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Giorgi, A. (2009). The descriptive phenomenological method in psychobgy: A modified Husserlian approach. Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 233 pp., ISBN 978-0-8207-0418-0, $25.00 (paper).
In the interest of transparency, I begin with the context of my point of view in this review. I was a student of Amedeo Giorgi at Duquense University, where I studied and worked closely with him from 1973 to 1982. Like him, I work from the phenomenological point of view. Although Professor Giorgi and I share a common commitment to phenomenology, we have worked independently over the last three decades, though we share probing conversations on such topics as the similarities and differences in our practices and accounts of research methods. My focus in this review is not on the fine points of research method but rather on the larger significance of Professor Giorgi's new book.
For almost fifty years, Amedeo Giorgi has devoted himself to developing phenomenological research methods for psychology that would be applicable across all subject matters of the discipline, in other human sciences, and in such interdisciplinary professions as concern health, education, industry, and social service. What has distinguished Giorgi's work is his extensive knowledge of phenomenology and his creative fidelity in adapting its methods to human science. Giorgi has combined his background as a natural science methodologist with sophisticated philosophical knowledge, extensive historical scholarship in psychology, and broad experience in applying the methods he has developed. The elegant simplicity of the method makes it practicable in diverse projects, accessible to researchers with skills ranging from novice to advanced, and applicable to topics as widely ranging as the human experience itself. The procedures follow directly on the one hand from the demands of human phenomena and on the other hand from scientific requirements, including systematization and accountability. This achievement, of the utmost significance for human science, is made more clearly and definitively available to the scholarly community in his latest book than in any previous writing.
Giorgi has not peppered the field with facilely written or redundant volumes of his work. The text being reviewed is his second authored book, following the 1970 classic, Psychology as a Human Science. In his first book, Giorgi made a compelling case that psychology's persistent problems, reflected in critical protests...