that our

A concise overview of Soliloquy 7

wonderfully analytical minds can then decipher and analyse (Mental Consciousness). Such is the process of Soliloquy, which is arguably an integral practice, informed by our many modes of understanding. Husserl’s Transcendental Phenomenology was not accepted when it first appeared in the early twentieth century, because it asked scholars to think outside of the parameters of mental consciousness. In those days, Science was all. Marxists, Behaviourists and Existentialists, all dominant belief systems at the time, demanded repeatable, rigorous approaches to support the science of research. Fair enough – up to a point. At that time too, Freud (Freud, 1900/2010) was introducing the notion of the unconscious, and Jung (Jung, 1966), taking it further, wrote about a ‘Collective Unconscious’, and (based on Plato’s early acknowledgement of forms) introduced the notion of categories or archetypes, with which all humans can identify on some level. The ‘modernists’, that is the mental-mode advocates, tended to dispute any idea that could not be physically proven, so ignored this type of thinking or rejected it outright. But aspects of Husserl’s philosophy were not new. The notion of Plato’s ‘universal forms’ (Neville, 2005), personified in the Greek gods, align directly with both Jung’s archetypes and Husserl’s transcendental objects. Far from being the mere stuff of fantasy, they are metaphors for various human states of being. They are recognised inter-culturally. The question is sometimes asked, What is an archetype? Neville (2005) explains that archetypes are primary forms which govern the psyche, and transcend time and culture: For Plato, archetypes were ideas or forms of natural objects held to have been present in the divine mind prior to creation. For St Augustine they were ‘principle ideas’ which are themselves not formed, but contained in the divine understanding. In the Buddhist–Hindu systems, they are the first forms of manifestation that emerge from Void Spirit in the course of creation. Kant and Schopenhauer were more immediate precursors of Jung in dealing with this idea. For Jung, archetypes are typical and universal ‘modes of apprehension’ which appear as images charged with great meaning and power, images which exert a great influence on our individual and collective behaviour. (Neville, 2005, p. 125) Jung agreed with his critics that archetypes do not actually ‘exist’ in any lifeworld, tangible way. He explains: Of course they do not exist, any more than a botanical system exists in nature. But will anyone deny the occurrence and continual repetition of certain morphological and functional similarities? It is much the same principle with typical figures of the unconscious. They are forms existing a priori, or biological norms of psychic activity. (Jung cited in Neville, 2005, p. 125)

8 A concise overview of Soliloquy

Neville (2005) directs us to the Greek gods as examples of archetypes. I use the term ‘archetype’ interchangeably with Platonic form and transcendental object, and Neville’s examples help us to appreciate a range of archetypes. Among them are:     

Golden-Haired Aphrodite, the goddess of beauty and sensuality. Winged Eros, god of relationship and of the creativity, which is generated by relationship. Ares, a raging war god (and beaten in battle by Athena). Artemis the huntress. Hermes the Cowboy, ‘god of travellers, shepherds, thieves, merchants and scholars’. (Neville, 2005, P.292)

The last one is interesting. Such are examples of the forms, which may arise from subjective, reflective research data that is processed via Soliloquy and Transcendental Phenomenology. An intuitively skilful researcher will know that it takes time for an archetypal image to pass from the unconscious to the preconscious and then emerge and be recognised conceptually by the conscious mind. It is for the brave-hearted, because for the first part of the journey the researcher enters blindly and may doubt that the all-embracing archetype will ever actually appear. Then what might become of hir research agenda? Having trialled this, I now believe the transcendental object will make itself known. My Magical Consciousness assures me that it always will. It may not be recognisable at first, but if necessary, it will reappear again and again until I ‘get it’! Your unconscious, too, will know when you have summoned it to reveal your research outcome. The final chapter of this book will discuss in greater detail the research processes and methods of Soliloquy. Here is an overview of what to expect. Two of the key factors essential to this methodology are knowledge of the a priori object and knowledge about working intuitively through the unconscious. Let us introduce these now. Jung (1953) offers guidelines for the scholar who wishes to work in collaboration with the unconscious. It is sage advice for the phenomenologist who waits for an apparent, transcendental, a priori object: The point is that you start with any image; for instance, just with that yellow mass in your dream. Contemplate it and carefully observe how the picture begins to unfold or to change. Don’t try to make it into something, just do nothing but observe what its spontaneous changes are. Any mental picture you contemplate in this way will sooner or later change through a spontaneous association that causes a slight alteration of the picture. You must be careful to avoid spontaneously jumping from one picture to another. Hold fast to the one image you have chosen, and wait until it changes by itself. Note all these changes, and eventually step into the picture yourself, and, if it is a speaking

A concise overview of Soliloquy 9

figure at all, then say what you have to say to that figure and listen to what he or she has to say … Thus you can analyse your unconscious but also give your unconscious a chance to analyse yourself, and therewith you gradually create the unity of conscious and unconscious. (Jung cited in Neville, 2005, p. 91) When I was a PhD student at LaTrobe University, my supervisor who was knowledgeable in matters related to the unconscious, took a group of us through a meditation. It followed along the lines of Jung’s description. I will recount this in more detail in Chapter 5, but for now it is suffice to say that during the meditation I encountered a metaphor for my research embodied in the character of the Wizard of Oz. I had no idea why, but I knew that image would become important, and I made notes of it so as not to forget. Later, with the aid of my conscious reasoning, I discovered that the Wizard of Oz was the phenomenon or object of my inquiry into theatre directing. Having worked in theatre as a director myself, my research question asked about the essential nature of directing plays. The Director, like the Wizard of Oz, is usually seen as the all-powerful one with the vision. In practice, however, the actors and the director work together to create the art. Just as Dorothy and the other characters in Braum’s story of the Wizard of Oz discover that they always held within themselves the power they had attributed to the great Wizard, actors hold the power to give direction to the play. Just as the Wizard informs Dorothy of her potential capabilities, and assures her that she had power within her all the time (Fleming, 1940), a good director will empower the performers and work collaboratively. This was one of my earlier experiences of drawing on the previously unconscious, a priori object for research. A valid research methodology must be logically aligned with both its informing philosophy and the actions used to see it through. Assurance of it is one of the tasks of cognition. In Soliloquy, a conscious intelligence works collaboratively with the unconscious intuition, and each makes the other stronger. Here is the theoretical framework of Soliloquy. It is set out in a theoretically conventional framework, but it has unique aspects.

Philosophical alignment of the methodological framework In research, we make assumptions about how we know what we know. This is called the research epistemology. The term is often used loosely in academic circles, so I wish to define my intended meaning for it, as I use it repeatedly throughout the book. The research epistemology informs and logically aligns with the chosen methodology, and it can be based in one of three sets of assumptions – that which we call Objectivism, or Constructionist or Subjectivism (Crotty, 1996). These three ways of knowing the world inform the rest of the research design, which must align with it. I will discuss this in more detail in Chapter 5, but for now, it is enough to say that Soliloquy is informed by an epistemology of

10 A concise overview of Soliloquy

Objectivism, because it works on the assumption that there are forms or archetypes out there, which exist whether or not they happen to be discovered by any particular researcher. They are not tangible objects, like the ones that scientists seek, but ideal or a priori objects, which have been sought by philosophers over the ages. They are metaphors for the human condition. When I do Soliloquy, I seek these universal forms, which will only arise through my most personal and subjective experience of the research focus. To paraphrase Husserl (1964/1929), only through the most subjective experience can one know the intersubjective, that is, the universal meanings. Soliloquy is informed by Transcendental Phenomenology, so that is the Theoretical Perspective informing the approach. It is consistent with its informing epistemology of Objectivism because both seek objects that are independent of one’s subjective or constructed thought. It would be at odds with Constructionism or Subjectivism, and the theoretical framework would be rationally flawed if the researcher strayed from the logic of the alignment. The Methodology itself is served by the Methods, that is, the things the researcher does to perform the research. The Methods are listed in Figure 1.1, which summarises the theoretical framework of Soliloquy, and I will explain each one separately. However, in practice, intuitive researchers may discover that these methods are not always sequential and separate from one another. Figure 1.1 shows the structure of Soliloquy and an overview of the philosophical alignment in the research design. Objectivism is compatible with Transcendental Phenomenology, because the latter seeks intersubjective objects of the research experience. The listed methods serve the theoretical perspective, because they are the steps to accessing the researcher’s unconscious mind, which will present the intersubjective essence as a visual or mythical archetype. Although academics and students of methodology frequently use the term ‘epistemology’ in imaginative ways, I am using it to comply with Crotty’s thesis (Crotty, 1996) that in the context of research methodologies, there are only the three basic epistemologies (or ways of knowing), which can inform a research paradigm. Dr Michael Crotty was a tireless advocate for setting the records straight on phenomenology. I met him at a conference for the Association of Qualitative Research sometime last century, when I was a PhD student. I did not understand everything he was saying, and it sounded almost metaphysical and quite beyond my comprehension, but it resonated within me. When I spoke to him about my struggle to understand Husserl’s work and how I was hoping to approach my research, he announced to me somewhat triumphantly that I was doing ‘Transcendental Phenomenology’, and that not many had followed Husserl down that pathway. Flattered by his approval, without really knowing why, I thought I had better look further into this Transcendental Phenomenology, for I had no notion of what I was apparently doing, except that I seemed to be working intuitively, and this felt right.

A concise overview of Soliloquy 11

Epistemology Theoretical Perspective Methodology

Objectivism Transcendental Phenomenology Soliloquy

EPIPHANY

EPOCHE

EXPLICATION

METHODS

EXPERIENCE

FIGURE 1.1

EXPLANATION

Theoretical framework of Soliloquy methodology

In Chapter 5, I will further emphasise the need for aspiring creators of methodological frameworks to see that their designs are philosophically aligned. There is no point promising to construct research outcomes using an epistemology of Constructionism, if the follow up amounts to no more than series of subjective reflections, from which no evidence of analysis or outcomes are apparent. Using the correct epistemology is the first step towards creating an aligned methodological framework. Each researcher must understand where hir methodology is situated. As we have seen, it will be in one of the following epistemologies: 

Objectivism, which assumes that real or abstract objects exist, whether or not the researcher is aware of them. Scientific method assumes objectivism, and usually seeks tangible, external objects. Soliloquy also works with the epistemology of Objectivism, but the external objects being sought here are ideal or abstract.

12 A concise overview of Soliloquy





Constructionism, which assumes that although knowledge objects exist independently of the thought of an individual, it is the individual who creates meaning from these objects. To the constructionist, my meaning may be quite different to your meaning, even though they are drawn from the same experience. Most qualitative methodologies are based on Constructionism. Subjectivism, which assumes that there is no meaning outside of what I know from personal experience. Some kinds of reflective research and narrative inquiry work through Subjectivism.

Although Soliloquy starts with subjective methods, the overall epistemology informing the methodology is Objectivism, because ultimately the researcher is seeking abstract, archetypal objects. These objects will sum up the research in a way that is understood universally. Soliloquy, through first-person research into subjective experience, searches for what Husserl calls ‘a priori objects’. He says: All of phenomenology, or the methodological pursuit of a philosopher’s selfexamination, discloses the endless multiformity of this inborn a priori. This is the genuine sense of ‘innate’ … Phenomenology explores this a priori, which is nothing other than the essence … and which is disclosed, and can only be disclosed, by means of my self-examination. (Husserl, 1964/1929, p. 29) Soliloquy aspires to the application of this statement. Like Plato’s Greek Gods and Jung’s archetypes, these a priori objects do not actually exist in the lifeworld, but they exist transcendentally, in a way that symbolises lifeworld phenomena. The transcendental objects used in Soliloquy are similar to the archetypes used in psychoanalysis. Neville (2005) points out that archetypal psychology originated mainly from the work of Carl Jung, who was inclined to understand archetypes as pre-existent forms which are replicated again and again in nature and in our experience. He wrote of archetypes as ‘instinctual patterns of behaviour’, which are genetically inherited, as ‘structures of the collective unconscious’ and as ‘modes of apprehension’ which shape our encounter with reality … We can learn something of the nature of these patterns in the ‘old stories’ or myths of ancient cultures. (Neville, 2005, p. 22) In Soliloquy Methodology, when an image or metaphor from the ‘old stories’ presents itself, it may well come as a gift from the unconscious in the form of the research outcome. According to Neville (2005), archetypal psychologists suggest that ‘all behaviour is archetypally constellated’ and ‘Our thinking and behaving is done within one archetypal fantasy or another’ (Neville, 2005, p. 24). Soliloquy, too, sits with this belief.

A concise overview of Soliloquy 13

The Theoretical Perspective of any aligned research design is the philosophy that works within the context of the given epistemology. We have established that Soliloquy is informed by the theoretical perspective of Husserl’s Transcendental Phenomenology, and in Chapter 4 we will further explore the depths of what it actually means in this context. Husserl perfected this authentic phenomenology in his later life, but he was ahead of his time. I have suggested that twentieth century positivists were not ready to comprehend his notion of intersubjectivity. Husserl’s idea that through one’s most personal and subjective experience we can come to know the most universal and intersubjective phenomena, was criticised by his contemporaries, most notably Heidegger and Derrida (Hopkins, 2011), as too metaphysical and beyond the boundaries of the physical sciences. Hopkins (2011) notes Husserl’s response: ‘Merely fact-minded sciences make merely fact-minded people’ (Crisis, 4/7), observes Husserl. And these facts can teach us nothing about values, about reason and unreason in human affairs and about the meaning of human existence. Thus, despite the undeniable rigor, exactness and theoretical accomplishments of contemporary European sciences, their objectivity makes them poor organs for addressing what Husserl calls the ‘enigma of subjectivity’. (Hopkins, 2011, p. 12) Husserl attempted to explain that intersubjective knowledge can be conceptual. He argued, for example, ‘that through my fear of spiders, I can come to know your fear of snakes. Although our subjective experiences differ, the intersubjective phenomenon of fear transcends those differences.’ Husserl continues: Subjectivism can only be overcome by the most all-embracing and consistent subjectivism (the transcendental). In this (latter) form it is at the same time objectivism (of a deeper sort) … (Husserl, 1964/1929, p. 34) As depicted in Figure 1.1, the actions that the researcher does to serve the methodology are called the methods. Husserl informs us that phenomenology as a research process is necessarily a first-person event, which brings us to the first method of Soliloquy – that which I call, and intentionally capitalise for clarification, Experience. To do this methodology the researcher must experience the phenomenon in question. There is nothing impartial about it. It is research about one’s own subjective encounters. Because it is so personal, and because it engages the unconscious, it will nurture the manifestation of archetypal objects that emerge to eventually inform the rational mind. But first, the researcher must go blindly along, only hoping that some phenomenological object will become apparent at the end. S/he enters into a stage called the Epoche. It is the time of incubation, when nothing appears to be making sense or developing. The researcher should make time for the Epoche, and not allow the busy consciousness to take over. Under the surface, the unconscious will be shaping the data into a symbolic image or metaphor.

14 A concise overview of Soliloquy

Unexpectedly, an Epiphany will take place. The researcher may be noting dreams, participating in meditation or practising his Art, when seemingly out of nowhere an ideal object will appear. At first it may not be obvious to the researcher that it is important, but eventually, it will be clear that this image requires conscious analysis. It is then time for the phase of Explication. This is when the researcher starts to understand the meaning of the archetypal forms that have emerged in response to the research question. Finally, once the researcher can reflect upon and understand the significance of the research outcome, it will be time for the mental consciousness to do what it does so well – Explanation. I have argued on some occasions (Vallack, 2016) that it is necessary for researchers to articulate and evaluate their research outcomes, especially when the methods they use are creative and apparently obscure. In contrast, artists don’t need to explain their Art, but researchers, even those who use arts methods, must be able to argue for the validity of their data interpretation. Research, by its very nature, must ultimately conclude as a mental-mode, conscious activity. So they are the methods – the things that the researcher does as Soliloquy. It is an approach not unlike the way most of us make sense of our everyday experiences in the natural attitude. Consequently, it may not seem like research at first. What makes it research, and not just flight of fancy, is the credibility of the argument I construct to frame my inquiry. I need a logical argument that can justify the choices surrounding a philosophically aligned set of methods, which shed light on my experienced situation.

An example of Soliloquy in practice It may be useful to end this overview of Soliloquy with another example of how I have used the methodology in my work. In 2007 I was working as a Research Fellow at C.Q. University, on a project about personal (online) learning environments in Education. I was employed alongside technically gifted academics, (strangely) because I was not naturally talented in that regard. We used to joke that I was the ‘reality check’, but actually that was probably the case. I was employed to research into the reluctance that some academics showed towards using Web 2.0 technology. The research involved acquainting myself with Web 2.0 technology, such as Second Life, Twitter, Facebook, Delicious and other online environments, and mapping my novice experience along with the learning process. These platforms were still new in 2007. I kept a blog to record my reflections, frustrations and triumphs (Vallack, 2009). Apart from that there were no restrictions on my methods, and no pre-determined methodology. So, I naturally began using Soliloquy to address my research question about reluctant attitudes to technology. I wrote freely as my discoveries and feelings became apparent. In Freud’s terms, I was ‘free-associating’. Without confines or guidelines, or indeed any restrictions of any kind, I became intrinsically motivated to immerse myself freely in this new world of technology. Ironically, with hindsight I see it was the psychological

A concise overview of Soliloquy 15

journey rather than technology itself that motivated me. I enjoyed an exciting air of uncertainty and chaos, but because I was enjoying the process rather than trying to turn up a product, the technology was not as frustrating as I had found it to be in the past. Those of us who creatively bloom in an uncertain research environment are well suited to using Soliloquy for inquiry. We must hold our nerve through the initial period, when it seems that nothing will come of the inquiry. Others, however, who prefer a prescribed process with predictable outcomes will prefer anticipated options for gathering their data. That will secure those researchers with a better sense of control. What it will not do, however, is present them with an outcome they may never have imagined. The Web 2.0 learning process began with my own, subjective experience of the Web 2.0 phenomenon, all the while allowing space for Epoche and time for Epiphany. When researching the Web 2.0 technology platforms in 2007, at first I just blogged about it as a kind of free association. This provided an opportunity for the unconscious to speak through its language of metaphor and image. Eventually (and this is the unnerving part, as there is no conscious control over when it will happen) I referred unwittingly, through my writing, to the myth of Echo and Narcissus. It was my Epiphany, but initially I did not recognise it. Then, as the Explication phase manifested, and my blog again mentioned the myth of Echo and Narcissus, my conscious mind finally realised it was important. The whole process can seem like a leap of faith, as the researcher waits helplessly and patiently for the unconscious to present its fruits to cognition. For this reason, Soliloquy only suits intuitive individuals with the confidence to let the process unfold in its own time. Inevitably it does unfold to produce results. And this is always surprising to me. Once the Explication stage is reached, the researcher should engage cognitively with the insights presented. When the legend of Echo and Narcissus emerged, I was ready to allow my cognition to actively contribute to the process, and to explain any archetypal insights. The process began with an analysis of the legend itself, to decipher why it was important. You will need to be familiar with the story in order to understand its relevance to my research, so I shall retell it: Echo was a beautiful nymph who lived in ancient times. She was gay and cheerful, but she chattered unremittingly. The goddess Hera grew tired of her chatter and bid her to go to the woods and live her life there among the wildlings. Then as an afterthought, Hera added that she would lose her ability to speak, except for the ability to utter the last words of another. Echo did not mind her banishment at first, as she was a good hunter, having skills she had learned from Diana. After a little while, Echo began to feel lonely, and regretted offending Hera. Then one day she spied a beautiful youth and wished that she could speak to him, but alas. His name was Narcissus, although she was never able to speak it. When he caught sight of her he called out impatiently, ‘Who are you?’ and she replied, ‘are you’.

16 A concise overview of Soliloquy

‘Come here and show yourself’, he demanded, but when she only echoed his words, he thought her stupid and forgot about her. But Echo grew to love him and followed him about, keeping to the shadows of branches and fronds that would hide her. She stalked him timidly, ashamed that she could not communicate with him and fearing his cold rebuke. One day, as she watched him lay down to drink from the pond of spring water, she saw a change come over him. Narcissus had seen his own reflection in the water, but he had mistaken it for someone else. He believed the reflection to be a beautiful water spirit, who was staring back at him ardently. He immediately fell in love with himself. Never before had he known such perfected beauty. He bent down to the water to touch the face, and it came towards him but then dispersed upon his touch. He reached in to hold the creature that had so beguiled him, but the creature was shy and retreated, yet reappeared again and again indicating to Narcissus that his love was returned. The water spirit looked at him with such affection that Narcissus knew it to be so. Poor Echo would never have her Narcissus. She watched as he pined away by the water’s edge, refusing to eat or drink, until he died. There was nothing left of him. By the edge of the pond, beautiful daffodils grew in his place, and bent slightly towards the water as if to gaze at their own reflections. So in the light of this myth, presented to my consciousness during the research process, what did my analysis tell me about academics and technology? Through the methods of Elicitation and Examination of the data, it became apparent that the characters in the story were metaphors for my own encounter with technology. My blog (which was a new challenge that had been set for me to explore) showed that like Echo, who could no longer speak for herself, I felt inarticulate when I tried to talk about online environments. I did not know the meaning of the acronyms that were used excessively in tech-talk, and I was unfamiliar with the many websites that seemed to be known to my colleagues. Comparatively, I was not computer-literate. I could not shortcut my way around the keyboard as they did. Like Echo, I was relatively mute and only able to follow the lead of others. Most poignantly, however, the technology with which I was hoping to engage was cold and unfeeling. It lacked compassion. It was self-absorbed and inflexible. As Narcissus was to Echo, so technology was to me. It would not empathise or sympathise with my anguish. It was self-contained and sufficient unto itself. I did not matter to it at all, even though it was creating anguish for me! Consequently, in the final step of the methodology, the Explanation, I suggested that some academics, like me, may need to engage socially and emotionally in order to learn. We, who are emotional learners, need to be taught our online skills in a more personal way. Was the myth of Echo and Narcissus the key to understanding why some academics struggle with using narcissistic technology? And if so, perhaps we need to revise how we are teaching technical literacy in an academic environment – not for all, but for some types of learners?

A concise overview of Soliloquy 17

Finally In this first chapter I have presented an overview of my original research methodology, called Soliloquy. It is an application of pure phenomenology, which mandates that one must experience the phenomenon first-hand. This idea is in direct contrast with a popular misunderstanding that phenomenology is interview-based research and informed by narratives of another’s ‘lived experience’. In Chapter 4, I will take up this discussion at length, as I believe the commonplace bastardisation of Husserl’s phenomenology has created much confusion for students of qualitative research, who mistakenly believe they are doing phenomenology. I have emphasised that unless they are writing from personal experience, they are not doing phenomenology, at least in any pure, Husserlian sense. I will also offer direction for new researchers who may be baffled by this damnation regarding the authenticity of their secondary sources on phenomenology. To those who are someway down the track of Existential Phenomenology, all is not lost. The quality of the research can remain valid, but the terminology describing the methodology may change. There are other sound methodologies that can provide a framework for theme-based research. They are just not phenomenology. Our traditional, quantitative and qualitative approaches to research work well when we are able to rationally take one question or hypothesis, and deal with it in an isolated way. Cognitively, we deal well with such simple tasks. We even have software to help us do it. However, in an uncontrolled, chaotic research and learning environment, the information overload can be overwhelming for our limited cognition. Similarly, the software is limited. Soliloquy is a methodology that champions the unconscious to deal with complexity of information through its holistic approach to data synthesis, via intuitive and arts-based methods. This timid part of the mind, which is adept at sorting through chaos, can be engaged through patience and inner awareness. The unconscious recalls experiences and reveals solutions to complicated problems, through dream, art and authorship – if only we attune to the meanings therein. Phenomenology, akin to psychoanalysis, draws on the art of interpreting the language of the unconscious. Intuition and cognition work collaboratively in the methodology that is Soliloquy. It is not a new phenomenon, but ancient. Philosophers such as Gebser present us with theses supporting the idea that consciousness is not only mental and rational, but archaic, magical and mythical, and that it is possible to draw on all of these aspects of knowing to make sense of the lifeworld and to survive. In the next chapter I will examine these concepts as they are the foundations of Soliloquy.

Bibliography Charleson, D. (2020). Filmmaking as Research: Screening Memories. Christchurch: Palgrave. Crotty, M. (1996). Phenomenology and Nursing Research. Chatswood: Churchill Livingstone.

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Ellis, C. (2004). The Ethnographic I: A Methodological Novel about Autoethnography. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press. Ellis, C., Jones, S. L. H., & Adams, T. (Eds.). (2013). Handbook of Autoethnography. New York: Left Coast Press. Facinabao, M. G. (n.d.). Echo and Narcissus. Retrieved from www.thelotuspost.com/the-m yth-of-echo-and-narcissus. Fleming, V. (Writer). (1940). The Wizard of Oz. USA: Roadshow Entertainment. Freud, S. (1900/2010). The Interpretation of Dreams. New York: Basic Books. Freud, S. (1959). The Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud: The Question of Lay Analysis. London: Hogworth. Gebser, J. (1986). The Ever-Present Origin. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press. Hopkins, B. (2001). The Husserl–Heidegger Confrontation and the Essential Possibility of Phenomenology: Edmund Husserl, Psychological and Transcendental Phenomenology and the Confrontation with Heidegger. Husserl Studies, 17, 125–148. Hopkins, B. C. (2011). The Philosophy of Husserl. London: Routledge. Husserl, E. (1964/1929). The Paris Lectures. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Husserl, E. (1981). The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. Jung, C. (1953). Collected Works. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Jung, C. (1966). Man and his Symbols. London: Picador. McLellan, D. T.et al. (2019). Western Philosophy. In Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved from www.britannica.com/topic/Western-philosophy. Neville, B. (2005). Educating Psyche. Greensborough, Victoria: Flat Chat Press. Sheldrake, R. (2013). The Science Delusion. London: Hodder & Stoughton. Steiner, R. (1911). Wisdom of Man, of the Soul, and of the Spirit: Lecture 1. Franz Brentano and Aristotle’s Doctrine of the Spirit. Retrieved from https://wn.rsarchive.org/Lec tures/GA115/English/AP1971/19111212p01.html. Vallack, J. (2009) The (secret and password protected) diary of a Web 2.0 novice doing subtextual phenomenology. Paper presented at ECRM 2009: 8th European Conference on Research Methodology for Business and Management Studies, Valletta, Malta, 22–23 June. Vallack, J. (2014). Soliloquy: A Methodology for First-Person Research. Paper presented at the European Conference for Research Methodologies, London. Vallack, J. (2015a). Alchemy for Inquiry: A Methodology of Applied Phenomenology in Educational Research. Freemantle, Western Australia: Australian Association for Research in Education (AARE). Vallack, J. (2015b). From Art for Art’s Sake to Art as Means of Knowing: A Rationale for Advancing Arts-Based Methods. Electronic Journal of Business Reearch Methodologies, 12(2). Vallack, J. (2016). Theatre as Research – A Mysterious Mix. Etropic: electronic journal of studies in the tropics, 15(1), 114–122.

2 THE CO-EXISTING REALITIES OF THE EPHEMERAL AND THE ETERNAL Aristotle and Plato

It seems that lately, all about me are middle-class professionals from Western countries who are attempting to balance their lives through practices such as ‘Mindfulness’, Yoga, Pilates and a renewed search for spirituality. This research comes on the wave of this collective quest. One hundred years after Husserl, are we now ready to acknowledge intuition as part of our everyday wellbeing as well as our professional research? I am told anecdotally by my pal at work who takes an active interest in statistics, that although the number of westerners adopting organised religion is falling, the number seeking to incorporate spirituality of various kinds into their daily lives is increasing. It would not surprise me if she was correct. I remember, only fifty years ago, when materialism was so dominant in educated circles that one who maintained any sort of religious sympathies risked being viewed (among existential university cohorts at least) as naïve and decidedly ‘uncool’. The resilient ones who questioned those passionate proponents of Existentialism and Marxism throughout the twentieth century were deafened by fundamental materialists who worshipped the God of Science. Eminent physical scientist (turned sceptic) Rupert Sheldrake (2013) refers to this attitude as ‘Scientism’, and argues that it is a belief system that is not unlike many religions, as it is dogmatic and potentially exclusive, like all extreme views. He expresses it this way: Scientists claim to obtain absolute truth by viewing the world as objective observers. In the black-and-white version of scientism, science is set apart from all other human activities. Science alone is capable of yielding unassailable facts. In this idealised picture, scientists are exempt from the failings of the rest of humanity. They have a direct access to the truth. They are uniquely objective … and the prestige of the scientific priesthood adds the seal of authority. (Sheldrake, 2013, p. 317)

20 The ephemeral and the eternal

In this chapter we will look at the assumptions upon which ‘scientism’ is based. It will take us back to the academic foci of Plato and Aristotle, and their philosophical divide. We also discuss related observations by other theorists and then view these through the synthesising prism of Gebser’s theory of the evolution of consciousness (Gebser, 1986). So, while the status quo in the twentieth century held tightly to modernist views, there were many alternative thinkers like phenomenologist, Edmund Husserl, who saw the value of intuitive knowing. Husserl was ahead of his time, but his time is catching up at last, and now we are ready to hear what he and a few of his progressive contemporaries were realising. In this chapter, I will compare some of these philosophies, as there are relevant commonalities between them. At the risk of sounding unscientific, I dare say that the next wave of philosophical enlightenment will embrace the notion of balance between mind, body and spirit. Already a popular idea in the health sciences, it will mark the way for doing explorative and intuitive research. Steiner (1911) remarked on the apparent absence of spirit in early twentieth century scholarly thinking, but (dare I say) it seems to be resurrecting at last. Steiner provides us with interesting history and some insight into the vulnerability of spirit in a political and material environment: Outside the circle of spiritual science, as you know, the total nature of man is thought of as consisting of but two parts, the bodily-physical and the psychic. In the realm of recognized science, it is not customary nowadays to mention the spirit. Indeed, following certain premises, the result of reverting to the threefold organization of man (body, soul and spirit), as did the catholicizing Viennese philosopher, Günther, in the nineteenth century, raised scientific misgivings and also the blacklisting, in Rome, of Günther’s interesting books. This was done because as early as 869, at the eighth Ecumenical Council at Constantinople, the Catholic Church, in contradiction to both the Old and the New Testaments, had abolished the spirit. It had guided the development of dogmatism in such a way that the organization of man was permitted to comprise body and soul only. Curiously enough, this catholic development has persisted into our present science. If we seek to ascertain from history why scientists admit only body and soul we find but one reason. In the course of time the spirit has been forgotten; the habits of thought prevalent in certain circles have lost the ability to accept the spirit along with the soul of man. (Steiner, 1911) Spirit was never lost, but it was inaudible amidst the ephemeral rumblings of daily business. I will compare parallels in the thinking and paradigms of Steiner’s contemporaries – Husserl, Freud, Gebser and Sheldrake, along with the ideas of more traditional, modernist thinkers. I will also consider relevant shamanic approaches and practices involving altered states of consciousness, as they too may be relevant to the intuition inherent in Soliloquy. The important theories that inform Soliloquy include Freud’s psychoanalytic methods involving the unconscious mind, Jung’s identification of intuition and its

The ephemeral and the eternal 21

place in Personality Theory, along with the role of the unconscious and Collective Unconscious, and Gebser’s expansive perspective on the evolution of consciousness, which argues that all ways of knowing that have developed for humankind throughout the ages are valid. Historically, these sorts of views may be understood as reflections of Platonism, whereas more functional and materialistic ways of viewing reality have their theoretical foundations in alignment with a more Aristotelian perspective. So much philosophical debate comes down to these binary concepts, which embody the Platonic/Artistotelian divide. They include:     

the concept of mind and body in Cartesian dualism; that of mind and soul in science and theology; the ephemeral and the eternal; idealism and materialism; and the idea of Platonic forms versus Aristotelian matter; that which I call the eternal and the ephemeral, respectively.

The idea of apperception, essential to Transcendental Phenomenology, actually draws on the eternal and the ephemeral to work in harmony with one another. Apperception requires the researcher to hold two contradictory ideas in hir mind at the same time and see a truth in each. This happens when, for example, the lifeworld, ephemeral and subjective experience of the phenomenologist transcends, through the epoche and phenomenological reduction, to offer up to consciousness the ideal form that is the eternal, universal object. Husserl’s idea of a pure science was not appreciated by his materialist contemporaries, but he argued that it is the a priori object, reached through phenomenological reduction, that is the ever-present object worthy of science: The universal a priori is then the foundation for genuine sciences of matters of fact … a priori science is the science of the essential, that upon which the science of matters of fact must return for it to be essentially grounded. However, a priori science must not be naive, but must spring forth from ultimate transcendental and phenomenological sources … In other words, the necessary path to knowledge which can be ultimately justified in the highest sense … is the path of universal self-knowledge, first in a monadic and then in an intermonadic sense … One must first lose the world through the epoche so as to regain it in universal self-examination. Noli foras ire, said St. Augustine, in redi, in interiore homine habitat veritas. (Translation: Do not wish to go out; go back into yourself. Truth dwells in the inner man) (Husserl, 1964/1929, pp. 38–39) So whereas materialistic scientists work purely in the ephemeral, and philosophers such as Berkeley (1732/2015) (who famously questioned if anything really exists outside of our minds) dwell with the eternal and ideal, phenomenology transitions from one to the other. Phenomenology may therefore be more akin to how

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humans have evolved to intellectually and intuitively understand reality, respectively, and in its entirety. The Arisotoliens, the materialists and the ontologists did not see through Plato’s ideal and eternal lens. Their focus was worldly, and their perspective dominated thinking throughout the twentieth century, overshadowing Husserl and a few of his contemporaries who were breaking new ground with metaphysical inquiry. This is what Gebser (1986) called Mental Mode consciousness. It is only now beginning to loosen its hold on the academy. Only now, after quantum physics and unexplained telepathies (Sheldrake, 2013) and new awareness of spiritual realities embedded in other cultures (Santos, 2007, 2012), is it becoming apparent that perhaps one day, after all, science may not be able to explain everything empirically or mechanistically. Perhaps not everything exists materially and perhaps reality is more elusive and multimodal? These sorts of possibilities have occupied the minds of philosophers and theologians over generations, but science has remained territorially aloof from all that is intangible. Is it now time to merge our thinking and begin to see our realities apperceptively, as Husserl might have us do through Transcendental Phenomenology? The renaissance painter, Raphael (1483–1520) has portrayed Plato and Aristotle in his famous fresco (Sanzio, 1509). In the painting, Plato looks up to the Gods in their eternal forms, while Aristotle looks to the ground, that is to the material reality beneath him. For those less familiar with Plato and Aristotle, let us discuss how their perspectives are essential to the basic epistemological underpinnings of all research methodologies; indeed, all human thought. I observe the whole debate that pits positivist research methods and ways of thinking against more metaphysical or theoretical approaches, as having one of its starting points in Athens, from around 400 to 300 BC. I say one of them, because although I write this from a western perspective, and I am aware that other cultures could probably offer equivalent stories and debates. As many of you will be familiar, Plato was the student of Socrates, and created for us a legacy by transcribing the philosophy of that great, ancient sage. Socrates was an orator, not a writer. In turn, Plato taught Aristotle, and later, Aristotle tutored Alexander before he became ‘Great’. Like Husserl, who understood transcendental, intersubjective essences of phenomenology, Plato focused on ideal forms, arguing that they were indeed more realistic than the empirical objects, as the Forms embody the whole object and exist eternally, whereas the sensory, lifeworld objects reflect only aspects of the Forms and they then atrophy or move into the past and become a memory. Like Heidegger and the Existentialists, Aristotle looked to lifeworld matters and realities. He did not look up to the all-seeing, ever-omnipresent, transcendental objects he learned about from Plato. His thinking separated from that of his teacher, just as later, Heidegger would move away from the thesis of Husserl. Let us look at the resulting conflicts and consequences of these intellectual choices. It is apparent that western culture has largely followed Aristotle’s path with its focus on worldly objects and empirical inquiry. Drawing from scholars such as

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Husserl, Freud, Jung, Sheldrake, Steiner and others, I will argue that we are now ready to appreciate the insights that can be afforded through research approaches that seek philosophical enquiry beyond materialism. Science is wonderful and we are grateful for the advances it has made in service to our quality of life, but I believe we are now ready to also appreciate that which can only be researched via intuitive ways of knowing. Our ability to know beyond the five senses remains with us – perhaps as remnants of Gebser’s magical and mythical consciousness, or perhaps as a pre-integral consciousness. Enter the intuitive researcher. The methods serving the methodology of Soliloquy draw on the combined capabilities of both the unconscious and conscious minds. They seek the iconic information inherent in Plato’s transcendental forms, and they also use Aristotelian logic to ultimately analyse and explain the visual coding. So, unlike the either/or alternative, Soliloquy, as an application of Husserl’s phenomenology, draws on both the researcher’s ability to intuit universal, ideal objects, as well as hir capacity for analysis to present and articulate the research. Intuitive knowledge manifests itself as a whole entity. It is not fragmented. The artist who follows hir creative inclination will produce a whole and balanced composition rather than bits and pieces. If you are a creator of art or phenomenology, the difficulty will be in your ability to sustain the process during the incubation time, when you fear that nothing worthwhile is being created.

Art and transcendence Mr Scales was my Year 10 Art teacher. He nurtured in me a love of form and colour. In 1968, each Thursday afternoon, we sat together on paint-splattered, wooden chairs in the asbestos-clad Art wing of Boronia High School, transfixed on the images emerging from the cartridge paper beneath my brush. Sometimes he would take that brush from my hands and apply it lavishly to my work, advising me to use a ‘painterly’ style. I loved it and saw the difference immediately. I rejoiced as painterly freedom replaced anguished perfectionism. We ignored the unfree boys as they tested their physical strengths against one another, and cautious young ladies, who swapped crayons for nail varnish, still unaware that life-changing opportunities for girls were just around the corner. ‘Pearls before swine!’ My mother’s literary assaults came to mind. With my father nagging constantly that I should be out earning a wage by now, since his working class view was that education was wasted on women, I knew privilege when it was afforded to me by Mr Scales. If I worked fastidiously on a detail in the corner of the canvas, Mr Scales might invite me to step back and see the whole composition. The detail could come later – after the content had been put into perspective and made a compositionally sound statement across the space. Some research is like that. The scientific hypothesis looks at a small section of any given topic. Modern academics endorsed this approach, warning that the research must be scoped to remain manageable. Hypothesis-driven inquiry must be repeatable, rigorous and as detailed as possible

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before the inquirer should move on to the next section of the picture. In contrast, Soliloquy is more like a free flow of colour, shape and line, which will emerge as holistic shape and form, to the wonder of all, including the researcher. It is to positivist methodologies as Picasso is to da Vinci. Both enrich knowledge, but one is more philosophical while the other is more mathematical. Both are vital to knowledge. Picasso’s figures visually challenged one’s perceptions of time and place while da Vinci’s figures were anatomically correct in detail and perspective. Research can now become an art form and the art itself will inform the artist of its meaning. The whole picture emerges from the page as one form, which will take on a direction, and the artist will follow to discover what has emerged from hir unconscious; to discover that which s/he did not know that s/he knew all along. Later, this shape may be refined and analysed, detailed and perfected, but only after the shape of the creative unconscious has been allowed to emerge. This is how the unconscious – the smartest part of our minds – can work harmoniously with our rational consciousness. To use an analogy, like the midwife whose job it is to tidy up and take care of important details after the birth, our consciousness has a role to play. It is not the creator, nor even the deliverer, but it serves the unconscious in practical ways. It translates the language of the unconscious, so it can be communicated and articulated. Positivist Science has always mistaken the midwife for the mother of invention, I think, but their roles are complimentary. I say this as I suspect that creativity comes from the unconscious, and probably the collective unconscious, and our rational brains then explain it. Some researchers believe that creative concepts can be thought up, but I observe that my creative concepts are always presented as whole units of concept or image, born of the unconscious and then presented to the world consciously, through rational articulation. By the way, Mr Scales left the Education Department of Victoria in 1969 to become an exhibiting painter. I doubt he ever knew that his teaching, albeit of an unconventional style, had established in me the confidence and curiosity to pursue a lifelong inquiry into creativity. This research process I call Soliloquy is about seeing the whole form – what Husserl would call the ‘phenomenological essence’, and understanding it through a process of phenomenological reduction, through what our consciousness can access via image and myth. Soliloquy is a truly creative approach to doing research, which allows for the creative unconscious to work harmoniously with rationality and logic. I will emphasise that as researchers, we must address the question of how we know things, that is, of epistemology. Whereas some research methods like those used in scientific inquiry and Existential Phenomenology approach a problem deconstructively, Soliloquy assumes the type of holistic approach akin to Mr Scales’s painterly style and Husserl’s larger-than-life, Transcendental Phenomenology. Husserl’s later revelations about phenomenology support the thesis that through personal experience of the things themselves, we can also know things intersubjectively: ‘I experience the world not as my own private world, but as an intersubjective world, one that is given to all human beings and which contains objects accessible to all’ (Husserl, 1964/1929).

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These transcendental objects of experience are apparent to all individuals who will listen to intuition. We see them in our dreams, and they have featured in our stories throughout time. Artists know them and use them as metaphors; so too phenomenologists. Through transcendence, I can empathise with your experience when it is essentially like (but not necessarily identical in circumstance to) my own. Exploring my intensely subjective experiences may provoke a presentation to my own consciousness of universal significance. When this happens, the insights constructed in my unconscious mind are offered up to consciousness as an object or image – as an archetype. It is the rational, scientific and linguistic mind that can then explain what has happened. In phenomenology, the conscious and the unconscious minds work collaboratively to create and then explain the previously unpredictable insights that have emerged. Transcendental Phenomenology knows empathetically and universally through the conscious, the unconscious, and (to use Jung’s term) the Collective Unconscious. By the way, we need to be mindful of these terms as we too often assume that others understand them as we do. Sheldrake may refer to the collective unconscious as ‘non-human consciousness’ (Sheldrake, 2013) for example, whereas Jung will mean something quite different. Authors must define their terms to avoid speaking at odds to their reader’s understanding. Making one’s self understood can be an arduous task. Let me just add here that I use the term ‘Collective Unconscious’ in the Jungian sense, in which it embraces Husserl’s notion of intersubjectivity.

Intuition and the unconscious Traditionally, modern thinkers trust only reason as the tool for research, but philosophers such as Gebser (1986), Santos (2007) and Wilber (2015), argue that we have evolved to know so much more than what the limited capacity of our cognition can show. Dynamic psychiatrists such as Freud (1900/2010) and Jung (1953) have convinced even the most positivist thinkers that the unconscious (Jung) or subconscious (Freud’s early term for the unconscious) can be a resource for emotional and behavioural information. Dream analysis reveals patient attitudes that may at first escape conscious acknowledgement. The process of luring unconscious information into the light of consciousness is pursued by therapists through such methods as hypnosis, dream recall, and free-association. These are the methods used in Soliloquy. These are the methods that produce the data that our rational consciousness, in collaboration, can then analyse and explain. Husserl, Jung and Freud were contemporaries. What the theories of these three masters have in common is the explicit notion that human experience is patterned, and that understanding the patterns will provide insights into the experiences of individuals. Jung (1953) talks about archetypes – a priori forms that show aspects of human nature. Similarly, like Plato before him, Husserl refers to transcendental forms (Husserl, 1964/1929), which like archetypes, are superhuman forms, common throughout cultures and civilisations. What this means for the first-person researcher is the notion that subjective experiences of an

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individual have universal implications because of the potential intersubjectivity of that experience. For example, my experience of love may feel the same as yours, even though I have a love for cats and you may love dogs. Love is the intersubjective phenomenon that may be researched through your subjective data on dogs or my encounters with cats. I believe that using intuition and data from the unconscious can be fallible if the conscious analysis is poor, but we should consider, too, that the most positivist approaches to research can be flawed through inappropriate conscious analysis. It is vital to be mindful of the potential weaknesses in our methods. Scientific methods are generally rigorous, but they cannot address any research question that seeks information that is immeasurable. Intuition presents us with a kind of knowing that is sometimes hard to describe or explain. It works tacitly within us and reveals itself metaphorically. Science has taught us to distrust this sort of information, but it cannot offer a more reliable means for investigating many types of open research questions. I also believe that all humans are intuitive. Some cultures have refused to nurture these silent inclinations and allowed them to become shrivelled and distant. My own Western culture has done so, and I am now taking issue with that. Traditionally, those cultures that anthropologists have deemed to be ‘primitive’ (Sheldrake, 2013) have retained a superior ability for intuition. Gebser (1986) believes that humans have the capacity for magical and mythical consciousness, but that mental consciousness has come to dominate western thinking, since Aristotle ceased to promote the virtues of more intuitive ways of understanding.

