THE SIGNIFICANCE OF HUSSERL'S FIFTH MEDITATION AND THE ABSENCE OF

THE OTHER

Ian R Owen

This paper points to an omission in the understandings of psychology that underpin practice

and research. The omission is the lack of attention to the importance of the topic of the way in

which we understand how we experience other people, how we empathise. This paper

demonstrates this omission and briefly recaps Husserl's theory of empathy. This paper does

not provide an overview of the whole story of phenomenology nor can it fully state Husserl’s

position or analyse other interpretations of what he meant. However, the paper has the aim of

indicating the gap in understanding that is evident in "ignoring the other" in the majority of

quantitative natural science approaches. The interpretation of the Fifth Meditation is in-line

with the work of the Directors of the Husserl Archives that appears in English translation.

This paper amplifies and explains what is written by Kern (1993) and Ströker (1993).

There is almost a complete absence of consideration of how we come to be able to understand

other persons in psychology, the behavioural and human sciences. For instance, the PsycLIT

Silver Platter database of five compact discs covering the period 1887 to 1995 contains only

approximately 20 entries on the subjects of Husserl, empathy, the problem of other minds and

associated terms_. This paper works towards a position where it is possible to introduce the

implications of the lack of an attention to empathy. This is because there is a major problem

in understanding other people. We may often think we understand others but we never have

direct access to their thoughts and feelings. Consequently, the feelings and senses we have

about others are given to them by oneself in a manner which is not immediately evident. It is

the purpose of this paper to lay out some of the basic principles of Husserl's approach to

understanding the other. Husserl spent approximately 30 years in proposing a pure

psychology, a theoretical venture to ground and make cohesive applied work of all kinds in

the general sphere of psychology.

Historically, Husserl's work gained greater acceptance in philosophy. In philosophy

the problem of other minds, or the problem of empathy, had been the topic of prolonged

debate in eighteenth and nineteenth century German philosophy particularly_ (Stein, 1989).

But in contemporary psychology, the absence of consideration of the other is lamentable

because psychological knowledge needs to be grounded via a consensual understanding of

how one human being experiences another. The lived experience of other people occurs

before any rating and statistical analysis. Accordingly, if it is agreed that the object of

psychology is the lived experience of another person, it follows that some consideration of

how we achieve the senses of other persons is required in order to relate psychological

knowledge claims of any kind, and for any purpose, to the object of attention. This paper

claims that it is necessary to have an explicit theory regarding how one human being comes to

understand and experience another. Although such experiences which are clarified by science

occur within the totality of socio-cultural life in which we ordinarily live it is not enough to

ignore the processes through which we empathise other persons.

Husserl's approach

One of the clearest examples of the problem of empathy is provided in the collection of

research papers written in 1912 now called Phenomenology and the Foundations of the

Sciences_ (Husserl, 1980, pp 94-98). However, it is not until 1929, the year of writing the

Cartesian Meditations, that Husserl arrived at what can be considered as something of an

answer to the paradox of the apparent acquaintance with the mind of the other and its absence

as being directly given to us_ (Husserl, 1975). Husserl's phenomenology of experience was

intended to establish a scientific community with a new method of philosophical grounding

that would lead scientists, academics and practitioners of all kinds out of their alleged state of

philosophical lack of awareness. This state of epistemological and ontological non-awareness

called the "natural attitude" by phenomenology. The natural psychological sciences would be

one place where such a lack of reflection could be overcome, so that theories and practices

may be justified within an explicit consensus and understanding that includes understanding

one's own position within the whole set of possibilities.

Husserl called the cognitive-affective process that constitutes the senses of others in

our awareness, "empathic presentiation_". Empathic presentiation is the technical term for the

generation of empathic senses of other persons. This process has the features of creating a

vicarious experience of the apparently immediate understanding of the inner motives or

emotions of another person or persons. Paradoxically, these experiences are not experienced

as part of one's own consciousness; but are felt as either real or imagined within one's own

consciousness. For Husserl, what is experienced by oneself are never the actual experiences,

feelings and motives of another consciousness. He did not believe in mind reading. What is

experienced is understood as the constitution of the sense of the other in self. The precise

psychodynamics of this constitution is the puzzle that Husserl claimed to have solved.

The Husserlian understanding of empathy starts with a model of consciousness which

rejects the natural attitude assumptions that reify consciousness. It is claimed that all non-

phenomenological approaches project the distorting, natural attitude understanding (Husserl,

1981, p 192). It is alleged that an empathic part of consciousness which constitutes the

ordinary awareness of our feelings for, and understandings of, others. In the Cartesian

Meditations, a transcendental reduction produces an allegedly neutral attitude with respect to

all natural being-senses. This attitude is for the purpose of bracketing all assumptions about

oneself, others, culture, empirical psychology and human nature (Husserl, 1977a, p 96).

