The best therapy is phenomenological

Phenomenology is the study of conscious experience, of the way things appear to us when we see them through our own eyes.  For me this is the heart of psychotherapy, taking seriously how a person actually experiences their world, rather than immediately reducing that experience to a diagnosis, symptom category, or causal theory.  Pain and suffering are lived from the inside, they are phenomenological in their very nature.

There are many reasons why this kind of approach works for psychotherapy for both individuals and for couples:

·        It prioritises your lived experience. The focus is on what it is like for you to live through what you are living through, rather than asking what disorder you might have.  Anxiety, for example, is not just a set of symptoms; it is a distinctive way of experiencing your body, other people, time, and possibilities.

·        It avoids premature interpretation. Phenomenology encourages us to stay with what is actually presented rather than to immediately explaining it.  Your experience doesn’t get wedged into a model or theory, we let it live and breath as it is to show us what it has to offer.

·        It treats you as a person Tin a phenomenological approach the client is someone who themselves interprets, chooses, relates, and makes sense of their existence, you are not there for the therapist to measure or judge.

·        It recognises context. Experiences such as depression, shame, grief, or loneliness occur within your relationships, history, body, social world, and circumstances. Phenomenology therefore fits naturally with an understanding of psychological difficulties as ways of being-in-the-world.

·        It makes the therapeutic relationship central. As a therapist I am not an entirely detached observer. We encounter each other in the therapeutic space and we both participate. Phenomenological therapy pays attention to what emerges between us as a live system.

·        It preserves ambiguity. Human experience is often contradictory and difficult to articulate. Phenomenology doesn't require everything to be immediately explained. Sometimes understanding comes from carefully describing an experience rather than immediately explaining it.

·        It can deepen empathy. Rather than simply saying “I understand why you feel that way,” I attempt to understand the structure and meaning of the client's experience from the client's perspective.

From a deeper philosophical perspective, knowing psychotherapy is about changing your way of experiencing and inhabiting your world, then it makes sense to begin with experience itself. Phenomenology provides a philosophical method for investigating that experience.

For example, suppose a client says:

“I feel like I'm failing at everything.”

If we are just investigating symptoms, we might explore how often the client experiences low mood, sleep disturbance, loss of appetite, etc.

If we are working phenomenologically I might also ask:

“When you say failing, how do you experience the world from that position? What sort of everything is it that matters?  Depending on the answer we might then explore things like:

What happens to your sense of yourself when you encounter other people?

How do you experience your body?

What possibilities seem open or closed to you?”

Open enquiry can reveal so much more than a symptom checklist can, we can explore your relationship with yourself, others, time, and possibility, and we can  track how these things change.

For psychotherapy that has a phenomenological focus, and an appreciation of how phenomenal you are, get in touch on 01325 605160 or fjchrichard@gmail.com.