Gebser’s evolution of consciousness Scientific thinking has not always been the foremost way of knowing, and philosopher, Jean Gebser would argue it is not the last. I introduced Gebser’s theory of consciousness in the last chapter, but now let us examine it more closely. Gebser (1986) informs us that as human consciousness has evolved, we have learned to know things in different ways. His theory presents the idea that until the last 10,000 or so years, intuitively sensitive ways of knowing, which Gebser refers to as magical consciousness and mythical consciousness, played important roles in human perception (Gebser, 1986). He goes on to suggest that Mental mode consciousness, the dominant form of sense-making that is used in western society today, has a unique characteristic whereby it gives no credence to any other way of knowing. It required centuries to sufficiently devitalize and demythologize the word so that it was able to express distinct concepts freed from the wealth of imagery, as well as to reach the rationalistic extreme where the word, once a power [magic] and later an image [myth], was degraded to a mere formula. (Gebser, 1986, p. 83) Most of us were taught at school that Science is evidence-based and therefore superior to knowledge based on emotion, and that opinion should be guided by

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rational argument. Science curricula emphasised that an idea that cannot be reasoned and tested cannot be deemed valid. But Gebser argues that the ancient ways of knowing are still with us and relevant, albeit somewhat repressed in dominant cultures. According to Gebser, intuition and storytelling (frequently used in firstperson research, like Autoethnography and Soliloquy) are important tools for knowledge. Storytelling, hunch and intuition are all part of the way we know the world, but in recent times, we have been taught that only clear rationality is believable. Any sort of psychic awareness is usually diminished and dismissed by Science as counterfeit. Even telepathy, which has been widely tested with positive results (Sheldrake, 2013), is dismissed or ignored. Gebser says this of telepathy: even the most hard-bitten rationalist can no longer deny its existence. It is explained in part by an elimination of consciousness, which obscures or blacks out the ego and causes it to revert to a spaceless-timeless ‘unconscious participation’ in the group soul. Clairvoyance may be interpreted in the same way. (Here let us note that the worlds of the ants and bees offer us a primitive form of ‘unconscious participation’ in the group soul. The individual insect occasionally ‘knows’ when and where an event affecting the group occurs, so that insects of the same community, far removed from each other, often show the same reaction to events at the very same time.) (Gebser, 1986, p. 55) Rupert Sheldrake, has reported that his own experiments in telepathy have been convincing. He interviewed and tested large quantities of subjects who showed an ability to use telepathy for communication. He also reported that hundreds of animals were shown to know when their owners were about to return home. These trials were conducted scientifically using statistical information, and are explained in detail in his book, The Science Delusion (Sheldrake, 2013, ch. 9). Sheldrake remains very open-minded about paranormal events, and makes the observation that it is scrutinised by sceptics more closely than other forms of research: In no other field of scientific endeavour do otherwise intelligent people feel free to make public claims based on prejudice and ignorance. No one would denounce research in physical chemistry, say, while knowing nothing about the subject. Yet in relation to psychic phenomena, committed materialists feel free to disregard the evidence and behave irrationally and unscientifically while claiming to speak in the name of science and reason. (Sheldrake, 2013, p. 257) If we respect Sheldrake’s experiments into telepathy, which indicate that there is something unexplainable going on, then is this intuition? I think so. Gebser calls it the ‘spaceless-timeless “unconscious participation” in the group soul’ (Gebser, 1986, p. 55). Can we explain the unexplainable? Gebser might call it Magical

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consciousness, which is when we know something but are unable to articulate it. Polyani (1967) would call this ‘tacit knowledge’. Many scholars speak of such phenomena, and it is time to take the tacit into deliberate consideration. If we put the work of Jean Gebser into an historical context, we see he was a contemporary of Husserl. Gebser was born in Prussia in 1905, when Husserl was creating phenomenology, Freud had just released The Interpretation of Dreams, and in that same year Albert Einstein produced his theory of relativity. This was a significant time in modern science, as Platonic influences evident in Husserl’s Transcendental Phenomenology and Freud’s symbolic representations were again erupting to disturb the Aristotlian surface of fixture and calm. Other contemporaries of Gebser include Picasso and Jung, who show a notable serendipity in thinking, and Rudolf Steiner who worked extensively on spirituality as knowledge. Gebser was actually a friend of Picasso and would visit him in his residence in the Latin Quarter in Paris. Like Picasso, Gebser was interested in the subjective nature and objective possibility of time. In his theory of consciousness, Gebser describes humankind as having evolved through stages of awareness that move from an unperspectival, unconsciousness of time, through to modern, perspectival awareness. Like Picasso, Plato and Husserl, Gebser began to see time as a subjective notion, which could be frozen in the universal representation of the thing itself. I imagine it this way – I can be subjectively moved by this object of beauty, for example, because I live subjectively in time and see it come and go. Yet once I have experienced this beauty, it lives with me as an object of memory – in its entirety as beauty and not just the aspect of it that I encountered subjectively. Gebser describes a time when he was drawn to a particular painting by Picasso, which he describes as being ‘aperspectival’ and therefore enduring: I visited Picasso after his return from Brittany to Paris, in the autumn of 1938 at his studio … where he had done his Guernica, the work that almost abolished spatiality … I was especially attracted to one small picture representing a landscape of village roofs as seen from a window; the painting was nearly devoid of depth and any central point of illumination. The entire picture showed nothing but the layers of almost flat, multifariously coloured roofs suggesting at first glance a mere aggregation of rectangular planes. I felt attracted to it at first, or so I thought, by its abundance of colour, until the true reason for my interest finally emerged: its lack of any spatial localization of time. Instead of presenting a temporal moment, the picture renders an enduring, indeed eternal present. The shadows that appear among the graduations of hue were not the results of the specific spatial-temporal position of the sun … In Picasso’s paintings both the present and eternity are rendered transparent and thus ever-present, evident and concrete. (Gebser, 1986, p. 28) Gebser suggests that human awareness has actually ‘mutated’ (ibid., p. 29) over time. We have discussed his theory that it has evolved through four main

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evolutionary stages – Archaic, Magical, Mythical and Mental Consciousness, and his argument that we are now embarking on the fifth stage, which he calls Integral Consciousness. It is in this fifth stage that Picasso’s depiction of timelessness belongs, because unlike the perspectival nature of Mental Consciousness, the fifth mutation allows us to embrace the aperspectival condition of phenomena. Gebser is careful to make it clear that the mutations of consciousness he refers to are spiritual transitions, ‘not biological or historical’ (Gebser, 1986, p. 37). He says: In contrast to biological mutations, these conscious mutations do not assume or require the disappearance of previous potentialities and properties, which, in this case, are immediately integrated into the new structure … (Gebser, 1986, p. 39) So unlike the fish that develops legs or wings and never returns to the sea, the spiritual evolution of consciousness retains awareness of past consciousnesses. Below is a more detailed look at the mutations evident in Gebser’s Evolution of Consciousness.

Archaic consciousness This is the essence that lies underneath consciousness. I think of it as a life force. Gebser describes it as, ‘a time where the soul is yet dormant’. He maintains that the soul exists, but it is as if in a sleep state. Mahood (1996) writes extensively about Gebser’s work. He says that the archaic consciousness: was characterized by non-differentiation and the total absence of any sense of separation from the environment. This was a world of identity between self and surroundings; not a world in which we could speak of consciousness in any terms that would be meaningful to our modern understanding of the term. (Mahood, 1996, p. 15) Gebser offers to us a challenging comment on which to ponder when he writes that Archaic Consciousness is, ‘zero-dimensional, it is thus spatial and temporal, although our present mentality, if it grasps it at all, will see this as a paradox’ (Gebser, 1986, p. 43). I see Archaic consciousness as pregnant with the potential for life.

Magical Consciousness Gebser says that at some stage humankind mutated from Archaic to Magical Consciousness, and became profoundly aware of nature. Nature and humankind are at one in this stage. In Magical Consciousness there is no distinction between them. Events and symbols do not just represent things that are meaningful, they are those things in our magical consciousness. I understand it as existing in me today as

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I retain some worthless possessions of my loved-one who has passed, because, irrationally, I imagine that it allows me to remain close to her. Logically, I know it is not her, but emotionally and magically, is comforts me. Mahood says: the magical structure was characterized by a certain separateness, but not a total separation by any means. Dimensionally this could be described as onedimensional, a pre-perspectival state of timelessness and spacelessness. It was likened to a state of sleep. Magic man was much apart of his environment, to be sure, and felt secure only within his group, his tribe or clan. It was the transition from the Archaic to Magic structure of consciousness that has probably been mythologically captured in the story of the ‘Fall of Man’. (Mahood, 1996) Magical persons shared a group-ego rather than the individuality that occurred later when Mental Consciousness emerged. Gebser says: The egolessness of the individual – who is not yet an individual – demands participation and communication on the basis of the collective and vital intentions: the inseparable bonds of the clan are the dominant principle. (Gebser, 1986, p. 58) He goes on to point to the importance of silence and non-verbal communication that is characteristic of Magical Consciousness. Magical persons know without question. Magic manifests in us today when we feel we know but cannot say what it is. Gebser notes that cave paintings from the era show figures without mouths. Apparently figures with mouths began to appear only after we had mutated to the Mythical era of consciousness, and storytelling became significant. Gebser suggests that the absence of a mouth in these early paintings emphasises the idea that at this stage, humans placed emphasis more on what was heard – in nature – in order to survive and be at one with it and one another. The need for verbal communication emerged later: Man’s nearness to nature, the broad extent to which he and nature are still undivided, his more fluid situation and his sharper senses make possible these phenomena of a spaceless-timeless character. Pictorially they are expressed in certain early drawings of the magic period in the dreamy, almost trance-like way in which the head, and often the whole body, merges with the surroundings. (Gebser, 1986, p. 55) Magical consciousness is prehistoric in that it is before our sense of time and context. Gebser says that this began to mutate as we became aware of time: ‘In accord with the magical structure, this would have to be more a sense of time than a knowledge of it’ (ibid., p. 61).

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Ken Wilber is another contemporary philosopher who uses Gebser’s model to inspire his own work. He explains magical thinking as follows: Magic is the belief that your individual self can magically alter reality just by thinking about it or performing simple rituals. The self and environment are not yet clearly differentiated. And so an image of an object and the real object are often fused and confused. To manipulate the image is to manipulate the object. Voodoo is a classic magic religion. Make a doll representing a real person. Stick a pin in the doll and the real person is magically hurt … do a rain dance and nature is magically forced to rain and you caused it. (Wilber, 2015) Again, what is evident is the lack of separation between the subject and nature itself. This changes with the next leap of consciousness, as our kind mutates to Mythical Consciousness.

Mythical Consciousness With the awareness of time comes our awareness of soul, through what Gebser has termed Mythical Consciousness: Magic man’s sleep-like consciousness of natural time is the precondition for mythical man’s coming to awareness of soul. Wherever we encounter seasonal rituals in the later periods of the magic structure … we find anticipations of the mythical structure … We find evidence in pictorial form of this step out of magical enmeshment in several select works of Occidental art dating from the second millennium BC … It expresses man’s extrication from his intertwining with nature in two ways: first, by presenting terrestrial man (and not a divinity) standing out in partial relief from the background which surrounds and protects him, and thereby depicting the body in partial extrication from his surroundings, and second, by placing the upper torso against the ‘sky’ – the sky is simultaneous with the ‘soul’. (Gebser, 1986, p. 63) A characteristic of mythical consciousness is that stories emerged as a way of knowing. The word itself means to ‘discourse, talk, speak’ (ibid., p. 65). It bears the stamp of imagination rather than emotion, which is more aligned with magical consciousness. Gradually there is a shift from timelessness to what is today recognised as tangible periodicity. Myths reflect the collective consciousness of humankind. Gebser puts it this way: myths are the collective dreams of the nations formed into words. Until expressed into poetic form, they remain unconscious processes … The

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illumination of life coming from myth interpretation is closely akin to the successful dream interpretation of modern depth psychology. (Gebser, 1986, p. 69) Gebser suggests that the myths surrounding stories of sea voyages and adventures are, in fact, representative of our coming to terms with our own souls. He says that the motif of sea journeys are found in various cultures, including Greek, Nordic, Germanic and eastern traditions. It is not surprising, perhaps, that when Freud and Jung began to set out pathways for psychoanalysis using the knowledge accessible via mythical consciousness, that it was rejected by rational, mental consciousness. Modern, materialistic science has introduced wonders in the form of medicine and machines to our lifestyles, but it traditionally shuns any insight into how one might retain intuitive knowledge through remnants of mythical and magical consciousnesses. This is why Behavioural Psychology, with its bias towards positivist methods, was prominent during the twentieth century. In contrast, Gebser’s reference to ‘modern depth psychology’ alludes to a recognition of the work of Freud, who at the time was working on the ‘dream analysis’ to which Gebser refers in the above quotation. Gebser then describes the birth of the era of Mental Consciousness, which reigns still today. He uses the myth of the birth of Athena – the goddess after whom Athens was named. It is told that Athena burst forth from the head of Zeus, bringing with her mental clarity. She was capable of seeing previously unseen realities. Athens became the centre for Western philosophy, leading the way for the new era of perspectival truths.

Mental Consciousness and Integral Consciousness The mutation to Mental Consciousness took place from around 500bc, with perspectival consciousness coming to the fore in Greece, with Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, and also a little later with the Hebrew doctrine of Salvation and the Roman legal and political theory (Gebser, 1986, p. 74). Mental consciousness dominates Western thought as we now know it and supports Scientific and positivist approaches in academia. The interesting trait of Mental Consciousness is that it will not tolerate any of the former ways of knowing – not magical nor mythical awareness. It is perspectival in that it sees time as linear and space as three dimensional. Mahood sums it up as follows: Mental structure of consciousness is a three-dimensional, perspectival world that we described with the term wakefulness. The polar tensions of mythology are replaced by the analytical separation of duality and opposition. Thinking is primary, and in its latter stage, rational thinking is primary. But this structure, too, is yielding to a mutation which Gebser identifies as the integral structure of consciousness. This is described as a four-dimensional, aperspectival world of transparency. This is a time-free, space-free, subject- and object-free world of verition. (Mahood, 1996, pp. 15–16)

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The Integral Consciousness that Mahood mentions is the fifth and impending mutation that he says we are now beginning to witness. Unlike the exclusively rational and perspectival way of knowing the world, integral consciousness challenges us to see all former and perhaps future mutations of consciousnesses as being valid. Like Husserl’s Transcendental forms, Gebser’s Integral Consciousness sees objects in their entirety, that is, in an unperspectival way. Whereas Mental Consciousness, such as that evident in science-based materialism and positivist research methods, will not tolerate magical or mythical awareness, this new era accepts that humans have evolved to know things in various ways – archaically, magically, mythically and through reason. Because it reaches beyond the perspectival view, the philosophy of integral consciousness is able to accommodate all that is held true for transcendental phenomenology and the methodology of Soliloquy – the subjective magical and mythical ways of knowing, through to the unperspectival, a priori object that is the universal phenomenon. It is the rational, analytical trait of mental consciousness that allows these processes to be ultimately explained. Each phase of Gebser’s ever-present consciousness is essential to the process of Soliloquy and pure phenomenology. Gebser’s theory provides a rational context for our mental consciousness to grasp the notion of intuition and ideal forms, which are otherwise necessarily outside of its comprehension. The figure below shows a summary of Gebser’s evolution of consciousness, and how the various stages relate to the ways of knowing inherent in Soliloquy. It shows how the methodology draws on aspects of our knowledge development, from magical, mythical and mental ways of knowing.

The limitations of Mental Consciousness Proverbially, fire is a good servant but a poor master. The same may be said of Science. It is becoming increasingly popular among scholars and writers to

Soliloquy's methods of Experience and the Epoche require the researcher to use Magical Conscience. The researcher just allows hirself to absorb and be part of the experience.

FIGURE 2.1

When the Epiphany occurs, it will take the form of an archetype. The phenomenon is given up by the unconscious as a myth or image. It draws on the Mythical Consciousness of the researcher. The unconscious has somehow synthesised the data and presented it as a whole response to the subjective experiences.

The Explication Method in Soliloquy occurs when the researcher first intuits that the archetype is significant, and its symbolism is first acknowledged. The Explanation can then be incorporated to articulate the meaning of the symbols so that others can understand. These methods allow the researcher to transition into rational, Mental Consciousness to decipher symbols and articulate meaning.

INTEGRAL Consciousness – When the process of phenomenological reduction transitions subjective experiences into intersubjective objects

The parallels of Soliloquy and Gebser’s theory of consciousness

34 The ephemeral and the eternal

challenge the monopoly that Science has held over research in modern times. Perhaps this is because Integral consciousness is already mutating and changing our perspectives. This is not to say that quality Science has not produced amazing breakthroughs in many areas, without which human life would be diminished and jeopardised. But Science is not always as rigorous as it is generally believed to be, and Science cannot measure or account for certain phenomena. Lately, in my work environment, I am frequently hearing the term ‘evidence-based’. It is a term that seems to allow the user to assume authority. But of course, it is the quality of the evidence that will verify the quality of the results. There is some disagreement over the author of the quotation, ‘There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.’ It’s known that Mark Twain popularised it, but the origin is obscure; nevertheless, for me it comes to mind when one mentions evidence-based research. Just as one needs to retain a healthy scepticism towards intuitive methods for research, so too for positivist approaches. Apart from Gebser, other scholars have argued that human consciousness has evolved with time to become more complex. Gebser has been an inspiration to that which contemporary philosopher, Ken Wilber calls the ‘Integral thinkers’ (Wilber, 2015). Kegan, also, was influenced by Gebser to create a thinking profile, which shows one’s level of sophistication as a thinker (Patten, 2007). It sounds ominous, but it is interesting. This theory is relevant here because Kegan’s fifth order thinkers (those who have reached the highest stage) are able to hold two contradictory truths, or realities, and appreciate each of them. So too with Husserl’s idea of ‘apperception’ in phenomenology and thus, the theory informing Soliloquy. Researchers who practise Soliloquy start with their subjective truths as experienced in the life world, and transcend to know universal, ideal truths. These are very different realities and they exist in separate time and place zones, yet they complement one another. I am not sure I am in full agreement with Kegan on this point, but according to his theory, only a fifth-order thinker can appreciate the possibility of his argument. Kegan’s thesis is that one develops cognitively, not just by learning more things but by transforming the way in which one knows these things. There are many theorists who, like Gebser, have written about an evolution of consciousness and like Kegan, have developed their own paradigms for understanding human consciousness. Kegan’s theory is particularly interesting and as it relates to Soliloquy’s notion of apperception, let us look at it. Kegan refers to five ‘orders’ of thinking. He purports that whereas first and second order thinkers see reality very subjectively, third and fourth order thinkers become able to think more complexly as they learn to objectify and reflect upon, more realities. Terry Patten put it this way: Kegan’s five orders of mind involve qualitatively different ways of constructing reality. Each order is a qualitative shift in meaning making and complexity from the order before it. Kegan explains that we do not give up what we have learned in a previous order; we move the elements of the earlier meaning-making system

The ephemeral and the eternal 35

from Subject (where it was controlling us) to Object (where we have a new sense of control over the meaning-making system itself). In so doing, we transform, changing the actual form of our understanding of the world. (Patten, 2007) Kegan explains that the first and second levels of thinking are very basic and occur mainly with young children. They are also reminiscent of Gebser’s magical and mythical consciousness. Young children in Kegan’s First Order are made up by their perceptions. Reality for them is what they see, so that a quantity of water that looks different to them, perhaps because it is in a differently shaped container, actually is different … Kegan’s Second Order is one of ‘durable categories’ in the physical and social worlds. People at this Order can coordinate their impulses to describe their own and others’ enduring dispositions and preferences: ‘I’m a friendly person not just because I feel happy or have a friend today, but because I’ve noticed that’s true about me in lots of situations and circumstances.’ (Patten, 2007) As humans develop, their thinking becomes more aware and less subjective. Kegan points out that the fifth level of mind is rare and usually only occurs in older adults who have passed through the earlier stages. This is how they are described: In the Third Order, people can coordinate several points of view within a sense of their own role within a social structure. They can internalize others’ perspectives and thus, care about others’ opinions of them … In the fourth order, one has the ability to know one’s own mind independent of cultural expectations or ‘assumed truths’, to be able to set limits, maintain boundaries, and be cooperative and collegial. There is also the capacity to explore thoughts and feelings, creating one’s own sense of authority or voice. In the fifth order, one’s sense of self is not tied to particular identities or roles, but is constantly created through the exploration of one’s identities and roles and further honed through interactions with others. One is both selfauthoring and willing to work with the authority of others. One is able not only to question authority, but also to question oneself. (Patten, 2007) Neville (2005) clearly articulates the parallels between Kegan’s fifth order thinking and Gebser’s integral consciousness. He explains: As a third order thinker I accept without question the truth as I have absorbed it. As a third order thinker you believe in your truth in the same uncritical way. I am right and you are wrong, and at best we tolerate each other. As

36 The ephemeral and the eternal

fourth order thinkers we each maintain a critical stance towards our truths, and our concern is to look critically at these truths and all other versions of the truth and decide which one best accords with the evidence. As fifth order thinkers we regard all truths as partial, and if we find ourselves in dispute we are capable of constructing a truth which resides not only in both your partial truth and my partial truth but also in the tensions and contradictions between them … Kegan’s theory of cognitive development is a psychological theory and only secondarily concerns itself with culture. Gebser’s is a theory of culture which barely touches on the psychological development of the individual. Yet the convergence of the models is striking. The mythical structure appears to be manifested in third order thinking, the mental in fourth order, and the integral in fifth order. (Neville, 2005, p. 19) Scientific thinking is perhaps then stuck in what Kegan would call forth-order thinking and what Gebser terms, ‘Mental Consciousness’. Both of these theorists suggest there are more sophisticated ways of knowing, but it is hard to explain because explanations of this kind sound foreign to our learned ways of thinking. As academics we do love categories. It is ironic perhaps that in order to explain types of consciousness, we use mental mode terms like ‘levels of consciousness’ and scientific mechanical metaphors like, ‘structures of consciousness’. There are others who have been inspired by Gebser. Wilber names them: From Clare Graves to Abraham Maslow, from Dierdre Kramer to Jan Sinnott, from Jurgen Habermas to Cheryl Armon, from Kurt Fischer to Jenny Wade, from Robert Kegan to Suzanne Cook-Greuter, there emerges a remarkably consistent story of the evolution of consciousness … But they generally tell a similar tale of the growth and development of consciousness from – to use Jean Gebser’s particular version – archaic to magic to mythic to rational to integral. Most of the more sophisticated of these cartographies give around six to ten waves of development from birth to what I call the centaur level. (Wilber, 2015, p. 16) These are interesting parallels, however there remains a difference between Gebser’s original theory and those it may have inspired. The secondary designs focus on a hierarchy of consciousness. Apparently, for example, fifth order thinkers are superior to third-order thinkers. Gebser, however, describes each stage of consciousness without judgement, and finally suggests that each has a shared purpose as we move forward into integral awareness. I am aware that most academic institutions are still not prepared to accept or fund research into these types of theories, as the western tradition continues to prioritise materialism and a mechanistic view of the world. We see in Chapter 4 that Heidegger’s ontological distortion of phenomenology won

The ephemeral and the eternal 37

favour in the twentieth century, because Husserl’s philosophy, with its incorporated intuitive elements, was ahead of its time. For those thinkers who were not prepared for an epistemological shift, transcendental philosophy was incomprehensible. In the early stages of this research (Vallack, 2014) I explored Gebser’s theory as a way to understanding phenomenology and intuition. I began to devise parallels between the methodology of Soliloquy and the stages of Gebser’s ever-present origins of consciousness. As with Gebser’s notion of Integral Consciousness, I see Transcendental Phenomenology in general, and Soliloquy specifically, as processes that use apperception and apodictic truths to create the whole, universal representation of a phenomenon. Here is a table I published at that time, which shows these links: I have argued that apodictic truth is the whole truth, not just that which is seen from a subjective, single perspective. If you see an apple from one side of the table and I see it from the other side, for example, we are viewing it subjectively, yet we can share a sense of the ‘appleness’ of the thing. Apperception is the recognition

TABLE 2.1 Explanation of the parallels between Soliloquy methodology and Gebser’s evo-

lution of consciousness Gebser’s structures of consciousness

Characteristics of this level of consciousness

ARCHAIC

Presentiment

MAGIC

Space-timelessness. No individuality. United with everything. Gebser says: ‘When the … wakeful consciousness is sufficiently depressed so that the surroundings are no longer present …where even the psychic reality of dream and image vanish, his individuality is obliterated in the magic realm’ (Gebser, 1986, p. 163). Archetypes. Animated, primal images, which Gebser says are ‘reflections of the inner, dark and unfathomable forces in man which we call the powers of the soul or psyche’ (Gebser, 1986, p. 165).

MYTHICAL

MENTAL

The discovery of causality. Method replaces mystery, abstraction and philosophising.

INTEGRAL

Each phase of consciousness is retained and makes a contribution to knowledge.

Methods of Soliloquy that relate to each level of consciousness The EPOCHE – Stillness awaiting sensation EXPERIENCE & EPIPHANY through MEDITATION DREAM & DAYDREAM

EXPLICATION through TRANSCENDENTAL FORMS given images emerging through art, meditation, dream, music Examination data analysis & cognitive aspects involved in meaning-making The combined total of methods

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that although we may perceive given objects from differing perspectives, ultimately each perspective has its own share of a greater truth. I have defined my understanding of apperception as the ability to hold two seemingly contradictory ideas at the same time, and believe in them both. It relates to Soliloquy Methodology, because to do it requires the researcher to believe in two, co-existing types of reality. First there is the lifeworld reality – the busy chaos that one embraces at the start of the research process. This is the commonplace reality in which we live our daily lives. But there is also the eternal, archetypal truth one may arrive at through the Soliloquy process. Is this not a paradoxical, yet equally legitimate reality? To put it another way, my subjective experience is one reality, but the universal object that is known apodictically, as a result of the personal experience is another, equally valid reality. Let us explore the concept a little more because Soliloquy hinges on it: One might ask, ‘Which is the real object, that of the lifeworld or that ideal object in the transcendental plane?’ Consider then the possibility, which we take for granted daily, that the lifeworld might be that which constitutes reality. Surely, one might contend, we live in the real world – we touch, taste, smell, see and hear all that exists around us. Surely the lifeworld is reality? Consider then this argument: The lifeworld is transient. At any given moment, that which we know as reality has passed. Nothing exists in a fixed state, as all is in flux. However, in the transcendental realm, permanent forms exist and remain, beyond daily entropy. Existing in this reality are eternal truths, archetypes and universal essences. They go by many names because they have been recognised throughout cultures and time, as ongoing structures of reality. Surely this constant realm is reality? And that which we know as the lifeworld, a mere series of passing impressions? This is not an idealist view, as it purports that archetypes exist beyond the mind of the individual, as is the want of true realism. These intersubjective objects are independent of one’s awareness, understanding or belief in them. Soliloquy seeks these objects, and is therefore a methodology informed by Objectivism. In the methodology of Soliloquy, the first-person researcher works apperceptibly – first with the reality of the subjective lifeworld, before transitioning to research outcomes in the form of apodictic, transcendental objects of phenomena – the intersubjective insights (Vallack, 2014). These concepts, once again, reflect the divide in thinking that is the legacy of Plato and Aristotle.

Sheldrake’s ‘science delusion’ In his book The Science Delusion, Rupert Sheldrake challenges the notion that Science is unquestionably objective. An eminent scientist himself, he questions the belief system that underpins Science, claiming that the methodology and its application, like any research approach, can be flawed. Sheldrake maintains that Science is like a new belief system because we have come to accept it without question. Science has consistencies and simplicities that are the envy of these new, experimental approaches to research – and I include Soliloquy here. If this were a

The ephemeral and the eternal 39

book about scientific methodology, there would be less need for a glossary and chapters to explain and justify the content. Those of us schooled in the western tradition during the twentieth century have been taught the rules of scientific procedure. It is familiar. It feels safe. We have also absorbed without question many of the assumptions that come with it. Sheldrake points these out. He says: Here are the ten core beliefs that most scientists take for granted: 1

2

3

4 5 6 7

8 9 10

Everything is essentially mechanical. Dogs, for example, are complex mechanisms, rather than living organisms with goals of their own. Even people are machines … with brains that are like genetically programmed computers. All matter is unconscious. It has no inner life or subjectivity or point of view. Even human consciousness is an illusion produced by the material activities of brains. The total amount of matter and energy is always the same (with the exception of the Big Bang, when all the matter and energy of the universe suddenly appeared). The laws of nature are fixed. They are the same today as they were at the beginning, and they will stay the same forever. Nature is purposeless and evolution has no goal or direction. All biological inheritance is material, carried in the genetic material, DNA, and in other material structures. Minds are inside heads and are nothing but the activities of brains. When you look at a tree, the image of the tree you are seeing is not ‘out there’, where it seems to be, but inside your brain. Memories are stored as material traces in brains and are wiped out at death. Unexplained phenomena like telepathy are illusionary. Mechanistic medicine is the only kind that really works. (Sheldrake, 2013, pp7–8.)

Existentialism, which together with Mental Consciousness and Scientism, was riding the same wave of materialism about one hundred years ago, saw philosophers such as Heidegger and Sartre, and novelists like Camus eloquently endorsing positivist ontologies. Husserl’s phenomenology, as it moved from the ephemeral to the transcendental, could never be understood through such narrow focus, so it was distorted. Positivism has no place for anything that cannot fit into its framework. The Science Deity evoked a very powerful, fundamentalist belief system, permeating universities during the twentieth century and accepted widely without question. Sheldrake likens this unquestioning faith to that of militant religions. He challenges our Mental Mode complacency in regard to Science. He puts modern assumptions into perspective and argues that Science is not a deity but a beliefsystem that can be held to account like any other. Sheldrake argues that Science pretends to be more objective than it really can be, and refers to ways in which this

40 The ephemeral and the eternal

illusion of objectivity is created. The use of the passive voice in writing up experiments in Science is an indicator of a certain detachment from the experiment, but Sheldrake asks to what extent this is possible. He says: For those who would idealise science, scientists are the epitome of objectivity, rising from the sectarian divisions and illusions that afflict the rest of humanity … Most scientists are unconscious of the myths, allegories and assumptions that shape their social roles and political powers. These beliefs are implicit rather than explicit. But they are more powerful because they are so habitual. (Sheldrake, 2013, p. 300) So often Science is deemed to be beyond reproach. Yet scientific data can be scammed like any other. The researcher using any sort of qualitative or intuitive methods must state upfront any unavoidable inconsistencies and appreciate that some unexpected results may occur even when methodologies are perfectly executed. It falls upon the integrity of the researcher to see that the data is analysed and reported honestly.

An Autoethnographic Aside I recall that during the 1970s, when I was just starting at Melbourne University, the faith in existentialism and science was extreme. Those few who persisted with religious beliefs, or like me, had witnessed unexplainable phenomena involving intuition and psychic phenomena, were viewed by the physical and political scientists as naïve. Of course, there were other groups of thinkers who were at that time discovering alternatives such as Buddhism or exploring the moral authenticity of a vegetarian existence through the Hari Krishna movement; their music rang through the streets of Melbourne daily and set the beat for the city. Nevertheless, materialistic science and existential philosophy were indeed strong forces in the twentieth century, with the power to dictate how one should approach the task of changing the world, prescribing what was ‘cool’ and what was ‘square’. On campus in those days, the dominant view was that existence was meaningless and transcendental phenomenology, the collective unconscious and metaphysical awareness were all illusionary. And so they have been sleeping beautifully, through the mental mode of modernism for the past century. My first year of psychology at Melbourne University involved learning about statistics. That would be the way forward, and it was clear that the only research into human behaviour that would count in the subject would, indeed, be quantifiable. So I decided to pursue drama instead, because that could engage me emotionally with the human condition. I explored Stanislavski’s approach to acting, through empathy and affective memory techniques – methods that would introduce me to the power of the unconscious. My mentor and director, Lindy Davies, was unusually gifted in what was loosely called ‘method acting’. Method Acting

The ephemeral and the eternal 41

was really an American interpretation of Stanislavski’s naturalism (Stanislavski, 1962), but this term, developed by Lee Strasbourg at the Actors’ Studio in New York, had become popular at that time and was used freely. Later, when my drama school transitioned to become the Melbourne University’s Victorian College of the Arts, Lindy had become well respected in this area and was appointed Dean of Acting there. She also won a best actor award for her role in the film Malcolm in 1986, and it was evident from her own application of the technique that it was powerful. Lindy’s direction required actors to engage with both their conscious and unconscious minds, and to re-live their own experiences through the written script. It was an intensive approach that did not suit some young artists, because they resisted the vulnerability that was essential to the process. It suited me because my curiosity was greater than my fear, and because I was intrigued by its power to lift the character to another level – where the actor’s consciousness seems to sometimes disappear. The experience of performing to an audience and losing time to what must have been an altered state of consciousness, has motivated and set me on this research pathway in the hope to glimpse insight into the unfathomable potential of greater consciousness. I think now it had something to do with Magical Consciousness, where I somehow merged into my affective memory, which paralleled with the character and the situation, and allowed me (either) to forget who I was (or recall who else I was) for 45 minutes. Yet while I was pursuing such subversive learning inside the auditoriums, outside twentieth century modernism was strong and scientific method reigned. God was apparently dead (Jones, 2019), life was hopeless (Camus, 1942) and, according to science, everything I had ever felt was merely due to chemical reactions in my physical brain – all of which would cease to exist upon my expiration. On top of this, I was aware that if I dared to think differently about the hopelessness of ‘mankind’ (for gender- neutral language had not yet been invented back then) I should be deemed superstitious or mad. Behind these scenes new thinkers, including physical scientists like Sheldrake and philosophers such as Husserl, Gebser and Steiner, as well as the dynamic psychologists – Freud and Jung, were challenging the notion that all reality is physical. Perhaps, like Sheldrake (2013), they could see that this materialistic, mechanistic and pessimistic scripture is just another belief system, which (ironically) has scientific evidence stacked against it. In the next chapter we will look further into the concepts developed by these great scholars.

Bibliography Berkeley, G. (1732/2015). An Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision. Adelaide: University of Adelaide. Camus, A. (1942). The Plague. Melbourne: Penguin. Freud, S. (1900/ 2010). The Interpretation of Dreams. New York: Basic Books. Gebser, J. (1986). The Ever-Present Origin. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press. Husserl, E. (1964/1929). The Paris Lectures. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

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Jones, J. (2019). What did Nietzsche Really Mean when he Wrote ‘God is Dead’? Retrieved from www.openculture.com/2016/11/what-did-nietzsche-really-mean-when-he-wrotegod-is-dead.html. Jung, C. (1953). Collected Works. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Mahood, E. (1996). The Primordial Leap and the Present: The Everpresent Origin – an Overview of the work of Jean Gebser. Retrieved from www.grailwerk.com/docs/syna iretic.htm. Neville, B. (2005). Educating Psyche. Greensborough, Victoria: Flat Chat Press. Patten, T. (2007). How Consciousness Develops Adequate Complexity to Deal With a Complex World: The Subject-Object Theory of Robert Kegan. Retrieved from https:// terrypatten.typepad.com/iran/files/KeganEnglish.pdf. Polanyi, M. (1967). The Tacit Dimension. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Santos, M. d. L. (2007). Shamanic Representations: The Case of Nicholas Black Elk and the Sacred Vision. Crossroads, 2(1), 32–46. Santos, M. d. L. (2012). Altered States of Literature: Shamanic Assimilation and Romantic Inspiration. Aletria: Revista de Estudos de Literatura, 22(3), 253–264. Sanzio, R. (1509). The School of Athens. Wikimedia Commons. Retrieved from https:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_School_of_Athens#/media/File:%22The_School_of_Athens %22_by_Raffaello_Sanzio_da_Urbino.jpg Sheldrake, R. (2013). The Science Delusion. London: Hodder & Stoughton. Stanislavski, C. (1962). My Life in Art. London: Geoffrey Bles. Steiner, R. (1911). Wisdom of Man, of the Soul, and of the Spirit: Lecture 1. Franz Brentano and Aristotle’s Doctrine of the Spirit. Retrieved from https://wn.rsarchive.org/Lec tures/GA115/English/AP1971/19111212p01.html. Vallack, J. (2014). Soliloquy: A Methodology for First-Person Research. Paper presented at the European Conference for Research Methodologies, London. Wilber, K. (2015). Integral Spirituality. Kosmos Journal for Global Transformation, Winter.

3 INTUITION

Those of us who have been raised and schooled in the Western tradition have been taught that intuitive and creative accounts belong in the discipline of literature, not science. Yet if I believe what Sheldrake has said in the last chapter, and I do, then perhaps it is sometimes apposite to challenge those scientific conventions that are designed to create an illusion of objectivity. As researchers, we seek our truths, but we need to be completely transparent about how we reach them. That way, others can decide if it is an appropriate truth for them. Everything is evidence-based, but not all evidence is equal, and nor should it be. Some knowledge, like that in medical research, saves lives because the methodology used was exactly as it should be for that research. Other knowledge – the magical, the mythical (I like to use the term intuitive) – can only be known immediately. We can’t blind-test it. It’s already blind. Soliloquy starts with methods that elicit intuition, and later progresses through magical, mythical and mental stages of consciousness to produce phenomenology. We will look at those methods in Chapter 5. For now, if you can suspend your scientific inclinations for a few pages, I invite you to share with me a look at the personal experiences and circumstances that I believe prepared me for phenomenology, and I ask you to look for parallels in our own experiences. I do want to state upfront that your pathway to phenomenology will be different – as different as one person to the next. My experiences come from being born into a Spiritualist tradition. Your spiritual journey may be contextualised by Christian, Hindu, Muslim or Buddhist or one of the many powerful, shamanic traditions; it could be atheist. It does not matter where you start with intuition, the thing is that we all experience the unexplainable, and it means something. I have tried to make sense of it all, and so will you. Good luck with that. We may both have success, yet our solutions may differ – Kegan’s (Patten, 2007) fifth-order thinkers know there are many truths. This is my truth – my own, autoethnographic account of what intuition is for me. I offer this as a descriptive account of my subjective

44 Intuition

experience of it. It will be different to yours, but perhaps the essence of intuition will eventually become transcendental and enable you to recognise that same phenomenon from your own perspective? My mother was born into a humble and happy family, who accepted Spiritualism as a normal part of life. So was I. Intuition was taken for granted and nourished as necessary way to tap into a feeling or inclination that might give us direction. We also believed in God but would often discuss and ponder at what that meant. We did not really know what God was exactly, when we tried to understand God ‘scientifically’. We talked a lot about these sorts of things, with no firm resolve except to agree that there was something powerful beyond the mundane. We saw spirits as souls who had passed over and were at various stages of development. We considered the possibility of reincarnation, and that made sense to me, but not in any punitive sense. I believed in free choice and self-determination when it came to the soul’s journey. My mother was very wise, and if I was sick, I knew she would concentrate on healing me. This was usually successful, and whether it was due to her healing powers or the placebo effect of my faith in her, or the fact that my illnesses were minor, and I was to recover anyway, I don’t know. But her love and concern gave me comfort and she surprised me at times. After my parent’s marriage ended in the 1970s, my mother was free to pursue life beyond the kitchen sink. This is not to say that my Dad was a bad person, quite the opposite, but like most folk then, they were both victims of the times. Mum was highly creative and needed to find her way in the world. After she separated from her marriage, she went on to co-found Tumbetin Spiritualist Centre in Upwey, Victoria, in Australia. It was a not-for-profit psychic healing sanctuary. I think it fulfilled a purpose in her life that she needed to realise. Mum and Dad had conducted séances and experiments throughout my growing years, and these experiments had become a topic for engaging discussion over the years. Many, many times we would sit with a drinking glass on the Ouija board, the latter of which my grandfather had purpose-built for the task, and aim for more evidence of the afterlife. When I was young, I was not allowed to participate, as it was explained to me that children have wild imaginations, and although I was assured that there is nothing to fear, it was to be an adult activity. When I was eight or nine, the sessions began in earnest, as the two neighbours down the road – the Dysons – joined with my parents in weekly experiments with the Ouija board. For those who are unfamiliar with the practice, a Ouija board is a wooden board on to which letters of the alphabet have been painted, along with the words ‘Yes’ and ‘No’, which are placed at opposite ends. The researchers sit around the board, and place one finger onto a common water glass that has been positioned upside-down in the middle of the board. Drawing on the psychic energy of the participants, spirit visitors and guides can manifest energy to move the glass and spell out messages as the means of communication. This is an exercise in trust, as it is possible for some trickster to push the glass and thus ruin the experiment. As a teenager, I was warned against doing the Ouija board with anyone outside of the family who may take it as a joke, for then one

Intuition 45

may invite mischievous entities into the circle, and that is highly undesirable. The medium in charge of the circle, usually Mum, would start with a prayer for protection from and undesirable elements (the word ‘evil’ was almost never used in our house, for there was the belief that all souls are at various stages of evolution and some were less developed for now). Of course, the only time we see the Ouija board in film and media seems to be in the horror genre, so it has received bad press. I did not watch those films for most of my life in order to avoid the negative influences. Really, the Ouija board is just a communication tool, and no poltergeists were allowed. Years later, my family sat in regular phenomena circles with a trumpet instead of the Ouija board. The trumpet is a cone of some sort, usually cardboard, which is meant to amplify direct voice given from Spirit. I was adult by then, but too busy with life to attend. Apparently in the family’s circle, there were high hopes that things were starting to develop, until it became evident that one or two of the outside participants had been fraudulent. Small stones were dropping into the circle as if they had materialised, but apparently it became evident that they had not materialised during the séance. It seemed they had been brought in by someone and pitched into the middle of the circle, unseen in the darkness. So those meetings were abandoned. No one was ever accused of anything. Mum just said it was time to take a break, and that was it. It seems that some have such a need to be part of something sensational that they are prepared to fool themselves and others – to help things along a bit and keep it interesting when nothing much was happening. Communication with spirits requires a lot of patience. Deception was something my mother would not tolerate, as she would say it was just wasting everyone’s time if it was not ‘genuine’. She spent her whole life trying to further understand realities through philosophical discussion and investigation of spiritual phenomena. Now, having enjoyed a material existence for the first part of my life, it is my turn to try to make sense of it all. I once owned and lived in a haunted house in Gembrook. It had been the old Cobb and Co. stop a century or so before, and I fell in love with the old Victorian residence that had fallen into disrepair. As I was young and physically capable, the restoration of this home became my project, and I was fortunate to have a wonderful man in my life at that time who was a very willing and skilful renovator. One night, as we were sleeping in the back room of the house, I awoke to what sounded like a train coming down the passage beside my room. My partner slept soundly, but I sat upright to prepare for whatever it was that was rattling towards the bedroom door. A woman walked into my room – a spirit woman. She was clothed in a floor-length, black dress with a high collar, and her long, dark hair was swept back into a simple style. She didn’t smile, she just wanted to know who was in her house. As it happened, so did I. I recall walking through the bed, which seemed to have dissolved somehow, and going to the door to confront her. Nothing was said, but she was asking me who I was. I was asking her the same question. And for a long moment time seemed to stand still. Then somehow we seemed to approve of one another. I knew that this

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experience was significant and that I should try to retain some information for checking, because this was more than a dream. It seemed that I was speaking aloud then, and I asked her name. ‘Martha’ she answered – also aloud. I asked for a second name, but she seemed confused. She hesitated and then said, ‘Wednesday’. I don’t think she understood the question. Unfortunately, I have not been able to access records to check the names of residents or visitors to that old Cobb and Co stop. But I knew the incident was important. Nothing anyone could relate about their own encounters would mean as much, because I had witnessed this phenomenon from my own perspective. I told my sister and family about it, and they found it interesting, just like the numerous other family narratives of spiritual encounters and unexplainable events. Then it was more-or-less forgotten. Sometime later I was talking to the elderly lady who ran the local plant nursery in Gembrook. She said that she had lived in the house as a child and confirmed that it had been the Cobb and Co. stop around the turn of the twentieth century. She had a photo of it from those times and offered it to me. When I received the photo, to my astonishment, standing on the veranda was Martha. She was pictured with a man and a younger woman who was dressed in the same manner as herself. I have always found that my own experiences like this are so much more profound than if another had related such an encounter. Others may have experienced more extraordinary events than mine, but this is my evidence because I know it to be true. I expect each person has their own unexplainable incidents if they can recall them. We must seek out our own truths, for as far as you know I may have fabricated this story. I didn’t, but many do, just as many fabricate laboratory results to enhance their research or speed-up predictable but unattainable outcomes. A lot of phenomena seemed to happen when I was young, but I did not place as much importance on it as I might now. I just took it for granted. My older sister, Denise, had the ability to channel a lot of power, and when I was a bit older and sometimes allowed to sit in the circle, the glass would spin so fast around the board that it would fly off, out of control, and then fall to the ground. Sometimes the table itself – a solid wooden coffee table of about a metre in diameter – would tip up onto one leg, a feat which we could not fathom from a materialist perspective, as it was apparently being driven by one little glass with three fingers on it. Another time, Denise and I sat with the ‘board’ in my room, which was lit by two candles on the mantelpiece. We were feeling slightly guilty about doing this on our own, without a proper medium, but the vibrations were positive, and we seemed to be getting excellent communication, so we asked the spirit to put out the flames if they could. They did – two candles on opposite sides of the mantelpiece extinguished at the same time. The room went dark, and that surprised us so much that we jumped up from the floor to reach for the light switch. When the electric light came on, the candles flared up again as before. You had to be there. You always have to be there yourself to really be affected to the point where your curiosity motivates you to inquire further.

