Phenomenological research methods clark moustakas pdf

Introduction: Resources and Inspirations

In: Heuristic research : design, methodology, and applications

By: Clark Moustakas

Pub. Date: 2011

Access Date: April 20, 2018

Publishing Company: SAGE Publications, Inc.

City: Thousand Oaks

Print ISBN: 9780803938823

Online ISBN: 9781412995641

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781412995641

Print pages: 9-14

©1990 SAGE Publications, Inc.. All Rights Reserved.

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http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781412995641
Introduction: Resources and Inspirations

“Heuristic” research came into my life when I was searching for a word that would meaningfully

encompass the processes that I believed to be essential in investigations of human experience.

The root meaning of heuristic comes from the Greek word heuriskein, meaning to discover or to

find. It refers to a process of internal search through which one discovers the nature and

meaning of experience and develops methods and procedures for further investigation and

analysis. T h e s e l f o f t h e r e s e a r c h e r i s p r e s e n t t h r o u g h o u t t h e p r o c e s s a n d , w h i l e

understanding the phenomenon with increasing depth, the researcher also experiences

growing self-awareness and self-knowledge. Heuristic processes incorporate creative self-

processes and self-discoveries.

The cousin word of heuristics is eureka, exemplified by the Greek mathematician Archimedes’

discovery of a principle of buoyancy. While taking a bath, he experienced a sudden, striking

realization—the “aha” phenomenon—and ran naked through the streets shouting “eureka!” The

process of discovery leads investigators to new images and meanings regarding human

phenomena, but also to realizations relevant to their own experiences and lives.

As an organized and systematic form for investigating human experience, heuristic research

was launched with the publication of Loneliness (Moustakas, 1961) and continued in my

explorations of Loneliness and Love (Moustakas, 1972) and The Touch of Loneliness

(Moustakas, 1975). Other works influencing the development of heuristic methodology included

Maslow's (1956, 1966, 1971) research on self-actualizing persons and Jourard's (1968, 1971)

investigations of self-disclosure. Also of significance in the evolution of heuristic concepts are

Polanyi's elucidations of the tacit dimension (Polanyi, 1964, 1966, 1969), indwelling and

personal knowledge (Polanyi, 1962); Buber's (1958, 1961, 1965) explorations of dialogue and

mutuality; Bridgman's (1950) delineations of subjective-objective truth; and Gendlin's (1962)

analysis of meaning of experiencing. Rogers’ work on human science (Coulson & Rogers, 1968;

Rogers, 1969, 1985) added theoretical and conceptual depth to the heuristic paradigm

presented in Individuality and Encounter (Moustakas, 1968) and Rhythms, Rituals, and

Relationships (Moustakas, 1981). Phenomenological underpinnings of heuristics were

developed in Phenomenology, Science, and Psychotherapy (Moustakas, 1988).

As part of my own heuristic process in creating this work, I gathered before me the relatively

recent investigations for which I served as research guide. These included the inner world of

teaching (Craig, 1978); transforming self-doubt into self-confidence (Prefontaine, 1979);

shyness (MacIntyre, 1983); self-reclamation (Schultz, 1983); being sensitive (McNally, 1982);

being inspired (Rourke, 1984); return to Mexican-American ethnic identity (Rodriguez, 1985);

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the mystery of everyday life (Varani, 1985); feeling unconditionally loved (Hawka, 1986); the

psychologically androgynous male (Clark, 1988); synchronicity (Marshall, 1987); feeling

connected to nature (J. Snyder, 1989); growing up in a fatherless home (Cheyne, 1989);

rejecting love (R. Snyder, 1988); precognitive dreams (M. Potts, 1988); interaction rhythms in

intimate relations (Shaw, 1989); and the experience of writing poetry (Vaughn, 1989).

Along with the above works, I brought together my personal notes and spontaneous self-

reflective writings for study and analysis. I also reviewed heuristic literature and reexamined my

seminar outlines and presentations on heuristic design and methodology. I returned to lyric

poetry, autobiography, and biography. I engaged in an immersion process, open and receptive

to the nature of discovery, welcoming alternating rhythms of concentrated focus and inventive

distraction. I searched within my knowledge and experience for deepened and extended

awareness that would further illuminate structures and essences of heuristic discovery. I found

particular meaning in studies that exemplified the heuristic paradigm and provided practical

methods and procedures for its operational effectiveness in investigating human experience.

The heuristic process is a way of being informed, a way of knowing. Whatever presents itself in

the consciousness of the investigator as perception, sense, intuition, or knowledge represents

an invitation for further elucidation. What appears, what shows itself as itself, casts a light that

enables one to come to know more fully what something is and means. In such a process not

only is knowledge extended but the self of the researcher is illuminated. Descartes’ assertion

accurately describes the perspective of the heuristic researcher: No one can convince me “that I

am nothing as long as I think myself to be something … I am, I exist, every time it is

pronounced by me, or mentally conceived, it necessarily is true,” (Descartes, 1977).