Husserl claimed it is possible to see the essences of our experiences of others and finally

decide on the conditions for the possibility of such experience. This is the heart of the concern

for Husserl.

Husserl's approach was critical insomuch that he is claiming that psychology should

be focused on consciousness, one's own or that of others. Natural psychological science

focuses on behaviour, biological processes, the brain, chemical and electrical processes in the

brain and then claims to have found meanings about consciousness. For Husserl, the human

sciences must focus on their specific object_ of consciousness and other people.

Such a focus on empathy is central to initiate a philosophical reflection on "purified",

immanent experiences, by excluding all that could be doubted and all that is specifically part

of the surface, constituted feelings we have for others. One's own experiences can be reflected

on in a depersonalised and dissociated manner. The reduction allegedly produces a sphere of

pure ownness that belongs wholly to oneself (Husserl, 1977a, p 96, p 106). After the

reduction_, the observing part of reduced consciousness is regarded as an anonymous non-

participating observer which realises that it is split in several directions, yet has features of its

own identity and unity, within its multiplicity. The other is described in the following manner:

In changeable harmonious multiplicities of experience I experience others as actually

existing and, on the one hand, as world Objects - not as mere physical things belonging to

Nature, though indeed as such things in respect of one side of them... I experience them at the

same time as subjects for this world, as experiencing it (this same world that I experience)

and, in so doing, experiencing me too, even as I experience the world and others in it....

...I experience the world (including others) ... as other than mine alone [mir

fremde], as an intersubjective world, actually there for everyone, accessible in respect of its

Objects to everyone. And yet each has its experiences, his appearances and appearance-

unities, his world-phenomenon...

Husserl, 1977a, p 91.

What the above means is that the following selection of phenomena is taken into account.

Husserl believed that the following five points are most basic in our understanding of

ourselves in relation to others and they to us:

1. In empathy there is the understanding that there is a transposability of perspective. If two

people are looking at the same vase, the one understands that the other has a different

perspective on it. In empathy one person understands that two or more people each have

appresentations, additions of senses, one to the other. It is also the case that the other may

well understand that others have a different perspective concerning the same vase. When I

empathise with another person I realise they are a person who is like myself in a fundamental

manner.

2. Consequently, it is assumed that we all participate in one world, co-constituting its

meanings and objectivities.

3. Mutuality and reciprocity exist with respect to the appresentations of 'co-empathy,' because

empathy is a two-way communion, a connection between people. Human beings each realise

they are human.

4. Consequently, there is a single cultural world of shared appresentations of cultural-world

senses to objects, at a fundamental level. This position does not deny ethnocentricity and

racism, but is a claim that even hatred and discrimination are communicable through our

fundamental transpersonal humanity.

5. Through the mutual addition and transposability of senses is constituted the natural

attitude. At the natural attitude level, the ordinary ontic level of understanding, each

individual person has their own individual perspective and an illusion of privacy and

separation from each other and the world. In fact this last point could be called a 'false sense

of alienation'. It is false because people are enjoined in an all-embracing mutuality and

intermixing that occurs through their common psychophysical Nature. Human beings are

complex interrelations of consciousness, intersubjective actuality on consciousness, history

and physical nature_ (De Boer, 1978, p 458).

The transcendental reduction requires the setting aside the usual senses of the

presumed existence of received wisdom about others and human nature: "But in the case of

our abstraction the sense "Objective," which belongs to everything worldly - as constituted

intersubjectively, as experienceable by everyone, and so forth - vanishes completely"(Husserl,

1977a, p 96). There is an alleged rejection of language (Ibid, p 95, p 106) in order to attend to

non-verbal senses, like in meditation. Attention turns to the psychophysical Nature only of

what appears of oneself, as an example of human beings in general and their actual contexts.

What remains, for Husserl, is the direct seeing of the essences of automatic and non-egoic

syntheses by which: (1) the absolutely constituting consciousness creates all meanings and

spans time (p 112-3). Also (2), it appears that the empathic senses that were constituted for

the first time in infancy remain as accessible sources of their on-going future additions to the

perceived bodies of others (p 93).

Husserl's philosophical process started with our everyday experiences of empathy in

all their forms as in the five points noted above (p 91). By means of the transcendental

reduction, it is alleged that an absolute sphere of immanent seeing is produced, in which it is

possible to see essences of the constitution of the sense of others, self and the intersubjective

constitution of all forms of meaning. The psychophysical Nature of one's living body itself is

revealed only after the transcendental reduction as...

...a kind of "world" still, a Nature reduced to what is included in our ownness and, as

having its place in this Nature thanks to the bodily organism, the psychophysical Ego, with

"body and soul" and personal Ego - utterly unique members of this reduced "world".

Husserl, 1977a, p 98.

What the above means is that human Nature is allegedly evident by attention to our own

living bodiliness and the way in which meanings are immediately apparent.