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FIGURE 3.1

Gembrook House, 1910

Having said that, I do not suggest that anyone try these things without the presence of an experienced medium. Fear is a negative emotion and may attract lesser entities. We never had that, as we were usually calm, positive and (I believe) well protected by prayer and spirit guides who were more powerful that the lesser ones. My sister and I were alone when the candles went out, and so it is probably better that we did not pursue that activity. Mum or a spiritually wise adult should have been there. My mother told me when I was young that I should never be afraid of spirit, because I am also spirit in a physical body. I have as much power as any other, and that should I ever be confronted with an entity that I do not feel is positive and well-meaning, I can ask it to leave – and it will leave. It has to, because I am stronger. I believed her and was not afraid. Fortunately, the only little demons I have had to stand up to have been the ones in physical bodies like me. Asserting one’s strength of character seems to work for them too. My early adult years were filled with lifeworld learning and I set aside all metaphysical pursuits. My elder sister, Lynette, was a spiritual healer, and would heal anyone who asked for no cost. Our family was philosophically opposed to the idea of taking money for healing or psychic readings, as we believed it was a gift to be given. By the time the 1970s came around, new ageism was surfacing, and there were ‘channellers’ (an American term) and psychics setting up businesses. About that time Mum founded Tumbetin Spiritualist Healing Centre with my sister and some friends they had met through the Spiritualist church. The mission was to

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provide free healing and psychic information to anyone who needed it or was interested in learning more. Both my sister and mother had experienced astral travelling. Each had been alarmed initially, because they found themselves paralysed and did not know what was happening to them. I witnessed that they were able to placate some who had also been frightened by similar experiences. Mum would always paraphrase President Roosevelt in his 1933 inaugural address, who said that there is ‘nothing to fear but fear itself’. She never cited Roosevelt, but it makes sense that she would have heard that address in 1933 and retained that important pearl of wisdom either consciously or unconsciously. As a researcher I have naturally returned to the unanswered questions. My family have passed on and there is no one to ask or deliberate with about these matters, so I have taken steps to investigate more on my own – and to share it with you. I have twice visited Stansted Hall, which is the home of Spiritualism in England. The property was generously donated to the Spiritual Association by Arthur Finlay, and for many years it has been a not-for-profit organisation, run largely by volunteers, which conducts classes and workshops in spiritual development for mediums, healers and the like. It is very well respected, which is important because, unfortunately, charlatanism creates a minefield for those who seek truths in these matters. As I have never been a medium, I was a bit out of my depth there, but keen to persist. I was not seeking to develop mediumship as much as to gain an insight into psychic phenomena. I participated in two, week-long workshops for mediumship, and some of my fellow students amazed me. Most of them were much more experienced at ‘channelling’ than me, and they picked up on things that no-one could know. But I was used to being amazed by good mediums. It had happened frequently and I had become complacent. What I was not prepared for was to actually receive a message myself, to which someone else could directly relate. I am not practised, as one should be in order to do well with this gift (a gift we all have, I think), but I did receive a couple of messages for complete strangers – out of the blue – which astonished me much more than it did them. Below are some excerpts from the journal I kept while there in 2009. The following excerpts are verbatim data taken directly from my journal, so the genre is informal – casual, in fact. I have changed the font in order to identify it as such. I include it here as it was written each evening after my psychic development workshops. It retains the processes, feelings and thoughts that I was experiencing while trying to explore spiritual development and mediumship. I include it here because it contains personal descriptions of my encounters with intuition.

Stansted Hall – Journal 2009 What a difference a day has made. Things were looking bleak yesterday for me, here at Stansted Hall – the Hogwarts of Spiritualism. But let me start at the beginning …

My room is plain and resembles the average convent room – small, hard single bed, no TV or radio – but I do have an

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ensuite shower (rare here) and tea making facilities. Well it is England after all. There are rules here – silly ones it sometimes seems, like you have to always sit at the same place and with the same table of people for all meals for the entire week. (Choose carefully on day one if you ever come here.) As fate would have it, I am seated with a nice lady, Ali, a strange one who shall remain nameless, and some other interesting people. We are assigned to our groups and our group tutor. Ali says, before the list goes up, that she hopes she doesn’t get (let’s call him) Jerry, because Jerry has a reputation for saying sarcastic things in the name of humour, and she doesn’t feel like dealing with that sort of thing right now. Ali’s dealing with a bit on her plate at the moment, but there is an unspoken understanding that we won’t go into too much personal detail because we will all be reading for each other over the week. So, we go to the lists when they are posted, and we see that we are in the same group – with Jerry! I am going to jump around a bit, but bear with me: About five years ago I drove Mum to Tumbiten to see the hotshot medium that had been brought out from England. He went into trace and brought forward two or three characters. Standing at the back of the room, Mum’s friend, Ray asked me what I thought, and I said that I didn’t believe him. It was too stagey. Anyway – you guessed it – it was Jerry. When he walked into our group I was faced with a dilemma. Here I was, in this beautiful place, suddenly not feeling very spiritual. To cut the story to the chase, I felt my confidence slipping away as I got everything wrong: He passed a rock around and we had to guess where it was from. I couldn’t. I disagreed with Jerry when he told how Red Cloud took the rich man to live in a poor house in the afterlife, against his will. ‘We choose our own path’, I protested. I was told that Red Cloud’s teachings were more aligned with Christian teachings. ‘Yes, it sounds like it’, I reply. Ali shrinks in her seat beside me and whispers, ‘Enjoy Bournemouth on Wednesday’ (I was going down there for a work commitment that day). Ali was meaning ‘because you’ve done your dash here’. Another belief here, apparently, is that reincarnation is not part of the equation. Those who have been here before say it’s a real faux pas to mention reincarnation. Well I’m like What?! I was surprised to learn that Spiritualism was becoming a dictator sport.

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I went back to my humble room after dinner and fell asleep. Consequently, I apparently missed a good demonstration that evening. This morning I did not want to leave my little blanketed rock. When I did get up, I made it just in time for breakfast. My neck had been causing me irritating pain after I had strained it by hauling luggage from Malta to England. So, I skipped class and booked a massage. Then, wondering about getting to Bournemouth on Wednesday, I skipped class again and took a lovely English countryside laneway to the village, thereby purchasing my train ticket for Wednesday and spontaneously, getting a haircut. When I did get back for lunch, and then the afternoon session, Jerry asked me if I had been ill. I explained about the ticket, trying to be as considerate and polite as possible, knowing that my uncertainty was more about my problems than his. And that was OK. Now I have to tell you this: Some years before she died, Mum gave me a silver sovereign case that had belonged to my grandfather. It had been a gift from my Nana who had been the medium. Feeling slightly silly, I packed it in Australia to wear here. I was taking her along for support, I think. Not having a chain, I modified another necklace and attached the sovereign locket and wore it around my neck. As the day wore on and I became less confident in the intuitive abilities that I had never before thought to doubt, I removed the necklace. I think I felt unworthy of Nana’s locket. I don’t know. This afternoon some people got up to read for the group. Jerry stood behind them and clarified the messages that they were mucking up with their mindful interpretations. They were thinking too much. Actually, he was staggeringly good. The student would say something like ‘I’m getting your sister’ and he would say, ‘no it’s someone on your father’s side, and the receiver would then know the link. Jerry actually tuned into the spirit that was communicating with the student in order to clarify the message. I was pretty impressed with that, since those receiving the readings understood their messages after his clarification. What we are learning is to describe the feelings and impressions while being aware that our mind will sometimes muck up an authentic impression with a quick guess. This is what I had done the day before when I guessed the wrong place.

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Then we worked in threes. We were there to support each other. Today I had some really encouraging receivers, and I think I made a little progress. I am still really unsure of what I am doing. It’s one thing to just sit there sceptically while someone else get things out of the blue, but to come up with a reading for another is really hard. The hardest thing about it is preventing yourself from trying and guessing too much. Anyway, my first reading for Lorna was about a man in a pub. First, I got a man with a moustache, but she couldn’t place that Jerry calls that ‘a dip’ – in other words, when your mind jumps in and gives a wrong guess. Then I got another man who apparently resembled the man her father would drink with. All very well, but a bit cliché – you know, vague. Then I got something like ‘Fox/foxes’ so I said, ‘a pub called something like the Fox and Hounds’. Well the pub was called ‘Foxes Inn’, so the lesson there was don’t embellish. At the time when I got it I felt stupid saying it, because every third pub in Britain is called something like that, but later (because you are completely in the dark when you are giving it) when she confirmed that it was the pub where her father drank, I was pleased with that. Now it was her turn. She gets Mum. Very nice – ‘I’ve got your mother’ and all that, ‘and she sends love’ – mmm – and she’s saying something about a necklace. She doesn’t like what you have done with it, and you should wear it. ‘OK’ I say to Lorna. ‘It’s in my bag. I’ll put it back on’. Well done, Lorna! In the next session I work with Ali. We have become friendly, but we actually have been chatting about the place and not about ourselves. Everyone just seems to know not to discuss personal matters here. Ali and I are both feeling hesitant because yesterday we both thought that wretched stone was from Mexico. Anyway, now convinced we are the class duds, we read for each other. I make a little progress (although you can’t help but doubt – maybe it was a lucky guess?). I pick up her mother-in-law who is reserved and seemed unfeeling. I smell violets. I see jewellery – pearls and a stone. Ali tells me that this is an amazing reading. I’m thinking she’s trying to boost my confidence. I don’t think it was amazing, but I am pleased that some things seemed right to her. The message was an

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apology to Ali, or as close as this lady could get to an apology. Ali explained that there had been a lot of tension between them and she was always cold to her. I could smell and see violets. Again, it seemed so cliché to me as I was saying it, but Ali said this lady used to fight with her husband when he pulled them out of the garden as weeds. She liked the violets. How did I get that, I wonder. Then she read for me, and Dad came through and so did Pa (my mother’s father). A tall man with a stoop. (Yes – my grandfather, Pa) He’s resting his hand on a table. (I guess that it will be the table he made to fit the Ouija board.) Did he like woodwork? (Yes – shed was set up for it.) I am seeing books with this man. (Only person in the family to be educated, apart from me.) He has a choking in his throat – he covers me with love – Ali cries at this point. Simone, our tutor for the afternoon, comes over and tells her that mediums must control their emotions. She then adds that she knows this because it is a challenge for her to do this. All that she had said about Pa was true, including the choking. When he came to dinner, my Mum would cut his meat up, but he still choked frequently. Dear Pa. Such a gentleman and it was embarrassing for him. Now I am going to digress so the next part will make sense: Years ago, I saw a wireless record player in an antique shop that is exactly the same as the one we had in Bayswater when I was a kid. I said to my friend at the time that I must buy that because it is exactly the same as Dad’s wireless. A few days later the same friend turns up with about six 78 records for this record player. One of them is a ridiculous Hawaiian ukulele rendition of the song Dad always sang for a joke – ‘Breeze’. It shocked me because I always thought Dad had made that song up. I did not know it was a real song! He would have heard it in about the 1940s, but I had never heard it. Who would have known it was once produced as a 78 record? We never had it in our collection. And there it was – a materialised gift from beyond the grave? Anyway, Ali gets Dad – Man with dark hair – your father – merchant navy – cigarettes – Capstan’s filter less? (all accurate!) – then,

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‘Did he like to joke around your father? – you know, play jokes on people?’ ‘Oo I don’t know …’ I say. ‘I’m getting Polynesia/Hawaii. I’m seeing the trees blowing in the wind …’ ‘That’s breeze’ I say. ‘Yes, Dad joked around.’ ‘He says he loves you.’ ‘I know’, I say. (To this day, Dad comes through strongly. So does Pa.) She also got Gordon and Alistair or Alley. Could be a woman. I said later to her that it might have been ‘Ollie’, but we don’t know. I couldn’t place that. It might have been a ‘dip’. I’m feeling happy and content tonight. And I told Lorna and Ali that they were spot on. Like me they were feeling a bit uncertain about being here until this afternoon. I told them that they were as good as the best readings I’ve ever had. I’m very new to this. I have never tried to put myself on the spot like this before. The meditation’s fine. I drop off with the best of them. Yesterday I felt stuff moving on my hand and wondered later if it was ectoplasm. It might have been sweat because it’s hot here at the moment. (They are all worried because it will be a pleasant 95 degrees all week – just like Rockhampton in Spring, but I digress.) What’s really hard is having no idea what you are about to get, and no idea if it’s real or mind made.

Tuesday 30 June 09 Third day at Stansted Hall. I am feeling good after yesterday’s little glimmers of hope. The ‘Stansted Healers’ came today, so I thought I had better give that a go. I didn’t feel as much energy as I receive from Net (my sister who is a spiritual healer), but it was good, and I felt refreshed afterwards. I told her I have depression, and about halfway through I saw it fall from me like a grey slim cloak and slide into the ground. So, I stepped out of it and I was shiny and new and clean. We did a little exercise to test our Clairvoyance/ Clairsentience. I am much stronger with the latter. There are a couple of strange ones here. I had to work with one this afternoon. She didn’t get anyone for me, but she became aware of a small child who was lost. The child had asked her to be presented to me, because I will

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know what to do. The ‘medium’ then runs out of the room in tears. I apologise to the next person who I am supposed to be working with and follow her out. She says she is so worried about the lost child and she doesn’t know what to do. So, because I have to say something, even though I have no real sense of the child, I say we will sit down together, send some healing to her and ask for a kind spirit to protect and guide her. We do that. I state that I think she has gone safely away now in the care of the angel. She agrees. We go back inside. This medium tells me she is a Sharman in her day job. My sense is that her concerns are of her own psychological making, but in this environment, I can’t judge. I am becoming increasingly impressed with our tutor’s psychic ability. Today he stood behind me while I tried to read for my partner, and he tuned in and clarified the bits I was missing. This is how it went: I say, ‘I am getting a young woman with dark red hair. She is very beautiful and vibrant. She is about fifteen or eighteen. Her hair is thick and curly, and her eyes are large and beautiful.’ Yes. My partner can place that. I struggle for a name – ‘Ruby or Ru … Ruth?’ Jerry chips in, ‘No, she said “Roof”’. My partner places that – ‘yes her room was in the attic – in the roof, and later when I went to the house, I also stayed in that room in the roof.’ I can barely believe I’m hearing this. How can an impression of a word in your head be misheard? ‘OK. Go on’, he says to me! I go on, and with Jerry’s help, she places the person and the situation. I am in awe of Jerry. I have never seen a medium tune into the reading of another. Moreover, I was getting the impression but he was getting the detail. It was what I was hoping would happen. It was a guided journey into the reality of intuition. Then later my partner reads for me. She gets a child with Shirley Temple style hair. (I think it’s the child in my portrait – Pa’s sister. After Pa died, I expressed an interest in a pencil drawing of a little girl that hung in his room. My mother gave it to me, and I have always valued it. It is a portrait of Pa’s sister who died when she was six years old. Her name was Ruby.)

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‘Ruby’ I say. Jerry refers me back to when I got that name. (What was that then? This is what fascinates me and motivates me to research these magical phenomena. Everyone in the group got something after Jerry clarified it. As you see, the ‘roof’ adjustment wasn’t just some vague fill in – the girl lived in the roof. Most of us would have missed our links without this clarification. She would have just said she can’t place Ruth, and that would be the end of it. It’s a bit funny. Jerry tunes in and says, ‘Right, now you’ve got her…’ And I say, ‘Have I?’ It’s pretty strange. Sometimes we work with the other tutors but Jerry is our main mentor. Jerry said he did some Tumbetin work about 4 years ago. There is an advanced class in the next room, and they are struggling – or so I hear. They have examinations now. Jerry said he would never pass the exam now because the new rule is you have to do platform readings with your eyes open – FOR HEALTH AND SAFETY REASONS!!! Also, no one is allowed to give future now because if it doesn’t come true people can sue you. I cannot believe these rules and restrictions. When I was growing up, Spiritualists just believed in the afterlife and apart from that, there was no scripture. You could believe what you like and belong to any religion. Now that it is becoming prescriptive, I disassociate myself from the organisation. I will take from it what makes sense to me, as I do from any religion, but I do not buy packages that have been put together by someone else. Next day… Can’t write much cos I’ve got flu. Summary of today’s highlights: 

A lovely sense of family support – Mum. Dad, Nana behind me, Pa and a couple of others – I think Lou Dyson and (not sure but) Aunty Cath Vallack. We hold hands in a circle, and I am reminded of 2 songs: Will the Circle be Unbroken and Nearer my God to Thee. There is a lovely sacred feeling. This place has a beautiful, sacred feel.  Partner writes the name of someone on a piece of paper, and I have to pick up the illness this person has.

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Can’t believe I got this. I get eyes, fading eyesight. She says yes and asks me what else. I take a minute. She prompts me – focus on hands and feet. Slowly (without me realising it) my hands and feet have twisted like the patient’s. She said it looked the same. Apparently, the patient had glaucoma and the medication they gave him for this crippled his hands and feet. It was as if I was acting out the afflictions. I think Jerry called it ‘Objective Clairsentience’. This clairsentience is definitely my thing apparently. It’s the easiest for me because it just presents itself (like an object of phenomenological reduction). This really surprised me. I couldn’t get anything after that because I was too excited. My mind became busy with self-congratulation so I got nothing else.) Later I read for another lady and got some things right: A red-haired man with a freckled complexion. (Yes)A white car with rounded fenders. (Yes) Another man who apparently always comes with him. (She tells me he had a twin brother.) I get horses with him. (yes) She asks me how he died, and I felt he had fallen from a trotting sulky or something to do with an accident. She tells me he was a rodeo rider and fell from the horse. She asks me how the other man passed, and I get a crushing feeling in the chest. She said, ‘Did he pass quickly?’ I say ‘Yes’ Apparently this man was her late husband who died suddenly of a massive heart attack.

What is mediumship? Having grown up in my Spiritualist family, where there was a deal of contrast between the focused discussions about the afterlife and death experiences and the sometimes irreverent sense of humour to put it all into perspective, I have seen enough psychic phenomena to convince me there is something more to reality than the mechanistic theories of last century’s Science. Like most people, I still cannot claim to have it all worked out, but I choose to think about it a lot. My grandmother who was the trance medium, would deliver psychic messages from the platforms of Christian Spiritualist churches in Brunswick, Melbourne, in the 1940s. More traditional Christians would see this as a paradox, believing Spiritualism to be the work of the devil. I don’t believe that. My mother would say there is no devil, except for the fear and doubt within ourselves, and that we should never let that get the best of us. I believed her; I still do. It is my magical consciousness at work.

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The Spiritualism I knew as a child was deemed by its practitioners to be a philosophy, not a religion. Spiritualists themselves came from different belief systems, and there was no doctrine or prescriptive way to live. We were an eclectic mix of folk who shared a belief in an afterlife, and apart from that, we had varying hypotheses about how it all happens. Additionally, it was widely held that mediums and healers were gifted ones who had a responsibility to humankind to pass on that gift freely, and as I have suggested earlier, for no financial gain. To sell psychic information was called ‘fortune-telling’, and fortune-telling was not only illegal but unethical. That has changed now, and I reserve all judgement, as we must each determine our own pathway, and I have paid others to provide readings for me, out of sheer curiosity. But no one in my family ever charged a cent for healing or for mediumship. It was deemed improper to do so back then. My grandmother died when I was quite young, but I have a few memories of her. In my earliest recall I was standing in her kitchen. She went a bit strange – sort of neutral looking – and asked me if I was getting ‘blood noses’. I had been. I wondered how she knew. Of course, my mother could have mentioned it, but from the way she said it, I could see that it had just occurred to her, out of seemly nowhere. She told me to tie string around my little finger. That was odd. My grandfather, Old Pa, loved her so, and would lament in the years after her death that she had never come back to him with a message. We would wonder again at how it all worked. Why was this phenomenon so elusive that it could not be held at will? We were philosophers and scientists from the school of life. We had beliefs, but these were always hypotheses to be tested and re-tested. Nothing was ever final, despite some pretty interesting séances involving physical phenomena. We knew it happened but we wanted to know how it happened. I still want to know that. As a young child I was told about Spiritualism and I was allowed to participate in adult discussions, but my mother was careful to exclude me from anything that might overwhelm an impressionable youngster. I did see some of it – I have mentioned the candles extinguishing and re-lighting and tables tipping onto their side on a regular basis – and this was part of a normal family life from time to time. Then there were long periods of uneventful, lifeworld stuff that took precedence in each of our lives. Because I was the youngest, I often felt a little excluded from the spiritual experiments, so I turned my interests elsewhere – to art and drama and animals! Now my parents and two older sisters have gone – and I do miss them being around – I have tiptoed back towards this metaphysical world to explore it and question it once again. My clairvoyant cat is interested in it too. When I attended the courses in mediumship at Arthur Findlay College in England, it was not because I hoped to become a medium like my grandmother, but because I wanted to experience the phenomenon of mediumship in order to better understand it; to know it and make sense of it in the scheme of life’s events and my own sense of reality beyond everyday existence. There, albeit very briefly, I grew to experience the difference between what was labelled psychic readings and spiritual readings. On reflection, I could relate this back to my work

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in phenomenology, and I wondered if it was a fitting piece for my emerging picture-puzzle. It goes like this: A medium opens to receive messages, and when I try it, it feels the same as when I open to receive intuition, a creative solution or a phenomenological object. On my last visit to Stansted Hall, I was fortunate to hear the lectures of the top medium, Gordon Smith (2018). He explained that messages may be received by the medium on a psychic level or on a spiritual level. Psychic information is that which exists in the aura around us, and I wondered if that was the same as Jung’s unconscious or the collective unconscious. Interestingly, Carl Jung was a Spiritualist too. I have wondered if his notion of the collective unconscious grew from his idea of a spirit world, to which each spirit has access. So psychic information, be it from the Spirit world or from Jung’s collective unconscious or Husserl’s Epoche, is that which we all know but cannot always access so easily. We cannot think it out. We have to wait for it to rise up into consciousness. So, if in a psychic reading, I tell you what you did today, for example, perhaps I access the information through a shared unconsciousness? Perhaps we can all learn to retrieve such intuitions, should we dedicate the time to do so. On the other hand, Gordon Smith (2018) would say, spirit messages are sometimes from the psychic and sometimes from loved ones or others who have passed over into spirit. Sometimes when I am writing I wonder if I am influenced by spirit, but I do not claim it to be so. I just don’t know and feel a little presumptuous to suggest it. That will be the sceptic in me, doing her necessary job. I have just now retrieved a notebook with some scribblings from those lectures by Gordon Smith at Stansted Hall. I had forgotten I had it until now. Here are some of the notes. They are all appropriations and interpretations that I was writing during Gordon’s talk, and I have précised them into bullet points: 

The psychic messages are from you and not from Spirit. Be honest about which is which when doing readings. I ask: Is either one related via what Husserl would call the Epoche?  There is inspiration from your own soul and there is inspiration from Spirit. When you first start to talk, it is always from self, then Spirit takes over and redirects. Starting with self is OK. When you step into the power, inspired speaking takes over. I ask: Is this similar to when I start to speak of my own experience of my inquiry and find it is overtaken through some altered state (such as a dream) to reveal an intersubjective, universal insight? Is that the process of phenomenological reduction?  The medium works through the psychic power of the mind and when in the power, you get the spirit dropping in and out – you must know the difference. Your exercise is to feel the presence of Spirit and know when it is there.

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I ask: As a researcher, do I need to know the difference? And does it matter so long as I experience eidetic reduction?  You can’t make messages come into your head. You have to sit quietly and let them come to you. Sit and quiet the mind and wait for spirit to arrive … (it is like) sitting with God; a light within. I ask: Perhaps the researcher who practises these methods I call Soliloquy can prepare themselves to better receive the transcendental object when it presents itself? They can practise quieting the mind.  It’s the energies that work within the body that Spirit can work with. If you are fighting to place a contact, you haven’t got a contact. I think: Like the transcendental object, one must wait for it to present itself. Thinking obstructs it.  You can’t do mediumship without sitting in the power. Learn to turn the mind down … Turn down the voice of yourself to allow in the voice of Spirit. I ask: How does the researcher quieten thought so as not to interfere with the transcendental reduction? For me, it manifests through the unconscious and shows itself as dream. Can others more intuitive than I short-circuit this process and just receive the phenomenological object psychically? I see that back then I have written a note to myself, which reads: This is a positive and affirming experience. The emphasis on humility in mediumship and gratitude to the pioneers of last century fills me. I see I need to work more on sitting with the power. Like my methodology – the mind must be quietened so that it can receive the message or the image or the phenomenon. And then I ask, ‘Is the unconscious mind the realm of the imagination and the psychic and is the collective unconscious the domain of intuition and of the Spirit?’ Just as the medium must wrestle with these questions, so should the intuitive researcher. I don’t think it matters if one is a Spiritualist or a Hindi or a Moslem or of any other religious persuasion – all gateways to spirituality ask similar questions of those who would pass through. All are valid, I believe. The question to the researcher is one of epistemology and method. How do we know what we know, and how can we best go about accessing this knowledge? I came to Soliloquy through my reading of Husserl. It just manifested itself as I pursued the processes he seemed to be describing behind the veil of translation. Phenomenology resonated with me because I already knew (from my own pathway in life) some kind of transcendentalism. I believe there are many roads to this, and mine is but one. Of course, I will always struggle to see the way more transparently, as we must. Having mused on the idea of telepathy and mediumship, I am reminded of Bergson’s definition of intuition. It resonates with my own understanding:

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Bergson distinguished between two profoundly different ways of knowing: the method of analysis, which is characteristic of science, and the method of intuition, a kind of intellectual sympathy through which it is possible to enter into objects and other persons and identify with them. All basic metaphysical truths, Bergson held, are grasped by philosophical intuition. This is how one comes to know one’s deepest self and the essence of all living things, which he called ‘duration’, as well as the ‘vital spirit’, which is the mysterious creative agency in the world. (Chambre et al., 2017)

Same God – different names In this chapter I wanted to provide an insight into my perspective on transcendental phenomenology and how I experience realities other than the mundane. My preferred perspective allows me glimpses into spiritual and philosophical awareness, and the inspiration to speculate as to how it may all fit together. My subjective experience of Spiritualism allows me to access the transcendental world of spiritual knowledge, in perhaps the same way as someone else’s Catholic experience puts them in touch with the Holy Spirit or someone’s Moslem faith allows access to universal, spiritual enlightenment. My way is just a single example of a way towards something much more profound, I think. It is my subjective pathway to the transcendental phenomenon of spirituality. I suspect that at the crux of every faith is the same essence of spirituality, but that culturally and individually, we have separate, subjective experiences of this universal essence. Faith, then, may be like phenomenology; every individual perspective of God (or the universe, or whatever you prefer to call that great force that surfaces perennially to inspire humankind) is one view of a universal phenomenon, which we might call God. We know it through our own experience, and others know it through theirs. We understand the experience others have of it because it is in some way like our own. Is then Spirituality (or God?) the intersubjective object that we reach via our subjective experiences and our own processes of phenomenological reduction, that are our religious practices? I can only tell you of my own personal experience of Spiritualism, for that is what I know. Not for one minute do I suggest that in order to understand Transcendental Phenomenology, that one needs to be a Spiritualist. That would be absurd. It would be like saying that in order to understand happiness you must do only that which makes me happy. I do suggest, however, that a phenomenologist will need to find a way to become truly intuitive in order to connect the subjective experience to the universal form of that experience. That may be via prayer to one’s God, or through meditation or through just being quiet for long enough to receive from the collective unconscious, an insight into the universal form that embodies, transcendentally, the whole essence of the phenomenon in question.

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Bibliography Chambre, H. et al. (2017). Western Philosophy. In Encyclopaedia Britannica. Retrieved from www.britannica.com/topic/Western-philosophy/Contemporary-philosophy Patten, T. (2007). How Consciousness Develops Adequate Complexity to Deal With a Complex World: The Subject-Object Theory of Robert Kegan. Retrieved from https:// terrypatten.typepad.com/iran/files/KeganEnglish.pdf Smith, G. (2018). Beyond Reasonable Doubt: The Case for Supernatural Phenomena in the Modern World. London: Coronet.

4 THE THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVE OF SOLILOQUY Transcendental Phenomenology

In this chapter I intend to look at the essential nature of phenomenology, and its various contortions, along with the reasons why it is largely misunderstood in academic circles today. Transcendental Phenomenology (Husserl, 1964/1929) is pure phenomenology, as offered up through the insightful writings of Edmund Husserl. Because it was written from a philosophical perspective that was unfamiliar to many social scientists in the early twentieth century, it was widely misunderstood. To compound the problem, Husserl’s fair-weather protegé, Martin Heidegger, manipulated the master’s phenomenological terminology, causing much confusion. What started out as a philosophical approach to knowing humankind in general, became at worst, a series of mundane ways of knowing what some phenomenon was like for a small sample of interviewees. It was changed from having a profound, epistemological focus on knowing universal, human traits, to a mundane, ontological view of what a few people have said they felt and did. So how did this happen? In this chapter I ask you to consider the written and anecdotal evidence that Husserl’s phenomenology was misunderstood and maligned. I currently believe that Husserl’s phenomenology was largely overlooked for circumstantial reasons, which include the fact that he was writing during a modern, or as Gebser (1986) would say, ‘Mental mode’ era, and because of the political circumstances that were surrounding Husserl at that time. Husserl’s views on positivism were clear. All these metaphysical questions, taken broadly – commonly called philosophical questions – surpass the world understood as the universe of mere facts … Positivism, in a manner of speaking, decapitates philosophy. (Husserl, 1970, p. 9)

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Written at the start of the twentieth century, Husserl’s work was ahead of its time. Thinking was dominated by a mechanistic and materialistic view of the world (Sheldrake, 2013), wherein anything that was not able to be measured scientifically was regarded with suspicion or merely overlooked. Abstract thought and Platonic ideas of forms and archetypes did not fit into this narrow, positivist view. Contemporary peers to Husserl, such as Jung (1953), Freud (1900/2010), Steiner (2005) and Gebser (1986), who were also pioneering new and challenging concepts, were similarly disregarded with treated with suspicion by the status quo. Only now, a century later as we embark on what Gebser would call the era of ‘integral consciousness’, as all ways of knowing are starting to be appreciated, will scientific thought make room for other ways of comprehending humankind. In fact, with the more recent insights made available through science itself, specifically through quantum physics, the material world as it was thought to exist is now, itself, the matter for further research. Husserl’s pièce de résistance, Transcendental Phenomenology, was created at the end of his career, just before the Second World War. Although initially mentored by Husserl, Heidegger, who was a member of Hitler’s new Nazi Party, went on to personally disrespect his Jewish advocate, while at the same time, professionally bastardising phenomenology. Heidegger changed the focus of phenomenology so that (for him) it was about lifeworld experience. He neglected to change the terminology, however. His reconfiguration of phenomenology made the methodology appear more familiar to his contemporary readers at that time, and so became more easily accepted by them, despite its inconsistencies. Heidegger’s representation of Husserl’s thesis appeared more accessible to scientists who were unreceptive to anything vaguely ‘metaphysical’ (Koestenbaum in Husserl, 1964/ 1929, p. xxii). Heidegger retained the phenomenological terminology, which Husserl had chosen to best articulate his transcendental and epistemological insights, however, Heidegger needed to redefine the terms because they did not make sense in his new, ontological, lifeworld context. As a result, those whom he had influenced, and many today who call themselves phenomenologists, claim to be doing what they now call, ‘Existential Phenomenology’ (ibid.; Crotty, 1996), but I will argue that they are in fact not doing phenomenology at all – at least in any Husserlian sense. Borrowing from Husserl’s work, they claim to be incorporating phenomenological concepts such as the ‘epoche’, ‘bracketing’ and the ‘intuition’ of ‘essences’, but the metaphorical glass slipper of phenomenology will really only fit the original Cinderella – Transcendental Phenomenology. Many contemporary academics and their students have moved away from phenomenology now, claiming it is too hard to understand. It is not hard if it is viewed epistemologically rather than ontologically. For many who attempt to use it in practice, it seems to have metamorphosed into something which resembles Grounded Research with a lot of complicated terms that no one really understands – apparently, and according to his own hand (Hopkins, 2001), not even Heidegger himself.

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In the 1920s and 1930s, the political situation in Europe became increasingly menacing for Husserl, given his Jewish ancestry. Like many at the time, he supposedly converted to Protestantism for a while. He was in Paris in 1933, when Hitler took over Germany. Translator, David Carr in Husserl’s final publication, The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Philosophy: An Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy reminds us that, ‘As a Jew who was denied any public platform in Germany, he had to publish, as he had lectured, outside his own country’ (Husserl, 1970, p. xvii). Although he had officially retired in 1928, he continued to deliver invited lectures in Paris and Prague. He struggled relentlessly for truth, and did not recoil from changing his truth should new knowledge demand it. Hopkins (2001) explains that Husserl’s concern for maintaining the integrity of knowledge exceeded that of any other twentieth-century philosopher. He quotes Husserl: [M]y whole life I have fought, indeed wrestled, for this honesty, and where others had been long-since satisfied, I questioned myself ever anew and scrutinized whether there was not indeed some semblance of dishonesty in the background. All my work, even today, is only to scrutinize and inspect again and again … One must have the courage to admit and say that something one still considered true yesterday, but that one sees to be in error today, is such an error. (Husserl in Hopkins, 2011, p. 337) When Husserl died on 27 April 1938 in Friedburg, his manuscripts were almost lost. History tells us that they were rescued (some say his wife took an active role in their recovery), and that they were brought to Belgium by the Franciscan, Herman Leo Van Breda. This is where the first Husserl archive was founded in 1939. Since the 1950s, Husserlian archives throughout the world have been editing his works and publishing them in Husserliana, an archive for Husserl’s works, which is located in Leuven, Belgium. Outside of the philosophical domain, I have attended many conferences for qualitative methodology over the past decades and in all that time I experienced only one presentation that challenged its audience to understand phenomenology in its political and philosophical context. It was delivered in the year 1998, by the late Dr Michael Crotty at the Conference for the Association of Qualitative Research, in Sydney Australia. A self-disclosed, Existential Phenomenologist, his presentation was unpopular, because he challenged the authenticity of most of the ‘phenomenology’ papers presented at that conference. And there were many such papers in the conference proceedings, as phenomenology was becoming a popular methodology in the new millennium. It was a time when fledgling researchers, like me, thought that all we had to do was draw up a few themes from interview data, and say that we were constructing the essences (deluded by the fantastic idea that it is possible to eliminate all of one’s subjectivity). Dr Crotty helped to correct many

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understandings that were assumed by those whom he referred to as ‘new’ phenomenologists, and possibly as a consequence, put an end to the popularity of Phenomenology in Australian research circles. Although still popular in America, I have heard anecdotally at qualitative conferences in Australia and Great Britain that potential ‘phenomenologists’ were discarding it as ‘too complicated’. At that conference in Sydney in 1998, Dr Michael Crotty, observed that many there who claimed to using phenomenology were failing to do so, even in the existential sense. He claimed that like some inauthentic phenomenologists writing from American Humanist secondary sources, they were not familiar with Husserl’s work. He pointed out that they nevertheless persisted with terms such as ‘bracketing’, ‘intention’ and ‘intuiting meaning units’, but their understanding of these terms aligned with the hermeneutic perspective, made popular by scholars who were partly responsible for the acceleration of what Crotty euphemistically calls, ‘new’ phenomenology. He really means that it is not phenomenology. Although I do not agree with everything Crotty says about phenomenology, his argument is strong and I learned a lot from him in my early days as a PhD student. He emphasised the need for phenomenology to be performed from either an objectivist epistemology (as I have done with Soliloquy) or from a Constructionist epistemology (on which Crotty based his own methodology for Existential Phenomenology). His main complaint was regarding the ‘New Phenomenologists’, whom he accused of using ‘narcissistic’ and ‘subjectivist’ approaches to research, by looking at what an experience was like for someone rather than looking at the phenomena itself – or what Husserl had called, the ‘things themselves’ (Husserl, 2001/1900–1901). In the defence of new scholars at that time, including myself, who were without the advantage of an undergraduate degree in philosophy, there seemed to be few reliable, secondary resources available. Google has come a long way this century, but when I started investigating phenomenology, we relied mostly on books. I recall searching three libraries at Melbourne University in 1991, for texts about phenomenology. There was little to be found, except for some publications by authors whom Crotty would classify as ‘new’ phenomenologists. I found an edited book by Giorgi (Giorgi, 1985) and a chapter by Wertz (in Giorgi, 1985), and little else. They were becoming popular at the time, perhaps because there were few alternative publications, except for the seemingly ominous translations of Husserl. Eventually, following the advice given to me on Transcendental Phenomenology by Dr Crotty, I started my long and slow journey through the translations of Husserl’s work, as I do not read German. Even in English I didn’t understand much, and I sat alongside two solid dictionaries of philosophy for many years during my early, Husserlian encounters. Yet all along, it felt comfortable and oddly familiar. Something about it resonated in me, even though I struggled with the philosophical language. As I began to master some of the terminology, I was astonished to discover parallels between what he was saying and things I felt I had always known. That is what compelled me to stay with it. It vindicates the old adage that we only understand what we already know.

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At the turn of this century, the New Phenomenologists misled many students of methodology, including myself. Some years before my encounters with Husserl, my otherwise successful Master’s thesis (which was a misguided attempt at Phenomenology) was returned by one examiner as failed because he thought that, I ‘did not understand Phenomenology’. His assessment was vetoed by the thesis evaluation panel, because the other examiners had viewed the thesis positively, but I knew somehow that this unwelcome examiner’s report was correct. I decided to look into the matter. Now I see that my generous assessors were possibly less informed. Using the limited phenomenological literature accessible from the Melbourne Baillieu library in 1991, I had based my research methodology on a flawed, secondary source. My cautious examiner set the seed for a future redress of phenomenology with the suggestion that the thesis should fail because I had attended to poor references, and that not only was I not doing phenomenology but I did not know that I was not doing phenomenology. Indeed. Thank you, Dr Warren Lett. You were absolutely right. Now, however, when I am asked to examine theses claiming to be using phenomenology (which I know will be flawed) I decline. It seems unfair to fail students who are being misdirected by their supervisors towards this imprecise methodology they mistakenly call phenomenology. The skewed understanding of Husserl’s philosophy has assumed epidemic proportions in contemporary, academic circles. Conferences for Social Sciences, Education, Psychology, Nursing and the Arts – to name a few – all over the world are presenting papers by authors who are not only not doing phenomenology but are apparently also unaware that they are not doing phenomenology. It is time to set things straight – preferably through public forum. This scrambling of phenomenology began with Martin Heidegger, who was a young and ambitious academic in Husserl’s professional circle. Heidegger went on to manufacture a reputation as (according to some) the one who really developed phenomenology, but this is quite inaccurate. Such misinformation regenerated and spread like a disease. Its enablers were those who could not have read Husserl since their interpretations show no appreciation of transcendental reduction. We were misguided by the following sorts of beliefs: Martin Heidegger … further specified the phenomenological method. He departed from Husserl’s notion of bracketing, because he believes that human beings cannot bracket personal biases, but it is these biases that create the lens through which the researcher views the phenomenon … (Parse, 2001, p. 77) Husserl did not want us to bracket personal biases. He wanted us to bracket the lifeworld through transcendental reduction. I will look at the misuse of Husserl’s terminology later in this chapter but suffice to say at this point that Husserl never purported a conscious separation of personal bias from the observed phenomena, but rather a transcendence of it. One might speculate that had Heidegger properly understood Husserl’s work he would not have been inclined to put a personal spin

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on it. Heidegger began to use Husserl’s phenomenological language, but he used it incorrectly. He was missing the epistemological point at the heart of Husserl’s thesis, because he viewed it from the materialistic, positivist perspective, that is, ontologically. A few philosophers understand pure, Husserlian phenomenology in the ways that have eluded most academics today. I have found the various works of Burt Hopkins very useful, and he has aided my understanding of Husserl’s phenomenology. There is much, too, that I do not understand. I do not pretend that reading the works of both Hopkins and Husserl has been easy for one such as me, who does not have a foundation in Philosophy. I persisted, however, because the life in the texts were on some level recognisable. Not many social researchers who claim to do phenomenology have philosophical scholarship. Those who do are more likely to see the problems of alignment in this new take on phenomenology. I have admired a few enlightened ones – for example, members of the Husserl Circle, who run a small and exclusive, annual, international conference, as well as philosophers such as Koestenbaum (Husserl, 1964/1929) and Spiegelberg. Koestenbaum identifies the phenomenological schism, and supports most eloquently the argument I am attempting to make: Husserl’s conception of phenomenology differs markedly from those who claim to have adopted it. To the existentialists, phenomenology is a disciplined, rigorous, sensitive, and imaginative description and analysis of the data of experience… man’s being in the world. Husserl’s phenomenology is more than that. Not only is Husserl’s orientation pre-eminently epistemological rather than axiological, but his technique is more carefully delineated than it is for the existentialists. (Koestenbaum in Husserl, 1964/1929, p. xxiii) In this chapter I will be contrasting three main understandings of phenomenology. The first and correct understanding is that set out as Transcendental Phenomenology, which was created by Husserl. The second is Existential Phenomenology, which originated as a distortion of Husserl’s thesis, developed by Heidegger. The third group who will be mentioned are the ‘New’ Phenomenologists. This term comes from Crotty (1996), who argued that this group of researchers were working from an epistemology of subjectivism, and consequently were not doing phenomenology.

