The lived experience of remembering a ‘good’ interview: Micro-phenomenology applied to itself

Abstract

Micro-phenomenology is an interview and analysis method for investigating subjective experience. As a research tool, it provides detailed descriptions of brief moments of any type of subjective experience and offers techniques for systematically comparing them. In this article, we use an auto-ethnographic approach to present and explore the method. The reader is invited to observe a dialogue between two authors that illustrates and comments on the planning, conducting and analysis of a pilot series of five micro-phenomenological interviews. All these interviews asked experienced researchers of micro-phenomenology to browse their memories to identify one successful and one challenging instance of working with micro-phenomenology. The interview then focused on this reflective task to investigate whether applying the method to itself might reveal quality criteria. The article starts by presenting a shortened and edited version of the first of these interviews. Keeping the dialogue format, we then outline the micro-phenomenological analysis procedure by demonstrating its application to part of this data and corresponding passages of other interviews. We focus on one unexpected finding: interviewed researchers judge the quality of an interview in part based on a connection or contact between interviewer and interviewee. We discuss these results in the context of the means and intentions of the method and suggest avenues for future research.

Daydreaming as spontaneous immersive imagination: A phenomenological analysis

“…We have here offered a conceptual and phenomenological clarification of daydreaming in general terms, but it will be important to complement this preliminary effort with specific phenomenological investigations using qualitative interview methods that work to elicit the more fine-grained texture of experience, for instance within the neurophenomenological research programme (Thompson & Lutz, 2003), or through the micro-phenomenological interview method (see e.g. Heimann et al, 2022). Further qualitative research can differentiate more precisely between mind-wandering, daydreaming, and deliberate imaginative crafting in terms of how subjects understand implicitly the experiential differences, for example in relation to their sense of agency as opposed to spontaneity.…”

Phenomenology and Temporality in Psychopathology: Calibrating Qualitative Phenomenological Methods According to the Timescale of Subjective Reports

“…The aim of this paper is therefore to a) demonstrate that the timescale of lived experience is indeed an aspect of qualitative phenomenology that requires more attention; and b) propose a framework within which different timescales of lived experience can be conceptualized (primarily for the purpose of qualitative research in phenomenological psychopathology). We will follow similar methodological reflections (Heimann et al, 2022;Linger, 2010) by drawing both on theoretical sources as well as the qualitative material that we had collected over the years. The conclusion of this discussion is that to be able to validly discuss temporally extended experience, formal methods of interpretation must be incorporated into qualitative phenomenology.…”

Author’s reply to the commentaries: Clearing up misunderstandings about the course-of-experience framework and laying the groundwork for future discussions

“…Regarding the self-confrontation micro-phenomenological interviews, the concepts of languaging (addressed by McKinney et al, 2023), inter-enaction, intercorporeality, participatory sense-making and re-enactment are good candidates to clarify what happens during the interviews. Micro-phenomenology provides important insights, given the studies that have focused on the micro-phenomenological interviews themselves (Depraz, 2022; Heimann et al, 2022), but also given the scientific agenda of researchers like Nathalie Depraz, which is to renew phenomenology as praxis and phenomenological practice thanks to enaction. As an illustration, Bitbol and Petitmengin (2017) assume that the intersubjective dimension of the micro-phenomenological interviews allows investigating the intersubjective dynamics at play in the enaction, and vice versa.…”