For Husserl there are three processes of constitution at the heart of the creation of the

sense of the other. He claimed that first, there is a primal institution of the first ever empathic

sense of another person. This happens during infancy. Primal institution is the first-ever

successful learning of an object's meaning. Within such a process there is a first ever pairing

of categories of associated senses and a first ever appresentation of the cultural sense onto the

cultural object. For instance, primal institution occurs in an example where a child visually

perceives inanimate things and learns to understand them over a period of time.

...objects given beforehand... the already-given everyday world... in which we

understand their sense and its horizons forthwith, points back to a "primal instituting", in

which an object with a similar sense became constituted for the first time.

...for the first time the final [use-] sense of scissors [occurs]; and from now on he sees

scissors at the first glance as scissors.

Husserl, 1977a, p 111.

So it is claimed that a primal institution of the first sense of any object, or the first sense of

another human being, involves the creation of basic categories of the experience of objects.

Husserl concluded that the primal institution of an object's sense occurs through two

other allied involuntary processes. The first and all future attainments of any objects' senses

require these two processes. For there to be an understanding that the adult carers of the infant

are human, the infant has to be able to constitute the sense of itself and the sense of the other.

This is termed pairing and is a general process of the constitution of all kinds of senses, not

just those concerning the constitution of the senses "self" and "others" (p 98). Generally,

pairing is a cognitive-affective process of the constitution of basic categories of meaning and

the on-going attainment and refinement of such categories or schemas of basic experience.

The term pairing was a general finding from Husserl's analysis of experience. It

applies to the creation of many categories of sameness and difference in experience. The

specific creation of the categories "self" and "other" have a pivotal role in the creation and

maintenance of categories of higher intellectual understanding.

Pairing is a primal form of that passive synthesis which we designate as

"association"... In a pairing association the characteristic feature is that, in the most primitive

case, two data are given intuitionally, and with prominence, in the unity of a consciousness

and that... as data appearing with mutual distinctness, they found phenomenologically a unity

of similarity and thus are constituted as a pair.

Husserl, 1977a, p 112.

Husserl started from the position that we are linked to others through empathic syntheses

which literally constitute the presence of the other, in a complex manner, within ourselves.

From the evidence of his direct seeing of himself he argues that what exists in ourselves is a

vicarious experience whereby the mind of the other which is never present to us, quasi-

appears as though it is present. Part of this process incurs repeated appresentations from self

to others and then the retention of the sense of the other into self. However, the third

simultaneous synthesis is appresentation, the addition of senses when the perceptual object

appears within lived experience. What enables this to take place is the recognition of

fundamental similarity between self and others which is based on the recognition that both

self and other are a psychosomatic unity of meaning and felt-sense. This appresentation or

adding occurs in a similar manner to that in which we experience external objects in three

dimensions instead of just two: When we look at a cup, although we do not see its oblique

sides or its rear, such views are appresented to the front view that we do see.

Furthermore, pairing occurs for all consciousness. All the cognitive-affective

processes of each person's mind are assumed to function in a similar manner. It is mutual and

reciprocal in joining people together (p 122). The initial and continued recognition of

similarity that occurs between two or more human beings is a form of the seeing of the

category: "we are human and both have a unified mind-and-living-body". What is seen as the

bodies of others are given the sense of lived bodies and living consciousness, over there. This

process happens for all persons. So others reciprocate with the same processes themselves.

The three processes of synthesis are claimed to be the most fundamental processes for

empathy and intersubjectivity to exist as they do. It is because of the primal institution of a

sense, the pairing and on-going appresentation and retention of experience, that any

recognition occurs for persons. What accrues is the universal co-constitution of the senses of

self and other within humanity. In 1929 Husserl was confident that...

... from the very beginning that only a similarity connecting, within my primordial

sphere, that body over there with my body can serve as the motivational basis for the

"analogizing" apprehension of that body as another animate organism.

Husserl, 1977a, p 111.

In Husserl's studies of himself, in which he tried to lay aside all natural-attitude cultural

assumptions, his experiments led him to believe that this process involved the mutual and

simultaneous appresentation of empathic meaning constituted through one's past.

Consequently, others are felt to be living persons, "like me", but "over there" (p 118-9). He

concluded that because of human beings' apperception of themselves as a unity of

consciousness, their living bodiliness and their physical bodiliness, they understand the

physical bodies of others by immediately adding to them the sense of their own unity. After

such an addition the other is felt to be other because they are physically over there and not me

here. This continuing transfer and accrual of meaning constitutes the sense of self, other, and

intersubjective interconnection. The other is a target for projections of passive, non-conscious

processes, whereby my experiences become given as belonging to the other (p 117). As a

consequence in the natural attitude, a constituted experience comprised of the previous

processes, the other is felt to have the being-sense of an existent person:

...as we find on closer examination, I apperceive him as having spatial modes of

appearance like those I should have if I should go over there and be where he is. Furthermore

the Other is appresentatively apperceived as the "Ego" of a primordial world, and of a monad,

wherein his animate organism is originally constituted and experienced in the mode of the

absolute Here, precisely as the functional center for his governing. In this appresentation,

therefore, the body in the mode There, which presents itself in my monadic sphere and is

apperceived as another's live body (the animate organism of the alter ego) - that body

indicates "the same" body in the mode Here, as the body experienced by the other ego in his

monadic sphere. Moreover it indicates the "same" body concretely, with all the constitutive

intentionality pertaining to this mode of givenness in the other's experience.