Platonism and universal form One of the key ideas informing Transcendental Phenomenology is this notion of universal form. In a philosophical context, such thinking can be described as Platonism. Platonism embraces the belief that there is ‘a realm of necessarily existing abstract objects comprising a framework of reality beyond the material world’ (Carder, 2019). It was personified by Plato with the notion of the Greek gods

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existing in a metaphysical reality, and embodying universal, human characteristics. These gods had a substance of their own, in that they did not just exist in the mind of the person who thinks about them, but as a separate reality, independent of any single person’s intention. If they just existed in my mind, for example, they would be products of my subjectivism. The perception that they exist as metaphysical objects or ‘phenomenological essences’, whether or not I even know about them, is consistent with the concept that they are universal objects, and furthermore, that they can be sought via an epistemology of Objectivism. Additionally, they do not exist in the lifeworld. These objects brimming with the traits of humankind are ideal, not physical. A physical manifestation of Cupid does not walk around in the lifeworld. That would be absurd. He is a transcendental essence and an ideal object, not mundane like you or me. We see his reflection in ourselves and others from time to time, but we do not see Cupid in his entirety. I believe it is at this juncture that Heidegger’s ontologically inclined existentialists may begin to dally with what Husserl termed ‘psychologism’ (Husserl, 1964/1929). They say they find ‘essences’ in everyday phenomena, but ideal, metaphysical objects can only appear metaphorically in the lifeworld. I suggest that what these existentialists are really finding are themes based on collected data about lifeworld experiences. These themes are not ‘intuited’, they are thought through cognitively and deduced, like most other mundane, qualitative processes. Legitimate phenomenologists ‘intuit’ essences, as awareness of their existence is received from the researcher’s own unconscious. That unconscious is drawing on, or intuiting from, its connection with the transcendental plane. Is this the place for what Jung calls the Collective Unconscious (Jung, 1966)? What is intuited is the visual or audible or somehow otherwise-sensed impression that is the universal, Platonic form, which has been conjured by the intention or focus of the researcher. For example, when I intuit the phenomenological essence that may come to me in the form of Cupid, I might later realise that my unconscious has presented me with a semblance-solution to my question. Cupid does not appear before me in the lifeworld, but he is presented in his ideal entirety, through perhaps a dream or creative vision. I recognise aspects of him that I have become familiar to me through my own experience. My semblance of Cupid is not the same as the entire ideal form. To confuse the two is absurd ‘psychologism’. The Platonic form and my partial expression of it exist in different realms. My semblance is a reflected schism of the whole, but Cupid is nevertheless real. His reality resides in the transcendental plane and he is an ideal, universal object. He is in metaphorical view of the whole of humanity, with its various cultures and various cultural names for him. He is aptly referred to as a God, because he exists in another reality, although his influence is everywhere in the lifeworld. As a researcher, I know that he is not of my own making. Yet if his presence becomes the apparent response to my phenomenology, I see that my intuition has summoned him. By intuiting and then identifying and naming him as the essential influence that is responding to my research question, I can then use my cognition to synthesise further similarities between Cupid and my research phenomenon. So first I use intuition and then I use reason. This codependence is central to Soliloquy.

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Knowledge and belief In Chapter 2 we considered Rupert Sheldrake’s (Sheldrake, 2013) argument that like many religious belief systems, scientific method is also based on a leap of faith and a set of assumptions. Few would dispute the suggestion that the approach works well when it comes to research that can be measured and quantified, but scientific method cannot adequately address all types of research questions. In the early twentieth century, a group of European philosophers were challenging the dominant, positivist view that all humanistic studies could be approached in the same way as research into the natural sciences. Nietzsche was famously sceptical about the capacities of reason, as was Wilhelm Dilthey (1833–1911), who argued that: Whereas the natural sciences aimed to explain all of physical reality in terms of unchanging, general laws, the ‘human sciences’ (Geisteswissenschaften), such as history, sought to capture unique individuals or events from the past. (Wolin, 2018) Dilthey went on to argue that it was necessary for research into humanistic studies to be based in an alternative epistemology. This need is recognised and addressed today, with most positivist, scientific research being based on an epistemology of Objectivism and most post-positivist, empathic approaches adopting an epistemology of Constructionism. A similar kind of thinking was taking place in France at the time as well, as if there was a kind of morphic resonance (Sheldrake, 2013, 2014) occurring across Europe. Henri Bergson (1859–1941) was exploring what he called a philosophy of ‘vitalism’, in which he compared one’s subjective experience of time, namely ‘duration’, with time proper as it was measured and defined in the natural sciences. He wrote in his book, Creative Evolution (1907): Anticipated time is not mathematical time … It coincides with duration, which is not subject to being prolonged or retracted at will. It is no longer something thought but something lived. (Wolin, 2018) Alfred North Whitehead (Whitehead, 2010) made intriguing insights around this time as well. Whitehead proposed that reality consists of processes rather than objects, and that a subjective experience became an object of experience once it moved from the present to the past. It is believed that Whitehead’s speculations spearheaded the arguments of quantum physics that are creating controversial discussion today (Sheldrake, 2013). So when Husserl was writing about transcendentalism and aiming to make phenomenology a ‘pure’ science, ironically, he may have been riding a kind of telepathy wave of understanding that was drawing from a wealth of metaphysical energies and challengingly alternative belief systems.

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Husserl, like Freud and Jung, built upon Plato’s concept of transcendental form. Freud promoted the idea of an unconscious mind, paving the way for Jung’s concept of Archetype and the Collective Unconscious, and long before them, Plato wrote of transcendental icons in the form of the Greek Gods. It was the basis for what is now a highly respected branch of psychology; that of psychoanalysis. I see clear parallels between phenomenology and psychoanalysis. Each uses information from the unconscious, which is given up to consciousness in the form of an image or symbol. This takes place when the person is in an altered state of consciousness, such as following a period of dreaming, or daydreaming or of immersive creativity. Once the cryptic clue is given from the unconscious, the conscious mind can then analyse its meaning and significance. There are specific ways for one to access this knowledge. If, for example, I am asked to paint myself into the ‘landscape of education’ (an exercise I sometimes set for my Arts Education students), and I ‘unthinkingly’ paint myself walking alongside Aphrodite, then I may later engage my cognition, and explore the possibility that for me, there is beauty in education, as Aphrodite herself is the symbol, or archetype of beauty. Of course, the interpretation is vital here, and therein lies the skill of the researcher who applies Transcendental Phenomenology to research. It is the same skill used by the psychotherapist, who may search for such mythical symbols to interpret a patient’s dream. It will come more easily to some researchers, who exhibit intuitive (Jung, 1953) personality traits. Just as we have different learning styles, we have different research styles, and research outcomes have always been somewhat dependent upon the skill of the researcher. The psychoanalytic theories that inform dynamic psychotherapy, such as those pioneered by Carl Jung (1953), Sigmund Freud (1900/2010) and Milton Erikson (Haley, 1973), are essential to Soliloquy because they inform Transcendental Phenomenology. I do not think that many psychologists nowadays would completely repudiate the existence of the unconscious, but the researcher doing Soliloquy might work with an appreciation of both the power of the unconscious mind, and a notion that Jung calls the ‘collective unconscious’ (Jung, 1966). This aligns with the essential concept inherent in Husserl’s writings on Transcendental Phenomenology. He (Husserl, (1964/1929) tells us that by knowing the most subjective experience, we can access insight into the most intersubjective (universal) knowledge (ibid., pp. 34–36). It is at this point that the phenomenon transcends and becomes intersubjective. We are aware of Husserl’s insistence that phenomenology must be a study of one’s own, personal experience – not a researcher’s analysis of someone else’s account. Also, that these universal insights cannot be thought through in order to make them appear. They must present themselves, metaphorically, in their own time. They are shy, so the researcher must quieten the mind for them to be heard. Husserl needed to create new language to do justice to his brave new world of concepts and icons. When I see myself walking alongside Aphrodite – alongside beauty – it is symbolic. My hypothetical painting could have been a literal one from a lifeworld setting, perhaps showing me walking down a school corridor. But

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instead it sets aside the mundane in order to show the meaning metaphorically, through the profound presence of beauty herself, in her classic Greek form. Husserl refers to this process of looking beyond the obvious and mundane as bracketing. In my painting, the lifeworld (perhaps the actual school corridor) has been transcended (or bracketed) in order to show a more meaningful overview of what the Landscape of Education means to me and then more so – beyond myself. Education aligns with beauty– universally. Artists transcend the lifeworld repeatedly and intrinsically, in order to show their visual statements metaphorically. Writers frequently write using dual levels of meaning, as the simple story becomes a parable for a more profound, transcendental story. So bracketing, in Phenomenology, is to suspend disbelief, and allow the fantastic symbols of the soul to show us the transcendental essence of the situation. Later, in good time, our analytical selves will make sense of it, and convert the images into comprehensible language. For the unconscious always communicates through image and emotion, not words. One hundred years ago, Edmund Husserl developed the philosophy of phenomenology as a way of knowing the essential nature of a personally lived experience. He was out of time. We considered in Chapter 2 Gebser’s thesis that the early twentieth century was dominated by Mental Mode consciousness, where the only recognised approach to research was a positivist one. I have suggested that the young Heidegger, the ambitious academic who had been mentored by Husserl, didn’t seem to grasp the key idea informing Husserl’s philosophy – that of phenomenological reduction. Yet driven by ambition, he allegedly stole Husserl’s terminology and forged new meanings with it, in an attempt to apply it to his awkward, lifeworld interpretations of hermeneutical themes. Like Crotty (1996), I argue that Heidegger spearheaded the hybrid movement in phenomenology that has come to be known as Existential Phenomenology. He retained the terminology created by Husserl, but the definitions of the terminology warped as Heidegger tried to apply them to a different reality. Nevertheless, he went on to influence a whole French school of philosophers, and most of the American Humanists, whose book chapters are quoted by postgraduate students today, as they struggle to understand this Phenomenology, which they claim is so difficult. Of course it is difficult. It must be viewed in the context of Husserl’s philosophy in order for it to theoretically and philosophically align as a research methodology. Soliloquy emerged as a response to this need for such an alignment.

The a priori object Husserl is quite clear about the transcendental nature of phenomenology in his later works, but many scholars continue to draw on his earlier writings, wherein his concept of phenomenological reduction was merely forming. The final insights were dismissed by Heidegger, who considered Husserl to be growing ‘more and more unglued’ (B. Hopkins, 2001, 2011). Heidegger and the existential, ontological phenomenologists who followed him may have fallen into the bind of psychologism, against which Husserl (1927) would have us warned. Once again,

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however, the definition of psychologism itself will vary, and those who do not grasp Husserl’s transcendentalism will not appreciate his understanding of the term. It is used differently by one who does not acknowledge the transcendental domain. Psychologism as I see it and as I understand Husserl’s definition, is the absurd attempt to align the way of knowing the abstract object with the way of knowing the lifeworld one, and making assumptions about one, based on the other. One will not change the nature of its existence to align with the other. That is not possible. They exist in separate realities. They are epistemologically at odds. Philosophical phenomenology seeks ideal objectivism, and existential or ontological phenomenology creates lifeworld themes via constructionism. Husserl makes it clear that the transcendental reality and the lifeworld reality must be known through apperception – that is, the ability to view two contradictory ideas, and to see the truth in each. It is a kind of suspension of disbelief, which children and performers will understand more easily than others who have had to suppress such magical thinking. The transcendental world and the lifeworld exist on different planes and therefore cannot be reconciled. If these existential phenomenologists, or as they are sometimes called, the ‘psychological’ phenomenologists (Husserl, 1927), will not touch on philosophy even so far as to see this mandatory component of phenomenology, then they, like Sisyphus, will be eternally pushing uphill, the question, What is phenomenology?. It cannot be answered in the context of mundane reality! Knockleman’s observations support this view: What is phenomenology? It may seem strange that this question still has to be asked half a century after the works of Husserl. The fact remains that it has by no means been answered. Phenomenology is the study of essences; according to it, all problems amount to finding definitions of essences: the essence of perception, or the essence of consciousness, for example. (Knocklemans, 1967, p. 356) And here we are, a full century after Husserl, still asking the same question. Yet Husserl is clear about two things endemic to his Transcendental Phenomenology. Firstly, the ‘essence’ refers to the a priori object of the inquiry, and secondly, that the practice of phenomenology is a solo experience, which is not to be informed by interview data and co-researcher: All of phenomenology, or the methodological pursuit of a philosopher’s selfexamination, discloses the endless multiformity of this inborn a priori. This is the genuine sense of ‘innate’ … Phenomenology explores this a priori, which is nothing other than the essence…and which is disclosed, and can only be disclosed, by means of my self-examination. (Husserl, 1964/1929, p. 29) Students and their advisors frequently claim to be doing Hermeneutic Phenomenology, which they would maintain is language-based analysis, usually informed by

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interview data. In the light of our discussion so far, and Husserl’s quotation above, we must understand that this is not phenomenology. It is perhaps another hybrid of ‘phenomenology’, that has taken root far away from the original source. The hermeneutical research process itself may result in valid inquiry if handled carefully, but the researchers do not seem to understand that they are not doing phenomenology. Husserl’s thesis, as we observe here, is nothing other than first-person, ‘self-examination’, which culminates in the ‘essence’ or the phenomenological ‘a priori’, transcendental object. To the materialistic and mechanistic world of twentieth century science, this sort of philosophical thinking was incomprehensible. That is why the meaning of phenomenology has been so distorted over the last century. It was ahead of its time and it was not compatible with the mental-mode consciousness, which has been dominating academia for a while now. Despite the criticisms of his contemporary colleagues, Husserl persisted with the establishment of his theory of Transcendental Phenomenology, the only pure phenomenology, and a science which takes one on a journey – past psychological idealism (Husserl, 1964/1929, p. 33), through transcendental idealism (ibid., p. 34) and solipsism to a metamorphic manifestation of the alter ego (ibid.), that is, the intersubjective embrace of the universal object. I maintain that pure phenomenology is simply Transcendental Phenomenology, and unless one can grasp the philosophical implications of this, one cannot appreciate the theoretical framework of phenomenology nor the methods for Soliloquy, which are informed by it.

The pregivenness of objects So now we find ourselves here. We have emphasised that when we talk about Husserl’s objectivism, we must understand that unlike the material objects sought through scientific methods, Husserl’s phenomenology seeks transcendental objects, the archetypes, which cannot be found directly in the lifeworld. We maintain that like Plato’s Gods, the universal objects live in the transcendental plane. They are pregiven, in that they exist in the minds and spirits of humankind, regardless of culture and throughout time. We have mentioned the idea of a single transcendental object with various cultural presentations – like beauty herself, which the Greeks might call Aphrodite, while the Romans will call her Venus. She is one essence – the essence of beauty. She does not walk about in the lifeworld in godly entirety – she cannot, as to think so would be to partake in the absurdity that Husserl names Psychologism. She is a metaphor for beauty, and because she does not live, she does not die. Her beauty is eternal and evident in its many lifeworld forms – in nature, in love, in all that we recognise as beauty. Her form is enduring, perennial and eternal, albeit elusive. She is the symbol, the essence of beauty. When the researcher is finally given the essence of the inquiry, it comes as an image, like that of a goddess. Unlike the ethnographer who will construct themes from hir conscious investigation into lifeworld data, the phenomenologist seeks archetypal forms such as Aphrodite, who lives in our collective unconscious (Jung). The collective unconscious knows image, not words, and in

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particular, not thoughtful, thematic responses to hermeneutic inquiry, for that dwells in the conscious domain. This is how Husserl describes the transcendental process, which culminates in connection with the pregiven object. He explains that it presents itself through the epoche – that vacuum of consciousness in which the brain stills in order to receive pregiven, universal knowledge. Husserl says: We perform the epoche – we who are philosophising in a new way – as a transformation of the attitude which precedes it not accidentally but essentially, namely, the attitude of natural human existence which, in its total historicity, in life and science, was never really interrupted. But it is necessary, now, to make really transparent the fact that we are not left with a meaningless, habitual abstention; rather, it is through this abstention that the gaze of the philosopher in truth first becomes fully free: above all, free of the strongest and most universal, and at the same time most hidden, internal bond, namely of the pregivenness of the world. (Husserl, 1981, p. 151) Let me break this down to convey my understanding of what Husserl is saying here. I think this holds a key to the link between apodictic knowing and the transcendental object. I am keen to be transparent rather than slide over notions on slippery terminology, which may leave the reader with a different understanding of my intention altogether. Philosophers write for philosophers, and it takes the lay reader a lifetime to decipher the many connotations that are loaded into the terminology. Ironically, I am attempting here to communicate these ideas in plain English. As phenomenologists, we can go beyond language, but as a methodologist or an academic, we are necessarily enslaved by it and must do our best to explain ourselves. So here goes: Husserl says, We perform the epoche – we who are philosophising in a new way – as a transformation of the attitude which precedes it not accidentally but essentially, namely, the attitude of natural human existence. (Husserl, 1964/1929) His epoche is performed. It involves the action of withdrawing from the conscious lifeworld into the abyss that precedes and pervades altered states of consciousness; into the dreaming of the unconscious mind. We are philosophising in a new way, because unlike the positivists, we are suspending our concern with the lifeworld and with logic and rationality. This is necessary and ‘essential’. It is a transformation of the attitude which precedes it – that is, the natural attitude is transformed into the transcendental attitude through the void of consciousness that is the epoche. Although we leave ‘the attitude of natural human existence which, in its total historicity, in life and science, was never really interrupted’, our actions do not

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impact upon the natural world. This will exist as always, and we are as if in a parallel existence as we float to the transcendental attitude – the realm of the unconscious. Husserl then assures us that this will be a rewarding step. When I embarked on this years ago as a PhD student, and took the step of discarding my many hours of autoethnographical data, it occurred to me that this new-found elevation into the abyss may result in nothing – a void of any knowledge or insight. It didn’t. It led me to where I am now still searching. Husserl assures us that by bracketing out the material world, the epoche will lead us to insights beyond it. He says: it is necessary, now, to make really transparent the fact that we are not left with a meaningless, habitual abstention; rather, it is through this abstention that the gaze of the philosopher in truth first becomes fully free: above all, free of the strongest and most universal, and at the same time most hidden, internal bond, namely of the pregivenness of the world. (Husserl, 1964/1929) This pregivenness of the world is the universal object that appears as the image to embody our inquiry. It is relevant to all of humankind, thus it is the universal, intersubjective object. So the question that was originally embarked on by the researcher through personal, subjective inquiry transcends the solipsistic state to reveal an ideal form, in relevant response to the research question, and recognisable to all, regardless of culture, language or other mere lifeworld divisions. Those who cannot grasp this essential function of phenomenology – the existentialists and the subjectivists – will miss the significance of this form. They will miss the phenomenology. Consequently they will struggle to make sense of the process by reconstructing meanings outside of Husserl’s concept. They will redefine terms such as bracketing, epoche, pre-givenness and indeed, phenomenology. As contended, the reason they use Husserl’s language at all can be traced back to the bastardisation of Husserl’s phenomenology by his then protégé, Martin Heidegger. Heidegger tried to rewrite Husserl’s metaphysical thesis to fit into his ontological, mundane perspective of reality, and consequently had to distort the philosophical terminology. Aphrodite does not appear in her entirety in the lifeworld, but because the existentialists and the hermeneutics cannot see or intuit the goddess, their ineloquent descriptions work merely, and at best, to construct a hollow shell of the deity herself. She is referred to as the theme of ‘beauty’, while her glorious abundance of connotation and splendour that is Aphrodite is missed. The so-called objects of Existential Phenomenology are usually such themes, drawn from conscious analysis of interview data. Whereas the pure phenomenologist receives a’priori objects through the transcendental epoche, these themes are cognitive constructions. In Soliloquy, based on pure phenomenology, the object, albeit transcendental, exists whether or not it is observed and recognised by the researcher. It is based on the epistemology of Objectivism. Phenomenology is not known through Constructionism, although those who call themselves Existential

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or Hermeneutic Phenomenologists would have us believe so. Constructionism usually involves an active process of a busy, conscious mind, It is noisy, and the pregiven object will not be intuited above all that thinking. The pregiven, transcendental object is shy. The circumstances need to be conducive for it to emerge. It is lured forth via the epoche. It is lured by silence. Husserl goes on to clarify that it is the intersubjective, pregiven object that results from this highly subjective, solipsistic interaction with the lifeworld: Given in and through this liberation (the epoche) is the discovery of the universal, absolutely self-enclosed and absolutely self-sufficient correlation between the world itself and world consciousness. By the latter is meant the conscious life of the subjectivity which effects the validity of the world, the subjectivity which always has the world in its enduring acquisitions and continues to actively shape it anew. And there results, finally, taken in the broadest sense, the absolute correlation between beings of every sort and every meaning, on the one hand, and absolute subjectivity, as constituting meaning and ontic validity in this broadest manner, on the other hand. (Husserl, 1981, pp. 151–152) Following on from this, Husserl rules out methods that are typical of the existential approach to phenomenology. He explains that the way to phenomenological enlightenment is to view the thing from above; to view the wood, instead of the trees. Rather than approaching the phenomenon from the ontological domain, it is given through the apophatic domain. The thing is constituted through transcendental subjectivity. The transcendental researcher intuits meanings, both apodictically and through the epoche, thus embracing the true (subjective/intersubjective) essence and spirit of the phenomenon: What must be shown in particular and above all is that through the epoche a new way of experiencing, of thinking, of theorizing, is opened to the philosopher; here, situated above his own natural being and above the natural world, he loses nothing of their being and of their objective truths and likewise nothing at all of the spiritual acquisitions of his world-life … he simply forbids himself – as a philosopher … to ask questions which rest upon the ground of the world at hand, questions of being, questions of value, practical questions, questions about being or not being, about being valuable, being useful, being beautiful, being good etc. … It is from this very ground that I have freed myself through the epoche; I stand above the world, which has now become for me, in a quite peculiar sense, a phenomenon. (Husserl, 1981, p. 152) Here we see that Husserl’s argument is in direct contrast to that of Heidegger and the modern existentialists. Husserl forbids himself questions about being, whereas Heidegger’s philosophy is all about being. They claim to be doing phenomenology of the ‘lived experience’ and yet they experience something quite different (although

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they still call it the epoche). Husserl makes it clear that the epoche is situated ‘above the world’, and that the philosopher cannot ask questions relating to being or practicalities, because, ‘it is from this very ground that I have freed myself through the epoche’. So according to Husserl, the ontological disfigurement of phenomenology is not possible. The task is absurd. It is what Husserl calls ‘psychologism’, because phenomenology is transcendental and the lifeworld must be born again through the reflection of itself, that is the epoche. Let me tell you a story about the lifeworld and transcendentalville.

The story of art As you would know, there are three planes of existence. There is the physical, lifeworld from which we now speak, which is the first and lowest plane. Secondly, there is the transcendental plane where phenomenologists and artists sometimes go, and where Plato discovered his ‘forms’, having peered into the third plane, which is of course, the plane of the gods. As it happened, a small god, known only by the generic term, ‘Phenomenon’, once descended to earth via magic. He was unable to understand any of the verbal languages spoken in this lifeworld, but he knew that in order to reascend to his rightful place at the heavenly table of archetypes, he would need to establish his true identity; that is, his element. Aphrodite had once smiled upon him and shown him the element of beauty, and this had inspired him to seek the essence of his own existence. It had, in fact, inspired him in every way. When he would seek to catch a glimpse of beauty, he would sometimes see Aphrodite in strange and unexpected places. There was occasional talk of beauty in the lifeworld, but since the small god could not understand talk, he would look underneath the language for clues; he sought knowledge sub-textually. And he hoped with all his mythical being that his own element might become as clear as beauty. Phenomenon, as he was vaguely known, had found himself amidst a busy and forbidding lifeworld plane. He became confused. At first there were no signs of his role-model, Aphrodite, but as he became accustomed to the harsh physicality of the place, he would see specks of light here and there which he knew to be fallen droplets from her eyes. This regained sense of Aphrodite gave him confidence. He explored the plane, wandering here and there without any purpose that was apparent to him. He explored the world

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experientially, but he could not talk about it, because he did not understand talk. This meant that he could not categorise his thoughts by using language as a clustering mechanism. His thoughts were becoming many and untidy, lying about on the floor of his mind in the very place that was to be kept special for thoughts of Aphrodite! The more he experienced, the more the mess piled up. The more it piled up, the more pressure it put on his mind, until one day it happened that he decided to take a good look at the items that had accrued in his mind. And as he clambered over all the stuff, he got higher and higher until his head was sticking up into the transcendental plane. From there he lost all sight of his actual experiences, but he could just manage to see them reflected in a large lake, next to which he had been residing. He gazed at his reflected experiences. He was too high to see any of them in watery detail, but to his astonishment he saw that the many and varied items had fallen into a pattern. The colours had balanced, as if arranged by a painter, and there was texture and movement in the design. Like Narcissus he became transfixed with an image of himself – his form, his element. He wondered if he should name it in order to take it back to earth. Then suddenly it was gone. Lifeworld rationality had killed it, and a drop of blood from his own brain fell to implode the vision. This loss of insight impacted upon the little god. Having been sucked rudely back down to earth through a tunnel of reality, he decided to pursue his element by safer, scientific means. He learned language so that when he caught glimpses of his true identity, he could borrow words and clichés to capture and hold them. He gathered themes to trap his insights, and wrote them down so they could not wander. He sought to find and name his element through rigour and member-checking and triangulation. And he took lessons in piano and mathematics to appease his status anxiety. He forgot about the transcendental plane, which had shown him patterns. There was too much to do – too much to label, for now he was in the real world of accountability and hierarchy, and this talk of other dimensions of thought wasn’t convincing anyone! It seemed that he would never find his true element, so instead he gave himself a name. He called himself Persephone. As he became accustomed to this lowly plane, he developed fear and doubt and depression. And when he

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thought he could smell the perfume of Aphrodite on the breeze, he dismissed it as a brain tumour. Then one day as he sat at his piano, and all hope of finding his purpose and identity had passed, he drifted into a daydream. And as he dreamed, he began to play, and the music evoked patterns in his mind. They were the same patterns that he had glimpsed in the transcendental plane, but now they shook with sound. And he cried out, ‘I am Art!’ Just like that! He was Art. For it is Art that transcends the lifeworld to reveal universal patterns, and Art that is the go-between for heaven and earth. Of course Art needs an instrument through which to express himself, so he did not know who he was until he resounded through his language of music. In this new millennium, researchers are beginning to embrace ways of knowing without the contextual limitations of those who pioneered these breakthroughs at the end of the nineteenth century. Even for some of the most recognised scholars of phenomenology, Husserl’s transcendentalism was deemed obtuse. Contrary to the opinion I put forward here, it has been argued that one can use Husserl’s phenomenology without heeding the philosophy on which it is founded. This popular idea is that the methodology can be separated from the philosophy: With Husserl the term ‘phenomenology’ occurs in two meaning contexts: (1) to signify method, (2) to signify a philosophy. We use the term exclusively to refer to the method and remain completely impartial to Husserl’s development of phenomenological philosophy. (Langeveld in Van Manen, 1989, p. 33) The irony is that those who misuse the methodology do so precisely because they have ignored or misunderstood the philosophy. I think that attempting to apply the methodology outside of its philosophical context, is what has led to much of the confusion that I attribute to phenomenology in its broad and broadest senses. Heidegger and those who followed him were trying to find universal truths among the crowded, subjective superficialities of the lifeworld. Metaphorically speaking, they could not see the wood for the trees. There was no transcendental transformation, no bringing forth of the transcendental subjectivity. The everyday themes and hypotheses remained just so – mundane. Conscious thought that is not guided through unconscious synthesis will not reach the universal object. It will merely produce themes relevant to that situation – just as it is so for any ethnographer or Grounded theorist – but it will not grasp the transcendental object of Phenomenology. The aspiring phenomenologist who aims to remain completely impartial regarding his personal bias, is naïve. Husserl does not actually set out a methodology as such, but he points to the guiding principles. Others have attempted to

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decipher a methodology from these guidelines, inventing new interpretations of his terminology to make it applicable to their proposed methods. Husserl’s own work developed throughout his lifetime. It grew and evolved, leaving some of his followers behind. If one is to fashion a methodology and claim it to be based on Husserl, one needs to be specific about the time and theoretical context on which this application is based. Existential phenomenologists usually refer to Husserl’s early work, and bypass the essential notion of the transcendental object, which is the outcome of phenomenological reduction. Soliloquy seeks to be an application of Husserl's final resolve.

Transcendental Phenomenology in life and research Once I stood only a few feet from a lioness that would have surely killed me, had not the force of her fury impacted against the iron bars of her cage. My back was against the brick wall that edged the narrow walkway for the keepers. I had been told to keep away from the bars, because lions could reach through them. I had been holding her three-week old cubs, already able to challenge my embrace with real strength in those little arms and thick paws; claws and teeth already formed. When they were returned to her cage, and she was released from her security enclosure, she flew at me. Maybe there was four feet between us by the time she hit the bars, but for an instant, before I knew what was happening, there was a moment of impending doom, so profound that, in Polanyi’s (Polanyi, 1967) terms, it was more than I could say. It was primal. I suppose there was some fear – no – I just made that up then. There was no fear. It just didn’t occur to me until later. But there was something greater – like a surrender to inevitability – a strange sort of calm, and there was a predominant sense of awe at her beauty and power. This description is quite inadequate. It was one of the most basic moments of my life. My identity was dwarfed in the shadow of the beast. My place in the scheme of things had been given a new perspective. Comparatively, and on her terms, I was cat food. With the sensation of the animal’s body falling into the cyclone wire that, I had forgotten, had separated us – with the momentary defeat of her power by the reality of the barrier, I too fell. I fell from the transcendental attitude back to the natural attitude – then fear, then a roaring in my ears that was my own blood, then a scanning for labels to categorise the experience, an estimation of the distance between myself and the cage, a guess at the length of the cat’s arm and its ability to come at me through the gap at the bottom of the cage, a strange pity for the beast as it was now rendered impotent by its imprisonment, then someone nearby said something – then a decision to move away – then a cognitive minimisation of my personal experience… Crotty’s ‘new’ phenomenologist (Crotty, 1996) might ask, ‘What was that like for you?’ But is that really what we, as potentially hunted ones, wish to know? Or do we want to know more about that suspended moment of awe, that archetypal dimension in which we prepare for lion attack; the instant that transcends one’s fears and pathetic ambitions and confronts us with the I-am-cat-food crisis? Crotty (1996) uses the term ‘new phenomenology’ to describe the approach to social research that has grown out of the American Humanist Psychology movement. It is

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worthy of identification here because so much of the literature on phenomenology is drowning in it. There is the implication, however, that if we are to consider ‘new’ phenomenology, then it should perhaps be in the context of some ‘old’ phenomenology, and what is that? Crotty’s use of the term ‘new’ is really just a euphemism for ‘non’, I suspect, so clarification should not be sought chronologically. The problem that Crotty points to is that there are researchers who call themselves phenomenologists, yet paradoxically, appear to be epistemologically steeped in subjectivism. He argues that it is the object of the experience that must be explored through phenomenology, so if there is no object independent of the subject, if the object has collapsed into the subject, then phenomenology, by mere fact of definition, is impossible. There has been much confusion surrounding Husserl’s alleged period of idealism. Yet Husserl explicates the essential phenomenological relationship between the subject and object via the act of intentionality. In Cartesian Meditations, an earlier work by Husserl, he writes: The object is, so to speak, a pole of identity, always meant expectantly as having a sense yet to be actualised, in every moment of consciousness it is an index, pointing to a noetic intentionality that pertains to it according to its sense, an intentionality that can be asked for and explicated. (Husserl, 1977, p. 45) This is reminiscent of Whitehead’s notion of subjective intention becoming an objectified event after it has moved from the present to the past (Sheldrake, 2013, 2014). Is this an example of Sheldrake’s morphic resonance? Were certain colleagues in Husserl’s circle of associates intuitively linked? Not every scholar was on that wavelength. We might ponder the alternative for a moment if we are to better understand the twentieth century situation of that fledgling phenomenological movement. In his first book, Phenomenology and Nursing Research, Crotty (1996) is concerned with the confusion that the Maslow/Rogers led, American humanist psychology movement has created for aspiring phenomenologists. Like Husserl, Maslow and Rogers were the forerunners of challengingly new concepts, and Rogers, in particular, was moving away from the conventional theory at the time, which assumed that the mind was part of the physical brain. The influence that concerns Crotty is more to do with the humanists’ focus on subjectivism. Here he describes how the North American humanists changed the nature of phenomenology: This strange Continental mode of thought and inquiry (phenomenology) was transposed into something more familiar, with humanistic psychology proving an effective instrument in this Americanising of phenomenology. Already part of the tradition referred to, humanistic psychology had succeeded in setting down deep roots and was not to be dislodged or even challenged. (Crotty, 1996, p. 121)

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Crotty goes on to explain that humanistic psychology became most quickly entrenched in the caring professions such as nursing. When I was privileged to hear Dr Crotty speak at a Sydney conference in 1998, shortly before his untimely death, he expressed his concern that of the forty or so theses that he had examined, which had claimed to be phenomenological inquiries into nursing research, only one or two were actually doing phenomenology. The others were subjective accounts of the co-researchers’ experiences. Apparently, the authors had completely missed (what Crotty argued is) the point of phenomenology. They had focused on the subjective descriptions in the data rather than on the objects of the data, that is, the phenomena. Phenomenology had become confused with something else. Crotty agrees that much of this confusion is due to misuse of phenomenological terminology: Yet the rhetoric of phenomenology has also been appealing. Thus we find a marriage of phenomenological terminology with methods drawn from and based on the Maslow-Rogers form of humanistic psychology. This explains the anomaly often found in nursing literature and elsewhere where an unobjectionable exposition of phenomenology is coupled with a method that in no way seeks to investigate phenomena but is content to deal with noetic aspects only in the style of humanistic psychology. (Crotty, 1996, p. 122) The point worth noting here is that (as with my own early attempts at phenomenology) in these cases the researchers are unaware that they are not doing phenomenology. The ‘noetic aspects’ to which Crotty refers are the ‘what was that like for you?’ kind of inquiries, targeted at personal descriptions and subjective insights. Crotty calls himself an Existential Phenomenologist. For him, this means he must seek his ‘phenomenon’, which will amount to a theme to shed light on his inquiry. He argues that Phenomenology is not a series of subjective descriptions, but a single, identifiable ‘essence’ that answers the research question. Being an Existential Phenomenologist, the means by which he arrives at this essence – or theme – is through careful, cognitive analysis. It differs from Husserlian phenomenology in that the process is not transcendental; it remains cognitive like the physical sciences. What Crotty asks for is a unit of meaning, theme or a cognitive outcome for the enquiry. He uses a process called ‘ideation’, which was created by Husserl early in his work on phenomenology, but later abandoned and made redundant when transcendental phenomenology emerged as the final outcome. Existential Phenomenologists, who do not surrender to the unconscious as a means to making sense of the data, attempt to work it all out cognitively. In my opinion, it is a comparatively inefficient approach, as our conscious minds lack the synthesising power of the unconscious and the collective unconscious. Nevertheless, the existentialists work thorough this ideation process, which involves a lot of thinking and rethinking, to finally produce a description of the phenomenon. I believe this existential approach to be a legitimate, mental-mode research methodology, in the

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vein of other interpretivist approaches. It comes from Heidegger’s ontological approach, and I respect the methods, however as I have repeated, and to be sure I will again, it is not phenomenology in the final, Husserlian sense. We need to know where we are coming from epistemologically, in order to ensure that our methodology and methods are feeding back into that. Crotty’s approach is especially well aligned and rigorous. His five-step approach (Crotty, 1996, pp. 158– 159) to doing Existential Phenomenology outlines how one should construct themes from the data. Epistemologically, it is grounded in Constructivism. In contrast, Transcendental Phenomenology, Husserl’s pièce de résistance, is given up via the unconscious, as a preformed, ideal object. It contains the universal essence that will resonate with humankind. It will speak to many, not just the few who reside in the narrow context of the inquiry. Crotty’s criticism of his ‘new’ phenomenologists are similar to those I direct at the existentialists. In each case we argue that the other is not reaching the phenomenological object. He is highly critical of subjectivism. He explains that central to phenomenology is Brentano’s idea of intentionality. Crotty argues that this essential interplay between subject and object is absent with subjectivism. Consequently, he contends that subjectivism is not compatible with phenomenology: In subjectivism, meaning does not come out of an interplay between subject and object but is imposed on the object by the subject. Here the object as such makes no contribution to the generation of meaning. It is tempting to say that in constructionism meaning is constructed out of something (the object), whereas in subjectivism meaning is constructed out of nothing. We humans are not that creative, however … The meaning we ascribe to the object may come from our dreams, or from primordial archetypes we locate within our collective unconscious … from anything but an interaction between the subject and the object to which it is ascribed. (Crotty, 1998, p. 9) It is interesting that through constructionism, Crotty understands that meaning which we ascribe to the object may come from our dreams or from the collective unconscious, whereas I understand the phenomenological object to be given as is (not interpreted) through these same means. Husserl’s succinct explanation of the paradoxical process towards intersubjectivity is described in his Encyclopaedia Britannica article of 1927. He explains that only through the most subjective experience can one reach the most objective outcome. Through the personal we glimpse the universal. The archetypes, which present themselves through Transcendental Phenomenology are intersubjective in that they are universally recognised by humankind. These forms transcend language, learning, culture and race. They are revealed via the process of eidetic reduction, that is, through the metamorphosis of my own lifeworld experience into the transcendental object. I wonder why Crotty did not take that final theoretical step into transcendental phenomenology? He was well aware of it, because he identified that I was heading

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in that direction, long before I knew it, and I thank him for saving me a few more years trying to work it out for myself. I seek the a priori object, as given, and Crotty seeks to construct the object. Apparently his ‘new’ phenomenologists (Crotty, 1996) do not seek it at all! So what about all this research that is being produced under the banner of phenomenology? What about ‘new’ phenomenology? Does it matter if it’s really phenomenology after all? Is not the research perhaps valuable whatever its academic pigeonhole? Crotty has brought to our attention that if we are to present research for academic contribution, then we have the obligation to our readers and to ourselves to have attempted familiarity with the broader epistemological questions about how we know what we know. I do not mean that we should have fixed answers, for surely such constructions will be in perpetual flux, but we do need to have an appreciation of the complexity of the research arena and some best guesses as to why we have chosen to use specific categories and terminologies. In my own research I have shifted my epistemological stance several times, as I grow and am able to understand more. At the moment, I understand that by entering into a period of utmost subjectivism, one might pass through the epoche to emerge with the transcendental, universal object. Trust in the pre-existence of this object, in the thing-in-itself, makes for objectivism. That is where I currently am, and I have built Soliloquy from that perspective. As a researcher, you will navigate your philosophy to inform your approach. That is the work we do: we go about finding out what we need to know in the most appropriate ways. Transcendental Phenomenology will suit those of us who intuit knowledge easily. Thinkers may prefer methods that are informed through analysis and logic only. Both are serviceable. Each will provide different types of insights. To present this idea another way, I would like to quote Spiegelberg’s definition of phenomenology. He points to the plethora of approaches that shelter under that title. Like Crotty, who criticises ‘new’ phenomenology, Spiegelberg (1972) warns us against phenomenology in its ‘widest sense’. They have concerns, as I do, for the number of phenomenologists-in-name-only who bandy-about Husserl’s terminology with no thought to the alignment of their methodologies nor the authenticity of their methods: By ‘phenomenology’ I shall understand what I called previously ‘phenomenology in the broad sense,' i.e. the approach advocated by the original group of Husserl’s early collaborators and their successors, who interpreted the motto of ‘going to the things’ as a faithful description of what was intuitively given, including not only particular phenomena but also their essential structures. This broad sense is to be distinguished from the strict sense in which the ways in which these phenomena appear are studied, as well as from the strictest sense implied by the introduction of Husserl’s phenomenological reduction – i.e., the operation of ‘bracketing’ or suspending the belief in the reality of the immediately given, an operation leading to ‘transcendental phenomenology’. On the other hand, phenomenology is not to be taken in the widest sense of

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the term which would include everyone who, regardless of his relation to the movement, has adopted either consciously or unconsciously one or other of the techniques mentioned above. (Spiegelberg, 1972, p. xxxii) Soliloquy has been conceived in the ‘strictest sense’, having embraced transcendental reduction. Crotty’s constructionism would probably place him in the court of Spiegelberg’s ‘strict sense’, which brings us to the question of phenomenology in the ‘new’ or ‘widest’ sense. Unfortunately, it still keeps appearing in PhD candidature applications in the areas of Education and the Social Sciences. I have chaired conference tracks which include phenomenological approaches in Spiegelberg’s ‘widest sense’ and find it difficult to see beyond the flawed methodology to appreciate the gist of the presentation. When asked about the methodology, I hear students say they are doing a ‘sort of phenomenology’. Actually, they have not defined their approach accurately. Researchers need to be able to do this and defend their choices whenever necessary.

Is all Phenomenology Transcendental? I am convinced that pure Phenomenology is Transcendental Phenomenology, however, qualitative researchers outside of Philosophy departments seem to be mostly unfamiliar with transcendentalism. These contemporary researchers who claim to be doing phenomenology also appear to be, however unwittingly, doing Existential Phenomenology. As Michael Crotty advised my naïve student self, some twenty years ago, ‘few have followed Husserl down the path of transcendentalism’. Well now, perhaps it is time. One cannot reach the epoche through someone else’s descriptions. I have suggested that the practitioner of Existential Phenomenology either reaches the universal object unwittingly, through unconscious transcendence and eidetic reduction, or does not encounter the epoche at all, and consequently produces mundane, lifeworld descriptions and themes. The latter alternative has the potential to be redefined and presented as useful, qualitative research, but it is not phenomenology. I argue that Phenomenology is:    

always philosophically transcendental; always epistemologically objective; always starting in the empirical lifeworld and ending with the a priori reduction; and always a solo investigation without co-researchers.

It takes the form of a journey to and through the epoche, which bars the psychological ego, giving free passage to the transcendental ego (the observer) to reach the alter ego (the intersubjective self), wherein one encounters the archetype (Jung’s term).

