The field of psychology has evoled in the 20th century from what many considered the magical work of Sigmund Freud to a respected scholarly discipline. A great deal of research appears in psychology journals every year, and four of the methodological traditions are the focus of this paper: phenomenology, heuristics, ethnomethodology, symbolic interactionism. For each tradition, epistemological assumptions, methods of inquiry, and research environment are described.
Phenomenology is the unbiased description of immediate experience just as it occurs. The experience is not abstracted or analyzed into elements, it is uncorrected observation. It involves the experience of common sense instead of that reported by the trained introspector with a systematic orientation. Phenomenological theories focus on the individual's perception of himself and of life events which provides the framework for understanding personality development. This orientation views the individual as the source of all acts, believes that behavior is the observable expression of the internal world, suggests that science must begin with the study of peoples' experiences, and believes that individuals are free to make choices in each situation. The key to understanding the individual's reaction to the environment is the personal interpretation of events (Greene & Ephross, 1991, p. 111; & Schultz & Schultz, 1992, p. 377).
According to Carl Rogers, the phenomenal self is an image of the self that each perceives in his own way, it may not correspond to external reality. The well-adjusted person has a more accurate perception of how they act, think, and experience. Rogers believed that infants have an internal locus of evaluation and an organismic valuing process, which guide individual experiences. External evaluation processes may stifle the person's ability leading to denial and distortion (Greene & Ephross, pp. 111-112).
The phenomenological approac...