Husserl, 1977a, p 117.

However, the lifelong presence of the physical bodies of other people act as unities of

meaningful consciousness and living bodies which are retained by the individual. Each

meeting with another is part of an overall learning experience through which the individual

gets to learn about the shared cultural world in all its details and complexity. Therefore, we

are mutual targets and the bearers of meaning for each other of temporal accumulation of

empathic objectivity and all other kinds of higher intellectual objectivity. Thus, in a further

twist, the realisation that we all have the same unified psychosomatic existence, for Husserl,

becomes the basis for the establishment of all other forms of objectivity and meaning.

It is quite comprehensible that, as a further consequence, an "empathizing" of definite

contents belonging to the "higher psychic sphere" arises. Such contents too are indicated

somatically and in the conduct of the organism toward the outside world - for example: as the

outward conduct of someone who is angry or cheerful, which I easily understand from my

own conduct under similar circumstances. Higher psychic occurrences, diverse as they are

and familiar as they have become, have furthermore their style of synthetic interconnexions

and take their course in forms of their own, which I can understand associatively on the basis

of my empirical familiarity with the style of my own life, as exemplifying roughly

differentiated typical forms. In this sphere, moreover, every successful understanding of what

occurs in others has the effect of opening up new associations and new possibilities of

understanding; and conversely, since every pairing association is reciprocal, every such

understanding uncovers my own psychic life in its similarity and difference and, by bringing

new features into prominence, makes it fruitful for new associations.

Husserl, 1977a, p 120.

The comments above refer to constituted codes of conduct and communication in culture and

society. Husserl is claiming to have shown that through his analysis of the living body, it

indicates how the social body also operates. The importance of empathy for phenomenology,

and the sciences to be founded on it, is that empathy is mediated through our understanding of

the signs, sounds, movements and gestures of the bodies of others. That which we

experienced as infants acts as a template for on-going social learning throughout the lifespan.

Habit and automatic processes build up immediate expectations and abilities of recognition_.

The bodily presence of others throughout life acts as a sign for the retained,

accumulating associations and references of the sense of otherness, that accrue in each

consciousness in constituting a collective sense of memories and meanings. We do not

immediately transfer our sense to others, but they invoke in us the sense of our own retained

or imagined having been where they are, which also adds to prior pairing and appresentation

(Husserl, 1977a, p 118).

Thus the totality of the actual social world is constituted and retained by all egos and

their consciousness. From the immanent processes of each individual arise the beginnings of

all meaning and forms of intersubjectivity which are mediated communally (p 119). The

cultural senses, the public meanings of a group are based on the continual holding of a shared

sense of human being:

The first thing constituted in the form of community, and the foundation for all

other intersubjectively common things, is the commonness of Nature, along with that of the

Other's organism and his psychophysical Ego, as paired with my own psychophysical Ego.

Husserl, 1977a, p 120.

It is through the primal institution, the pairing of self and other, and the continued connection

between self and other, that all cultural senses may pass in transmission from one person to

another. It is also the case that for Husserl, thing-constitution, the constitution of a cultural

sense to a cultural inanimate object, is not more fundamental than the empathic constitution of

the senses "animal" or "human" (p 145). Therefore, primal institution in empathy is the most

constitutive synthesis of all meaning.

Consequently, when Husserl asked "what are the primordial, conditioning experiences

for objectivity to exist?" His answer is that our link with the other is the first and most

fundamental objectivity. Accordingly, there is no solipsism for Husserl but an intersubjective

creation of common objectivities and meanings. Empathy, the vicarious feelings and

responses in self, is part of an intersubjective co-constitution which constitutes the shared

experience of the same objects in one, fundamental cultural world. This overall process has

come to be known as transcendental intersubjectivity - the intersubjective constitution of

meaning with others in the world. Through his exceedingly complex and condensed

presentation, Husserl claimed that his analysis also demonstrates the necessary condition of

intersubjective human nature that is necessary for the establishment, and any possible

agreement of, any culturally objective meaning, a theme which was present at least as early as

1912 (Husserl, 1980, pp 1-2). The consciousness of other persons is a mediated presence,

indicated through their speech, movement, bodiliness and gestures.