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This way to intuitive knowledge is echoed universally. Koestenbaum (in Husserl, 1964/1929, p. xlii) points out that in Oriental philosophy, this source is referred to as the Atman or Purusha, and has religious significance. I believe this transcultural process to be as natural as breathing. We solve personal problems and make personal decisions in this way on a daily basis. Why should research be so different? Research has been hijacked by mental mode consciousness for at least the past four centuries. We are now ready to allow for other ways of knowing to guide our research – up to a point. That point is where the universal object has been given up by the unconscious through Magical or Mythical Consciousness, after which, our cognition can take on the role of clarifier and communicator and articulate the meaning of the given objects. In contrast to many contemporary interpreters of secondary sources on Phenomenology, or perhaps of the earlier writings of Husserl, I maintain that Phenomenology is not:     

philosophically existential; epistemologically constructionist; necessarily hermeneutical; sourced through descriptions of other people’s experiences; nor a methodology involving co-researchers, except perhaps in the final stages, when the research may be presented as theatre or literature or in some other interactive art form.

Much of the confusion surrounding any discussion of this nature results from the terminology. In the case of Phenomenology, Husserl’s original terminology was reinstated with reinvented meanings when Heidegger began to write about it. The terms now have different meanings to different writers, yet we expect others to understand our gist. For example, the term ‘alter ego’ means different things when use in different contexts. As I see it, archetypes such as beauty, love, greed and indulgence, for example, may be personified through God-like images and are known to us all, intersubjectively, through our alter ego – that is, our transcended self. I am perhaps going beyond Husserl’s view here, but I understand the alter ego to be the single point where we all connect as one. I think it is what Jung termed our ‘collective unconscious’. The idea of a ‘Collective Unconscious’ was contemporary to Husserl’s own emerging concepts, yet ironically, and by its very nature, it may have been also known to him on some level. I see Husserl’s transcendental object as one that resides in Jung’s Collective Unconscious, and Husserl’s transcendental self as the alter ego, which merges as one with humankind. In phenomenology, an object, be it universal or mundane, finds recognition via the intentionality of a subject. Husserl uses the term alter ego extensively when describing phenomenological reduction through apodictic constitution. To put it another way, I understand Husserl’s alter ego to be the intersubjective self. Husserl explains that the alter ego manifests itself as an experienced presentation. So then, is the alter ego manifested as the object presented (I am beauty) or as the

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collective unconscious to which the object belongs (I have beauty)? I am not sure if Husserl answers this. Perhaps it is both. He does say that it emerges as a necessary result of phenomenological reduction: We must ask what kind of constitution is necessary for another self to appear as an existent in my realm of consciousness and in my world. It is a fact that I experience other minds as real, and not only do I experience them in conjunction with nature, but as interlaced into one whole with nature. Furthermore, I experience other minds in a unique manner. Not only do I experience them as spatial presentations psychologically interlaced with the realm of nature, but I also experience them as experiencing this self-same world which I experience. I also experience them experiencing me in the same way as I experience them, and so on. In myself, within the confines of my transcendental consciousness, I experience everything whatsoever. But I experience the world not as my own private world, but as an intersubjective world, one that is given to all human beings and which obtains objects accessible to all….However, what is indicated under these circumstances, that is, when I carry out phenomenological self-disclosure and through it the interpretation of what is legitimately indicated, is another transcendental subjectivity. The transcendental ego establishes in itself – not arbitrarily, but necessarily – a transcendental alter ego. In this manner, transcendental subjectivity is expanded to become intersubjectivity, to become an intersubjective transcendental community, which, in turn, is the transcendental ground for the intersubjectivity of nature and the world in general, and, no less of the intersubjective being of all ideal objectivities. (Husserl, 1964/1929, pp. 34–36) This is an important description of Husserl’s Transcendental Phenomenology. To the hardened materialist, it may not seem comprehensible. One must suspend understanding of life being just about the present, which, in the words Steve Miller’s famous song, ‘keeps slipping into the future’ (from ‘Fly Like an Eagle’), and dwell on the philosophical reality of Plato’s eternal forms. The next section will look at how this can come together in research practice through apodictic understanding and the alter ego.

The alter ego, apodictic truth and eidetic reduction My pioneering venture into transcendental phenomenology, which brought me to the archetype of the Wizard of Oz, also led me down the yellow brick road to Soliloquy. In my first encounter with the approach, I had asked the question, ‘What counts as directing?’ and was surprised when the Wizard of Oz surfaced from my unconscious on two occasions. The first time it appeared I did not recognise it as significant, so it began to hammer on the door of consciousness until I became aware of it. It appeared and reappeared in the script of a play that I was writing – and then it was obvious. The theatre director was like the Wizard of Oz because everyone believes the director to

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have great powers and they talk about hir ‘vision’ for the artwork. In reality, however, the play evolves as a collaborative effort through the work of the actors. It is the director who empowers the actors in order for the magic to happen, just as the Wizard of Oz empowers the story characters by reminding them of their own strengths. (Baum, 1998) As I understand it, the Wizard of Oz (or Aphrodite, or Apollo, or any archetype relevant to my research) is an aspect of my alter ego. It resides in our Collective Unconscious, and consequently it is recognised by and accessible to all. It is potentially universal, as it is an object that may appear, perennially, to symbolise that particular phenomenon. The Wizard of Oz emerged as the object to represent directing, however other situations with similar dynamics may also be appropriate for the emergence of the Wizard of Oz. For example, it is widely appreciated that through psychotherapy, the patient is actively responsible for creation of his or her wellbeing. The therapist, although outwardly seen as the instigator of recovery, is arguably, more like the Wizard of Oz. The therapist, like the director, to varying degrees is the catalyst for the patient’s recovery. Like any archetype, the Wizard of Oz may appear in the most unexpected of places via phenomenology. In my case, he was the phenomenological essence presented to me through the process of eidetic reduction – which is the intuitive process that takes place in my unconscious. When my subjective experiences were synthesised by my unconscious they formed an apodictic truth – that is, a representation of the whole phenomena, not just as I saw it from one, lifeworld perspective. In this case, my subjective experiences of directing were processed as the archetype of the Wizard of Oz. This archetype has universal meaning, not just subjective relevance to me. Phenomenology requires a distinction to be made between lifeworld, perceivable objects and transcendental, abstract objects. This is the key difference between popular Existential Phenomenology and Husserl’s Transcendental Phenomenology. Whereas the first spends a lot of energy trying to understand the research phenomenon from one perspective, Husserl’s approach allows the entire essence of that object to be presented directly to the researcher. Then it can be understood by others, because after the transcendental reduction of the subjective experience to the intersubjective object, it is potentially relevant to humankind. It is convenient to demonstrate this with reference to visual objects. The Oxford Companion to Philosophy introduces the concept most eloquently and provides a concrete example to explain the perceptual differences between a lifeworld view of a thing a philosophical, ‘direct knowledge’ view of it. An essence can be presented to the mind in its totality in one mental act of intuition. Perceptual objects, however, can never be so presented. According to phenomenologists, we can only perceive aspects of them. This is one of the fundamental differences between essences and certain individual things. What does it mean to perceive aspects of, say, one of our billiard balls? There seem to be two notions of an aspect at work. Firstly, we must distinguish between the colour instance of billiard ball A, which is a part of A, and the differently coloured sensations which we experience when we look at A. Assume, for

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example, that A is illuminated from one side, so that half of it lies in the shadow. Even though that billiard ball is evenly coloured, our colour sensation of it is not uniformly white: one part of it is much darker than the other. And if we were to put on coloured glasses, our colour sensation would not be white at all. Now, what phenomenologists sometimes seem to have in mind when they speak of perception through aspects is that the property instances of a perceptual object, its colour, its shape, appear to us only through the perceptual variations of our colour sensation and the variations of our shape sensations. (Honderich, 1995, p. 158) This aspectival data is the focus of the Existential Phenomenologist, and one can see how it might be inferior to the big picture presented through pure phenomenology. Whereas Existentialists can only see the object from one perspective, the transcendental phenomenologist will move beyond this lifeworld illusion to intuit the billiard ball in its immediate and holistic sense: Secondly, and much more obviously, spatial perceptual objects can only be perceived from a point of view. For example, when we look at billiard ball A, only one side is turned towards us and we cannot see its back. In this sense, therefore, we can only perceive, from a given point of view, a spatial ‘aspect’ of it. It is clear that this notion of an aspect is quite different from the one in the last paragraph. According to phenomenology, therefore, one’s knowledge of things divides into direct and indirect knowledge, that is, into direct knowledge and knowledge through aspects. Essences (universal properties) are known directly, but perceptual objects are only known through their aspects. (Honderich, 1995, p. 158) Husserl refers to this ‘direct’ form of knowing as apodictic knowing, which he says, is essential to Transcendental Phenomenology. Whereas Existential Phenomenology focuses on perceived objects and their limited, aspectival qualities, Transcendental Phenomenology accesses the entirety of the phenomenon. This gestalt, apodictic knowledge is central to phenomenology. Such objects are the ‘things themselves’, to which Husserl famously referred.

Why is Phenomenology so misunderstood? Here is a selection of definitions of phenomenology that Dr Crotty distributed in notes given at the Qualitative Research Conference in Sydney on 16 November 1997. They demonstrate the range of perspectives and complexities that we are dealing with when we come together to share understanding of phenomenology. Which of these sounds familiar to you?

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Phenomenology invites us to ‘set aside all previous habits of thought, see through and break down the mental barriers which these habits have set along the horizons of our thinking’. (Husserl). Phenomenology asks us not to take our received notions for granted but to call them into question – to ‘call into question our whole culture, our manner of seeing the world and being in the world in the way we have learned it growing up’ (Wolff). In phenomenology there is a ‘transformation of familiarity into strangeness’ (Natanson). Phenomenology ‘exhorts a pristine acquaintance with phenomena unadulterated by preconceptions’ (Heron). Phenomenology is ‘a determined effort to undo the effect of habitual patterns of thought and to return to the pristine innocence of first seeing’ (Spiegelberg). ‘… we must be attentive, receptive to reality … an experience which is focused on the things themselves’ (Spiegelberg). ‘… the “thoughtful” experience of things, a “meditative” thinking in which we let things emerge and rise up in their own presence’ (Caputo on the later Heidegger). Phenomenology shows that ‘in order to see the world and grasp it as paradoxical, we must break with our familiar acceptance of it’. It ‘slackens the intentional threads which attach us to the world’. We need to ‘suspend for a moment our recognition of [things]’ (Merleau-Ponty).

Crotty emphasised that phenomenology is frequently linked to wonder. It sounds romantic, but hints at a lack of clarity about phenomenology. This is typical of a ‘make of it what you will’ attitude that new, would-be phenomenologists seem to claim as legitimate passage to research:     

‘To be surprised, to wonder, is to begin to understand’ (Ortega y Gasset). ‘Astonishment, as pathos, is the arche (beginning) of philosophy. The pathos of astonishment does not simply stand at the beginning of philosophy. Astonishment carries and pervades philosophy …’ (Heidegger). ‘Man alone of all beings, when addressed by the voice of Being, experiences the marvel of all marvels: that what-is is’ (Heidegger). The purpose of phenomenology is to ‘retrieve the sense of wonder about the experiences that have become obscured by our taken-for-grantedness’ (Relph). Marcel ‘attempts concrete illumination of existence as we find it … Like Heidegger, Marcel understands the quality of this initial reaction to the experience to be a deep wonder at that which is’ (Sadler). And Crotty says that the starting point is silence:

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‘… phenomenological inquiry begins in silence. This silence represents a struggle to ‘see’ the phenomena as clearly as possible as these are given in immediate experience, in one’s own consciousness of those things’ (Psathas). ‘… phenomenological philosophy is the very opposite of all quick-fix philosophy by mere talking. Here, one talks a little less, remains more silent, and sees more – even that part of the world which perhaps can no longer be talked about’ (Scheler). And Husserl says:



‘I keep on meditating …’(Husserl)

No wonder the academy is sometimes baffled by phenomenology. We see hear a cacophony of ideas, resounding with various epistemologies and terms, which have no obvious relationship to one another. To be fair, I have bundled them together out of context, yet they are nevertheless indicative of the huge variety of contexts from which they come. It’s confusing and easy to flummox and (perhaps even) impress a naïve audience, to the point where they might give up listening and just accept a lot of nonsense. Distinguished philosophers such as Spiegelberg (1982) have helped me to grasp insights into Husserl’s phenomenology. When I was a bewildered student of epistemology, Spiegelberg’s writings endorsed my inclinations and gave me the confidence to let go of the many misleading accounts of phenomenology that are popular in academic circles outside of philosophy. Here, Garaudy (1985) describes Spiegelberg’s understanding of phenomenological method in the context of doing research from a Muslim perspective. It is one of the few approaches that accommodates an authentic, Husserlian phenomenology, I think, and also supports my view that although doing phenomenology merges with the spirituality of the researcher in many regards, it does not necessitate that the researcher should approach it from the position held by any particular faith: elements and structure of the phenomena obtained by intuiting. The third phase is the phenomenological describing, by negotiation or by metaphor and analogy. One should concentrate on the central or decisive characteristics of the phenomenon and abstract from its accidentals. Step two is investigating essences. Spiegelberg points out that one cannot intuit essences without exemplifying particulars, which may be given in perception or in imagination or both, and that the general essence can be understood by looking at the examples and instances which stand for the general essence. This is a Platonic concept which is quite compatible with Islam. The third step is apprehending essential relationships and refers to phenomenological a priori insight, i.e., phenomena which are known to us only from experience … (Garaudy, 1985)

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Almost all of what is available on phenomenology in academic journals and book chapters (outside of that written by philosophers) is misleading because they have been informed by flawed secondary sources. Phenomenology has become so hybrid that Husserl’s pure philosophy is endanger of extinction. That is Heidegger’s legacy. Ricoeur, Sartre and other existentialists followed Heidegger and modified the definition of phenomenology. It is so difficult to read the texts that have been written by philosophers who really understand phenomenology, because the philosophical language and circuitous nature of the writing. The more accessible articles, written by academics who base their research on flawed secondary sources, are the ones to which our students (and indeed our academics) return. Phenomenology has consequently be reborn in academia as some hermeneutical Frankenstein for subjective anthropology. The focus for the existentialists is always on written descriptions of what they assume are the ‘things themselves’. When Husserl referred to the ‘things themselves’ he was talking about the archetypal, a priori forms that result from phenomenal reduction. These iconic images are intersubjective, unlike personal descriptions, which may amount to little more than narcissism. The popular misunderstanding of phenomenology, which I argue is a result of Heidegger’s misinterpretation of Husserl’s thesis, is summed up in the quotation below. I dispute this definition of phenomenology, but it has become so entrenched in the thinking of contemporary academics that it will be difficult to shake. I am hoping that our transition into Gebser’s age of Integral Consciousness will help us to better appreciate what Husserl was proposing a century ago, before many of his own contemporaries, such as Heidegger, were ready or able to understand. Existential thinking and mental-mode consciousness have led to what I argue are erroneous interpretations of phenomenology. However, the popularity of this line of thought has allowed it to overtake any sensitive understanding of Husserl’s phenomenology. In the Social Sciences, Education and Psychology, Existential Phenomenology became very popular at the end of the twentieth century. What these researchers were doing was adopting Heidegger’s re-invention of the Husserl’s concept, and developing it further and further away from its transcendental origin. It grew to be understood as a kind of theme-based interpretivism, which used interview data from small samples of co-researchers. Heidegger was sometimes hailed as the saviour of phenomenology, rather than its deconstructor. Usually the topics were about feelings and attitudes, which could be described better than they could be measured. It was just another theme-based, qualitative inquiry system. The methods serving these methodologies were created with unvarying attention to lifeworld data. They are not phenomenological. Here is an example of phenomenology’s popular and flawed interpretation, along with mention of some of those practitioners with whom I take issue: Phenomenological research was originally developed by Husserl (1931, etc.), Heidegger (1962, etc.) and Merleau-Ponty (1962, etc.) and received elaboration by their great apologist, Spiegelberg (1975). It has become a major source of illumination for psychology (cf. Colaizzi 1973; Valle & Halling 1989) and nursing research (cf. Crotty, 1996a). It has also been applied with great effect

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to school education by van Manen (1977, 1990), and to adult education, as has been pointed out by Stanage (1987) and Collins (1984, 1987) and to a lesser extent, Brookfield (1990a, b). Phenomenology wants to slow the researcher down and hold his or her gaze on the phenomenon itself – the lived-experience of some activity – seeking not to locate it in an abstract matrix by saying how its abstracted structure might be similar to others, but rather to illumine its specific quality as an experience. (Willis, 2001) No. Husserl originally developed phenomenology, and Heidegger stole his terminology and distorted the whole concept by forcing it into a lifeworld dimension. It does seek the abstract, a priori object. For any research methodology to get by in a world governed by Mental Consciousness (Gebser, 1986), it needed to adopt a familiar, mundane, interpretivist approach, not unlike grounded theory. There is nothing necessarily wrong with the rigor in such a research approach, the problem is its name (and the unethical identity theft of phenomenology). The scholars and the author mentioned in the above quotation have all made positive and impressive contributions to the academy, but they were not doing phenomenology. If one wants to use interview-based research of this kind – if perhaps you are part-way through data collection for your research thesis and wish to proceed in an interpretivist way, I suggest you refer to Heuristic Inquiry (Moustakas, 1990). This well aligned, empathetic approach was developed by Clarke Moustakas. It is a constructionist approach, which uses data from participants who have experienced events similar to those experienced also by the researcher. Heuristic Inquiry is not phenomenology, although it has been confused with it at times. We have talked about a lot of scholars who have made various contributions to our understanding of phenomenology. Where did they come from in the scheme of things? Let us put their views into a chronological perspective, which may afford us context. Many of the methodologies that function under the banner of Existential Phenomenology are potentially rigorous and valid, but they miss what I consider to be the very crux of the thing – the universal object. I have argued that the epistemology informing each philosophy is at the root of their difference. I would like to explore the implications of this difference. Since Existential Phenomenology has won so much popular attention in social and psychological research, I think it deserves thorough examination. I am aware that many readers will disagree with my arguments at first, because the popular view is entrenched. We need to address that. Let us now view it in its historical context. This will show how authentic phenomenology was dragged in the wrong direction until it parted and drifted off into the future. It is time to recover it.

The historical context of Phenomenology Figure 4.1 shows some of the origins and divisions in phenomenology. It shows the evolution of thinking, which has brought us to this present state of ambiguity. It

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shows the split between Transcendental Phenomenology and Existential Phenomenology. It also shows the direction taken by the existentialists, who were influenced by the writings of Heidegger, who was influenced by the pragmatic, political times of pre-war Europe. Heidegger’s time was one for worldly thought, for revolution, for the Nazi Party and existential philosophy. Popular western thought was not yet ready for transcendentalism, and so Husserl’s phenomenological scaffolding and terminology were hijacked and the master was maligned. The diagram also indicates contemporary influences surrounding phenomenology – Freud’s psychoanalysis and Gebser’s theory of consciousness. It shows the thinking that has brought us here with Soliloquy.

What did Heidegger do? Husserl wrote in the margin of Heidegger’s draft on Phenomenology: Heidegger transposes or changes the constitutive-phenomenological clarification of all regions of entities and universals, of the total region of the world, into the anthropological … In that way everything becomes ponderously unclear, and philosophically loses its value. (Husserl in Hopkins, 1997, p. 284) I am telling you what I think about all of this, but I am going to be unscientific for a moment and also tell you how it makes me feel. We know what we know through both our thoughts and our feelings, so if you are able to empathise with what I say, perhaps it will round out your understanding. I therefore supplement the argument with this account of my feelings as information:

The Drift of Phenomenology

Steiner 18611975

Jung 1875-1961

Freud 18561938

Psychoanalytical methods and Soliloquy Methodology

Plato

Husserl 1859-1938 Pure philosophical phenomenology: Transcendental Phenomenology

Gebser 19051973 FIGURE 4.1

Heidegger 1889-1976

Brentano 1838-1917

The drift of phenomenology

Aristotle

Ontology and Deconstructionism Derrida Existential Phenomenology Sartre, Ricoeur and the French Existentialists Crotty and Australian Existentialists American Humanists —Giorgi, Wertz etc.

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According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, ‘Martin Heidegger was an enthusiastic Nazi and supported the dismissal of Jewish faculty from German Universities’ (Britannica, 2019). I must state upfront that there is a shadowy and perhaps unprofessional part of myself that gleans a certain satisfaction from these anti-Heideggerian, disparaging remarks. It is because I have become emotionally involved with Husserl’s work, having spent as much time with it now as one might in a good, long marriage. Heidegger has done much to malign and disrespect both Husserl and his work. I care and it affects me. If I was a positivist researcher, I might not admit that, even if I felt it. It would weaken my paradigm. As a phenomenologist, I allow the experience to make its contribution. Out of interest, too, I try to empathise with the Heideggerian perspective in order to appreciate the whole encounter – consciously, intuitively and emotionally. My unconscious will sort out that conglomeration of impressions later, and I will make a conscious effort to undeniably analyse what it offers to me. An Existentialist would be telling me to ‘bracket’ my feelings (we understand that in flawed, existential terminology it means set the feelings aside), but that would be impossible to do because my unconscious would hide them from me, even if I tried. This popular misunderstanding of the very term ‘bracket’ suggests the impossible. In authentic phenomenology, my feelings and subjective starting points are bracketed by the very change that takes place through the Epoche, when my subjective chaos is transformed into the intersubjective object of my enquiry. I do not need to impose false discipline on my reactions or feelings. That will all be taken care of as part of the natural, transcendental process. Meanwhile, I persist with my inferior conscious reckonings, and attempt to follow the difficult philosophical language and sparsely punctuated meter, as I read and re-read the arguments of both Heidegger and his supporters, to see what I may be missing. At this stage of my journey, I am seeing that they are actually not understanding the concept of transcendental reduction. My feelings are endorsed by Husserl in the quotation I set prominently at the start of this section. Koestenbaum vindicates my understanding too, pointing out that the Existential Phenomenologists choose to ignore essential aspects of Husserl’s work: The existentialists tend to ignore the more technical epistemological and metaphysical aspects of Husserl’s thought. Among these must be listed the theories of constitution, the reductions leading to the transcendental Ego, the idealistic tendencies and implications, and the view that logic has ontological import. Sartre, for example, is explicit in rejecting the doctrine of the Transcendental Ego. Also, through the emphasis on action, he rejects the notion of potentiality, a simulacrum of which emerges in Husserl under the doctrine of horizons. The existentialists ignore Husserl’s general system….They prefer the concrete drama of the lived experience to the abstract, esoteric and purely philosophic language of Husserl… (Koestenbaum in Husserl, 1964/1929, p. lxxi)

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Phenomenology becomes ‘ponderously unclear’ when actioned from an existential, materialistic and mundane perspective. Crowell (1990) writes an informative article that tells of the attempt at collaboration made by Husserl and Heidegger, when writing on Phenomenology for the 1927 Encyclopaedia Britannica. After a period of strained interactions, Husserl invited Heidegger to co-write the article on phenomenology. However, because of their differing perspectives, it did not work out. Heidegger redrafted Husserl’s first effort, and Crowell (1990) describes the outcome: In keeping with his (Husserl’s) conviction that the article should emphasise the transcendental nature of phenomenology from the onset, Heidegger writes that this ‘pure subjectivity’ can be called ‘transcendental’, since in it the being of all that is experienceable for the subject in varying ways, the ‘transcendent’ in the widest sense, is constituted (Hus IX, 297). (Crowell, 1990) This suggests to me that Heidegger has missed the meaning of ‘transcendental’ in the Husserlian sense. The ‘pure subjectivity’ should not be called ‘transcendental’. The ‘pure subjectivity’ is the solipsistic experience, which is then transformed via phenomenological reduction to become intersubjectivity. The transcendental phenomena is the intersubjective, a priori object. Heidegger’s ontological take on Husserl’s thesis will never allow him to comprehend the notion of the ideal, transcendental object. Like Aphrodite or the Lady of Shallot, it does not exist in the lifeworld where Heidegger and his Dasein are rooted. The ‘being of all that is experienceable for the subject in varying ways’ is not transcendent, it is lifeworld description. Transcendency would reveal the single, iconic and intuited form that contains universal meaning – not just meaning for the subject. The subject and the subject’s varying experiences are transcended, via the chrysalis that is the epoche, to reveal the transcendental object, that is, the butterfly. As a researcher, editor and examiner, I have made a point of trying to balance my perspective and comprehension of phenomenology with an appreciation for Heidegger’s philosophy. I have persisted with journal articles that argue Heidegger was a superior phenomenologist to Husserl, but each time I see that the author, like Heidegger, was approaching the topic from a lifeworld, ontological perspective, and had usually missed the point of phenomenological reduction in the transcendental sense. It was with some relief that I came across the writings of Burt Hopkins (2001), who was able to articulate and clarify some things that I could not. Hopkins is an expert on Husserlian Philosophy, and Secretary of the Husserl Circle, which is based in the USA. He had some intriguing evidence to suggest that for Heidegger the prize to be sought was not so much academic truth, as professional recognition and fame. The hypothesis offers a possible motive for why Heidegger was blind to the master’s superior insight and instead of following Husserl’s lead, promoted his own versions of it. Unfortunately, that sort of self-

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promotion is rife in academia, as it is elsewhere, and I see no reason for it not to have been happening a century ago, just as it is today. Although Heidegger had been encouraged and mentored by Husserl, perhaps because of ambition, or perhaps because of political discordancy, Heidegger took to undermining his advocate. It was pre-war Germany. Husserl was Jewish, (although like many others at the time he had apparently converted to Christianity) and Heidegger was a member of the Nazi Party. One cannot really know if Heidegger’s attacks were motivated by prejudice or greed, but they appear to be significant. My thoughts are that Heidegger did not grasp the metaphysical aspects of Husserl’s later philosophy, and so believed him to have lost touch with reality. Heidegger must have assumed that if he could not understand Husserl’s new concept then it must be nonsensical. Or perhaps he needed to deliberately put his own stamp on something for the sake of becoming a ‘famous philosopher’ (Husserl in Hopkins, 1999, p. 163). What assessment do you make of the following written exchanges between them? Husserl invited Heidegger to work with him on an article for the 1927 edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannia article, but perhaps he was unaware of what Heidegger was writing prior to that point. Professor Hopkins informs us that: Unlike Husserl’s assistants and collaborators Fink and Landgrebe, who apparently were able to satisfy the understandable needs of both youth and thinking for independence while yet remaining faithful to and on good terms with their teacher, Husserl, Heidegger, for whatever reasons, was unable to do so. In a letter to Karl Lowith in 1923 he writes: ‘I publicly burned and destroyed the Ideas … to such an extent that I dare say that the essential foundations for the whole (of my work) are now clearly laid out. Looking back … I am now convinced that Husserl was never a philosopher, not even for one second in his life. He becomes ever more ludicrous.’ (Hopkins, 1999) And to Karl Jaspers a few months later, Heiddeger writes: Husserl has come entirely unglued – if, that is, he ever was ‘glued,’ which more and more I have begun to doubt of late. He goes from pillar to post, uttering trivialities that would make you weep. He lives off his mission as the ‘Founder of Phenomenology’, but nobody knows what that means. (Hopkins, 2011) ‘But nobody knows what that means’ – Heidegger’s own words. Interestingly, the notes to one another, some scribbled in the drafts of Heidegger’s famous work, Being and Time, clearly show that Heidegger was not prepared to look past the lifeworld to any sort of metaphysical, transcendental object. Yet is it such a leap? Eastern philosophy has always embraced transcendentalism. I return again to Gebser’s notion of mental-mode consciousness (Gebser, 1986). It

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was the era for Mental Consciousness then, which would shun any notion of a magical or metaphysical nature. Perhaps Western philosophy, now nearing a time for Integral Consciousness, is just catching up. Hopkins (2001) notes the following exchanges between Husserl and Heidegger. These citations illustrate the extent to which their philosophies were epistemologically opposed: Heidegger’s text: the question of Being is ‘the most basic and concrete question …’ Husserl’s marginal note: Yes, as a transcendental-phenomenological question about the constitutive meaning of being [Sein]’ (Hopkins, 2001, p. 278)

Heidegger’s text: ‘The questions about [the structure of eksistence] aim at laying out what constitutes eksistence. We call the interconnection of such structures “eksistentiality”. The analysis of it has the character of an eksistential (not an eksistentiel) understanding.’ Husserl’s response (as quoted at the start of the section): ‘… everything becomes ponderously unclear, and philosophically loses its value’. (Hopkins, 2001, p. 284) Heidegger’s text: ‘Rather the kind of access and the kind of interpretation [Interpretation] [of Dasein’s understanding of its Being] must be chosen in such a way that this entity can show itself from itself. What is more, the approach should show the entity the way it usually and generally is, in its average everydayness.’ (Hopkins, 2001, p. 284) This idea is directly opposed to Husserl’s phenomenology. Heidegger repeatedly attacks the reputation of his mentor. Hopkins continues: In another letter to Lowith (May 8, 1923) he writes that his lecture course Ontologie: Hermeneutik der Faktizit’t ‘strikes the main blows against phenomenology. I now stand completely on my own feet…. There is no chance of getting an appointment [with Husserl’s help]. After I have published, my prospects will be finished. The old man will then realize that I am wringing his neck – and then the question of succeeding him is out. But I can’t help myself’. (Hopkins, 1999, p. 162) Was it the notion of Husserl being the founder of phenomenology that troubled Heidegger, or the comprehension of phenomenology itself? Any way, it appears that he was more concerned with his lifeworld situation of career and status than with any authentic commitment to philosophy. Husserl despairs at the folly of youth. His response is sadly gracious:

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yours [Heidegger’s] is a true and authentic youth that can still well up and throw itself at the world, full of feeling and with clear vision, and absorb a true image of that world deep in your soul – and then speak itself forth in honest language and forge its own particular way of expressing the image it has formed … It is impossible to imagine you ever betraying that for some silly gains or frittering it away … to lose all that in the drive to become some pompous, self-important ‘famous philosopher’ – no, it’s unthinkable. (Husserl in Hopkins, 1999, p. 163) Husserl recognised Heidegger’s understanding of phenomenology to be an absurd distortion, which he called ‘anthropologism’ and ‘psychologism’. This is why it became impossible for them to work together on the 1927 Encyclopaedia Britannica section about phenomenology. Strangely, Heidegger always denied that his version of the philosophy was taking phenomenology in a different direction. Hopkins (1999) has looked into the dilemma: Word of course got back to Husserl that ‘Heidegger’s phenomenology is something totally different from … [his, and that Heidegger’s] university lectures as well as books are, on the contrary, open or veiled attacks on… [his] … works, directed at discrediting them on the most essential points’ … and Husserl reports that upon relating this to Heidegger ‘he would just laugh and say: Nonsense!’ … Heidegger was clearly wrong in his personal judgment of how the ‘old man’ would react to his public ‘burning’ and ‘destruction’ of Husserl’s thought and ‘wringing of his neck,’ however, since Husserl supported Heidegger professionally to the very end, viz., he supported him as his successor for his Chair at Freiburg. (Hopkins, 1999, p. 164) Even at the end, Husserl continued to mentor and support Heidegger, who had clearly underestimated his character. So why is it that Heidegger’s philosophy has overtaken and dominated phenomenological thinking in many academic circles? I suggest that his work was timely. Last century was a time for lifeworld science. No thinking other than scientific thinking could be tolerated, and indeed, the criticisms always levelled at Husserl’s Transcendental Phenomenology are in terms of its dubious mystical or esoteric qualities. In Gebser’s (1986) terms, we were in a mental mode of consciousness, and this mode will tolerate no other thought dimensions. History repeats itself. Heidegger had been mentored by Husserl just as Aristotle had followed Plato. It is apparent in the pragmatic writings of Aristotle and Heidegger that they should not accommodate the magical and mythical qualities evident in the philosophies of Plato and Husserl. Did Heidegger lack capacity for apodictic thought, as well as grace? Both Aristotle and Heidegger were speaking a language that their contemporaries were ready to understand, which enabled them to consequently surpass their masters’ teachings, because unlike Plato and Husserl,

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they were not ahead of their time. They got their start riding on the coat tails of the ‘old men’ whose necks were wrung. Hopkins makes this point clear: With the publication of Heidegger’s lecture courses, and their numerous references – for the most part critical – to Husserl’s philosophy, there is the analogue to Aristotle’s lack of reticence in criticizing his teacher. Systematically, there is the putative ‘otherworldliness’ of both Plato and Husserl’s thought vis-a-vis the likewise putative ‘concreteness’ of Aristotle and Heidegger’s thinking. And philologically, there is the tendency to grant – on the basis of the propinquity of Aristotle and Heidegger to their teachers – a privileged status to the students’ interpretations of their teachers’ doctrines by those who attempt to come to terms with the matters involved in what inevitably shows up as their controversy. (Hopkins, 1999, p. 164) Heidegger’s influence on phenomenology has been catastrophic. It has overshadowed the truly profound thinking of Husserl, and spawned a plague of New Phenomenologies, which have little connection with the philosophy on which their methods are supposedly based. In this quotation from Hopkins, Husserl states that Heidegger’s phenomenology is ‘impossible’. He refers, I think, to the psychologism and anthropologism that is typically evident in the analysis of Existential Phenomenology, and writes: Heidegger’s criticism, both open and veiled, is based upon a gross misunderstanding; that he may be involved in the formation of a philosophical system of the kind which I have always considered it my life’s work to make forever impossible. (Hopkins, 1999) Students of qualitative research, who battle with the apparent complexities and contradictions of phenomenology, are in good company. According to Husserl, Heidegger didn’t understand phenomenological reduction, which is at the heart of all comprehension of phenomenology. Hopkins: And ultimately, there is Husserl’s comment that Dorian Cairns recorded in 1931: He said that neither Heidegger nor Becker nor Kaufmann understood the phenomenological reduction. Of Heidegger’s analysis of the Sein des Seienden … he said that he was tempted to use Kant’s title, ‘of a Discovery Which is Supposed to Make Transcendental Philosophy Unnecessary’. But it is his conviction that the most important thing about his whole philosophy is the transcendental reduction. (Hopkins, 1999, p. 168) Other materialists at the time, apart from Heidegger, were also riding a different wave of understanding to that of Husserl. Alfred Schutz was an existentialist who

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worked in the areas of social science and favoured what has come to be known as ‘Hermeneutical Phenomenology’ (Schutz & Luckmann, 1973). Again, this is Existential Phenomenology, but it has specific focus on the dialogue transcribed from interview or survey data. Schutz would agree with Heidegger that any real phenomenology must be that which is derived in and from the lifeworld. Schutz strived to develop a sociological phenomenology, hence his focus on the natural attitude. The natural attitude, however, does not accommodate the possibility of phenomenological reduction, so again, it is not really phenomenology. Typically, Schutz’s focus is on the natural attitude: The sciences that would interpret and explain human action and thought must begin with a description of the foundational structures of what is prescientific, the reality which seems self-evident to men remaining within the natural attitude. This reality is the everyday lifeworld. It is the province of reality in which man continuously participates in ways which are at once inevitable and patterned. The everyday lifeworld is the region of reality in which man can engage himself and which he can change while he operates in it … (Schutz, 1973, p. 1) It would suit Heidegger not to understand Husserl’s phenomenology. In addition to any political agenda, where could Heidegger go to establish himself as a famous philosopher, if he were to recognise Husserl’s Transcendental Phenomenology? This might explain the quotation below, which displays Heidegger’s dismissal of Husserl’s epistemology as ‘Schein’ (sham). My source is Hopkins, once again: Heidegger’s personal assurances according to Husserl that his work ‘was the continuation of my own research’ (Letter to Pfander, 480), his steady denial ‘that he would abandon my transcendental phenomenology’ (same letter, 481), would seem to render reasonable Husserl’s expectation that Heidegger’s published approach to phenomenology would be intelligible in terms of his own phenomenology. Yet the ‘indirection’ with which Heidegger admitted to Jaspers that he wrote ‘against … [Husserl’s] sham [Schein]-philosophy’ (22) perhaps excuses somewhat Husserl’s inability to even begin to appropriate Heidegger’s thought on its own terms, in a manner similar to Heidegger’s efforts at an ‘immanent’ critique of Husserl’s thought. After all, regarding the latter, Heidegger’s lecture courses surrounding the publication of Sein und Zeit make it clear that the locus of this critique lay in what he saw as the failure of Husserl’s phenomenology to interrogate both the mode of Being (Seinsweise) of the intentional entity (i.e., the subject) as well as the meaning of Being that guides the understanding of the subjectivity of this entity’s Being. (Hopkins, 1999, p. 168) Heidegger’s resulting influences are reminiscent of the Sophists during the fifth century BC, who challenged the ancient Greek idea of essential forms as

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represented in the Gods, and argued that all objectivity is impossible (Tarnas, 1991, p. 28). I see parallels between the chaos that was created by the Sophists, two and a half thousand years ago, and the confusion resulting from Heidegger’s proverbial spanner, flung into the works of phenomenology, around 1927. Tarnas can tell us about the Sophists: According to Sophists such as Protagoras, man was the measure of all things, and his own individual judgements concerning everyday human life should form the basis of his personal beliefs and conduct – not naive conformity to traditional religion nor indulgence in far-flung abstract speculation. Truth was relative, not absolute, and differed from culture to culture, from person to person, and from situation to situation. Claims to the contrary, whether religious or philosophical, could not stand up to critical argument. The ultimate value of any belief or opinion could be judged only by its practical utility in serving an individual’s needs in life. (Tarnas, 1991, p. 27) Tarnas’s (1991) description of the chaos in thinking that resulted from the Sophist influence, is reminiscent of the post-modern potpourri of understandings that we now collectively call phenomenology: In the Sophists view, the speculative cosmologies neither spoke to practical human needs nor appeared plausible to common sense … the Sophists recognized that each person had his own experience, and therefore his own reality. In the end, they argued, all understanding is subjective opinion. Genuine objectivity is impossible. All a person can legitimately claim to know is probabilities, not absolute truth … Other than appearances, a deeper stable reality could not be known … because such a reality could not be said to exist outside of human conjecture. (Tarnas, 1991, pp. 27–28) This focus on the subject’s perspective is like that of Crotty’s ‘New’ Phenomenologists, who have entered on the wave of postmodern eclecticism. They seem to align this subjective focus with the notion of Heidegger’s being. In the case of the ‘New’ Phenomenologists, it is their own being, and not that of humankind that is the concern. Husserl’s phenomenology moves from this subjective starting point to the pregiven, absolute truths – the Platonic forms. These are the essences that one seeks through phenomenology. In his attempts to reconfigure phenomenology, Heidegger, like the Sophists, shifted the epistemological starting point from objectivism to constructionism or subjectivism, and consequently, the foundations of the philosophy crumbled. Now students ask the meaning of terms like ‘essences’ and ‘objects of phenomena’, because without recognition of the a priori, universal forms, the terms are moot.

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In the introduction to Husserl’s last, unfinished work, The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology, Carr draws some interesting parallels between the change in philosophical thought and that of political thought, during the Nazi era of pre-war Europe. Apparently Husserl saw existentialism as an inappropriate, reactionary response to the logical positivism of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, which seemed to lack relevancy to human problems. Carr observes: But for Husserl, existentialism, whatever its value as an expression of man’s problems and Europe’s problems, was precisely a symptom and the farthest thing from a proper remedy. It attacked the old rationalism, with its sterile legacy of nineteenth-century positivism, simply by turning it upside down; it was ‘irrationalism’ pure and simple, upon which Husserl makes his most vigorous attacks. (Carr in Husserl, 1981, p. xxvi) Carr goes on to draw parallels between existentialism and Nazism. The first was popularly conceived throughout the twentieth century as the noble, philosophical position of the likes of Camus (1942), just as Nazism was once viewed favourably in parts of Europe. It is, of course, usually seen as the antithesis of all that is noble in thought. The Nazis showed anti-intellectualism through the burning of books. The existential philosophers were great thinkers but shunned the bourgeoisie as the capitalist class who owned most of the wealth and did not live the authentic life of suffering. Carr sees each philosophical approach as symptomatic of the historical climate: But existentialism was not only symptomatic of Europe’s problems, it was also symptomatic of the desperate and false solutions being accepted by society as a whole. The scope of Husserl’s attacks on ‘irrationalism’ makes it unmistakably clear that he had in mind not merely a philosophical ‘direction’ that was fashionable among the educated. Antirationalism and anti-intellectualism were everywhere, and not merely ‘in the air’; they were explicit elements of Nazi ideology and propaganda. Husserl’s blanket indictment gives expression to a clear link in his mind between philosophical antirationalism and political antirationalism. Heidegger’s actual connection with the Nazi’s at one time during this period simply underlined in fact what for Husserl was a kinship in essence. (Carr in Husserl, 1981, p. xxvii) Heidegger’s revisions of Husserl’s phenomenology thesis were well timed to woo antiacademic and antirational audiences. Throughout history, philosophy, art and politics have run together, and we have considered that the philosophy that informs Transcendental Phenomenology is not consistent with that of Existential Phenomenology.

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Koestenbaum supports the idea that the existentialists did not fully appreciate the nature of phenomenology, which they supposed they are doing. He also agrees that their approach lacks the epistemological focus of Husserl’s philosophy: Husserl’s conception of phenomenology differs markedly from those who claim to have adopted it. To the existentialists, phenomenology is the disciplined, rigorous, sensitive, and imaginative description and analysis of the data of experience, particularly as these stem from the human situation and man’s being in the world. Husserl’s phenomenology is more than that. Not only is Husserl’s orientation pre-eminently epistemological rather than axiological, but his technique is more carefully delineated than it is for the existentialists. (Koestenbaum in Husserl, 1964/1929, p. xxiii) Most contemporary New and Existential Phenomenologists, who have been unwittingly influenced by Heidegger and who consciously dwell on transcriptions of co-researchers, claim to be able to identify ‘essences’, but they merely construct themes. Unless researchers experience the epoche and transcendental reduction, they have stayed safely in the lifeworld mode and have identified general lifeworld trends rather than phenomenological objects intuited directly from the transcendental ego. Whereas the pure phenomenologist knows the essence of a phenomenon via the unconscious, the existentialist works out the links and themes like any other rational qualitative methodologist.

Darren works it out

Golly, Darren! We have to finish this postgraduate, Existential phenomenology thesis! Stop day-dreaming!

No wait... I think Iˈm on to something... I just have no idea what it is... I just have no idea what it is... It ˈll dawn on me soon... Wonˈ t be long...

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Seven years later

"The epoche eliminates as worldly facts...both the reality of the objective world in general & the sciences ... of the world... “There exists no “I” and there are no psychic actions...in the psychological sense... But through all this I have discovered my true self ....Through the phenomenological epoche ‚ the natural human ego‚ specifically my own‚ is reduced to the transcendental ego.".Yeh! – Husserl‚1964 ‚ page 10. ....I think it's overtaking me... It′s all consuming....What's that? Is that a transcendental object or???

Later still... THIS IS THE MEANING OF PHENOMENOLOGICAL REDUCTION! NOW: (I create a science) "that is created exclusively by and inside my transcendental subjectivity alone. It thus becomes a transcendental-solipsistic science (Husserl‚ 1964‚ p.11). (This is later developed) from transcendental solipsism to transcendental Intersubjectivity... "The object (of the life-world) as pure phenomenological experience must become a central concern of phenomenological description. (So) What is the nature of the abysmal difference between phenomenological judgments about the world of experience and natural-objective judgments? The answer... as a phenomenological ego I have become a pure observer of myself. I treat as veridical only that which I encounter as inseparable from me ‚ as pertaining purely to my life and being inseparable from it....I become the disinterested spectator of my natural and worldly ego and its life" (Husser‚ 1964 ‚ p.15).

