This article points out the criteria necessary in order for a qualitative scientific method to qualify itself as phenomenological in a descriptive Husserlian sense. One would have to employ (1) description (2) within the attitude of the phenomenological reduction, and (3) seek the most invariant meanings for a context. The results of this analysis are used to critique an article by Klein and Westcott (1994), that presents a typology of the development of the phenomenological psychological method.

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Phenomenology, as a distinct philosophy in the modern sense, began with the publication of Logical Investigations (1900/1970) by Edmund Husserl. Husserl's thought developed continuously, if nonlinearly, over roughly a half century in which he was active as a scholar and thinker. He influenced many of the dominant philosophers of the 20th century who worked in the continental tradition (e.g., Heidegger, 1927Heidegger, /1962 Merleau-Ponty, 1945 Sartre, 1943Sartre, / 1956) and often the thought of those Husserl influenced became more wellknown than the thought of Husserl himself, often unfairly so (MacDonald, 2001), especially in the social and human sciences. Speigelberg (1982) has written the classic history of this movement, and the reader is referred to his work for more details concerning philosophical phenomenology and its history.There was also a grassroots American phenomenological movement in psychology that initiated with the work of Snygg (1935) in the 1930s, especially Snygg and Combs (1949) later. However, this development took place without any influence of continental philosophical phenomenology. In essence, phenomenology means for this tradition "from the point of view of the behaving organism itself" (Snygg, 1941, p. 406). The major contribution of this grassroots phenomenological tradition were pulled together and published by Kuenzli (1959). This book contains 14 chapters by the major representatives of this approach, including Snygg, Combs, Rogers, and MacLeod. A check of all the references indicates that no major philosopher of the continental philosophical tradition is referenced in any of the 14 chapters. Only in the selected bibliography section at the end of the book are two of Sartre's smaller works mentioned. Moreover, the idea of a phenomenological method as applied in psychology is not articulated in any of the chapters. Mostly the argument was presented as a need for a phenomenological "approach," "perspective," or "frame of reference." This tradition obviously has interesting aspects but it does not touch on the method to be articulated in this chapter. Neither does the defense of phenomenology by Rogers and MacLeod in the famous debate with behaviorism touch on the manner in which the phenomenological method should be used in psychology (Wann, 1964).

The author explains that his background was in experimental psychology but that he wanted to study the whole person and not fragmented psychological processes. He also desired a non-reductionistic method for studying humans. Fortunately he came across the work of Edmund Husserl and discovered in the latter's thought a way of researching humans that met the criteria he was seeking. Eventually he developed a phenomenological method for researching humans in a psychological way based upon the work of Husserl and Merleau-Ponty. This article briefly describes the method.