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Gunnar Karlsson formulates his project in a chapter on the psychoanalytic conceptualization of the psyche:
The psychoanalytic process begins with the analysand's conscious self-understanding and is driven forward by means of conscious validations of interpretations of the unconscious. Our knowledge of the unconscious is always based on the conscious (contents of consciousness) … that is why, to understand the unconscious, we first have to understand what specifically characterizes consciousness. In the discussion of what distinguishes consciousness I shall make reference to phenomenology. (p. 81)
The writer aims at bringing psychoanalysis and phenomenology together with the purpose of making his contribution that psychoanalysis may become founded on a more adequate theory of knowledge, that is a meta-theory where the abstract and theoretical constructions of human sciences can be ‘justified through their foundation in the life-world (Lebenswelt) of the subject’ (p. 35). Husserl (1952) is quoted: ‘Phenomenology is in our opinion the source of science, the mother of all thinking’ (p. 35).
The first part of the book is a philosophical and epistemological exposition of Husserl's phenomenology: the teachings about the natural attitude that characterizes everyday experiences and the teachings on the phenomenological reductions where the question: ‘How is it possible that I experience (something)?’ forces us to reflect on the experience itself (experiencing); Karlsson points out that this is an ontological problem. Consciousness is always consciousness about something and is essentially intentional. Intentionality gives direction and meaning. The concept of meaning is at the very core of phenomenology: the (subjectively) experienced meaning always relates to an experience and to a way of experiencing. The author finds a number of inter-connections between psychoanalysis and phenomenology: the interest in the subjective, in intentionality and meaning, in the importance of refl