“ Do not wish to go out; go back into yourself. Truth dwells in the inner man “(Husserl)

Bracketing Husserl took a lifetime to create and articulate how the tools of phenomenology were to be used. Some of Husserl’s followers were lost along the way. They arrived somewhere else but thought they had arrived at phenomenology. Like Columbus who mistakenly thought he had found India when he disembarked on the shores of America, many scholars missed phenomenology because the transcendental domain was invisible to them. They don’t know the difference because

106 The theoretical perspective of Soliloquy

Husserl‚ 1964‚ p.39!!! YES! MOLLY...... Well don' t give it to me! I have to finish this postdoctoral...

Golly͵ Molly! I 've GOT it!

I know! I' ll write a play! That' ll bring out the archetypes!

Later again... Wow! This transcendental object is ‚ like, INTERSUBJECTIVE! EVERYONE CAN RELATE TO IT! Whether they know it or not!

and like another Shakespearian play! Cliches! Cliches! Cliches!

It's like Plato's FORMS! Like the Greek Gods!

HEY YEH! YEH!AND Freud ... and Gebser...and... I think I am fading into transcendental oblivion

Sadly‚ Darren passed over to the spirit world before completing his phD ‚ but he enjoyed a very long and inspired life‚ thanks to -TRANSCENDENTAL PHENOMENOLOGY!

they have not alighted on the real territory. They took Husserl’s box of vocabulary, removed the terms and put them to use in ways contrary to their design. Then others came along, and whisked them away to even more awkward applications! ‘Bracketing’, which to Husserl means setting aside the lifeworld, has been twisted into a lifeworld understanding. The following erroneous explanation is typical of that put forward in contemporary texts about methodology. I argue again that it is a popular and misleading understanding of ‘bracketing’: ‘The researcher

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makes explicit his or her beliefs about the phenomenon and sets these aside when approaching the descriptions’ (Parse, 2001, p. 80). This is not Husserl’s understanding of ‘bracketing’. It is a convenient, new meaning, which allows an imposing cuckoo of a methodology to sound like phenomenology. Let us examine this misconception of ‘bracketing’ further, for it makes a good example for the extent to which Husserl’s infant philosophy was rendered askew. Husserl’s ‘bracketing’ is rejected by some critics for reasons which show a clear misunderstanding of its meaning. The following comment typifies these: ‘It [Husserl’s method of uncovering the “essence of phenomena”] happens through bracketing personal biases and dwelling with the descriptions of the phenomenon until pure meaning surfaces’ (Parse, 2001, p. 77). I am being relentlessly unforgiving of flawed definitions that really have become wide-spread and accepted through common usage. Because these understandings of Husserl’s terminology are entrenched now in the academic areas of education, social sciences and health, it is difficult to turn it around. If this book does little else, may it draw attention to the portent of Husserl’s Transcendental Phenomenology, through which the lifeworld rather than one’s particular bias is bracketed. Transcendental Phenomenology is a solo process. Essences of phenomena are presented through stillness, not activity. The author then goes on to hail Heidegger as the one to ‘bring together’ Husserl’s ideas through the birth of Existential Phenomenology. Obviously, I cannot leave this go. Martin Heidegger … further specified the phenomenological method. He departed from Husserl’s notion of bracketing, because he believes that human beings cannot bracket personal biases, but it is these biases that create the lens through which the researcher views the phenomenon … (Parse, 2001, p. 77) Now this is confusing. Husserl never asked us to bracket personal bias. He asked us to bracket our lifeworld. And we don’t have to do this consciously, because our unconscious will sort it all out for us. It shows a misunderstanding of Husserl’s methods for transitioning from subjective experience to intersubjective form. It also leaves us wondering how, if Heidegger departed from Husserl’s notion of bracketing (and he said that he did), bracketing retained its place in so many of the existential-style methods. Heidegger did argue that bracketing is an impossible task. His understanding of the term – to set aside one’s personal biases – would indeed be challenging for any researcher. Yet the Existential Phenomenologists to follow Heidegger wrote it into their step by step methodologies, incorporating it into the hermeneutical methods. Existential Phenomenologists such as Giorgi (1985) have put forward methods, which they claim to be phenomenology, which do use ‘bracketing’. Again, the meaning of the word has been altered by the user.

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I have spent some time talking about what I see as a flaw in the epistemology that informs Existential Phenomenology. For clarity, let us look at what these methodologists recommend that we actually do. Let us see the consequences of their theoretical perspectives, and how it affects the phenomenological terminology.

Existential phenomenology Those who seek literature on phenomenology are likely to have come across the names Van Manen (1990), Giorgi (1985), Wertz (1985) and Collaizzi (1978). They are widely featured in secondary sources, especially those written in the USA and Australia. They are the references most frequently cited by students approaching phenomenology in the social sciences, health sciences and in Education. These leading scholars have put forward methods for doing research, which they call ‘phenomenology’. The problem, as I see it, is not that the methodologies lack merit, but that they are incorrectly named. They are not phenomenology. Their processes could (and no doubt have) produced valuable research outcomes. Allow me to suspend criticism for a moment and precis the methods used in these popular approaches. If we suspend judgement regarding the name of the methodology, we should agree that the approaches are consistent and legitimate. Here is a brief description: Dutch scholar Max van Manen is known to be a hermeneutical phenomenologist. Van Manen says that one turns to a phenomenon, ‘which seriously interests us and commits us to the world’ (Van Manen, 1990, p. 2). The second step involves ‘investigating experience as we live it rather than as we conceptualize it’ (ibid.). In the third instance one reflects on ‘essential themes which characterize the phenomena’, and lastly, the researcher describes the phenomena ‘through the art of writing and rewriting’ (ibid., p. 3). Amedeo Giorgi became well known for his methodology in the 1980s. He saw a need to present a methodology for doing phenomenology. Groenewald presents here the commonly held idea that, by 1970, phenomenology ‘had not yet establish[ed] itself as a viable alternative to the traditional natural scientific approach in psychological research’ (Stones, 1988, p. 141). The reason, according to Giorgi (as cited in Stones), was that a phenomenological praxis, a systematic and sustained way, had not yet been developed (Schwandt, 1997). In this regard, Lippitz (1997, p. 69) remarked that after phenomenology flourished ‘during the first twenty years after the Second World War, this approach was forgotten for a while’. However, in the 1970s, phenomenological psychologists established a praxis, which is a methodological realisation of the phenomenological philosophical attitude (Stones, 1988).For Giorgi, the operative word in phenomenological research is ‘describe’. The aim of the researcher is to describe as accurately as possible the phenomenon, refraining from any pre-given framework, but remaining true to the facts. According to Welman and Kruger (1999, p. 189) ‘the phenomenologists are

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concerned with understanding social and psychological phenomena from the perspectives of people involved’. (Groenewald, 2004, and references therein) This is how Giorgi’s model unfolds: Giorgi approaches data analysis through a series of logical steps. The first is what Giorgi calls ‘Bracketing’ (Husserl’s term). It aims to enable direct contact with the world as it is lived and experienced by the subject. The second part he calls ‘intuiting’ (Husserl’s term) and it requires the researcher to intuit psychological meanings from the data. Giorgi calls these ‘Meaning Units’ (from Husserl). Third is describing, which involves the organisation of structural units into ‘a systematic, structural description to gain relation of their essential meanings through coherence … Analysis proceeds from the individual to the general’ (Giorgi, 1985, p. 93). I think Giorgi’s methodology became popular because it provides steps to follow. The researcher does not have to worry about definitions and philosophy, s/ he just follows the instructions. It’s a perfectly good approach, but of course, it is not based on Husserl’s intuitive phenomenology. All of these approaches, produced by the American humanist schools of thought, use interview-based data and cognitive means to analysis. They even use words like ‘intuition’, but not in the same way as Husserl. Most scholars avoid reading Husserl, and unwittingly rely on misinformation that is accrued by inaccurate, secondary sources. So many students set out to use phenomenology, thinking it is a process of interview and theme construction. Then they present a paper on it, and convince half of an audience that it is so. I think that phenomenology has been confused with these more general, theme-based methods so frequently that increasingly, it nurtures popular misconception. Because there is confusion about the language of phenomenology, and a lack of example regarding its applications, some student researchers lack the confidence to use it. These students may be the ones most aware, because they have noticed the anomalies. Potential phenomenologists are confused when they attempt to reconcile the contradictory rhetoric that exists. Phenomenology is sometimes just dismissed as too difficult. But it’s not. It has just been misrepresented, and in the next chapter I present an example of a methodology based on Transcendental Phenomenology – Soliloquy. Much of the misleading literature on phenomenology presents us with terminology that stems from Husserl’s phenomenology, but which is used in a way that is foreign to its original intention. It sounds like the original thing, but does it make sense? Beginning researchers, who read conflicting papers on phenomenology, are apt to assume that the fault lies with their own reading of that literature. Crotty was the first to bring this to my attention: In the 1960s, American-style humanistic psychology was already at centre stage when phenomenologists like van Kaam and Giorgi began articulating their step-wise methods for phenomenological research. What seems to have

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happened is that while the rhetoric of phenomenology proved attractive, the phenomenological method itself was interpreted in the light of prevailing concepts and became fundamentally distorted … One hears of ‘experience’ and ‘phenomenon’, of ‘reduction’ and ‘bracketing’ – of ‘intentionality’, even. However, the meaning of these terms is no longer the meaning they have borne within the phenomenological movement from which they have been taken. (Crotty, 1996, p. 2) Crotty makes a sound observation here, but I take the meaning of Husserl’s terminology beyond the existential perspective of Crotty. We have mentioned that Husserl’s ‘bracketing’ refers to the practice of eliminating one’s lifeworld perspective to reach transcendental phenomenal reduction. Those influenced by Heidegger had to create new, meanings for the terminology. For Wertz (1985), Giorgi (1985) and other existential phenomenologists, an example of ‘bracketing’ might involve ignoring comments by co-researchers that are deemed to be irrelevant to the topic of inquiry. If the interviewee answers a telephone call during the data collection, that conversation is erased from the transcription – or ‘bracketed’ – because the telephone data is deemed irrelevant to the research. Other terms were also changed so that they sounded as though they had been created for the natural attitude. Phenomenological ‘reduction’ came to mean a series of themes, which summarise the transcriptions rather than the intuited object, which takes the subjective experience of the researcher to the intersubjective level of human understanding. So, the meaning of that term has also changed to the extent that it in no way resembles its original definition. Is it any wonder that phenomenology confuses the student who tries to grasp the concept by reading a range of sources.

In summary In this chapter I have argued that Husserl’s pure phenomenology has been widely misinterpreted, and I have attempted to address that mistake. I have emphasised that Husserl’s final phenomenology prescribes a solo journey for the researcher. One must approach Transcendental Phenomenology from a personal, most subjective position, in order for the objects to present themselves intersubjectively. The difficulty with phenomenology, in its contemporary configuration, is that aspiring phenomenologists are unaware that they are really only doing a type of theme-based interpretivism. We have considered the intersubjective nature of pure phenomenology, which like Jung’s archetypes and Plato’s universal forms, transcends the individual’s perspectival point of view, as it transcends culture and the whole of the lifeworld. Husserl’s concept of ‘bracketing’ cradles the notion of apperception and the coexistence of the contradictory notions of the lifeworld and the transcendental plane. Phenomenologists bracket their understandings of the mundane in order to receive the universal archetype essential to their inquiry. It is the fully dimensional,

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apodictic object, which is the essence of the phenomenon. We have noted that this object is not a semantic description. Its profundity extends beyond any lifeworld reflection of it, yet it says more about this reflection than any amount of words. Transcendental Phenomenology does not entertain descriptions of co-researchers, because the transcendental phenomenologist must work alone, with empirical, solo experiences, to pass through solipsism in order to reach the intersubjective, transcendental object of the inquiry. Archetypes (Jung), universal forms (Plato) universal objects (Husserl) are truly intersubjective, as they resonate in the unconscious and conscious minds of humanity. Husserl’s most succinct explanation of this seemingly paradoxical process is in the Encyclopaedia Britannica article of 1927 (Husserl, 1927). He explains that only through the most subjective process can one reach the most objective outcome. Through the personal, we glimpse the universal. The phenomenal archetypes, which present themselves through Transcendental Phenomenology, are intersubjective in that they are universally recognised by each individual. These forms transcend language, learning, culture and race. They are the transcendental objects of phenomenology. They are revealed via the process of eidetic reduction, that is, through the metamorphosis of lifeworld detail into transcendental object. Intersubjectivity is another phenomenological term, which we have considered within the context of Husserl’s later discoveries. It is not about understanding the feelings expressed in the description of a coresearcher, as some would have us believe. That is empathy. The domain of intersubjectivity is in some ways equivalent to that of Jung’s Collective Unconscious: Other persons appear to me as entities that experience me in turn. I consequently do not experience the world as my own private and subjective world, ‘but as an intersubjective one’. (Koestenbaum quoted in Husserl, 1964/1929, p. lxi) The idea of the individual being part of the organism of humanity is one that goes beyond any individual culture. It is a universal way of understanding our connections to others. John Donne’s famous line of poetry is an example from English literature that echoes this sentiment: ‘Do not ask for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.’ Each of us is inextricably bound together on a level that transcends our lifeworld individuality. It is from our part in this universal spirit, or collective unconscious or God (?) that one knows intersubjectivity. Neville articulates the idea of the transcultural nature of the concept: For Plato, archetypes were ideas or forms of natural objects held to have been present in the divine mind prior to creation. For St Augustine they were ‘principle ideas’ which are themselves not formed, but contained in the divine understanding. In the Buddhist-Hindu systems, they are the first forms of manifestation that emerge from Void Spirit in the course of creation. Kant and Schopenhauer were more immediate precursors of Jung in dealing with this idea.

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For Jung, archetypes are typical and universal ‘modes of apprehension’ which appear as images charged with great meaning and power, images which exert a great influence on our individual and collective behaviour. (Neville, 1989, p. 129) He goes on to say that Jung agreed with his critics that archetypes do not actually ‘exist’ in the lifeworld, but did indeed occur in the order of things. Of course they do not exist, any more than a botanical system exists in nature. But will anyone deny the occurrence and continual repetition of certain morphological and functional similarities? It is much the same principle with typical figures of the unconscious. They are forms existing a priori, or biological norms of psychic activity. (Jung in Rogers, 1977) … Jung was interested in archetypes as the primary forms which govern the psyche, but we can look for their manifestations much more widely than that: in political systems, philosophical and scientific theories, ‘movements’ in music, art and architecture, language structures, religious doctrines, social customs, physical or emotional epidemics, and theories of education. (Neville, 1989, p. 129) In this section I have contended that all phenomenology is actually Transcendental Phenomenology. Those who claim to be doing phenomenology based on Husserl’s early work are basing their approach on unfinished business. Many contemporary researchers who claim to be doing phenomenology are not. They are likely to be doing some kind of theme-based, qualitative inquiry, which may well have merit, but they are not doing phenomenology. Even some ‘famous philosophers’ are apparently missing the point. The cries about not understanding phenomenology are poignant, because so many contemporary methods are inconsistent with Husserl’s thesis. Further complicated with ambiguous and degenerate terminology, these distorted methods are nonsense in any phenomenological context. The beginning student of phenomenology who cries, ‘I don’t understand this stuff!’ is in the company of greatness, I dare say. Over and over there is evidence that Heidegger’s understanding of these concepts were grounded in materialistic, mental-mode thinking, and (to use Gebser’s terminology) he was unable to recall the magical and mythical remnants of consciousness necessary to grasp Transcendental Phenomenology. Everything was thought through rather than intuited as a metaphysical whole. Heidegger went on to inspire Existential Phenomenologists such as Paul Ricoeur, Jean-Paul Sartre and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. It was the time of Existentialism and Marxism and God was apparently dead. I take this discussion to the edge of that reasoning. Pursuing the investigation beyond the work of Heidegger is beyond the scope of this book. I am not motivated to do so either, as I believe Heidegger’s ontological focus

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missed something essential to the human experience: the human spirit. Come with me now to the final chapter, as we examine the methods through which to approach Transcendental Phenomenology, and journey to the phenomenological, a priori object.

Bibliography Baum, F. (1998). The Wizard of Oz. China: Robert Frederick. Britannica. (2019). Martin Heidegger. Retrieved from www.britannica.com/biography/Ma rtin-Heidegger-German-philosopher. Camus, A. (1942). The Plague. Melbourne: Penguin. Carder, E. (2019). Platonism and Theism. In J. Fieser & B. Dowden (Eds.), Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Prairie View, TX: Prairie View A&M University. Collaizzi, P. F. (Ed.) (1978). Psychological Research as the Phenomenologist Views it. New York: Oxford University Press. Crotty, M. (1996). Phenomenology and Nursing Research. Chatswood: Churchill Livingstone. Crotty, M. (1998). The Foundations of Social Research. Sydney: Allen & Unwin. Crowell, S. G. (1990). Husserl, Heidegger, and Transcendental Philosophy: Another Look at the Encyclopaedia Britannica Article. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 50(3), 501– 518. Freud, S. (1900/2010). The Interpretation of Dreams. New York: Basic Books. Garaudy, R. (1985). Ibn Khaldun’s Theories of Perception. American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences, 2(2). Gebser, J. (1986). The Ever-Present Origin. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press. Giorgi, A. (1985). Phenomenology and Psychological Research. Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press. Groenewald, T. (2004). A Phenomenological Research Design Illustrated. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 3(1). Haley, J. (1973). Uncommon Therapy: ThePsychiatric Techniques of Milton H. Erickson MD. New York: W. W. Norton & Co. Honderich, T. (Ed.) (1995). The Oxford Companion to Philosophy. New York: Oxford University Press. Hopkins, B. (1999). The Essential Possibility of Phenomenology. Research in Phenomenology, 29(1). Hopkins, B. (2001). The Husserl–Heidegger Confrontation and the Essential Possibility of Phenomenology: Edmund Husserl, Psychological and Transcendental Phenomenology and the Confrontation with Heidegger. Husserl Studies, 17, 125–148. Hopkins, B. C. (2011). The Philosophy of Husserl. London: Routledge. Husserl, E. (1927). Phenomenology. In Encyclopeadia Britannica. London: Richard E. Palmer. Husserl, E. (1964/1929). The Paris Lectures. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Husserl, E. (1970). The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Philosophy: An Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy (Trans. D. Carr). Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. Husserl, E. (1977). Cartesian Meditations: An Introduction to Phenomenology. Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff. Husserl, E. (1981). The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. Husserl, E. (2001/1900–1901). Logical Investigations (Ed. D. Moran). London: Routledge. Jung, C. (1953). Collected Works. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

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Jung, C. (1966). Man and his Symbols. London: Picador. Kockelmans, J. (1967). Phenomenology: The Philosophy of Edmund Husserl and its Interpretation. New York: Anchor Books. Moustakas, C. (1990). Heuristic Research: Design, Methodology and its Applications. London: Sage. Neville, B. (1989). Educating Psyche. Melbourne, Australia: Collins Dove. Parse, R. (2001). Qualitative Inquiry: The Path of Sciencing. Boston, MA: Jones & Bartlett. Polanyi, M. (1967). The Tacit Dimension. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Rogers, C. R. (1977). On Personal Power. New York: Delacorte Press. Schutz, A., & Luckmann, T. (1973). The Structures of the Life-world, volume 1. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. Sheldrake, R. (2013). The Science Delusion. London: Hodder & Stoughton. Sheldrake, R. (2014). Morphic Resonance. London: London Real. Spiegelberg, H. (1972). Phenomenology in Psychology and Psychiatry: A Historical Introduction. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. Spiegelberg, H. (1982). The Phenomenological Movement: A Historic Introduction (3rd ed.). Leiden: Martinus-Nijhoff. Steiner, R. (2005). The Foundation Stone Meditation. Great Britain: Rudolf Steiner Press. Tarnas, R. (1991). The Passion of the Western Mind. New York: Ballantyne. Van Manen, M. (1989). Pedagogical Text as Method: Phenomenological Research as Writing. Saybrook Review, 7(2). Van Manen, M. (1990). Doing Phenomenological Research and Writing: An Introduction. Edmonton: University of Alberta. Wertz, F. (1985). On Being Criminally Victimized. In A. Giorgi (Ed.), Phenomenology and Psychological Research. Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne Press. Whitehead, A. N. (2010). Process and Reality. London: Simon & Schuster. Willis, P. (2001). The ‘Things Themselves’ in Phenomenology. The Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology, 1(1), 1–12. Wolin, R. (2018). Continental Philosophy. In Encyclopaedia Brittanica. Retrieved from www. britannica.com/topic/continental-philosophy.

5 SOLILOQUY FOR THE INTUITIVE RESEARCHER The methods

Throughout this book I have endeavoured to explain and substantiate the theoretical framework of Soliloquy, because it is essential that researchers understand the methodology they have chosen to use. They must believe theirs to be the best approach for their particular inquiry. For those who are comfortable working intuitively, this chapter now presents a step by step approach to doing Soliloquy.

Alignment in methodology We have established that Soliloquy, which I argue aligns with Husserl’s Transcendental Phenomenology, always investigates a phenomenon that is within the experience of the researcher. That requirement counts as a method, which serves the methodology of Soliloquy. It starts with the most personal and subjective involvement with the topic, and unlike most qualitative research, the data must come from the researcher’s first-person encounters with the phenomenon, and not from interviews or any other means of soliciting data from research participants. The point that Soliloquy does not use data from co-researchers is what makes it phenomenology in the Husserlian sense, and we have explored this Transcendental Phenomenology extensively in Chapter 4. It is also a factor that separates Soliloquy from other types of inquiry, which have erroneously been described in secondary sources as phenomenology. Transcendental Phenomenology aligns with firstperson research, but methods using interviews belong in a different methodology (perhaps Grounded Theory), with a different Theoretical Perspective (perhaps Interpretivism) and a different Epistemology (Constructionism). I have advised that if you are a researcher who has embarked on a project, which you mistakenly believed to be phenomenology, you might be better to reassign and realign your methodology rather than start over in a way that may not suit your inquiry. If you are just beginning to realise that you are not doing

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phenomenology, but you do not want to abandon your data, shift it to another type of interpretivist style of methodology, that will keep your reasoning aligned and logical. Perhaps you are doing a Case Study, or a Focus Group? Frequently students and researchers like to design their own approaches to inquiry, so if you consider that to be your best option, just ensure that you have thought through the philosophical alignment of your approach, and that it is logical. Crotty (1998) sets out some useful examples of processes for research, which I have modified to create Table 5.1. It shows the sorts of components that can be used to create a theoretical framework using a variety of research methodologies. If you choose to create your own variations to better meet the needs of your inquiry, you must ensure that the combination you choose makes a compatible, working model. If you want to use scientific method, for example, you need to adhere to a prescribed procedure. That is because the theory informing the approach demands that you meet certain expectations. The work must be objectivist in its approach, and if the experiment is repeated, it should produce the same outcomes. We have made great advances in medical and environmental research thanks to the reliability of this methodology. If, however, you want to work with a group of people in an ongoing way, to make their work situation better, a good choice of methodology would be Action Research. With this approach, the participants come together as equals to discuss and trial ways to improve their situation. New ideas are trialled, and then the group reflect on the changes and decide if they should be retained or discarded. Further ideas for improvement are discussed and trialled, and the procedure continues for as long as it is practicable. A scientist working on a short experiment is approaching research very differently to the arts-based researcher or the Action Researcher. You must choose your approach carefully, and then ensure that there is a thread of common logic running through your model, from its epistemology through to its methods. Dancing your research as a method, for example, would probably not serve scientific method adequately (but it might be useful as a method for Soliloquy). Look at Table 5.1 and see how you might choose to match items from each category. For those who may have embarked on Existential Phenomenology, but are now reconsidering, I have recommended Moustakas’s Heuristic Inquiry (Moustakas, 1990). It is an excellent methodology for intuitive researchers who wish to include methods involving interview material from co-researchers. The analysis then necessarily becomes consciously hermeneutical rather than exclusively introspective and intuitive. Secondary sources have often confused Heuristic Inquiry with phenomenology. There is a whole school of thought that works with that, which they call ‘hermeneutical phenomenology’. I have covered this in the last chapter. I have stated that I do not doubt the potential for these methods to produce good research. We can check the alignment of the methodology as a means to verification. Heuristic Inquiry is informed by Constructionist Epistemology, which means the researcher will be constructing the research outcomes as s/he interprets and

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TABLE 5.1 Categories for building a research methodology

Epistemology

Theoretical perspective

Methodology

Methods

Choose one Objectivism Constructionism Subjectivism

Choose one consistent with the Epistemology Positivism Post Positivism Interpretivism Critical Inquiry Feminism Postmodernism Transcendental Phenomenology Etc.

This methodology must align logically with all other columns Experimental Research Visual Sociology Narrative Inquiry Survey Research Ethnography Soliloquy Action Research Grounded Theory Heuristic Inquiry Discourse Analysis Etc.

Examples Sampling Measurement and Scaling Photography Questionnaire Observation  participant  non-participant Interview Focus Group Case Study Life History Narrative Theme identification Document Analysis Etc.

Source: adapted from (Crotty, 1998, p. 5)

makes sense of the data. The Theoretical Perspective may be Interpretivist and the Methods will probably include open interviews and reflective practice. We can see that it has a very different alignment to phenomenology, but that each category in the framework is compatible. The excerpt below embodies typical misgivings regarding phenomenology and Heuristic Inquiry. They are prolific in the literature. Don’t allow yourself to be misled by these obscure anomalies that are too frequently associated with phenomenology. Trumbull describes Heuristic Inquiry as a form of phenomenology, which I contest. He does so because it is similar to the existential and hermeneutical approaches, which are erroneously referred to as such. Moustakas (1990) has appropriately given his methodology a different name. Trumbull’s quotation here represents a widely held view of phenomenology, with which I disagree: Heuristic study is a form of phenomenology and involves self-disclosure. The researcher is attempting to experience what the subject is experiencing. He explains and compares his own experience with the co-researcher. The researcher is intuitive; he is more involved in the study. Heuristics is an accurate report on the experience of oneself and others (Moustakas, 1990). An example of the difference between phenomenology and heuristic research is sitting on the bank of a river and describing it versus being in the river. The latter is Heuristic research. (Trumbull, 2005, p. 110) The phenomenologist does not sit on the bank of the river. The phenomenologist is alone, at the mouth of the river, swimming out to sea to embrace the universal

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ocean. Most of you who have an interest in phenomenology will have come across these confusing and eclectic versions of what it is supposed to be. They are the common misinterpretations that were widely published by American humanists and those who would follow them, towards the end of the twentieth century, when some of us were starting to explore the merits of qualitative methods of inquiry. Some of us, including myself, were getting it wrong in those early days. (Of course we still do, but hopefully we persevere towards our truths with attempts to reassess our errors.) Recognise these existential misinterpretations once and for all as the legacy of Heidegger’s bastardisation of phenomenology. Heidegger, as we have seen, needed to make his approach ontological, because he did not appreciate the epistemological nature essential to phenomenology. Recognise these nonphenomenological methods when you encounter them, lest you risk becoming confused and end up doing some other, interview-based research when you had intended to do phenomenology. If that happens you may as well use software rather than intuition to determine your categories. Check the alignment. Phenomenology is informed by Objectivism, never epistemologies of Constructionism or Subjectivism. You will see that I describe these below. The alignment will show the validity of the research. I read with interest the publications by Hopkins (2011) that endorse my criticisms of Heidegger’s meddling in phenomenology. Hopkins and the elite Husserl Circle are working to retrieve and maintain the writings of Husserl that were almost lost during the second world war. You will see what I mean here. In Hopkins recent publication he says that he intends, introducing the beginner to Husserl’s phenomenology from a historically informed philosophical perspective that avoids the historical presuppositions of his major critics (Heidegger and Derrida), a major aim of this book is to disclose the often facile and superficial assumptions that inform and guide their critiques. (Hopkins, 2011, p. 2) As I separate myself from most qualitative researchers and boldly argue against the misconceptions of phenomenology that have become the status quo in most contemporary, academic circles outside of philosophy, I am reassured in my views by the endorsement (if only in part) implied by the expert (and wonderfully derisive) final word of Hopkins, as he puts the work of Heidegger and Derrida into perspective. In Soliloquy, arts practice is a way for some to access the objects of the unconscious and the collective unconscious. Artists who express themselves through practice may uncover things about their personal and research situations that can be useful to their research. The art work can be analysed, not unlike a dream. It will produce symbols and icons that the skilful researcher may learn to interpret. Of course, the artist who is not doing research does not need to do any such analysis. I am increasingly aware of more arts-based researchers who are

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creating their own methodologies to match their inquiries. That’s fine, but we must keep in mind that unlike Art, research is rational practice. Unlike the artist, the researcher must be able to argue that the research approach is philosophically and rationally aligned, from the Epistemology, through the Theoretical Framework and down to the Methods that are used to serve the Methodology. Art speaks for itself but research does not. Research needs the clear logic of the researcher to explain and justify the process and defend the outcomes, even if the methods used were intuitive or artistic. Further to Table 5.1, Table 5.2 is an example showing how this sort of alignment can be created. The table shows sample methodologies, and how they align with the different epistemologies, theoretical perspectives and methods. This table sets out examples of how methodologies, informed by epistemologies of Objectivism or Constructionism or Subjectivism can show theoretical alignment. You will see that I have put Soliloquy alongside of other methodologies, to illustrate their separate threads of alignment. Much of Soliloquy involves personal immersion in the experience as well as a way of accessing what is offered up by the unconscious through such catalysts as dream, reflection on free association, and/or visual arts or play writing. How then can I argue that this is research and not creative art? I can demonstrate that the art activities are methods, serving the methodology. The difference between research and Art is that Art can be part of the research but not the whole process. We have established that any aligned research framework will firstly be informed by the researcher’s epistemology (way of knowing). Let us recap the three possible epistemologies for research, with examples: 





Objectivism: the idea that there are objects out there, which contain autonomous meaning, whether or not they are discovered and identified. This is the way of Science and Soliloquy and of pure phenomenology. Science ‘knows’ that gold and weather and light exist, whether or not they are seen or felt or in any way encountered. Soliloquy ‘knows’ that universal metaphors representing human states exist, as archetypes such as Aphrodite, Narcissus, the Wizard of Oz, whether or not the researcher acknowledges their presence or allows them to be presented by the unconscious. Constructionism: the idea that there are objects out there, but they only take on meaning after the researcher interprets them. This is the epistemology assumed by most methodologies used in the Social Sciences, including Ethnography, Post-Structural approaches, Grounded Theory, Existential ‘Phenomenology’, and other theme-based approaches; Subjectivism: the idea that all meaning exists in the mind of the individual. Postmodern methods sometimes compliment this epistemology, as they are as eclectic as the individuals who practise them. Some autoethnographies seem to sit happily with this. Soliloquy uses subjective experiences and written or spoken reflections as methods towards finding the universal objects – towards

Objectivism

Scientific theory Scientific Method

Steps of the Scientific Method Step 1 – Question. The ‘thing’ that you want to know. Step 2 –Research. Step 3 –Hypothesis. Step 4 – Experiment ETC. (Academy, 2019)

Epistemology

Theoretical perspective Methodology

Methods

Symbolic interactionism Ethnography

Examples: Participant Observation Focus group Measurement Narrative May include: Case study Discourse Analysis

Steps of the Soliloquy 1. Experience 2. Epoche 3. Epiphany 4. Explication 5. Explanation

Constructionism Transcendental phenomenology Soliloquy

TABLE 5.2 Epistemology and alignment in research design – some examples

Autoethnography (some) arts-based research Examples: Personal journals, Blogs, Dance as Research; Theatre as Research; Film as Research, Some interviews etc. With Subjectivism, the methods may lack analysis and may not produce a research outcome.

Expressionism

Subjectivism

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Objectivism. In Soliloquy the subjectivism is a method, not the epistemology. That is the important difference. I see potential for autoethnographers to take their subjective research on to reveal objective outcomes through the use of Soliloquy, which would strengthen the research paradigm. The main criticism of autoethnography and arts-based approaches is that they do not have relevance for others. Soliloquy seeks the objects known by and relatable to humankind. Finally, before we focus on the methods for doing Soliloquy, two annotated theoretical frameworks are offered below, showing the details of their methodological alignment. They can be used as examples, or as templates for the alignment of new or modified methodologies that readers may want to trial. The notes explain how each element either informs or serves the other parts of the whole.

The methods for doing Soliloquy Now that we have looked at Soliloquy in the context of research methodologies and their compositions, let us look at each of the methods in detail. They are not necessarily in chronological order. The process may or may not be linear, but in my experience that has been the case. Allow me now to expand on these explanations as best I can, as they are organic and forever evolving alongside my own comprehension. This is especially true of the Epoche, which I see as the crux of the whole approach. It is the intuitive phase. It is where the phenomenological reduction takes place. But first, before trying to make sense of anything, with Soliloquy one must experience the phenomenon first-hand. Husserl is quite clear about it: The universal a priori is then the foundation for genuine sciences of matters of fact … a priori science is the science of the essential, that upon which the science of matters of fact must return for it to be essentially grounded. However, a priori science must not be naive, but must spring forth from ultimate transcendental and phenomenological sources….In other words, the necessary path to knowledge which can be ultimately justified in the highest sense…is the path of universal self-knowledge, first in a monadic and then in an intermonadic sense….One must first lose the world through the epoche so as to regain it in universal self-examination. Noli foras ire, said St. Augustine, in redi, in interiore homine habitat veritas. (Translation: Do not wish to go out; go back into yourself. Truth dwells in the inner man) (Husserl, 1964/1929, pp 38–39)

Experience Soliloquy begins in a way akin to Autoethnography (Ellis, Jones & Adams, 2013), but then unlike Autoethnography, goes on to produce a research object; an explicit outcome, to which others may relate. Through Autoethnography, the reader can

Objectivism

Phenomenology (Transcendental Phenomenology)

Soliloquy

Epistemology

Theoretical perspective

Methodology

Soliloquy is informed by the theoretical perspective of Phenomenology, which seeks objects of inquiry (as does Scientific Method). In Soliloquy, the epistemology of Objectivism aligns with the theoretical perspective of Transcendental Phenomenology. There is a difference between the types of objects sought by science and phenomenology. Science seeks material, lifeworld objects and phenomenology waits to receive universal and intersubjective metaphors for the human condition; sometimes called by philosophers, a priori objects. I have argued that all phenomenology is Transcendental Phenomenology, and anything else is a misnomer. It is therefore sufficient to refer to the theoretical perspective of Soliloquy as ‘Phenomenology’, but as we have discussed, it can be confusing. The key component of this theoretical perspective is that it seeks intersubjective objects (and consequently it aligns with Objectivism). Soliloquy research methodology is approached from a personal perspective (aligns with Method 1 Experience) and it allows time for the incubative, intuitive responses in the unconscious (aligns with Method 2 Epoche) to produce the relevant, metaphysical object. This is offered up to consciousness as an archetypal object which is the essence of the research (aligns with the epistemology of Objectivism and Method 3 Epiphany) The researcher realises what has happened and becomes aware of the object. The inquiry had graduated from the personal and subjective to the archetypal and intersubjective, forming a metaphor that is a recognisable configuration of humankind (aligns with Method 4 Explication). The researcher then analyses, and explains the phenomenology to others. It can be articulated in hindsight by rational consciousness (aligns with Method 5 Explanation). The system that brings all of this alignment together.

TABLE 5.3 An annotated theoretical framework of Soliloquy methodology

Methods

Explanation

Explication

Epiphany

Epoche

Experience

 Experience – This is the first-hand, subjective knowledge of the researched phenomena. The researcher becomes immersed in the experience as it happens. S/he sits passively with the chaos of data. There is no reasoning required at this time.  Epoche – Husserl’s term for the stillness of consciousness. As if in a lucid dream, the Soliloquer withdraws from lifeworld chaos, and passively waits for the story to present itself. This silencing of the conscious mind makes way for unconscious images and patterns to emerge in the next phase.  Epiphany – This is the moment of ‘Ah-ha’, when there is a breakthrough from the unconscious to cognition. It is when the archetypal form is presented to the researcher. It may appear as an image that s/he is drawing, or an archetypal form s/he sees in meditation, or as a story s/he already knows, or as a song in hir head… reason cannot access this gift until later – after it presents itself in its own way. One cannot consciously make it happen; it must be allowed to happen.  Explication – This is the revelation, when the conscious mind can see and logically appreciate the intuited object, as it is offered up to reason by the unconscious. It is sometimes entwined with the Epiphany, the manifestation of the phenomenon – as art or image or archetype or some other concrete outcome of the Epiphany. The creative process itself will enable the Explication – through creative writing an archetype that was first glimpsed in early free-association scribble may appear, through painting a shadowy image may consolidate on the paper. This is the stage when the researcher makes sense of it all for hirself.  Explanation – And here is where the rational mind comes into play. Until now it had been set aside to make way for intuition. Now Reason re-enters, no longer as the master, but as the servant. Hir role is to translate analyse and explain the new and complex information. The intersubjective outcome needs to be explained so that it can be comprehensible to others.

The Methods are what we do to serve the Methodology. The terms are frequently used interchangeably in academia, but they are not the same. They both align with the Theoretical Perspective, which is the philosophy informing the research. For Soliloquy, the methods are:

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TABLE 5.4 A comparative alignment: scientific method

Epistemology

Objectivism

Theoretical perspective

Positivism

Methodology The methods

Science assumes that objects are independent of the observer. They are material objects which can be measured in some way.

The Encyclopaedia Britannica defines Positivism as follows: ‘Positivism, in Western philosophy, generally, any system that confines itself to the data of experience and excludes a priori or metaphysical speculations’ (Feigl, 2019). Scientific It is a little confusing that the methodology should be Method referred to as a method. The steps of the scientific method are as follows: 1. Make an observation or observations. 2. Ask questions about the observations and gather information. 3. Form a hypothesis — a tentative description of what’s been observed and make predictions based on that hypothesis. 4. Test the hypothesis and predictions in an experiment that can be reproduced. 5. Analyse the data and draw conclusions; accept or reject the hypothesis or modify the hypothesis if necessary. 6. Reproduce the experiment until there are no discrepancies between observations and theory. This rigorous approach is perfectly aligned with its Epistemology of Objectivism and the theory of Positivism, which informs the approach. All Methodologies, established or newly created, need to demonstrate this level of philosophical alignment in order to show academic exactitude.

empathise with the first-person experiences of the researcher. Soliloquy goes to the next level to reveal an object that symbolises the whole experience. An autoethnographic phase may initiate Soliloquy, or alternatively the researcher may experience a phenomenon without expressing anything initially. This is the Experience phase. It is here that the research question will begin to show itself and continue to become increasingly clear as the project progresses. It evolves. By contrast, of course, in Scientific Method the research question is presented in the form of a hypothesis, which requires the investigator to guess the outcome up front. This is not the intuitive way. It is cognitive. The intuitive researcher will start with a feeling – an inkling about something, which at first may not be able to be articulated. As it is pursued and allowed to show itself, it will form as a new idea to the rational mind, which eventually will become scrutable. Because the emerging phenomenon is a new concept, which rises up from the unconscious, it will show itself symbolically, and will then need to be analysed rationally in order to decipher meaning. The meaning when uncovered may be layered and complex, which is why the researcher must take time for all of this to present itself to consciousness and then be understood. Along the way, the research question will emerge and clarify. Although the researcher will start with a feeling about the phenomenon, the focus for the question surrounding the inquiry will become more clear as the project progresses. Allow it to happen.

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Husserl, ahead of his time, was certain that looking inwardly at one’s own experience was a way to seek knowledge. It is clear in the quotation at the start of this chapter, as Husserl quotes St Augustine with ‘truth dwells in the inner man’. His call for personal exploration of phenomena was radical. The early twentieth century was the era of Gebser’s ‘mental consciousness’ and Sheldon’s ‘scientism’. Macann’s comment on Husserl’s reference to St Augustine is poetic and astute: What a world away from the configuration that defines contemporary philosophy and which, following the lead of Wittgenstein and Heidegger, seeks to jettison the bag and baggage of interiority, subjectivity and spirituality as a cultural anachronism! … an epitaph for Husserl’s thought, it might be this: ‘Truth dwells in the inner man. (Macann, 2005, p. 54) Now, it is popular to look at one’s own experience. We see plenty of examples. But as a method for Soliloquy, try not to analyse it too much at the start. Let it enfold you. Let the events accumulate and your unconscious will weave meaning from them. In Chapter 1 I touched on the example of how I developed Soliloquy during research into the phenomenon of play directing. Let us look at that now in more detail and see how it may serve as a methodological template for other research projects. I began with a desire to know something more about the phenomenon that was directing plays. My ‘working’ question started out as, ‘What counts as directing?’ After the initial inquiry processes, I considered the metaphor I had been given in a meditation, and later too, when I was writing about the topic. This metaphorical archetype was the Wizard of Oz. How did that answer my research question? Perhaps I should also reverse this question and answer process and ask, what was the question that matched this answer that my unconscious synthesis was showing me? It is possible then to replace the original question created consciously, so that the intuited answer then determines what should be asked, and what is needed to be known? I will need to give this further consideration, I think. My rational analysis determined that in popular opinion, like the Wizard, the director is attributed with great powers. Critics talk of a director’s vision for the play, and to some extent that may be true, but the director always works with actors who contribute to the creative process and change the dynamics. The Wizard of Oz, in Baum’s (Baum, 1998) story empowers Dorothy and her friends by revealing to them that they have all the magic they need within themselves. In my experience, that is what the director does with the actors. The Wizard, like the director, becomes redundant as the players assume control. Professional directors usually do not attend performances after the play has opened to an audience. All power is handed over to the Stage Manager and the actors. My question is still applicable – What counts as directing? It was answered by my unconscious with a symbolic object in the form of a Wizard of Oz, which emerged from my own experience of directing. I then needed to consider the possibility that other

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directors work differently. Some are authoritarian rather than collaborative. I have worked with amateur directors like that, and their results lack the authenticity of the professional, collaborative director. In the light of the outcome, I eventually see what I have been wanting to know. The research question now shows itself as, What counts as authentic directing? It is OK if the focus of the question becomes clear as the project emerges. This is an evolving methodology. Trust that your intuition will show you what you need to comprehend. That way you will come up with something of which you would never have thought. Researchers are increasingly attracted to postmodern approaches to research that allow them to explore their own psyche. Once frowned upon by positivists who sometimes argued that such data was narcissistic nonsense (Crotty, 1996), it is now flooding our journals. The positivists do have a point, however. Research is a disciplined approach to inquiry, whereas creative writing and art are potentially free. The condition inherent in Transcendental Phenomenology and its application, which I call Soliloquy, is that the artistic freedom and subjective data are methods towards a final, universal idea, a transcendental object. Once this happens, the research becomes independent of the subject, who is also the researcher. It shows the entire essence of the phenomenon; that is in Husserl’s terminology, the thing itself. So the researcher needs to know and draw upon something from hir own life that matters and which s/he wants to better understand. By way of example, let me tell you how this directing research came about in my experience. As you know, I worked for some years as an actor and then as a director of theatre. At the time of my early work in phenomenology, just after I had got it all wrong in my Master’s thesis and was starting again with Transcendental rather than Existential literature, I happened to be directing a play that was to be staged at the Gasworks Theatre in Melbourne. This was the experience I was to use for my phenomenology. I wanted to understand the essence of directing actors in a play; its phenomenological essence. I was personally absorbed in my play and work with the actors. To do Soliloquy, you will need to find your passion and your pursuit. It can be about anything, so long as it matters to you. Don’t try to anticipate what will come of it, because if you do that you are working in a positivist way, as if you are hypothesising. I must say here that the temptation to look ahead is persistent. This is because we have been trained to plan ahead and write goals and expectations. At this stage, Soliloquy must be a leap of faith. If you know the outcome, it means your cognition has not yet handed the control to intuition, as it must in these early stages. That is the only way you will be able to uncover insights that you could not have anticipated. Other doubts that researchers are likely to have with intuitive inquiry is that the outcome may fail to arrive or that the research itself will not be important because it is only about oneself. Trust that it will eventually produce an intersubjective outcome. Husserl (Husserl, 1964/1929) says that in order to access the most universal insights, one must start with the most subjective, personal experience – ‘Do not go out; go back into yourself’ (Husserl, 1977). Our unconscious minds, which

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we have considered to be so much smarter that our thinking brains, will see it through. The researcher must intuit if this approach feels right or decide if another more readily accountable methodology should be chosen. It is the dilemma only you, as the practitioner, can resolve. So let us assume you have your work in front of you and it will be the basis for your venture into phenomenology. You might like to record and reflect on your activities, for example. When I directed the play, I recorded my free and seemingly random thoughts about each rehearsal, in the car while driving home that evening. The data was fresh, and I spoke of the events, my frustrations and generally gave an unfiltered account of my perspective on things. This data would not be transcribed or used in its entirety. It was the equivalent of the free-association Freud would invite from his patients who were undergoing psychoanalysis. The process of recording the data allowed me to bring my feelings to the surface and make evident any patterns of feelings that I may have been hiding from myself. It was, as the name suggests, free association. Voice recordings of one’s experience is an easy way to start gathering the data. Any arts-based methods are also good. For example, visual artists may choose to paint or draw expressionistic responses to their experiences, dancers may use movement and music – any means of expression that comes naturally to the researcher will help to wake the feelings that will become metaphors for knowledge – later. I could have transcribed the voice recordings, but at that point in the development of Soliloquy it occurred to me transcription was unnecessary. My unconscious had already begun to synthesise and create archetypal objects by the time I was part way through the research. It took me a while to realise it. The experience that you choose for your research should interest you greatly. If you wish to use Soliloquy, it is important for you to be intrinsically motivated by your project. Some people do postgraduate inquiry solely to receive a qualification. It would be faster to use another approach if you are intending to bore yourself for extrinsic reward. If you are lucky enough to have the opportunity to engage intuitively in a topic for which you have a passion, then your inquiry should be inspirational – for you and for others like you, as you uncover that intersubjective pearl.