The absence of the other

One of the strongest implications that arises from an understanding of Husserl's approach in

the Fifth Meditation is that the perspective of phenomenology presented there spans the

categories that currently exist in the behavioural sciences between social learning theory,

psychoanalysis and developmental theories. Husserl asked "precisely how does it happen that

we are both apparently in contact with the feelings of others and yet never so?" Following

Descartes, Husserl stated not "I think therefore I am", but "because of primal institution,

pairing and appresentation I am in a shared cultural world". Husserl answered that even

though we never have the contents of their minds directly given to us, as we have the lived

contents of our minds given to us, it is still the case that we can understand others, from time

to time such an understanding may be accurate. For Husserl, it is the case that the interaction

between absolute consciousness, the other and the cultural content co-constitute the world-

sense that surrounds all we experience_.

Another major point is that phenomenology as a pre-science and pre-philosophy rules

out of court logical argumentation as being an overly assumptive model for justification of

knowledge. It also abandons the assumptions that knowledge is somehow separate from mere

experience, or distant from the presence of others. On the contrary, through primal institution

and pairing in early life all intersubjective, intellectual and other forms of knowledge, are

based on appresented senses. Such learning may be accurate or inaccurate, according to one's

perspective. Husserl's theory of empathy is a precise formulation concerning how the social

construction of meaning occurs.

Phenomenology is an attempt to set aside assumptions in the hope of finding the

common invariant aspects of meaning in the world. What remains after such an attempt is that

the pure flux of conscious awareness has an intersubjective sense (1977a, p 94, p 105) given

through appresentation and retention of earlier perceptions and experiences, through learning.

Also, the recognition of the sense of self co-exists with the recognition of otherness in

pairing. Husserl argued that transcendental intersubjective syntheses are the most basic

condition for the co-constitution of an objective shared world, because the constitution of the

world is a shared process of accumulating evidence to which all humans contribute and are

shaped by what they create. This sharing occurs in all-pervasive, simultaneous syntheses of

empathy which are the mutual transfer and addition of a primordial sense of otherness to

others. On the basis of empathy occur the co-constitution of objects having social meanings,

in subjectivity, whereby culture and history can accrue through time. In short, our experiences

of the world, and everything in it, are grounded on empathy, according to Husserl (Bernet,

Kern & Marbach, 1993, p 165).

But in the Fifth Meditation of the Cartesian Meditations Husserl recorded some

conclusions rather than providing his workings. Also, the type of theory was one that is

directly comparable to a psychodynamic image of consciousness. His theory included the

connections of the appresentation (projection) and retention (introjection) to habituation and

social learning. Indeed, there are a number of similarities between Husserl and Freud. Both

claimed to have been able to find the definitive characteristics of the acts and syntheses of

consciousness. Freud worked on the processes of transference, projection, defence and so

forth. Both were engaged in the qualitative clarification of experience.

Of course, there are many more complex, higher combinations of empathic syntheses

and acts of the ego based on them. For instance, our inner creation and participation in the

inner lives of others, may or may not be validated by them. Also, I can also empathise with

another's empathising. Being a citizen in society is related to empathy, expectation and

habituation, which are complex syntheses, as are changes in the types of relationships that

people have throughout the lifespan_. It is also the case that Husserl's theory of empathy is a

theory of how we come to have culture and cultural senses that are accessible to us all, or at

least potentially open to us.

Husserl felt that the type of argument that he provided in the Fifth Meditation was the

answer to understanding the manner in which consciousness and meaning are both public and

private, both immanent and transcendent. Like a moebius strip, the apparent transcendence of

public meaning also holds for the individual - and what is individual is often understandable

publicly_. This perspective was also expressed in terms of the world, by Husserl and

Heidegger. For Husserl, the cultural world or cultural context is that which is immanent and

projected out in understanding any specific cultural object. It is also that which surrounds all

experience as an ultimate context, one which constrains that which can be understood within

the context (Tran, 1986, p 35). In the Fifth Meditation, Husserl's answer is that the

transcendence of the cultural world becomes retained in the immanence and transcendence of

consciousness through the lifelong learning of meaning that is based on the fundamental role

of the understanding of the feelings and motives of others' bodies. If it were not for our ability

to make feelings "for" others and to attribute others with a consciousness "like ours", then

there would not be any understanding as human beings have it. Like Descartes, Husserl

implied that this is an evident truth. It is not because I think that I am. We understand and

exist in a meaningful human world as we do because of primal institution, pairing and

appresentation that are continually up-dated with new appresentations to objects from others.

The obscured emphasis of the original perspective

Unfortunately, the impact of Husserl's pure psychology has been small during the twentieth

century even though he achieved such a theory. His philosophical approach to grounding

psychology has many thought-provoking points to offer contemporary workers. His manner

of arguing and consideration of evidence contains the features of psychodynamic cognitive-

affective processes. He argued that it must be the case that there are automatic tacit processes

in the occurrence of our senses of other persons. Such a first-ever learning happens first of all

as an infant and is extended throughout the lifespan. Ultimately the senses we have of other

persons are regarded as social learning that becomes more refined throughout the lifespan.

