A Phenomenologic Approach to Dream Interpretation: Part I: Phenomenology—An Historical Perspective

Phenomenology, as to the attitudes implied and the techniques that follow from them, has been described, known and used since recorded history, with and without awareness, in a variety of forms and under a multitude of names. The latter create a spectrum, beginning with the master-disciple relationship, through the scientific attitude, to free association. This span includes much of human history, innumerable frames of reference and a host of techniques. This paper, therefore, can only be titled a, not the, phénoménologie approach to dream interpretation. Through an historical resume, references to familiar concepts, and utilizing illustrative instances, an attempt will be made to indicate the nature of phenomenology and the horizons it can open for understanding and treating human beings.

Husserl's Logische Untersuchungen¹ dates modern pure phenomenology and its basic concept the epoché: “We put out of action the general thesis which belongs to the essence of the natural standpoint, we place in brackets whatever it includes respecting the nature of Being: this entire natural world therefore which is continually ‘there for us,’ ‘present to our hand,’ and will ever remain there, is a ‘fact-world’ of which we continue to be conscious even though it pleases us to put it in brackets.”²

Ellenberger states that “Husserl's phenomenology is basically a methodological principle, intended to provide a firm basis for the foundation of a new psychology and of a universal philosophy. In the presence of the phenomenon (whether it be an external object or a state of mind), the phenomenologist uses an absolutely unbiased approach; he observes phenomena as they manifest themselves and only as they manifest themselves. This observation is accomplished by means of an operation of the mind which Husserl called the epoché or “psychological-phenomenological reduction.” The observer “puts the world between brackets,” i.e., he excludes from his mind not only any judgment of value