Epoche After the researcher has surrendered to the experience and expressed hir responses to it in hir own way, then s/he waits. How long? As long as it takes? I believe that if you suggest to your unconscious that you need to receive an insight by a certain time – a week or a month perhaps – and if you remain open to receiving the response, it will present itself to you in one way or another and in a timely fashion. Some of us informally practise this kind of autosuggestion regularly, without paying much attention to it. Do you find that you can successfully tell yourself, before you sleep at night, to wake at a certain hour? It is like that. I still set an alarm as a backup, but autosuggestion usually works. The Epoche is the domain of

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the intuitive researcher who knows there is something to be accessed, just below the surface, and can sustain the time it takes for ideas to incubate. There are many scholars who talk about a stillness that settles just prior to a creative breakthrough. The calm before the storm? Husserl’s Epoche is one label for this pregnant stillness with which we are probably all familiar. Moustakas (1990), in his intuitive methodology that works with both personal experience and co-researchers, calls this ‘incubation’ time. Others, such as Polanyi (1967), talk about ‘tacit’ knowledge that one just has but does not know where it comes from. Within Gebser’s framework, the Epoche aligns with Magical Consciousness. If humans believe and know things without knowing how or why then they are sensing magical consciousness. The knowledge is intuitive. Throughout cultures and time, humans have been aware of this kind of knowing, but it is hard to describe. It resists the light-of-day explanations that modernism demands. In Greek mythology, Psyche is the goddess of intuition. Her story is inspiring, telling of her love for Eros and her resilience to overcome obstacles set before her by her jealous mother-in-law, Aphrodite. Like intuition itself, Psyche knows her lover in the dark without being able to actually see him. When she shines a clear light on him, he disappears. In the Epoche, as the researcher you must stop thinking about your topic and just let the experiences you have known develop and grow in the unconscious. Eventually, and perhaps sooner than you anticipate, the product of this stillness will present itself from the unconscious. Be aware that it will appear as a metaphor or image of some kind, perhaps in a dream or meditation. I have been wondering if there is a spiritual aspect to Husserl’s Epoche, that informs the artist or the researcher in that quiet moment of tacit awareness. We live in the lifeworld, that place where much of our thinking and functioning is urgent and explicit and known through the five physical senses. We believe we are functioning (largely) in a rational way and we (mostly) aspire to that. These are the qualities in which we have been taught to trust (although trust is a somewhat magical quality). But what of our dreams and imaginings? If the psychoanalysts have taught us anything, it is that there is a lot going on under the surface. So what lies below that ocean that is the unconscious? This is a long bow I now draw, and it does not matter to doing Soliloquy if you agree or not, but I put to you something for your consideration: There are many cultural and religious beliefs that align with Jung’s idea of the unconscious and the collective unconscious. My own experience of Spiritualism has suggested that there is both a psychic state, in which one might pick up the thoughts and feelings of those around us, as well as a spiritual dimension, which if accessed successfully, can yield messages from others who have died but are now living in spirit. There is research into parapsychology to support this view (Smith, 2018). Every indigenous culture seems to have beliefs that to a greater or lesser degree align with these essential components. What if – Jung’s ‘unconscious’ aligns with the astral plane, where telepathy manifests, or even where spirits of the living and the dead can move and communicate? What if Jung’s ‘Collective Unconscious’ is

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indeed the Epoche, wherein lies the greater consciousness of which we are all a part? Is this the domain of what Christianity and Judaism calls ‘heaven’; or Islam calls ‘Paradise’ or what in Buddhism is known as Nirvana? Spiritualists may refer to the ‘Spirit World’- and others (except for the existentialists who choose to be shackled in the purgatory of Mental Consciousness) will have many and various takes on it. I don’t think it matters what religion one comes from or aspires to, the Epoche – or whatever you call it – seems to be a universal place of shared understanding that is beyond consciousness. Perhaps it was born at the time of Gebser’s magical knowledge, developed through mythical awareness and comes of age as a precursor of Creativity itself. Here, I am drawing a line between the dots of Jung’s Collective Unconscious, Husserl’s transcendental Epoche and the spirituality of modern religions – specifically Spiritualism (for that is the one I have come to know through personal experience). I do not see it as such a long stretch of the imagination. Jung himself was a Spiritualist, and he and Husserl were contemporaries, practising at a time that favoured the revival of Spiritualism, at the turn of the twentieth century. Were they in a kind of morphic resonance, along with Gebser and others such as Steiner (1911), Picasso (Woman Weeping, 1937) and Bergson (Chambre et al., 2017)? Creativity resounds in us. We know when we witness art that holds universal truth, because it resonates from deep down inside ourselves. The artist has drawn from the Epoche, which is also our own well of universal knowledge. The truth then is our own. We are all connected at this level. So too, the researcher who uses personal experience to draw from the Epoche and our collective, transcendental phenomena, will produce a universally recognisable outcome.

The Epoche and altered states of consciousness In my own experience, dream, day-dream and meditation are the most useful pathways to the unconscious. I wonder to what extent, if at all, intuition can be accessed artificially? During the nineteen sixties and seventies, a lot of psychiatric research went into investigating the effects of psychedelic drugs and their ability to alter one’s state of mind, until it was deemed unsafe and was ceased. This may be a way forward for some researchers, but I know little about it from personal experience. I feel that I am taking part in a natural process when I visit my unconscious realms, even though in dreams and the like, encounters can be challenging and confronting. If I introduce mind-altering substances to create the same effect, I wonder if the journey will be as purposeful and useful as a dream. I trust my mind knows what it is doing as it unites conscious awareness with unconscious synthesis. If I write down my dream, I can usually make sense of it now. It has taken some years of psychotherapy, but I am confident that dream analysis is a reliable way for me to access my unconscious. I think I doubt the drugs because they seem random. They do not come from my physical self, and I worry they might create artificial concerns and anxieties. This is perhaps naive. I trust now that I can work with my unconscious. I see my shadows as aspects of myself that are

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trying to protect me and I thank them and manage them – at least I am confident to try. But if I splatter my unconscious canvas with foreign substances, I fear it will disrupt the natural flow of my intuition. I am concerned that it will, in fact, interfere with my informative unconscious to conscious liaison. Of course, I may be mistaken, and I try to search beyond my learned values to see where the doubt comes from. I can’t. It just feels off target to me, and so I must respect that and behave accordingly. Each of us must find our own way. Certainly, other cultures have been using medicine to facilitate altered states for thousands of years. Shamanic insights into altered states of consciousness have been studied extensively by Marcel de Lima Santos (2012), who draws parallels between the mystics’ interest in altered stares of consciousness and that of the nineteenth century English poets, who experimented with mind-altering drugs in efforts to reach the profound enlightenment of the Sharman. Interestingly, there are mixed reviews regarding the quality of the creative works produced under the influence of such substances. Personally, I have found substances such as marijuana and speed to be disturbing to my psyche and unpleasant. Consequently, my experience of these and other recreational drugs is very limited. I did however work for years as a travelling performer, with two companions who would smoke various drugs regularly after the show for relaxation and entertainment. I was able to observe their self-perceptions and antics while in these states, and noted that they seemed to enjoy an inflated sense of creativity and self-confidence. They believed the drug was making them ingenious beyond their sober capabilities. As the abstemious observer (except perhaps for some secondary-smoke effects), I could not see it. Once, while driving through the Queensland outback, from Mt Isa to Townsville, the driver – high as an eagle – insisted on taking photographs of the grass as it sped by us, all blurred and red with seed. When I showed him the results, he denied they were his photographs. Apparently the pictures had in no way captured the exhilaration of the subjective view. Coleridge’s poem, Kublai Khan was famously written under the influence of laudanum. It was popular practice amongst the romantic poets of the eighteenth century to explore altered states of consciousness in this way. Critics have mixed opinions of the poem. When I read it, I thought it was a laboured attempt at what could have otherwise been a more subtly romantic and erotic metaphor. Again, it sounded as though the author was enjoying the creative experience of beating out art with a sledgehammer. Santos (2012) provides some details as to how the circumstance of writing the poem came about: Coleridge himself, writing what many consider the most famous preface in literary history, declared that after the ingestion of an anodyne (laudanum), he fell asleep in his chair at the moment that he was reading the following sentence in Purchas’s pilgrimage: ‘Here the Khan Kublai commanded a palace to be built, and a stately garden thereunto. And thus ten miles of fertile ground

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were inclosed with a wall.’ As the story goes, the poet awoke and started putting down the distinct recollections of his vision, which are what we have in ‘Kublai Khan,’ but before he could finish it, Coleridge tells us, ‘he was unfortunately called out by a person on business from Porlock, and detained by him above an hour’. As he returned and tried to resume his writing, the vision had almost completely faded, ‘with the exception of some eight or ten scattered lines and images, all the rest had passed away like the images on the surface of a stream into which a stone has been cast’. (Santos, 2012, p. 41) So was the inspiration the result of the laudanum or the product of Coleridge’s unconscious, offered up through a dream? Perhaps it does not matter, but I am inclined to believe that authentic creativity will come aplenty from the natural human states involving dream, meditation and other less toxic means of altering one’s state of consciousness. I sincerely do not mean to be judgemental in this regard, and I am open to the possibility that some folk may find it useful to ingest substances to enhance their creative potential. I have never found it to be the case. The substances seem to make me anxious and are counter-productive. I had a similar reaction when I was briefly exposed to high-voltage cables. My friend and I were enjoying a country drive in Gembrook, Victoria, when a winding road brought us directly underneath the high-voltage power lines that go down through Gippsland. The electricity disoriented me and seemed powerfully disturbing, forcing our prompt departure. I wondered if I had some kind of sensitivity disorder, as my friend was not affected at all. Altered states of consciousness can be a powerful means to access information from the unconscious. Some may choose artificial means to gain access to otherwise closed parts of their brains, but I do not claim to know or respect the validity of those means. Let us look at other ways one can access the synthesising powers of our unconscious minds. Different cultures and individuals will find various levels of trance state acceptable and useful. Santos (2012) tells us of the extreme outcomes of Shamanic practice. It makes for interesting reading. Here Santos gives us an overview of shamanic means to what may be equivalent to the Epoche: Shamanic authority stems not only from their being able to communicate with the spiritual world and hence have access to certain mysterious forces such as those that command the natural forces of rain and harvest, but also from their ability to control these forces by means of ritual and sacrifice known to them only. These shamanic practices involve the achievement of an altered state of consciousness on the part of the shaman by means of an extreme and conscious derangement of the psyche, that is, of a conscious attempt at an ecstatic state of awareness. This is in turn accomplished through a number of techniques that involve fasting and/or the ingestion of sacred plants, as well as drum beating accompanied by rhythmic chants and dramatic performances.

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Once the altered, or ecstatic, state of consciousness is achieved the shaman is given access to the mysterious forces of the supernatural world. He can thus perform a wide range of extraordinary activities such as the transformation into animal form, the prediction of future events as well as the unfolding of past ones, the making of rain along with any other weather manifestation, and the healing of the sick as well as the mortal infection of the healthy. (Santos, 2012) Did Coleridge have access to the ‘the mysterious powers of the supernatural world’ when creating Kubla Khan? The poem itself is of course the final testimony to the method. For me it has an air of self-conscious cleverness, which is reminiscent of the hedonistic behaviour of my drug-drunk friends of long ago. Dr Oliver Tearle, a lecturer in English and literary critic, observes: The poem is haunted by repetition, suggesting that Coleridge’s very attempt to replicate the glory and beauty of this lost world is linguistically doomed to failure: words like ‘chasm’ and ‘momently’ appear twice, as do the phrases ‘pleasure-dome’, ‘sacred river’ (actually present three times), ‘caverns measureless to man’, ‘sunny (pleasure-)dome’, ‘caves of ice’. It is as if the poem, and the poet, cannot get beyond these phrases summoning the world of Xanadu but unable to recreate it in any true sense. The reasonably regular iambic tetrameter rhythm of ‘Kubla Khan’ is almost chant-like, but this chant will not succeed in magically causing anything to appear. In the last analysis, ‘Kubla Khan’ is at once a gorgeous evocation of a lost world of fantasy and wonder, and a poem deeply aware of the poet’s inability to call back that world to us. It is fitting that Coleridge locked the poem away for nearly 20 years, seemingly in acknowledgment of its lack of success in this regard … (Tearle, 2017) Perhaps, as many would argue, the clumsy repetition was indeed a brilliant literary device to illustrate the poet’s inability to recreate the golden age of Kublai Khan? However, it is my opinion that, like the effects of the mind-altering substances, it is fun, but potentially misleading. I have wanted to cover some alternative routes to the Epoche here, but for most of us, it will just be a quietening of the mind. Forget about your research for a time. Walk amidst nature and beauty, and just don’t work at thinking. The work in the Epoche is under the surface and the more your thoughts try to anticipate the things to come, the more they block out the Epiphany.

Epiphany Bernie Neville, in his book Educating Psyche (1989), reminds us of the wisdom of the unconscious. He refers us to Erickson’s view that our unconscious minds are smarter than we are, and quotes Erickson:

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And it is very important for a person to know their unconscious is smarter than they are. There is a great wealth of stored material in the unconscious. We know the unconscious can do things, and it’s important to assure your patient that it can. They have to be willing to let their unconscious do things and not depend so much on their conscious mind. This is a great aid to their functioning. So you build your technique around instructions that allow their conscious mind to withdraw from the task and leave it all up to the unconscious. (Erickson in Neville, 1989, p. 68) This is the Ah ha moment when your phenomenon rises from the stillness of the Epoche to show itself to consciousness. The thing itself, or the intersubjective phenomenon, will usually first appear in a kind of cryptic form that will need to be analysed in order to be understood. The Wizard of Oz first appeared to me in a guided meditation. My PhD group would meet regularly each month, and we would take part in various activities that our supervisor, Bernie Neville, would lead. Sometimes we would draw our thesis and position ourselves somewhere in relation to it. Other times we would roleplay receiving our doctorate and then moving backwards in time, describing each stage that led to the successful completion, but in reverse chronological order. I found this creative visualisation exercise particularly helpful, as it allowed me to see a possibility that was not automatically evident to me. Working class girls from Bayswater have to nurture the idea that they are smart enough to do these sorts of things (at least in my day, when my father could not see the point in any of his daughters going past Year 10, as it would just be wasted time after we were married and keeping house; it was the 1960s). Bernie’s expertise in psychoanalysis meant that he could assist us in accessing the epiphanies that lay dormant in our unconscious minds. Each of us – priests, Anglican ministers, psychologists and educators like me, would find our way to our own truth through his unconventional practices. Mind-mapping was new then, and I recall one student who was struggling to crystallise his thesis embarked on mind-mapping during one of our meetings. The next month he arrived in an elated state, with reams of butchers’ paper rolled up in his grasp. As he lay the paper out it travelled for meters across the floor. There was his thesis. It looked as though he had produced his word limit on that butchers’ paper, but he was ecstatic that he could now see where he was headed in context to his reading, and could now complete the work. This may be one way for some to reach their Epiphany. As I said, for me it was during a guided meditation. Bernie asked us to think of a question. It seemed odd at the time, but my question was, ‘What comes after Postmodernism?’ We were then asked to close our eyes and imagine ourselves walking down a track. The track became sandy and we found our way down to the beach. Because all things are possible to the imagination, we walked into the sea and could breathe easily as we discovered underwater caves and elaborate sea gardens. Of course, this description does not do justice to the event, because it is a synopsis based on memory, but when one is immersed in the meditation there are colours and fish and many things of beauty created by one’s own imagination,

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which enhance the experience and make it unique. Bernie lead us to a door, behind which would be a person who could provide an answer to our research question. My door was opened by Dr Michael Crotty, who had passed away from the (real) lifeworld some months before. It was Michael, you may recall, who first pointed me in the direction of Transcendental Phenomenology. In the meditation, Michael took me by the hand and said we would go together to put my question to Husserl. On the way, he smiled and said he hoped he wasn’t the Wizard of Oz. I did not see how that meditation had offered an epiphany for my research into Directing until the Wizard of Oz cropped up again in a play I was creating. I happened to be writing a play about methodology, which was performed at the Conference for the Association for Qualitative Research in Melbourne in 2001. Playwriting comes easily to me because I have created so many small plays as an actor and Drama teacher over the years, and I find it is an excellent pedagogy for getting across complex ideas, which can be discussed and clarified through the character dialogue. Often when I am writing plays, I imagine I hear what each character is saying and find out what is happening as I write. It is a bit like when we may overhear a child playing with dolls. S/he does not work out the plot beforehand, it just happens along. That is how I was writing the methodology play, when one of the actor characters referred to the Director character in the play as the Wizard of Oz. The Director was the Wizard of Oz/ Id. He said the last word in two ways at once, as one can only do in a dream state. I ran with the Wizard of Oz, but I still wonder what further light the ‘Id’ reference might shed on my inquiry into Directing. Perhaps it was a grounding reference to the lifeworld working in conjunction with the transcendental world of the Wizard of Oz? The Epiphany allowed me to recall the meditation, and I knew that the image was somehow significant. It had now presented itself twice, and it felt important. At this stage I did not know why. I was becoming aware of the connections but I could not see how they fitted together. That would be the challenge in the next phase of the methodology – the Explanation. It was now time to engage my cognition in order to make sense of it all and articulate it so that others may understand. These are some of the processes that allow the Epiphany to surface in your research. You will need to discover the means by which you can best stream the information created in the unconscious. If you are an artist, you may paint for expression and see what forms on the canvas. A dancer may move freely and discover thoughts arising or manipulating the movement. Such are the methods through which one can turn art into research. Meditation is excellent. I found writing down the dialogue of imaginative characters as they spoke their lines in a play to be useful. I was not consciously thinking about what they were about to say. I just wrote down their interactions as they flowed from my creative unconscious to my typewriter. Walking is good, too, especially if it is practical to abandon thoughts of everyday safety and just surrender to the the monotonous rhythm of pace. The epiphany comes when the researcher is engaging in a creative or meditative activity that quietens conscious prattle so that the unconscious can be heard. Each researcher

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will need to find the activity in which they can best achieve the necessary mindlessness. If you are not familiar with painting, then that activity will not quieten your consciousness, because you will be in the moment, thinking about colour and mess and probably trying to assess the quality of your artistic skill. That will not do. Find your way to silence and nurture the conditions for your Epiphany to emerge.

Explication The epiphany presents you with the entire object, which at first may seem cryptic, or even worrying. We must remember that the unconscious has no filter, so society’s cultural improprieties are not censored. See any such presentations as metaphors for your inquiry. In a dream, a sexual encounter may symbolise a useful connection or a death may be a metaphor for a new beginning. As researcher, you will need to decipher its meaning, analyse the data and prepare to be able to articulate it in a way that can be communicated to others. It is at this point in Soliloquy when the unconscious mind passes the research over to rationality and logic, so it can be polished and understood as synthesised data. I will show you an example of a dream that I had while writing this chapter, which at first may seem unnecessarily crude. It is important to rein in any overcultivated sense of propriety when dealing with dreams. The thing is, we cannot control the data from the unconscious, and nor should we try. It was the raw nature of unconscious data that blackened the name of Freud when he first beset psychoanalysis upon puritanical, Victorian societies. Soliloquy asks the researcher to work in harmony with the metaphoric song of the unconscious. Unlike our mental consciousness, it has no way to screen or make judgements concerning social impropriety. It will sometimes present us with images we may not wish to mention publicly, let alone publish. And you don’t have to mention them, but heed them and think through the associations with suspended adjudication. You are likely to either discover that this is not the methodology for you, and return to safer ground, or become so intrigued with the insights that you no longer doubt the symbolism. Try to remember that these images will most likely be metaphors. Stick with it and work out what it really means. As you become more familiar with the language of your unconscious, you become less daunted. You may attune to the confronting images and see them symbolically, or even humorously. We all have seemingly silly dreams, but they are not as they seem. They are more than that. When Feud presented his theory of psychoanalysis to the conservative and somewhat prudish society of the early 1900s, he outraged his critics. Some rationalised that it was perverted nonsense, but it was just too confronting for them. Psychoanalysis was moving us away from the safe and controllable, physical and behaviourist view of psychology. Exposing one’s shadow was much more personally confronting than running rats up a maze for food rewards. Freud uncovered raw, human vulnerability as he asked patients to examine their personal dreams. Many would (and still do) choose to forget their dreams, as a means of denial. But our uncensored dream data are fascinating as they get to the heart of our questions and anxieties.

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When you start to record your dreams, try not to analyse anything as you write. Try not to overlook or ‘forget’ any embarrassing details, or feelings, about which your rational (judgemental) self would not approve. Write in as much detail as you can, describing feelings that accompany the events. These are vital to the content. The uncensored events and your emotional responses are your research data. The more personal and subjective it is, the more powerful the phenomenology. Here is an example of a dream I wrote down recently. I offer it as an example of how I recall dreams, and of the odd associations and symbols that seem nonsensical at the time, yet do become meaningful in hindsight. When I dreamed, I had been going through a time of change and was anxious about where it would take me. My two recently deceased sisters feature at the end of the dream. On waking, I wrote this down: I had a dream, which I believe to be a metaphor for my current situation. I needed to get to an important workshop for a creative endeavour, the details of which were not specified and probably not important. It was a city, and I think that city was Melbourne. I needed to get to an airport to travel there, before the workshop the next day. I also felt I had obligations to be in an educational institution, which seemed to be a high school, where I was working with staff to help them teach Drama. I was encouraging them to do plays with their students. I was trying to calculate how long I would need to get to the airport, because I was anxious about leaving my current school if they needed me to work further with them. It occurred to me that I had started rehearsing a big play with the staff at the school, but I had forgotten about it because I had been away. I was trying to remember if that play was opening that night. I did not know what had happened to the preparations or scheduling of the play, and it was my fault because I had been away and forgotten. I attended a class with one teacher, but the students were working in groups on something else and not listening to me or her. She was in the next room working on something else as well. I decided that I probably did not need to be here and decided to go to the airport. It was a long way, and I would need to walk somewhere to catch a bus. As I started to leave the school I saw it had flooded, and that I would need to walk through water – at first shallow, but it seemed to be deeper further in. The water was lapping at my feet as I stood on the concrete next to the building. Then I saw a black form and wondered if it was a crocodile. It was a crocodile, but I could not see how big it would be in its entirety. I found a stick about a metre long, and tried to lure it out a bit to see its size. When I poked it again, it shrunk back against the flooded concrete foundations of the building, and looked comically cute and small. But I knew it could transform in an instant and have the potential to devour me, so I treated it with respect. When it climbed up onto the concrete above the water, I could see that it was about two metres long – too small to kill me but large enough to possibly do me an injury if I made a wrong move. I needed to be aware of it and watch for potentially dangerous changes. I found myself back in the school building. It was starting to feel like that movie, Groundhog Day. I knew I needed to get to the airport for the important, future, creative

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event. Then, as often happens in dreams lately, I needed to go to the toilet but it was impossible to find one. This happened a couple of times and then, when I was outside sitting on a concrete bench (while simultaneously hanging my washed clothes on a clothesline), I realised I was sitting on an ancient row of toilets, like the ones I had visited at Ephesus. (The actual guide in Ephesus had remarked that in ancient times, men would sit here and converse.) In my dream, at this place I found I could relieve myself as I hung the washing on a clothesline, which had conveniently presented itself, an armslength above my head. It occurred to me that I now had no dry clothes to take on my journey. As I stood up, to my horror, dried faeces hung from my clothing, which had metamorphosed into a kind of hessian-bag tunic. Suddenly I was filthy and not dressed for the travel or the important event. The faeces looked like dried dahlia bulbs (perhaps indicating that all this shit may later bloom into something worthwhile, but that wasn’t helping my current dilemma). I would just have to go now as I was, unprepared. I tried to get to a bus stop or a train stop. I ran down the hill to a chaotic kind of bus stop. Others were trying to get away, and there was no time to choose where to go. I just knew I needed to move on now, and make my way to any other place. Events kept holding me here and I felt I was being tricked into believing I could not leave. I think I alighted a bus – that’s all I can remember. Then I was somewhere else – still trying to blindly find my way to the airport and wondering if it was too late. I passed a room and someone in there had recognised me and said something like, ‘there she is’. It was a gathering of people. I tried to move on and pretend I had not heard, as I was anxious to keep going. Then I realised that my sister Lynette was there too. She saw me and walked out of the room and into the corridor where I was. I had been heading for the lift. Lynette was wearing a red patterned scarf around her head and shoulders, the way a Muslim woman might wear a scarf. She came out and hugged me, and we both cried holding each other. We cried for her death and Denise’s death and for our separation. That’s all I remember. I feel I would have kept moving on, but it was a relief to see Lynette. I wondered if she was preparing for another incarnation, and was in fact, moving on herself. Having recorded the dream data as candidly and accurately as possible, it is then time to engage your mental cognition as you read it back to yourself. If immediate recognition does not come to mind, don’t worry. Later, when your unconscious has synthesised more data, something will surface to consciousness. If you miss it at first, it will keep appearing. That is how the unconscious works. The archetype of the Wizard of Oz appeared to me two or three times before I recognised it. As for the sample dream, my first thoughts are that my unconscious is endorsing the fact that I am having trouble moving on after the deaths of my sisters. Many years ago I had the good fortune to meet a wonderful psychiatrist who taught me how to understand my needs through analysing my dreams. Dr Keith Lim worked in Melbourne, and told me his influences included the works of Carl Jung and Karen Horney, among others. As I worked with Keith, intermittently over the

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next twenty years, one of the incidental benefits was that he taught me to appreciate the power of the unconscious. We worked extensively on dreams and their meanings, and I began to believe that through careful dream analysis, which uses feeling in conjunction with cognition, I could access an authentic sense of direction. As Milton Erikson said, and I have used this quotation in many of my publications because it seems to capture an essence in a sentence, ‘Trust your unconscious; it knows more than you do’ (Erickson, 1979). Regarding the dream I described above, I need to view it in the context of my life as it was at that time. I believe it was offering me a clear perspective on my current challenges. As the unconscious always communicates through images and metaphor, I must be open to all that it presents. For example, I may cringe at the details about excreting dahlia bulbs, yet the symbolism offers essential knowledge to my consciousness. Given that I delighted in planting dahlia bulbs each year when I resided in Melbourne, the image offers hope of good things to come, despite how they may appear in the context of the dream. All of the irksome details must be included in the raw, dream description. The unconscious has no moral filter, no censorship nor euphemisms. Many therapists now work with psychoanalysis, as does Soliloquy, because as Jay puts it, Freud’s contribution to the tradition of dream analysis was path-breaking, for in insisting on them as ‘the royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious’, he provided a remarkably elaborate account of why dreams originate and how they function. (Jay, 2019) That is why dreams are so trustworthy: they supply a royal road to the unconscious. It is also why this approach may not suit some researchers, and that is OK too. However, I suspect if you have come thus far in your reading that you are bravely resilient to the metaphorical language of the unconscious.

Explanation Once the intersubjective, archetypal forms have been given up to consciousness, the researcher then embarks on the sometimes arduous task of making the whole process transparent and understandable to others. We have to explain the analysis that has been partly completed during the last phase of Explication. It is possible that the final analysis will occur to the researcher during this explanation stage, as quite often writers do not make their thoughts clear until they are writing them down. This is where the methods merge and are interchangeable at times. Just as a good movie or book might have you thinking about it and discovering more unexpected insights years later, so too will the synthesis from the unconscious be complex. There will be layers of meaning. I am sure that I have not picked up all that was presented during my research work with Soliloquy. I think it is sufficient to take what we can, and know that there is probably more to know. If it is important, it will somehow appear to you again. This data and analysis is not finite

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like that of science, which is why it must be dealt with using intuitive methods rather than measurement. When you receive an image or an archetype, just as the psychoanalyst may relate dream images to a patient’s life circumstances, allow this symbol to explain the research. Write it down with your audience in mind. Speak to your audience as I am speaking to you. Do not blur what you say with unnecessarily verbose language or third-person pretence. I have attempted to describe my own attempts at transcending the lifeworld to reach universal, intersubjective phenomena. It is unlike the shamanic approach and it may well differ from your preferred way too, but that does not matter so long as we can each find our preferred methods. As transcendentalism touches on spiritual experience, it is fitting and possible for each individual to reach a transcendental state through the pathways available to hir and via hir own faith. Personally, I have no interest in pursuing altered states through drug-taking or physical stress, as I do not believe it to be an authentic way for me to reach my own truth, yet I remain impartial to the choices made by others.

An example of Soliloquy in practice: Echo and Narcissus Now that we have discussed the methods and considered the methodological framework of Soliloquy, let us return to the two examples of when I have used the approach for research. I hope the processes will now be transparent and clear. In Chapter 1 I referred to the research into Web 2.0 technology that I did in 2007 as a Research Fellow and as part of a team. We were investigating the potential use of online personal learning environments as pedagogy, and how to engage academics with the technology. I worked with very clever computer programmers, who were leading the research down technical tracks that I would be unable to navigate on my own. They wanted to know why many academics were recalcitrant users of technology. I was told that my role was to act as the ‘reality check’. They said I had been hired as part of the team, because they could not understand academics who do not immediately relate to technology. Clearly, I had been the successful applicant thanks to my lack of technical capability. I was instructed to introduce myself to Web 2.0 programs such as Second Life, deLicious, My Space, which were all very new to online users at that time, and to keep a blog about my learning. The job description was not explicit, but I suspect that they believed that if I could understand what they were saying, anyone would. I took to the task with enthusiasm and delighted in amusing myself by writing a blog through which I could vent my frustrations with technology. In the middle of this richly funded project, a university restructure left me, the Luddite, soldiering on alone with the entire project. With my gifted colleagues displaced, I felt impelled to do justice to their legacy. One of the original questions had been about engaging academics with technology, so using my blog data, which had been written incidentally and with no particular agenda, I became absorbed in my own feelings about technology. The blog had evolved to become first person data

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for the project. Without really thinking about it, I had been passing through the research methods of Experience, by working with the technology, and Epoche, as I was writing freely about whatever came to mind, using a type of free-association that was essential to dynamic methods such as Freud’s psychoanalysis. The Epoche is the time when all the work is being done by the unconscious, in the background. One day, while writing, I made reference to Echo and Narcissus. With hindsight, I believe this was my Epiphany. I did not realise the significance of the archetypal reference however, until I thought about it later. In Gebser’s terms, the notion of Echo and Narcissus had emerged from my Mythical Consciousness. It was then, through Explication and Examination, or through Gebser’s Mental Consciousness, that I could analyse and make sense of the mythical illusion as it crystallised in response to my research question: Why do some academics find it difficult to relate to technology? Do you recall the story of Echo and Narcissus that was related earlier? It is necessary for you to know it in order to appreciate the example. I shall only precis it here, as there is a more detailed account in Chapter 1: In Greek mythology, Echo was a wood nymph whose constant chatter had once offended the goddess, Hera. As punishment, Echo was condemned to wander the mountains alone, unable to say anything, except to repeat the last words of what she hears. She comes across a beautiful young man, called Narcissus. She falls in love with him and she watches him lie down to drink from the lake. She approaches him but cannot say anything. When he addresses her, she only repeats his last words and he becomes impatient with her and thinks her stupid. He gazes again into the lake where he sees an image of the most beautiful creature in the world. It is his own reflection. Transfixed with this beauty, but unable to reach his desire, Narcissus pines away at the water’s edge, where he dies beside the lake. Daffodils grow in his place. Hence, the Epiphany: The reason why some academics are recalcitrant users of technology is contained in the myth of Echo and Narcissus. I am Echo and the technology is Narcissus. Like Echo, I am inarticulate when faced with technology. I don’t understand all of the acronyms that my superior colleagues would use. I could barely repeat some of what they said. And like Narcissus, the technology itself is without empathy for my humiliation and isolation. It cares not what I understand, and moreover, like Narcissus, it is self-contained and self-focused. It will not adjust itself nor be flexible, nor even care if I am failing to engage with it. It is insensitive. I think that the very lack of empathy is the reason why some learners, who like me, need to engage emotionally in order to learn, find it difficult to engage with technology. It makes sense that an intuitive researcher used to working empathically, should struggle with technology. Perhaps this has implications for the way we teach it. There is the outcome of my research. The transcendental, intersubjective objects, conjured up by the methods of Soliloquy, assumed the a priori forms of Echo and Narcissus. Further inquiry may investigate how to improve teaching and learning in technology to cater for empathic learners. This question may be better addressed using another type of research methodology, for it may be appropriate to include more positivist methods. Herein is an example of the collaborative roles different approaches to research can play throughout one line of investigation.

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With this example of the research project described, I suggest that Soliloquy is a philosophically informed approach to research, which uses both cognitive and intuitive research skills to bring together conscious and unconscious ways of knowing. By allowing the unconscious to incubate information and bring it to the surface, in the form of image or story or myth, the rational mind, our dominant mental consciousness, can then work with insights more profound than it could have thought up by itself. The creative unconscious sees the big picture connections. The rational mind must then work to do justice to the cryptic data, analysing, interpreting and explaining it, in the same way as a good psychotherapist will interpret a dream. It requires practice, and a willingness to surrender mental control, in the trust that symbols will surface to illuminate the research. They always do if their manifestation is nurtured. I have emphasised the researcher using Soliloquy, must experience that which the research is about. Here is a more detailed account of the other example, explaining how I found the research object using Soliloquy. I refer again to the research into play directing:

The epiphany of the Wizard of Oz When I came upon the epiphany of the Wizard of Oz, I was directing a play at the Gasworks Theatre in Melbourne. Each night after a rehearsal, on my long drive back to the Dandenong Ranges, I talked freely into a voice recording machine. The experience of directing, and the late night ramblings were important first steps on the way to the methods of Experience and Epoche. It is customary in research to transcribe aural data, but that is a conscious activity, suited to more cognitive approaches. Just through doing the Directing activity and talking thoughtlessly, I was setting the conditions for the unconscious to launch its Epiphany. When you are doing Soliloquy, provide opportunities for the unconscious to be heard. Meditate. Paint. Walk. It doesn’t really matter what you do, but you must quieten the mental chatter and remain open for an image, a symbol of some kind that may appear – perhaps when you least expect it. I was taking part in a guided meditation when the Wizard of Oz came to me. I have related how, in my meditation, it was said aloud by one of the imagined characters with whom I was talking. I sensed its importance, but I did not know why. Watch out for this sort of intuitive object and the sensation that accompanies it. Later, when I was writing a play script, one of the characters said (again in my mind) that the play Director was the Wizard of Oz. That was the Explication. It made no sense at all to me at first. As I was writing the play, the characters explained it. As I typed out the dialogue that the characters were saying, and routinely tracked back and forth checking my draft, I became aware of how the Director could be the Wizard of Oz. The general public may believe the Director of a play to be the sole visionary. They speak of the Director’s insight and vision. But in the rehearsal room the actors build their characters and suggest many things that steer the performance. Like the great and powerful Wizard of Oz, the Director is accredited with too

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much power. Hir saving grace is hir ability to enable the actors as collaborators, and allow them to realise their own powers. The useful thing about analysing a given archetype like Echo and Narcissus or The Wizard of Oz is that the researcher can then consciously further elicit implications and connotations suggested in the original story about that a priori object. The theatre Director is the Wizard of Oz, because like that archetype, s/he is credited with more creative power than s/he actually has. Also, in the story it is the Wizard who eventually empowers Dorothy and her friends by informing them that they have unknowingly possessed powers all along. Like the actors who drive the creative performance, Dorothy can master her own destiny. She just didn’t know it until the Wizard pointed it out. It is the Director’s job to empower the actors who will drive the performance. And it is the rational mind’s job to empower the unconscious in Soliloquy. Neville talks about this in his book Educating Psyche: ‘Only conscious and unconscious working together can produce a truly creative product. That cooperation involves the conscious mind’s ability to evaluate’ (Neville, 2005). Some researchers – the dreamers, the artists, the right-brain folk – will be very good with this methodology. They will understand the premise of psychoanalysis, that the unconscious is better at synthesising bits and pieces of lived data. How might you allow your unconscious to be heard so that your research object can be recognised?

A pictorial view of Soliloquy The unconscious presents us with images – in dreams, in art, in visualisations. Here is a pictorial representation of how the subjective experience can transcend to become an intersubjective phenomenon:

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A final metaphor for Transcendental Phenomenology: ‘The Lady of Shalott’ The poem ‘The Lady of Shalott’ was written by English poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892) when he was 23 years old. It was revised later in his life, and reads as follows below. This is a great poem, because it seems to resonate with profound meaning. I think it relates an archetypal myth. There are many good

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theories as to what the mysterious poem actually means. We know what the narrative is about, but it has haunted me since that hot, summer afternoon in high school when the head mistress read it aloud. Why? The spinster who seemed to my schoolgirl self to be so proper was reading poetry pregnant with sensuality. Was that all, or was something calling to my collective unconscious? Intersubjective meaning. In contrast, however, here is a popular understanding of the poem: Much of the poem’s charm stems from its sense of mystery and elusiveness; of course, these aspects also complicate the task of analysis. That said, most scholars understand ‘The Lady of Shalott’ to be about the conflict between art and life. The Lady, who weaves her magic web and sings her song in a remote tower, can be seen to represent the contemplative artist isolated from the bustle and activity of daily life. The moment she sets her art aside to gaze down on the real world, a curse befalls her and she meets her tragic death. The poem thus captures the conflict between an artist’s desire for social involvement and his/her doubts about whether such a commitment is viable for someone dedicated to art. (Spark Notes, 2002) For me it is more than this. It is an allegory for Transcendental Phenomenology. As Jung explains, archetypes do not really exist. They are ideal forms and although we see reflections of them in the lifeworld, they ‘live’, like the Greek Gods, in the realms of our collective unconscious. Husserl, like Jung, argued that the phenomenologically reduced object cannot exist in the real world as that would be absurd. These two-dimensional, a priori objects are the intersubjective and universal objects that all of humankind can understand because they reflect in our threedimensional, personal experiences and we recognise them. I think the Lady of Shalott is the archetype who lives in the transcendental realm. When she launches herself into the stream to Camelot, she dies of Psychologism, which Husserl argues is the absurd notion of confusing a priori objects with their lifeworld reflections. She cannot exist in the lifeworld because she is an eternal and ideal object, not a worldly, ephemeral one like us (in our current state). She is twodimensional, whereas the lifeworld she interprets is three-dimensional. She works through the transcendental lens that is the mirror. The mirror reduces the threedimensional worldly sights to two dimensional, non-lifeworld reflections. These objects are then reflected back to humans on the earthly plane, so they can see aspects of themselves. Through her mirror, Shalott performs the phenomenological reduction and reflects the image of the a priori object back to the subject as an intersubjective ‘reduced’ version of the original experience. Like Aphrodite or Zeus, Shalott cannot exist in our three-dimensional world, but she ignores the laws of her existence and steps from the tower to the lifeworld boat that will take her to Camelot. When she defies the nature of her transcendental existence, and turns to embrace the lifeworld, the ‘curse’ comes upon her. She becomes absurd. She implodes. She dies. The mirror cracks as the tension between the two incompatible realms – the empirical, three-dimensional lifeworld and the ideal, two-dimensional

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transcendental world – shatter her. The material and the metaphysical repel one another. Although they can exist apodictically, alongside one another, they cannot merge perspectively as one and the same. Her empty shell, bereft of vital force, falls to earth and floats to Camelot. Lancelot says she has a beautiful face, but there is no life in her at all. Here is the poem. What will you make of it?

The Lady of Shalott Part I On either side the river lie Long fields of barley and of rye, That clothe the wold and meet the sky; And thro’ the field the road runs by To many-tower’d Camelot; And up and down the people go, Gazing where the lilies blow Round an island there below, The island of Shalott. Willows whiten, aspens quiver, Little breezes dusk and shiver Thro’ the wave that runs for ever By the island in the river Flowing down to Camelot. Four gray walls, and four gray towers, Overlook a space of flowers, And the silent isle imbowers The Lady of Shalott. By the margin, willow veil’d, Slide the heavy barges trail’d By slow horses; and unhail’d The shallop flitteth silken-sail’d Skimming down to Camelot: But who hath seen her wave her hand? Or at the casement seen her stand? Or is she known in all the land, The Lady of Shalott? Only reapers, reaping early In among the bearded barley, Hear a song that echoes cheerly From the river winding clearly, Down to tower’d Camelot: And by the moon the reaper weary, Piling sheaves in uplands airy, Listening, whispers ‘’Tis the fairy Lady of Shalott.’

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Part II There she weaves by night and day A magic web with colours gay. She has heard a whisper say, A curse is on her if she stay To look down to Camelot. She knows not what the curse may be, And so she weaveth steadily, And little other care hath she, The Lady of Shalott. And moving thro’ a mirror clear That hangs before her all the year, Shadows of the world appear. There she sees the highway near Winding down to Camelot: There the river eddy whirls, And there the surly village-churls, And the red cloaks of market girls, Pass onward from Shalott. Sometimes a troop of damsels glad, An abbot on an ambling pad, Sometimes a curly shepherd-lad, Or long-hair’d page in crimson clad, Goes by to tower’d Camelot; And sometimes thro’ the mirror blue The knights come riding two and two: She hath no loyal knight and true, The Lady of Shalott. But in her web she still delights To weave the mirror’s magic sights, For often thro’ the silent nights A funeral, with plumes and lights And music, went to Camelot: Or when the moon was overhead, Came two young lovers lately wed: ‘I am half sick of shadows,’ said The Lady of Shalott.