Husserl's theorising includes the perspective that the meaning of the behaviour of others is an

achievement of habits of cognitive affective processes. The contemporary implications of his

perspective are that it may be possible to connect disparate perspectives in cognitive science,

developmental psychology and the history and philosophy of psychology in order to progress

with a fuller understanding the persons who the researcher meets and the theoretician

describes.

The feelings we have about other people may not always be the focus of conscious

attention. Yet in conversations and close proximity to other people, more often than not, they

appear to be in a mood of some sort. They may look deep in thought or vacant, happy or

distressed. So much is often obvious. But we may not know how we know this. This paper

has set aside the relevant answers made by Mead and Freud as regards the sense of other

people for the purpose of concentrating on Husserl's approach. The omission of the manner of

creating the sense of the other is a most pertinent omission, considering that we are not alone

in the world.

Two other pertinent implications arise. Firstly, there has been much mention of the

self and theorizing about the ego in relation to the unconscious. But if there is to be a

justifiable theory of psychology, might it not be best to start with what is given in our

experience of other people? According to phenomenology in order to build theories that can

guide practice, it is better to start with direct experience, rather than to start at conceptual

assumptions. Secondly, if there is no agreed theory of how we experience the other, in the

culture in which we participate, there is room for error because knowledge and argumentation

concerning how to treat others is built on assumption. Such knowledge is not justified and

argued from consensually-agreed experience. Accordingly, the paper to turned to the major

significance of empathy and intersubjectivity for Husserl with the aim of showing how an

apparent phenomena has a hidden constitution.

Practical conclusion: One example

This final section makes some comments about the contemporary situation of justifying

theories and claims to psychological knowledge by empirical research. The particular area of

psychotherapy research is chosen to illustrate the differences between a grounded pure

psychological, Husserlian approach and the standard natural scientific approach. The history

of psychotherapy research has been dominated by the natural psychological science approach.

Currently there is a move towards adopting empirical methods to base theoretical practice and

inform therapeutic decision-making within sessions. However, within such a turn, where is

the consideration of the other as a basis for all such theorising and justification? Empirical

justification is an attempt at making important decisions for the future of the profession but

without a clear view of how we understand others and culture, without having an agreed

understanding of the overall context for how we make such justifications. It is precisely the

role of phenomenology to understand the context for thinking and reasoning, as it is a

fundamental analysis of meaning, as indicated above.

The major difference between the phenomenological clarification of experience and

the empirical forms of psychology, including some of the qualitative approaches, is the

immanent nature of the phenomena for phenomenology. This is also the case for

psychotherapy and areas like personality theory where the phenomena are not measurable for

empirical psychology. What is not measurable, what is not observable by raters, cannot be

subject to statistics and cannot be considered by natural scientific psychology. The

discrepancy between phenomenology, psychotherapy and personality theory, on the one hand,

and natural psychological science, on the other, can be made more evident in the following

example.

Natural psychological science, whether discourse analysis or an experimental

approach, can only begin with observable events, whether on audio tape, video tape or

through direct observation. For the natural psychological scientist, there must be something

observable in the behaviour, actions and words of the participants.

For phenomenology, psychotherapy and personality theory, the basis of evidence is

the sense of self and the sense of the other, in self, or between self and other. But such senses

are not available to the type of observation and measurement that natural psychological

science uses. For natural psychological science, the sense of self, ego, and the empathised

sense of the other, our feeling that we know the other, is not data and cannot be a part of its

science. But on the contrary, the genuine data for phenomenology, psychotherapy and

personality theory is that which is immanent, of oneself, and potentially not at all apparent to

anyone else unless they are having similarly describable experiences.

This leads to a tangle of problems of different varieties. There are theoretical and

practical problems in how to consider the most basic types of evidence. Phenomenology,

psychotherapy and personality theory prefer feeling, insight and empathy. There are research

problems, for the prima facie types of evidence are not agreed and neither is any means of

concluding from them. This means that the creation and use of psychological science has no

place of consensus within its broad field of differing approaches. Such a lack of consensus

renders the drive to conclude on empathic evidence problematic (Roth & Fonagy, 1986,

Bohart, O'Hara & Leitner, 1998, Elliott, 1998).

But, since the beginnings of evidence-based practice, theorising and clinical audit are

contemporary in psychotherapy practice, it would be prudent to have a consensually-agreed

model of how to understand and practice. It would be preferable to have such psychological

theories that are based on what is given rather than unjustified conceptual assumptions and

ontological prejudice. It would be ethical to demonstrate to clients, if necessary, and to other

professions, how we justify our understanding of clients and ground our responses, generally.

