Ernest Keen’s Fun-Filled Overnight as a Paradigm
It is not uncommon to introduce a paper on the application of phenomenological methods to psychology with a few disparaging remarks about a lack of a real understanding as to its philosophical basis and actual practice.1 While many papers introduce the problem, few deliver a manageable sense of how to apply the phenomenological method in a way that may be easily carried into practice. Ernest Keen’s 1975 “A Primer in Phenomenological Psychology”2 provides a truly useful paradigm that shows how it may be carried out through the use of mental models that help explain the phenomenology of a five year old changing her mind. As will be seen, Keen’s example shows how phenomenology can take into account the perspective of the observer in order to deliver an evolving, objective sense of how the subjective experience of a five year old may be interpreted.
The Example
Keen’s example involves a five year old who is packing her things for a “fun-filled overnight.” In doing so, she is anticipating the fun she will have at her friend’s house. When she does finally arrive, however, she changes her mind about wanting to spend the night there. Without any apparent reason, she begins crying and all she can say is that she wants to go home. On the way home, her tears subside. Pleased to be back home again, she happily goes to bed. The question Keen raises is why she changed her mind about wanting to stay at her friend’s house and how phenomenology can help us to understand her behavior.
Mental Models
Keen introduces a series of models, based upon her experience of time and space, that help create an objective framework for answering these questions. The first model is a series of three concentric circles in which the first represents “events,” the second “anticipations,” and the third “memories” (see image below). This model is meant to give us a representation of the structure of temporal experience for the first part of the evening. That is, the way she experienced the events as they unfolded before she changed her mind. The events at the center, the packing, for example, take place against the backdrop of her positive anticipations of the overnight, and those anticipations, in turn, play out against the background of her memories of her past experiences with her friend. It could be said that the backdrop for all three is what phenomenologists call “the lifeworld,” or the world of our everyday experience.
Temporal Structure Model of her state of mind while packing:
In the second model, which corresponds to the state of things when she changes her mind, events are again at the center, but now they play out against the backdrop of her memories of home, that, in turn, play out against her (negative) anticipation of staying at her friend’s house all night.
Interpretation
What we can say about her behavior, given the diagram, is that her memories of home came to the fore, once she was at her friend’s house, against the backdrop of anticipating what a night at home in her own more familiar bed might be like. Her orientation to the future underwent a radical shift from the first part of the evening to the second. At this point, a certain amount of hypothetical, interpretive reasoning enters the picture as to why she wanted to come home. Keen writes,
As she was crying, wanting to come home, her memory of home made the sack, the bed, and the room appear lonely, alien, unwelcome. But the memory of home loomed only because of a further backdrop of anticipation — of going to sleep in this alien room. She had been in this room many times before and had not found it unbearable. But knowing that she was supposed to go to sleep there made the room appear an empty place, a cold place, in contrast to her memory of her own warm bed at home.3
The hermeneutical approach to phenomenology sees some amount of interpretation as not only necessary, but also unavoidable in order to get a process of refinement underway. For example, Keen writes, “when we come through the front door, she grins.” This is interpreted as a sign of her being happy to be back home again, yet it is an interpretation of her psychological state and as such, may be treated as subject to further revision. The important thing is to be aware of interpretive moves as such, and therefore subject to revision. If anything and everything is to be doubted as to her subjectivity, we may not be able to make progress in actually understanding her behavior, which is, of course, what psychologists want to do.4
Conclusion
In the end, the interpreter is presented with a dilemma: leave the subjectivity of the subject a black box or try to use an interpretive method to get at the qualitative aspects of our common experience. In some cases, it may be very important to understand someone’s behavior on an individual basis and doing so may require the messy process of interpretation and revision. While useful, the objectivity of statistics can never quite reveal the qualitative aspects of a person’s inner experience.
For further discussion, see The Hermeneutic Circle – Structure and Flux, and Gadamer: Hermeneutics, Scientific Method, and Subjectivity – Structure and Flux.
- See Neubauer, B. E., Witkop, C. T., & Varpio, L., “How phenomenology can help us learn from the experiences of others.” Perspectives on Medical Education, 8(2), 2019, 90–97. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40037-019-0509-2 and Magnus Englander, “The Phenomenological Method in Qualitative Psychology and Psychiatry,” International Journal of Qualitative Studies on Health and Well-being, 11:1, 2016. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.3402/qhw.v11.30682
- Ernest Keen, “A Primer in Phenomenological Psychology” (Holt, Rinehart, and Winston 1975).
- Ernest Keen, “A Primer in Phenomenological Psychology,” 7.
- Ernest Keen, “A Primer in Phenomenological Psychology” 5.