Part III A bow-shot from her bower-eaves, He rode between the barley-sheaves, The sun came dazzling thro’ the leaves And flamed upon the brazen greaves Of bold Sir Lancelot. A red-cross knight for ever kneel’d To a lady in his shield,

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That sparkled on the yellow field, Beside remote Shalott. The gemmy bridle glitter’d free, Like to some branch of stars we see Hung in the golden Galaxy. The bridle bells rang merrily As he rode down to Camelot: And from his blazon’d baldric slung A mighty silver bugle hung, And as he rode his armour rung, Beside remote Shalott. All in the blue unclouded weather Thick-jewell’d shone the saddle-leather The helmet and the helmet-feather Burn’d like one burning flame together, As he rode down to Camelot. As often thro’ the purple night, Below the starry clusters bright, Some bearded meteor, trailing light, Moves over still Shalott. His broad clear brow in sunlight glow’d; On burnish’d hooves his war-horse trode; From underneath his helmet flow’d His coal-black curls as on he rode, As he rode down to Camelot. From the bank and from the river He flash’d into the crystal mirror, ‘Tirra lirra,’ by the river Sang Sir Lancelot. She left the web, she left the loom, She made three paces thro’ the room, She saw the water-lily bloom, She saw the helmet and the plume, She look’d down to Camelot. Out flew the web and floated wide; The mirror crack’d from side to side; ‘The curse is come upon me,’ cried The Lady of Shalott.

Part IV In the stormy east-wind straining, The pale yellow woods were waning, The broad stream in his banks complaining Heavily the low sky raining Over tower’d Camelot; Down she came and found a boat Beneath a willow left afloat,

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And round about the prow she wrote ‘The Lady of Shalott’. And down the river’s dim expanse Like some bold seer in a trance, Seeing all his own mischance – With a glassy countenance Did she look to Camelot. And at the closing of the day She loosed the chain, and down she lay; The broad stream bore her far away, The Lady of Shalott. Lying, robed in snowy white That loosely flew to left and right – The leaves upon her falling light – Thro’ the noises of the night She floated down to Camelot: And as the boat-head wound along The willowy hills and fields among, They heard her singing her last song, The Lady of Shalott. Heard a carol, mournful, holy, Chanted loudly, chanted lowly, Till her blood was frozen slowly, And her eyes were darken’d wholly, Turn’d to tower’d Camelot. For ere she reach’d upon the tide The first house by the water-side, Singing in her song she died, The Lady of Shalott. Under tower and balcony, By garden-wall and gallery, A gleaming shape she floated by, Dead-pale between the houses high, Silent into Camelot. Out upon the wharfs they came, Knight and burgher, lord and dame, And round the prow they read her name, The Lady of Shalott. Who is this? and what is here? And in the lighted palace near Died the sound of royal cheer; And they cross’d themselves for fear, All the knights at Camelot: But Lancelot mused a little space; He said, ‘She has a lovely face; God in his mercy lend her grace, The Lady of Shalott.

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Answering some critical concerns When I discuss Soliloquy with colleagues at the university or at conferences, I am met with mixed reactions. Some are confused about the idea of working intuitively. They are uncomfortable with research paradigms that are not explicitly positivist. Others seem to be excited by the idea that they could engage their hunches and inclinations for research, as that is probably familiar to them already. Some cannot agree that reasoning has a place in intuitive research. They prefer to do art and call it research. As I said earlier, and as Erikson said before me, this approach is for those of us who know that our creative unconscious is smarter than our rational selves, and are prepared to listen and wait for that inspiration. I recently presented Soliloquy at a university-wide research seminar. I used the forum to record the questions and concerns that were presented by the participants, as it was a timely opportunity to hear the responses of scholars from a wide range of disciplines. Here are the comments and observations that were made, and here are my rejoinders: A psychologist in the audience asked if I was just doing psychoanalysis as research. It is true that psychoanalysis is essential to Soliloquy, but it is only one of the threads that weave the methodology. The psychoanalysis of Freud and Jung align with Husserl’s phenomenology and also with Gebser’s theory of the evolution of consciousness to provide a three-pronged, theoretical understanding of transcendental reduction. These three key theories underpin Soliloquy and provide the strength of triangulation to the theoretical perspective. They complement one another. Husserl’s theory provides the philosophical overview and the concept of phenomenology, Freud and Jung inform us of the practicalities of how to access the unconscious, and Gebser’s theory allows us to see the evolution of consciousness as a big picture, contextual view of the methodology. Another point that arose in the discussion was that Soliloquy could be used to enhance sections of other methodologies. For example, in Action Research individuals could use Soliloquy prior to coming together with the action group, and perhaps ongoingly during the cycles of the research. Also, researchers who find Autoethnography useful but lacking in research outcome might focus on the methods of Soliloquy in the later stages of the inquiry in order to invite an unconscious synthesis of the experience to show itself. I think many of us use these kinds of intuitive methods daily, in order to make sense of things. We use it incidentally, without giving it much thought. When we use it in research, the thinking enhances it and makes it eloquent.

Enhance your research: enhance your life The practice of doing and reflecting, acting on hunches and doing again, perhaps in a different way – or not – is how most of us approach automatic problem solving in daily life. It draws on our learned and inherited ways of knowing, and links us intuitively to other living beings. For a while now we have not been encouraged to

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approach research in this way, as magical and mythical ways of knowing were regarded with suspicion. Now, as we pass through the era of Postmodernism, with its chaos of subjective perspectives to enter the next phase of understanding, which is possibly that of Integral Consciousness, we can finally identify within ourselves, through empathy and intuition, the intersubjective objects of human experience. Use the methods for your research, but also embrace and integrate them as the habits for daily life. Listen for the timid voice of intuition. Your thoughts and dreams and creative endeavours will enlighten you.

Bibliography Baum, F. (1998). The Wizard of Oz. China: Robert Frederick. Chambre, H.et al. (2017). Western Philosophy. In Encyclopaedia Britannica. Retrieved from www.britannica.com/topic/Western-philosophy/Contemporary-philosophy Crotty, M. (1996). Phenomenology and Nursing Research (1st edition). Chatswood: Churchill Livingstone. Crotty, M. (1998). The Foundations of Social Research. Sydney: Allen & Unwin. Ellis, C., Jones, S. L. H., & Adams, T. (Eds.). (2013). Handbook of Autoethnography. New York: Left Coast Press. Erickson, M. (1979). In the Room with Milton H. Erickson. Arizona: Parsons-Fein Publishing. Feigl, H. (2019). Positivism. In Encyclopaedia Britannica. Retrieved from www.britannica. com/topic/positivism Hopkins, B. C. (2011). The Philosophy of Husserl. London: Routledge. Husserl, E. (1964/1929). The Paris Lectures. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Husserl, E. (1977). Cartesian Meditations: An Introduction to Phenomenology. Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff. Jay, M. E. (2019). Sigmund Freud. Retrieved from www.britannica.com/biography/Sigm und-Freud. Macann, C. (2005). Four Phenomenlogical Philosophers: Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre and MerleauPonty. Abingdon: Routledge. Moustakas, C. (1990). Heuristic Research: Design, Methodology and its Applications. London: Sage. Neville, B. (2005). Educating Psyche. Greensborough, Victoria: Flat Chat Press. Polanyi, M. (1967). The Tacit Dimension. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Santos, M. d. L. (2012). Altered States of Literature: Shamanic Assimilation and Romantic Inspiration. Aletria: Revista de Estudos de Literatura, 22(3), 253–264. Smith, G. (2018). Beyond Reasonable Doubt: The Case for Supernatural Phenomena in the Modern World. London: Coronet. Spark Notes. (2002). SparkNote on Tennyson’s Poetry. Retrieved from www.sparknotes. com/poetry/tennyson. Steiner, R. (1911). Wisdom of Man, of the Soul, and of the Spirit: Lecture 1. Franz Brentano and Aristotle’s Doctrine of the Spirit. Retrieved from https://wn.rsarchive.org/Lec tures/GA115/English/AP1971/19111212p01.html. Tearle, O. (2017). A Short Analysis of Coleridge’s ‘Kubla Khan’. Retrieved from https:// interestingliterature.com/2017/08/a-short-analysis-of-coleridges-kubla-khan Trumbull, M. (2005). Qualitative Research Methods. In G. R. Taylor (Ed.), Integrating Qualitative and Quantitative Methods in Research. Lanham, MD: University Press of America.

GLOSSARY OF TERMS

The purpose of this glossary is to provide an easy reference for the reader. As there is much ambiguity surrounding common terms used in phenomenology, and it may be helpful to clarify how I am using terminology in Soliloquy. I believe that there is consistency between Husserl’s phenomenological language and my own, however I am mindful that even Husserl changed and interchanged meanings from time to time as his work evolved. My sources include Husserl’s later works, especially his Paris Lectures on Transcendental Phenomenology. I have put this glossary together using my acquired understanding of the terms, and sometimes with the aid and the paraphrasing of other references. absolute Pure, and without doubt. alter ego The other self that manifests during transcendental reduction. Our empathetic, intersubjective self. In Husserl’s own words: we must engage in the broad and systematic phenomenological task of exploring how, in the ego, the alter ego (Husserl’s italics) manifests and confirms itself as an experienced presentation … I experience other minds in a unique manner. Not only do I experience them as spatial presentations psychologically interlaced with the realm of nature, but I also experience them as experiencing this self-same world which I experience. I also experience them as experiencing me in the same way as I experience them … but I experience … an intersubjective world, one that is given to all human beings and which contains objects accessible to all. (Husserl, 1964\1929, p. 34) anthropologism

An attempt to found philosophical knowledge solely on an empirical study of humankind. Husserl points out that like psychologism and biologism, this practice is absurd.

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The whole truth, beyond what is perceived from a single perspective. apophantic domain That of the senses and propositions. In contrast to this is the ontological domain – that of lifeworld things such as relationships, business and politics. apperception Holding two contradictory ideas in one’s mind at the same time and believing in them both. Knowing that the subjective and the intersubjective are related. a priori An eternal and timeless structure. Constructed in the mind and not based on experience. archaeology Can refer to the layers of meaning in phenomenology. bracketing Like the phenomenologist, who suspends all presuppositions and beliefs about the research topic, in order to be open to receive what is then given, the theatre audience suspend disbelief so as to receive what is given to them through the theatre experience. Contrary to first appearances, suspending belief and suspending disbelief are parallel in that they both require a clearing of the mind. The idea of a theatre audience working phenomenologically is one which may serve as an illustration of bracketing. When the audience become involved with the action of a play, they experience it emotionally, as if it were real. This is like Husserl’s idea of the lifeworld experience in which we find potential phenomena for research. We cannot analyse our everyday experiences until we step out of them, put aside our prejudices (if possible) and attempt to see elements (or essences) of the experience from a new, transcendent perspective. Similarly, the audience may later look critically at a play, once they have transcended the experience of being emotionally and mentally part of it. In his introduction to Husserl’s The Paris Lectures, Koestenbaum (Husserl, 1964\1929) discusses the similar plight of the film audience, asserting that: apodictic truths

The familiar difference between, on the one hand, watching and enjoying a movie and, on the other, later analysing its aesthetic, technical, and sociological aspects and implications may serve to illustrate the distinction between a natural or straightforward experience and that same experience bracketed. When I watch and enjoy a film, I am ‘one with it’; I am engaged and involved. When later, I analyse it, I distance myself from the straightforward experience of the film; I observe the film independently of my emotional involvement with it. Criticism depends on the successful exercise of this latter attitude … While engaged, I think of the events in the film as real I view these as happening to me or around me. When distanced, I see the film for what it really is: an illusion. Film criticism invariably involves bracketing. (Koestenbaum in Husserl, 1964\1929, p. xxii) cogitatum

The object of consciousness; the noema.

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The constructive process which occurs after an object is intended. One intends and then constitutes an object of phenomena. Husserl refers to Descartes as ‘France’s greatest thinker’ (Husserl, 1964 \1929). He continues:

constitution Descartes

It must be said explicitly that the study of Descartes’ Meditations has influenced directly the formation of the developing phenomenology and given its present form … might almost be called a new, twentieth century, Cartesianism. (Husserl, 1964\1929, p. 3) But Husserl moves past Descartes’ mental mode (Gebser’s term) of reasoning, and explains: Yet it (phenomenology as a universal philosophy) is a realization altogether different from the one envisaged by Descartes and his age, influenced as they were by the natural sciences. Universal philosophy is not a universal system based on a theory of deduction – as if reality were a matter of calculation – but it is a system of philosophically correlated disciplines at the root of which we do not find the axiom ego cogito, but all-embracing self-examination. (Husserl, 1964\1929, p. 39) The ability to know tacitly which are the essential features of a phenomenon. Vacancy. The moment preceding the encounter with a given object, that occurs prior to recognition or categorisation of that object through language. A moment of naive impression. In Husserl’s words:

eidetic intuition epoche

This ubiquitous detachment from any point of view regarding the objective world we term the phenomenological epoche. It is the methodology through which I come to understand myself as that ego and life of consciousness in which and through which the entire objective world exists for me, and is for me precisely as it is. (Husserl, 1964\1929, p. 8) The Epoche remains mysterious to me because it is the domain of the unconscious, where lifeworld experience is synthesised to become embodied by metaphysical objects. It is not easily grasped consciously, because the conscious mind cannot go there. It relies on the impressions given up to it by the unconscious. I think that is why it must be known rather than understood. essence

An element. In Existential Phenomenology it is understood as a mandatory feature, fundamental to a given phenomenon, often sought through a process the existentialists call ‘ideation’ (see below). In Transcendental Phenomenology, I use this word as a simile for universal object. The thought processes involved in Existential Phenomenology

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are, in my view, made redundant by the process of eidetic reduction. The eidetic reduction of lifeworld experience to produce an essence is the process of pure and authentic phenomenology. existentialism This is a popular, twentieth century view of human existence, which was supported through scientific and ontological approaches to research. Tarnas (1991) can explain it most eloquently: Nowhere was the problematic modern condition more precisely embodied than in the phenomenon of existentialism, a mood and philosophy expressed in the writings of Heidegger, Sartre, and Camus, among others, but ultimately reflecting a pervasive spiritual crisis in modern culture. The anguish and alienation of twentieth century life were brought to full articulation as the existentialist addressed the most fundamental, naked concerns of human existence – suffering and death, loneliness and dread, guilt, conflict, spiritual emptiness and ontological insecurity, the void of absolute values or universal contexts, the sense of cosmic absurdity, the frailty of human reason, the tragic impasse of the human condition … No transcendent Absolute guaranteed the fulfillment of human life or history. There was no eternal design or providential purpose. Things existed simply because they existed … God was dead, and the universe was blind to human concerns, devoid of meaning and purpose … To be authentic one had to admit, and choose freely to encounter, the stark reality of life’s meaninglessness. Struggle alone gave meaning. (Tarnas, 1991, pp. 388–389) Existential Phenomenology

horizon

Originating from the work of Heidegger, it fixes on an ontological, psychological phenomenology, as opposed to Husserl’s philosophical and epistemological phenomenology, that is, Transcendental Phenomenology. In this book, and particularly in Chapter 4, I argue that Existential Phenomenology produces only lifeworld themes, not the universal objects essential to phenomenological reduction.

Husserl says:

perception occurs and sketches an horizon of expectations, which is an horizon of intentionality. The horizon anticipates the future as it might be perceived, that is to say, it points to a coming series of perceptions. (Husserl, 1964\1929, p. 18) Ideation

First described by Husserl, but later made redundant through transcendental reduction. It remains a key method used in Existential Phenomenology (Crotty, 1996). It involves the conscious process of seeking that which is essential to a phenomenon by imaginatively varying features. For example, Crotty says that one might ask, ‘If the phenomenon of x had this or that feature removed, would it still be x?’ (Crotty, 1996).

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This prematurely cognitive approach to phenomenology has no place in Soliloquy, as eidetic reduction via the Epoche will reveal the ubiquitous object – the intersubjective phenomenon. intend\intention

To set one’s mind on an object; to extend towards the object. One intends an object before it is constituted. Interestingly, Franz Brentano claimed that intentionality defined the distinction between the mental and the physical:

All and only mental phenomena exhibit intentionality. Since intentionality is an irreducible feature of mental phenomena, and since no physical phenomena could exhibit it, mental phenomena could not be a species of physical phenomena. This claim, often called the Brentano thesis … has often been cited to support the view that the mind cannot be the brain … (Audi, 1995, p. 381) Motivated by internal drives rather than external rewards (opposite: extrinsic motivation). intuition Knowledge which is not based on perception, memory or introspection. A hunch. In this book I explore the possibility that intuition is given up to individuals via their own creative unconscious minds or via access to what Jung might call the Collective Unconscious, or that which others call a spiritual dimension. It is unexplainable insight. (to) intuit essences To allow the essential features of a phenomenon to emerge from the unconscious, as opposed to trying to identify a phenomenon cognitively (ideation). Seeing beyond the physical perspective in order to know the metaphysical object in its entirety. I understand that at the point where the intended object transcends towards a universal form of apodictic truth, the essence of the phenomenon will manifest through phenomenological reduction. It is at this point that the limited, ontological perspective is transcended to be constituted by intuition as the universal object. That which was subjective becomes intersubjective, that is, universal. intrinsic motivation

narcissism

Methodologies that use subjective epistemologies have been criticised as ‘narcissistic’ (Crotty, 1996). The criticism aims at the researcher’s obsession with personal experience that has no implication for further, universal knowledge. There is often no outcome to the inquiry, just a potentially self-indulgent account of one’s experience. Wilber (2002) puts it this way:

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Narcissism, at its core, is the demand that ‘nobody tells me what to do!’ Narcissism will therefore not acknowledge anything universal because that places various demands and duties on narcissism that it will strenuously try to deconstruct. This would explain why Soliloquy, which is a process that seeks universal forms, is essentially different to narcissism. Although it initiates the research process using subjective data, this first-person experience is transcended to produce universal outcomes. The everyday, lifeworld view of things. When we enter the philosophical attitude, we suspend all natural beliefs in order to analyse them. Phenomenological reduction is the process of moving beyond the limited perspective one has in natural attitude, to knowing the whole (ideal or a priori) object philosophically. noema\noesis The phenomenological description of an object is called the noematic analysis. The descriptions of a subject’s intentions is called the noetic analysis. The noemanoema is the object and the noesis is the associated mental activity. ‘New’ phenomenologists, according to Michael Crotty (1996), make the mistake of focusing attention on the subject’s feelings (noetic description) rather than on the phenomenological object (the noema). In Soliloquy, where the analysis is transcendental rather than existential, Crotty’s criticism becomes moot. noematic analysis The phenomenological descriptions of the objects. noetic analysis Descriptions of the researcher’s subjective intentions. Positivism Encyclopaedia Britannica: natural attitude

Logical positivism, also called logical empiricism, a philosophical movement that arose in Vienna in the 1920s and was characterized by the view that scientific knowledge is the only kind of factual knowledge and that all traditional metaphysical doctrines are to be rejected as meaningless. (Britannica, n.d.) Fundamental. Relating back to origins. Soliloquy is radical in that it is informed by the essential and original phenomenology of Edmund Husserl. solipsism 1. (in ontology) the view that nothing exists except one’s own self and the contents of its consciousness; 2. (in epistemology) the view that nothing can be known except one’s own self and the contents of consciousness. In an older sense, solipsism means egoism, the view that nothing is to be valued except one’s own interests and pleasures. radical

Subtextual Phenomenology

Along with ‘Alchemy Methodology’ (Vallack 2010, 2015), this is an early incarnation of Soliloquy. As the methodology has been developed

160 Glossary of terms

and refined over the past twenty-odd years, the names changed accordingly, but the methodology has always aspired to be an application of Husserl’s Transcendental Phenomenology.

Bibliography Britannica. (n.d.). Logical Positivism. Retrieved from www.britannica.com\topic\logical-p ositivism. Audi, R. (1995). Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy (second edition 1999). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Crotty, M. (1996). Phenomenology and Nursing Research. Chatswood: Churchill Livingstone. Husserl, E. (1964\1929). The Paris Lectures. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Tarnas, R. (1991). The Passion of the Western Mind. New York: Ballantyne. Vallack, J. (2010). Subtextual Phenomenology: A Methodology for Valid, First-Person Research. Electronic Journal of Business Research Methods, 8(2), 106–118. Vallack, J. (2015). Alchemy for Inquiry: A Methodology of Applied Phenomenology in Educational Research. Freemantle, Western Australia: Australian Association for Research in Education (AARE). Wilber, K. (2015). Integral Spirituality. Kosmos Journal for Global Transformation, Winter.

INDEX

a priori: forms 5, 7, 25, 92, 112; insight 91; objects 3, 10, 12, 21, 33, 71–73, 84, 85, 89, 93, 96, 113, 142, 147; reduction 85; science 21, 121; universal 21, 121 Action Research xi, 116, 152 allegory 147 alter ego 73, 86–89 American Humanist Movement 5, 65, 71, 80, 81, 109, 118; see also humanism anthropologism 99 anthropology 26 anti-intellectualism 103 antirationalism 103 apperception 21, 34, 37–38, 72, 110, 155 Archaic Consciousness 6, 29 archetypal psychology 12 archetypes: analysis of 142; creation of 127, 139; defined 7; Greek gods as 8, 70, 86, 88; in Husserl’s phenomenology 73, 92; intersubjectivity of 38, 83, 86, 110, 111, 138; Jungian 7, 12, 25, 70, 85, 110, 111, 112, 147; Lady of Shalott 146–151; metaphorical 10, 25, 125; mythical 10; phenomenal 111; Platonic 63, 111; primordial 83; significance of 140; in Soliloquy 119; in the transcendental realm 38, 85; and the unconscious 1, 5, 70; universal 110; visual 10; Wizard of Oz 87, 88, 137, 142 Aristotle 20–23, 26, 28, 32, 38, 99–100 art: practices and practitioners 3–4; story of 77–79; and transcendence 23–25 Association for Qualitative Research x

astral plane 128 astral travelling 48 Augustine of Hippo (saint) 7, 21, 111, 121, 125 Autoethnography 3, 27, 40–41, 119, 121, 124, 152; experience with Spiritualism 43–48; Journal from Stansted Hall (2009) 48–56 autosuggestion 127 Behaviourism 7, 135 Bergson, Henri 59–60, 69, 129 Berkeley, G. 21 bias, personal 66, 79, 107 bracketing 63, 65, 66, 71, 75, 84, 95, 105–110 Brentano, Franz 83 Buddhism 7, 40, 43, 111, 129 Camus, Albert 39, 103 Carr, David 103 Caulley, Darrel x, xii channellers and channelling 47–48 charlatanism 48 Christianity 43, 49, 56, 97, 129 clairsentience 53; objective 56 clairvoyance 53 cognition 4, 9, 15, 17, 25, 68, 70, 86, 126, 134, 137, 138 Coleridge, Samuel 130–132 Collaizzi, P.F. 108 Collective Unconscious 7, 21, 25, 40, 58, 59, 68, 73, 83, 86–87, 88, 128–129, 147

162 Index

consciousness: altered states of 74–75, 129–132; archaic 29; collaboration with the unconscious 25; collective 31; evolution of 21, 26–38, 37, 152; Gebser’s theory of 26, 28–29, 33; integral 32–33, 34, 37, 63, 92, 152; levels of 36; logical 4; magical 6, 8, 23, 26, 27–31, 35, 41, 86, 128; mental 30, 32–33, 36, 39, 93, 125, 129, 140; mental (limitations of) 33–38; Mental Mode 22, 26, 39, 71, 97, 112; mythical 1, 6, 23, 26, 31–32, 35, 86, 140; non-human 25; stages of 6–7; structures of 36 constitution 87, 156; apodictic 86; theories of 95 Constructionism 9–12, 65, 69, 72, 75–76, 83, 85, 86, 93, 102, 115, 116, 118, 119 Constructionist Epistemology 116 Constructivism 83 creativity 24, 129; incubation period for 4 Crotty, Michael 5, 64–65, 80–84, 85, 102, 109–110, 134; on phenomenology 89–91; on processes for research 116 Crowell, S.G. 96 Davies, Lindy 40–41 Denzin, Norman x, xii Derrida, Jacques 13, 118 Dilthey, Wilhelm 69 dream analysis 4, 129, 135–138 dream recall 25 duration 60, 69 Echo and Narcissus 14–16, 139–141, 142 eidetic reduction 87–89 Elicitation 16 empathy 5, 25, 40, 69, 93–95, 111, 124, 140 Epiphany/ies xi, 1, 4, 11, 14, 15, 132–135, 140; of the Wizard of Oz 141–142 epistemology 6, 10, 24, 59, 67, 91, 93, 104; alternative 69; of Constructionism 11, 12, 69, 86, 102, 115, 116, 118, 119; of Constructivism 83; of Heidegger 98, l101; of Husserl 63, 95, 98, 104, 108, 157; of Objectivism 10, 11, 65, 68, 69, 75, 85, 102, 118, 119; research 9–10, 13, 22, 24, 59, 119; shift in 37, 62, 84, 102; of Subjectivism 12, 67, 81, 102, 118, 119, 121 Epoche xi, 4, 11, 13, 15, 58, 63, 74, 76, 127–129, 140, 156; and altered states of consciousness 129–132 Erikson, Milton 70, 132–133, 138

essence 12, 29, 60, 68, 102; of beauty 73; construction of 64; direct knowledge of 89; identification of 104; intersubjective 10, 22; intuiting 6, 44, 63, 68, 91, 158; of perception 72; phenomenological 24, 60, 68, 76, 88, 104, 107, 111, 126; a priori 72, 73; research 3, 82, 88; of spirituality 60; study of 72; transcendental 68, 71; universal 38, 60, 83 Ethnography 79, 119 Examination 4, 16, 140 Existential Phenomenology: analysis of 100; contrasted with Transcendental Phenomenology 83–84, 88–89, 94, 103; Crotty’s approach to 65, 83, 85; epistemological flaws of 108; Heidegger’s influence on 63, 67, 71, 92, 107; as Hermeneutical Phenomenology 101; objects of 75; as research method 17, 24, 85, 88, 92, 93; split with Transcendental Phenomenology 94 Existentialism 7, 19, 22, 39, 40, 75, 94, 95, 157; modern 76; parallels with Nazism 103; and phenomenology 104 Experience xi, 4, 11, 13, 121, 124–127; lived 17, 71, 76, 93, 95; personal 2, 3, 5, 12, 24, 38, 43, 60, 70, 80, 126, 128, 129, 147; subjective 15, 25–26, 70, 126 Explanation xi, 11, 14, 138–139 Explication xi, 4, 11, 14, 15, 135–138, 140, 141 faith 60 Finlay, Arthur 48 five orders of thinking 34–36 free-association 4, 14, 25, 140 Freud, Sigmund 2, 7, 20, 23, 25, 28, 41, 63, 94, 135, 138, 152; and the unconscious 70 Garaudy, R. 91 Gebser, Jean: and the Epoche, 128; influence of 36; on integral consciousness, 35, 37, 63, 92; on magical knowledge/ consciousness 23, 26, 31, 35, 129; and mythical consciousness 23, 26, 31–32, 35, 140; mental (mode) consciousness 22, 30, 62, 71, 93, 99, 125; approach to research xii; theory of the evolution of consciousness 6, 17, 20, 21, 25, 26–30, 33, 33, 34, 36, 37, 37, 94, 97, 152; and transcendentalism 2 Gembrook House 45–46, 47 Giorgi, A. 65, 107, 108–109, 110

Index 163

Greek Gods 7–8, 12, 67, 73, 128, 147; as archetypes 8, 70, 86, 88 Groenewald, T. 108–109 Grounded Research 63, 79, 115 Grounded Theory 119 group soul 27

translations of 65; and the unconscious 75, 125; on universal objects 111; see also Transcendental Phenomenology Husserl Circle 67, 96, 118 Husserliana 64 hypnosis 25

healing, psychic 44, 47–48, 57 Heidegger, Martin 13, 22, 36, 39, 62, 66, 68; attempted collaboration with Husserl 96; disrespect for Husserl 95; distortion of phenomenology 36–37, 62, 63, 66–67, 71, 75, 86, 93, 94–104, 107, 112–113, 118; exchange with Husserl 98–99; influence on the existentialists 94; letter to Jaspers 97; letters to Lowith 97, 98; membership in Nazi Party 63, 94–95, 97, 103; and ontolgy 83 Hermeneutic Phenomenology 72–73, 76, 101, 108, 116 hermeneutics 65, 71, 73–76, 86, 92, 101, 107, 116, 117 Heuristic Inquiry 93, 116, 117 Hinduism 7, 43, 111 Hopkins, Burt 67, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 118 horizon 90, 95, 157 Horney, Karen 137 humanism 69, 81; see also American Humanist movement Husserl, Edmund: on a priori objects 12, 21, 71–73, 121; on the alter ego 86; on apperception 34; bracketing 66, 71, 75, 84, 107, 109; collaboration with Heidegger 96; on bracketing 107; exchange with Heidegger 98–99; on experience 125; Heidegger’s distortion of his phenomenology 36–37, 62, 63, 66–67, 71, 75, 86, 93, 94–104, 107, 112–113, 118; and the integrity of knowledge 64; on intentionality 81; and intersubjectivity 20, 25, 37, 109; intro to last (unfinished) work 103; and intuitive knowing 20, 37, 109; as Jew 63–64, 97; and phenomenological essence 24; philosophical phenomenology of xi–xii, 1–2, 3, 5–7, 10–11, 13, 22, 23, 24, 28, 39, 41, 59, 62–63, 67, 69–70, 71, 73, 79–80, 110, 115; on positivism 62; on the pregiveness of objects 73–77; on psychologism 68, 77, 99; on pure science 21; on subjective experience 10, 13, 70; on ‘things themselves’ 65, 126; on transcendental forms 25, 70, 80, 86; on the transcendental process 73–75;

idealism 21, 38, 81; of Husserl 81, 95; psychological 73; transcendental 73 ideation 82 images 1, 12, 24, 71, 139; archetypal 8 innovation 4 Integral Consciousness 6–7, 32–33, 34, 37, 92, 152 Integral thinkers 34 intelligence, conscious 9 intention 30, 65, 68, 74, 109 intentionality 13, 81, 83, 86, 110 Interpretivism 115, 117 intersubjectivity 24, 60, 73, 76, 106, 139, 147; of archetypes 38, 83, 86, 110, 111, 138; Husserl’s notion of 25, 83, 87, 111; in research 4, 10; and subjective experience 10, 13, 25–26, 76, 96 intuiting essences 6, 44, 63, 68, 91 intuiting meaning units 65, 109 intuition 53, 128; accessing artificially 129; and altered consciousness 129–130; in American humanism 109; Bergson’s definition 59–60; eidetic 156; of essences 63; inability to quantify 5–6; and logic 1; of meaning units 65, 109; and mediumship 56–60; and phenomenology 1, 5, 37, 88, 109; philosophical 60; in philosophical research 19, 20–21, 27, 33, 40, 68, 70, 91, 115–117, 119, 124, 126, 128, 140, 151, 152; and psychic research 43–48, 58, 59; in Soliloquy 4, 6, 17, 20, 68, 121, 141; and storytelling 27; and the unconscious 2, 8, 9, 25–26; see also knowledge, intuitive intuitive unconscious 2 irrationalism 103 Islam 91, 129 Jaspers, Karl 97 Jay, M.E. 138 Judaism 129; see also Husserl, Edmund, as Jew Jung, Carl 23, 28, 41, 63, 137, 147; and archetypes 7, 12, 25, 70, 85, 110, 111, 112, 147; on intuition 20–21; philosophy of 2; and the Collective Unconscious 7, 8–9, 25, 58, 68, 70, 73, 86, 111, 128–129, 152; and Spiritualism 58, 129

164 Index

Kegan, Robert 34–36 Knocklemans, J. 72 knowledge: apodictic 74, 89; direct/indirect 88–89; gestalt 89; intersubjective 13; intuitive 1, 2, 20, 23, 32, 43, 86, 128; magical 43, 129; mythical 43; pregiven 74; of the a priori object 8, 9, 12; self- 121; spirituality as 28; tacit 2, 28; unconscious 1; universal 74; about working intuitively through the unconscious 8 Koestenbaum, Peter 67, 86, 95, 104 ‘Kublai Khan’ (Coleridge) 130–132 ‘The Lady of Shalott’ (Tennyson) 146–151 Leonardo da Vinci 24 Lett, Warren 66 lifeworld reality 38, 77, 88, 96, 101; bracketing 107; transcending 139 Lim, Keith 137 lived experience 17, 71, 76, 93, 95 Lowith, Karl 97, 98 Macann, C. 125 Magical Consciousness 6, 8, 23, 26, 27–31, 35, 41, 86, 128 magical thinking 31 Mahood, E. 29–30, 32–33 Marxism 7, 19, 112 Maslow, Abraham 81 materialism 19, 21, 22, 23, 39, 41, 63 Meaning Units 109 mechanism 41, 63 meditation 9, 53, 60, 91; for Epiphany 133–134, 141; guided 133–134 mediumship 48, 56–60 Mental Consciousness 6, 30, 32, 32–33, 36, 39, 93, 98, 125, 129, 140; limitations of 33–38 Mental Mode 22, 26, 39, 71, 97, 112 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice 112 metaphors 1, 12, 13, 25, 135; ‘The Lady of Shalott’ (Tennyson) 146–151; poetic 130; scientific mechanical 36 metaphysics 5, 22, 40, 63, 68, 69 method acting 40–41 methodology see research methodology; Soliloquy Methodology Mindfulness 19 mind-mapping 133 modernism 2, 7, 40 morphic resonance 81 Moustakas, Clarke 93, 116, 128 music, as language of art 79

Mythical Consciousness 1, 6, 23, 26, 31–32, 35, 86, 140; birth of Athena 32; Echo and Narcissus 15–16 mythology 77 myths 24; archetypal 146–147; see also Mythical Consciousness narcissism 16, 65, 92, 126 natural attitude 14, 74, 80, 101, 110 Nazi party: Heidegger’s membership in 63, 94–95, 97, 103; parallels with existentialism 103 Neville, Bernie 7, 12, 35–36, 111–112, 132–133, 142 new ageism 47 ‘New’ Phenomenology 3, 5, 65, 66, 67, 80–81, 84, 102, 104 Nietzsche, Friedrich 69 Objectivism xi, 9–10, 10, 11, 38, 68, 73, 84, 102, 119, 121; epistemology of 75 objectivity 102; illusion of 43 objects: a priori 3, 10, 12, 21, 33, 71–73, 84, 85, 89, 93, 96, 113, 142, 147; apodictic 111; archetypal 3, 12, 13; perceivable 88; perceived 89; pregiveness of 73–77; as ‘things themselves’ 89, 92; transcendental 8, 12, 25, 73, 74, 80, 88, 111; universal 73, 111; visual 88 ontologists 22 ontology 62–63, 83; of Heidegger 36, 39, 68, 71, 75, 83, 96, 112–113, 118; of Husserl 67, 76, 95; and phenomenology 72, 77 Ouija board 44–45 painting 4 paranormal events 27 Patten, Terry 34–35 pedagogy, through playwriting x–xi, 134 personal bias 66, 79, 107 Personality Theory 21 pessimism 41 phenomenological reduction 1, 24, 71, 80, 87, 92, 100, 105, 110 Phenomenology: and apperception 21–22; authentic 91; characteristics of 85; collaboration between conscious and unconscious in 25; drift of 94; existential approach to 76; Heidegger’s distortion of 36–37, 62, 63, 66–67, 71, 75, 86, 93, 94–104, 100, 103, 107, 112–113, 118; hermeneutic 72–73, 108; hermeneutical 116; historical context of 93–94; Husserl’s approach to 1, 5, 39; inauthentic 65; and

Index 165

Islam 91; language of 109; linked to wonder 90; and mediumship 57–58; as method 79; misconceptions about 17; ‘new’ 3, 5, 65, 66, 67, 80–81, 84, 102, 104; and North American humanism 81–82; philosophical 72, 79; political and philosophical context 64–65; and the a priori object 12; pure 62, 67, 85, 104, 110; range of perspectives and complexities 89–93; as research process 13; sociological 101; and Soliloquy 3, 4; Spiegelberg’s definition of 84–85; Subtextual xii, 159; terminology of 2–3, 82, 86, 110–111; transcendental nature of 71–72; what it is not 86; see also Transcendental Phenomenology philosophy 2; Eastern 97; Oriental 86; transcendental 37; Western 98 Picasso, Pablo 2, 24, 28, 129 plane of the gods 77 planes of existence 77 Plato 7, 12, 20–23, 25, 32, 38, 67–68, 77, 99–100, 110; and the transcendental form 70 Platonic/Aristotelian divide 21–23 Platonism 21, 63, 91; and universal form 67–68 Polyani, M. 28, 80 positivism 1, 5, 22, 24, 25, 26, 39, 62, 63, 69; logical 103, 159; post- x Postmodernism 119, 126, 152 post-positivism x, 69 pregiveness of objects 73–77 psychiatry, dynamic 25 psychoanalysis 4, 20, 70, 94, 128, 135, 138, 140, 142, 152 Psychologism 68, 71–72, 73, 77, 99, 147 psychology: archetypal 12; dynamic 41; humanistic 81–82, 109 psychotherapy 129; dynamic 70 qualitative methodology x, 64, 100, 112, 118 quantum physics 22, 63, 69 Raphael 22 rational logic 2, 24 reincarnation 44, 49 religion 43, 129; see also Buddhism; Christianity; Hinduism; Islam; Judaism research: arts-based 4; evidence-based 34; hermeneutical 73; hypothesis-driven 23–24; transcendental 76 research design: Epistemology 6; Methodology 6; Methods 6; Theoretical Perspective 6, 13

research methodology 1, 6; Action Research xi, 116, 152; arts-based 2, 118–119, 127; Autoethnography 152; case studies 116; categories for building 117; comparative alignment 124; construction of aligned 120; evolving 126; five phases of 4; focus groups 116; Heuristic Inquiry 116, 117; innovative approaches xi; interview-based 93, 115; mental-mode 82; mixedmethods x; philosophically informed 141; positivist 22; postmodern 126; qualitative x, 64, 100, 112, 118; qualitative approaches 17; quantitative approaches 17; using personal experience 2; valid 9; voice recordings 127; see also Soliloquy Ricoeur, Paul 92, 112 Rogers, C.R. 81 Santos, Marcel de Lima 25, 130–131 Sartre, Jean Paul 39, 92, 95, 112 Schutz, Alfred 100–101 science: as belief system 39–40, 69; idealisation of 40 ‘science delusion’ 38–40 scientific inquiry 24 Scientific Method 5, 6, 69; comparative alignment 124 scientific reasoning 5 Scientism 19–20, 39, 125 scientists, core beliefs of 39 séances 44 self-determination 44 self-examination 21, 72, 73, 121 self-knowledge 121 Shamanic insights 130, 131–132 Sheldrake, Rupert 3, 19, 20, 23, 25, 27, 41, 69, 81; ‘science delusion’ 38–40; on Scientism 39–40 silence 90–91 Smith, Gordon 58 Socrates 22, 32 Soliloquy 1–2, 8, 38; answering critical concerns 151–152; based on three principles 4; as collaboration between conscious and unconscious knowledge 6–9; defined 3–4; example in practice (Echo and Narcissus) 14–16, 139–141; as leap of faith 126; and Objectivism 11; parallels with Gebser’s theory of consciousness 33, 37; philosophical phenomenology informing 5–6; pictorial view 142, 142–146; process of 38; and psychoanalysis 152; theoretical framework of 2–3, 11, 34, 122–123; and transcendental phenomenology 84–85,

166 Index

115; use of intuition and storytelling in 27 Soliloquy Methodology 17, 38, 109, 121; Epiphany xi, 1, 4, 11, 14, 15, 132–135, 140–142; Epoche 4, 11, 127–132; Examination 4, 16, 140; Experience xi, 4, 11, 13, 121, 124–127; Explanation xi, 11, 14, 138–139; Explication xi, 4, 11, 14, 15, 135–138, 140, 141; philosophical alignment of 9–14, 115–122 solipsism 73, 111 Sophism 101–102 Spiegelberg, H. 84–85, 91 Spiritual Association 48 Spiritualism 43–48, 60, 128, 129; Christian 56; and mediumship 56–60 spirituality 19, 22, 28; as transcendental phenomenon 60 Stake, Robert x, xii Stanislavski, C. 40–41 Stansted Hall 48; Journal (2009) 48–56 Steiner, Rudolf 2, 20, 23, 28, 41, 63, 129 storytelling 27 subconscious 25; see also unconscious mind subjective experience 5, 15, 25–26, 70, 121 subjective intention 81 Subjectivism 9, 13, 83, 84, 102, 118, 119–120 subjectivity: enigma of 13; pure 96 Subtextual Phenomenology xii, 159 symbols 1, 13, 71 Tarnas, R. 102 Tearle, Oliver 132 telepathy 22, 27, 39, 59, 69, 128 Tennyson, Alfred Lord 146–151 Theatre as Research xi Theoretical Perspective 6, 13 theory of consciousness 94 theosophy 2 thinking: five orders of 34–36; mental-mode 22, 26, 39, 71, 112 time, subjective experience of 69 transcendence/transcendency 96: and art 23–25; and empathy 25 transcendental forms 25; see also universal forms transcendental idealism 73; see also idealism Transcendental Phenomenology 104–106; allegory for 147; and apperception 21, 22; contrasted with Existential Phenomenology 83–84, 88, 103;

Husserl’s development of xi, 1, 2, 5, 7, 24, 62–63, 67, 72, 85–87, 99; in life and research 80–85; and Platonism 28, 67–68; as research methodology 126; and Soliloquy 8, 10–11; and Spiritualism 60; split with Existential Phenomenology 94; summary 110–113; theoretical perspective of 13; and the unconscious 25 transcendental plane 38, 73, 77 transcendental reduction 66, 85 transcendentalism 2, 59, 85, 94, 97, 139; of Husserl 71–72 triangulation 152 Trumbull, M. 117 truth 125; absolute 19, 102; apodictic 37, 87–89, 155, 158; archetypal 38; eternal 38; subjective 34; universal 34 Tumbetin Spiritualist Centre 44, 47 unconscious mind 128–130; accessing 133; and altered states of consciousness 129–132; collaboration with the conscious 25; collective 7, 21, 25, 40, 58, 59, 68, 73, 83, 86–87, 88, 128–129, 147; communication from 71; creative 24; Freud’s idea of 70; intuition from 2, 8, 9, 25–26; language of 24, 135; listening to 141–142; metaphoric song of 135; power of 138; and research results 4; role of 21; superiority to logic and cognition 4; working in collaboration with 8–9; working intuitively through 8 universal forms 7, 10, 60, 67–68, 102, 110, 111 universal meanings 10; see also intersubjectivity Van Manen, Max 108 visual coding 23 vital spirit 60 vitalism 69 walking, for Epiphany 134, 141 Wertz, F. 65, 108, 110 Whitehead, Alfred North 69, 81 Wilber, Ken 25, 31, 34, 36 Wizard of Oz 9, 125, 133, 134; as archetype 87, 88, 137, 142; Epiphany of 141–142 wonder 90