Husserl's philosophy of psychology was focused on finding the processes of the mind

by analysing what appears to himself. For him, if we cannot account for how we understand

the other, we cannot justify a theory concerning human behaviour or create a justification for

how to act in the psychotherapy session. According to Husserl's phenomenology, there are

significant sins of omission from psychology because the fundamental processes through

which we experience other people are tacit. Husserl worked on this particular point from 1905

until his death in 1938 (Husserl, 1973b, 1973c, 1973d). In Husserl's terminology, empathy is a

"passive synthesis", an involuntary automatic and rapid cognitive-affective process of

consciousness based on the recognition of a fundamental similarity functioning without any

conscious action of the ego.

In conclusion then, there are many problems and paradoxical questions that could be

asked about Husserl's phenomenology and how it is relevant in informing the debate about

what can be counted as evidence in psychology, the behavioural and human sciences. There is

still much work to be done in applying Husserl's pure philosophy and psychology in these

worlds.

Notes

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_PAGE _

_PAGE _20_

_. Indeed, search as I might, I could not find any coherent theory of how we experience other

people in PsycLIT, The Philosophers Index, Sociological Abstracts and the Psychological

Bulletin. The small number of entries on the sense of other persons on the PsycLIT database

include contributions by Hermann Drüe, 1963, Fluckiger and Sullivan, 1965, Hunsdahl, 1967

Carr, 1973 and Jennings, 1986. Sokolowski’s work, although an authoritative and simple to

read overview of Husserl, has surprisingly little to say about the importance of empathy as

world-constituting and meaning-constituting (2000).

_.Writers include Paul Stern, Einfühlung und Association in der Neuren Asthetik (Hamburg:

Voss, 1898); Theodore Lipps, Grundzüge der Logik (Hamburg: Voss, 1893); Leitfaden in der

Psychologie (Leipzig: Voss, 1903); Asthetik: Psychologie des Schonen und der Kunst, Vol 1

(Leipzig: Voss, 1903); "Das Wissen von Fremden Ichen," Psychologische Untersuchungen

(1): 694-722. With other notable contributions by Max Scheler, Zur Phänomenologie und

Theorie der Sympathiegefühle und von Liebe und Hass (Halle: Niemeyer, 1913) of the second

revised edition was translated by Peter Heath as The Nature of Sympathy (London: RKP,

1954).

_. Edmund Husserl, "Phenomenology and the Foundations of the Sciences," translated by

T.E. Klein and W.E. Pohl. (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1980: 94-8). Original work written in 1912.

However, the particular research text included there is only a conclusion and the working

behind that conclusion is omitted from that work. In 1913 "Ideas I," section 151, page 363, we

find comments that precis the work that has been done on empathy so far Ideas pertaining to a

Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy: First Book. Translated by Fred

Kersten. (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1982). Original work published in 1913. In 1915 in Ideas II,

section 51, we find another approach to empathy, but the problem of understanding the whole

now becomes diluted because the comments made in this collection of papers are diffuse.

Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy: Second

Book. "Ideas II" was translated by R. Rojcewicz & A. Schuwer. (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1989:

208). Original work written between 1912 and 1925 but not published until 1952.

_. The text that became the Meditations was first presented as two lectures at the Sorbonne

(Husserl 1975). Original lectures given 1929. The English translation is the Fifth Meditation,

1977a, pp 83-120).

_. To understand Husserl's work on empathy and intersubjectivity it is necessary to know

about his analysis of the acts and syntheses of consciousness. Husserl's understanding of the

acts of consciousness begins with his distinction that perception in the five senses is the most

basic form of presentation. One where perceptual objects are regarded as current and actually

existing. But there are other types of givenness. Husserl's analyzed memory, imagination and

the semiosis of visual art reveal that their essence concerns the presentiation of prior

perceptions. He argued that these psychological acts re-present, "presentiate," an object that is

either not currently present, or may not potentially have ever existed. See Eduard Marbach

Mental Representation and Consciousness: Towards a Phenomenological Theory of

Representation and Reference. (Norwell: Kluwer Academic, 1993). Presentiations are a group

of processes within consciousness that present an absence. In recollection (long-term

memory) we remember what is not currently present but which was once present. In

imagination we create something which is not currently present or may never have been

present. In empathy we create the sense of the other's feelings, thoughts, motivations and

intentions although we never experience the contents of their minds and bodily sensation.

Another form of presentation is called "appresentation" the addition of meanings and senses

to what appears. Appresentation is a central theme in phenomenology that is barely

acknowledged except by Aron Gurwitsch, Phenomenology and the Theory of Science.

(Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1974). Husserl clearest presentation is in

Phenomenological Psychology translated by John Scanlon. (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1977: 83-

90). Original lectures given in 1925.

