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      CHAPTER 1

      METHODOLOGICAL CONSIDERATIONS

      Let us begin with the analysis of the fundamental methodological principles that must underlie phenomenologically oriented pain research. In the introduction, I have identified this task as one of the three fundamental goals of this study as a whole. Here I want to contend that the methods of the epoché, the phenomenological reduction, and eidetic variation constitute such fundamental methodological principles. These three principles are necessary: only insofar as one subscribes to them does one have the right to identify one’s investigation as phenomenological in the Husserlian sense of the term. Nonetheless, these principles are not sufficient; they need to be supplemented with other phenomenological methods. As far as the phenomenology of pain is concerned, these three methodological principles need to be supplemented with two further methodological procedures: what we will here identify as the method of factual variation and the genetic method of intentional implications.¹

      I will take four steps in my analysis. In the first section, I will present the methods of the epoché, the phenomenological reduction, and eidetic variation conceived of as the three principles that make up the methodological core of phenomenologically oriented pain research. In the second section, I will focus on three critiques that have been directed against phenomenology—the contentions that phenomenology is disguised psychologism, camouflaged introspectionism, and veiled solipsism. Responses to these three critiques will solidify the three methodological commitments mentioned above. In the third section, I will argue that the three fundamental phenomenological methods are necessary, yet not sufficient, and that the method of eidetic variation needs to be supplemented with the method of factual variation. We are in need of such a supplementation because in its absence, the method of eidetic variation is all too often understood as an excuse to engage in phenomenological reflections while dismissing (presumably, out of methodological considerations) all other scientific accomplishments that we come across in other fields of research. Phenomenology need not be the victim of its own purity: it must be open to the developments in other sciences—natural, social, and human—as well as to the advances in literature, poetry, cinema, and fine arts. Insofar as phenomenology is cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural, it merits being called dialogical. In the fourth section, I will qualify all the methods outlined above as the methodological commitments of static phenomenology, and I will further argue that they need to be supplemented with the methodological principles of genetic phenomenology. In such a way, we will obtain an answer to the first fundamental question of this study, which concerns the identification of the methodological principles of phenomenologically oriented pain research.

      Phenomenology has been practiced in a large variety of ways, and, therefore, one cannot exclude the possibility that the phenomenology of pain might rely on some other methodological principles. While admitting such a possibility, I would like to stress two interrelated points. First, phenomenology is a method, and, therefore, anyone who wishes to argue that the static and the genetic methods are expendable must show what other phenomenological methods could replace them. Second, the methods presented here are not only fundamental to phenomenology, but also exceptionally fruitful for pain research, which is in need of a reliable methodology to clarify pain experience independently from pain biology and pain sociology, yet without denigrating it to the empirical level of personal accounts of the idiosyncratic nature of one’s own experience.

FUNDAMENTAL METHODOLOGICAL COMMITMENTS: EPOCHÉ, THE PHENOMENOLOGICAL REDUCTION, AND EIDETIC VARIATION

      One commonly thinks of phenomenological analyses as reflections on experience, and things given in experience, from the first-person point of view. Such a general qualification all too easily leads to far-reaching ambiguities and confusions. These confusions are especially prevalent in such fields as pain research, where we come across investigations that are labeled as phenomenological simply because they provide a set of reflections on pain experience from the first-person point of view. One is thus left with the impression that any introspective, autobiographical, or even psychologistic set of reflections on pain experience can be characterized as phenomenological. Such a state of affairs has led to a misapprehension of the nature, goals, and function of phenomenology in pain research.

      Clearly, not any kind of reflection on experience from the first-person point of view is phenomenological. At least from a Husserlian standpoint, one would say: it is the commitment to specific methodological principles that distinguishes phenomenologically oriented investigations from other studies of lived-experience. Such a standpoint suggests that an investigation can be labeled as phenomenological if, and only if, it subscribes to the fundamental principles of phenomenological methodology. What exactly are those principles?

      It is not easy to answer this question. Ever since its emergence, the phenomenological method has been conceptualized in a number of ways, whose compatibility remains a contentious issue. On the one hand, there is the more apparent problem of methodological consistency that runs throughout the phenomenological movement. As Paul Ricoeur (1987, 9) has famously put it, the history of phenomenology is the history of Husserlian heresies. On the other hand, even if one limits oneself to classical phenomenology in general, and Husserlian phenomenology in particular, one nonetheless has to deal with questions concerning the compatibility of different methodological frameworks (say, those of static and genetic phenomenology), as well as of different accounts of the same methodological procedures (say, the account of the reduction as presented in Ideas I, First Philosophy II, and The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology). In the present context, it is not my goal to enter into this conflict of interpretations. I believe it is possible to bypass these controversies if one supplements methodological considerations with two qualifications. First, one needs to focus on the identification of the fundamental methodological principles, that is, those principles that could be qualified as necessary, although not necessarily sufficient. I will contend that the methods of the epoché, the phenomenological reduction, and eidetic variation are the fundamental principles of Husserlian phenomenology. I do not think that allegiance to these three phenomenological principles is sufficient to clarify what classical phenomenology (to say nothing of the phenomenological tradition as a whole) can contribute to pain research. It is therefore necessary to supplement these three methodological principles with further principles. Second, these three phenomenological principles, while necessary, can be conceptualized in more ways than one. The grandiose task of providing an exhaustive treatment of these principles is unattainable in the framework of a study that focuses on the phenomenology of pain. Here I strive to identify only the essential features of these methodological procedures, while at the same time conceding that they not only can be, but that they also have been, articulated in a number of complementary ways.

      A few words on the fundamental goals of Husserlian phenomenology are appropriate here. Husserlian phenomenology is marked by the ambition to be a science of phenomena purified of all unwarranted assumptions, constructions, and interpretation. For this reason, it strives to be a descriptive science, which would present phenomena the way they appear, without distortions or misrepresentations. It is, however, not enough to describe phenomena in order to grasp them the way they appear, since descriptions all too often succumb to bias and manipulation. Precisely because it strives to describe phenomena exactly as they appear, without any contamination, the possibility of phenomenology hinges upon its capacity to design a suitable methodology that would ensure the reliability of phenomenological descriptions. The methods of the epoché, the phenomenological reduction, and eidetic variation are meant to demonstrate the possibility of phenomenology, conceived of as a method for studying pure phenomena in an unbiased way.

      The Greek word epoché means “suspension, or bracketing.” To bracket, or suspend, means to put certain beliefs and

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