_. The term "object" is an opaque one in Husserl. It is a general term and claimed to be

ontologically and ethically neutral. When it is applied to other people it does not reify or

objectify them. Rather, what it means is a general term for the recognisable pattern, meaning

or perceptual sense that appears. Also, some objects are discreet items such as a book, or the

silhouette of a book. Others are abstract: "society", "compassion". However, it is a basic

ability of consciousness that out of temporal and actual multiplicity, unities of sense do occur

(Husserl, 1991, p 294). Original lectures given between 1905 and 1917 but not published until

1928.

The original German text of the Fifth Meditation also needs to be carefully considered

in relation to the question of precisely what Husserl is describing and analysing. Some lines in

the German original can be translated as follows. Husserl, 1950, page 122, lines 23-28:

We ought to work for insight into the explicit and implicit intentionality, in which the other

ego announces and proves itself on the basis of our transcendental ego, in the same way, in

which processes create themselves in myself and the sense of the other proves itself under the

headings of the other in unequivocal experiences as being in its way a self. (cf 1977a, p 90).

The same basic thought is expressed later in the text where Husserl returns to the same

theme, page 127, lines 12-21:

We state in this context one important phenomenon. In the abstraction remains for us a

uniform correlated level of the phenomenon world, of the transcendental correlates of the

continually unequivocal progressing world experience. Despite our abstraction we can

continually progress in the experiencing reflection. (cf 1977a, p 96).

The passages refer to the same lived experience that is the object of phenomenological

study and analysis.

_. Husserl alleges that the reduction enables phenomenologists to stand outside of themselves

and the world, in order to see both clearly and the complex intentional relations between both

through time. From this position, Husserl felt that he could contemplate the natural attitude

experiences of empathy which are now seen as accumulations through time and possible

sources for understanding the essences of empathic intentionality and the intersubjective

constitution of objectivity (Bernet, Kern & Marbach, 1993, p 75). His concern was to

understand the character of empathy and intersubjectivity by seeing and varying all possible

aspects of the relation between the constituting consciousness and the empathic syntheses that

are created and directed toward the empathic object of another human body.

_. The term "animate organism" tries to reflect this concern. It is a translation of "Leib,"

living body and "bodily organism" is a translation of "körperlichen Leib".

_. In this sense Husserl's conclusions on empathy agree with a general concept of

transference. Transference for Husserl is also a concept that includes as a mixture of self-

fulfilling prophecy and evoking behaviour from others, in order to confirm the prophecy.

_. Heidegger had a different view of empathy and took more of a contextual route to

understanding how we constitute empathic feelings. To explain his perspective would take up

a good deal of space. But briefly, because of human temporality and the overall context of the

world, and through our nature of being pre-reflexively in contact with each other, we

experience ourselves as already with others (Heidegger, 1996). See sections 13 and 69. There

are a few sparse details of his approach to the other in the summer lectures of 1927 (1982, p

278).

_. A phenomenological understanding of empathy can be acquired by reading section 151 of

Ideas I where, once more, Husserl provides an overview of his conclusions. The incomplete

PhD thesis of Edith Stein, a supervisee of Husserl, and later his research assistant, laid out a

Husserlian position in 1916 that all psychological knowledge is based on empathy (Stein,

1989: 19). Stein went on to develop her own approach in her habilitation thesis of 1919 on

psychological causality (published with Husserl's full approval (Stein, 1922). In all these

remarks it is important to bear in mind that for phenomenology consciousness is both

immanent and transcendent. If it were only immanent it would never be able to have access to

the public cultural world nor have any awareness of inanimate objects (Husserl, 1973d).

Original lectures given in April 1907. There is little on empathy in the Paris Lectures where

Husserl propounded an earlier stance. Cartesian Meditations is perhaps one of the most

definitive Husserlian texts but it is very condensed and contains many interpretative

ambiguities that can only be overcome through attending to the clarifications made by

Directors of the Husserl Archives (Bernet, Kern & Marbach, 1993: 159, Ströker, 1993, 130-

1). Unfortunately, Husserl confused his method in Cartesian Meditations, something which he

only later realised. For instance, after declaring on pages 96, 98, 104, 134 and 146 of the

Meditations that the transcendental reduction leaves a pure ego; he contradicts himself on

pages 93, 94, 98, 100 and 112 that the reduction reveals the presence of the sense of self and

otherness. Despite this, it is possible to recreate a Husserlian position which corrects this

confusion of categories.

_. I am making an analogy here. A moebius strip is a three dimensional strip of paper with a

number of twists in it. When a strip of paper is twisted once the resultant surface has only one

side.

Ian Owen is a senior lecturer in Counselling Psychology and a psychotherapist with the

Psychology Department of Wolverhampton NHS Trust. He is registered as a doctoral student

with The School of Psychotherapy and Counselling, Regents College, London, completing a

thesis entitled "What the Fifth Cartesian Meditation reveals for psychotherapy".

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