From the beginning and throughout an investigation, heuristic research involves self-search,

self-dialogue, and self-discovery; the research question and the methodology flow out of inner

awareness, meaning, and inspiration. When I consider an issue, problem, or question, I enter

into it fully. I focus on it with unwavering attention and interest. I search introspectively,

meditatively, and reflectively into its nature and meaning. My primary task is to recognize

whatever exists in my consciousness as a fundamental awareness, to receive and accept it,

and then to dwell on its nature and possible meanings. With full and unqualified interest, I am

determined to extend my understanding and knowledge of an experience. I begin the heuristic

investigation with my own self-awareness and explicate that awareness with reference to a

question or problem until an essential insight is achieved, one that will throw a beginning light

onto a critical human experience.

I n t h e p r o c e s s o f a h e u r i s t i c s e a r c h , I m a y c h a l l e n g e , c o n f r o n t , o r e v e n d o u b t m y

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understanding of a human concern or issue; but when I persist in a disciplined and devoted

way I ultimately deepen my knowledge of the phenomenon. In the heuristic process, I am

personally involved. I am searching for qualities, conditions, and relationships that underlie a

fundamental question, issue, or concern.

In heuristic investigations, I may be entranced by visions, images, and dreams that connect me

to my quest. I may come into touch with new regions of myself, and discover revealing

connections with others. Through the guides of a heuristic design, I am able to see and

understand in a different way.

If I am investigating the meaning of delight, then delight hovers nearby and follows me around.

It takes me fully into its confidence and I take it into mine. Delight becomes a lingering

presence; for awhile, there is only delight. It opens me to the world in a joyous way and takes

me into a richness, playfulness and childlikeness that move freely and effortlessly. I am ready

to see, feel, touch, or hear whatever opens me to a fuller knowledge and understanding of the

experience of delight.

In heuristics, an unshakable connection exists between what is out there, in its appearance and

reality, and what is within me in reflective thought, feeling, and awareness. It is I the person

living in a world with others, alone yet inseparable from the community of others; I who see and

understand something, freshly, as if for the first time; I who come to know essential meanings

inherent in my experience. I stand out within my experiences and in the entire domain of my

interest and concern. Moffitt (1971, p. 149) captures this kind of seeing and knowing in his

poem “To Look At Any Thing”:

To look at any thing

If you would know that thing,

You must look at it long:

To look at this green and say

“I have seen spring in these

Woods,” will not do—you must

Be the thing you see:

You must be the dark snakes of

Stems and ferny plumes of leaves,

You must enter in

To the small silences between

The leaves,

You must take your time

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And touch the very place

They issue from.

In Moffitt's sense, as a researcher I am the person who is challenged to apprehend the

meaning of things and to give these meanings ongoing life. I provide the light that guides the

explication of something and knowledge of it. When I illuminate a question, it comes to life.

When I understand its constituents, it emerges as something solid and real.

Emphasis on the investigator's internal frame of reference, self-searching, intuition, and

indwelling lies at the heart of heuristic inquiry. An example of the opening of a heuristic search

may be found in Roads’ Talking With Nature (1987).

Before anything else could become part of his knowledge, Roads entered into a dialogue with

trees, plants, animals, birds, and the earth. He heard nature speak to him, “Help yourself. If

you wish to tell the story of our connection, then write from the point of contact which you are”

(p. 1). Roads responded: “How can we write of unseen realities, hint of unheard concepts, or

even demonstrate the practicality of inner truths, without disturbing the slumbering Self within?”

(p. 22). The answer: “Let go and fall into the river. Let the river of life sweep you beyond all aid

from old and worn concepts. I will support you. Trust me. As you swim from an old

consciousness, blind to higher realities beyond your physical world, trust that I will guide you

with care and love into a new stream of consciousness. I will open a new world before you. Can

you trust me enough to let go of the known and swim in an unknown current?” (p. 26).

It is just this swimming into an “unknown current” that is so striking in heuristic beginnings. The

dawning of awareness may be refreshing and peaceful, or it may be disturbing and even

jarring. Whatever the effect, the heuristic process requires a return to the self, a recognition of

self-awareness, and a valuing of one's own experience. The heuristic process challenges me to

rely on my own resources, and to gather within myself the full scope of my observations,

thoughts, feelings, senses, and intuitions; to accept as authentic and valid whatever will open

new channels for clarifying a topic, question, problem, or puzzlement.

I begin the heuristic journey with something that has called to me from within my life

experience, something to which I have associations and fleeting awarenesses but whose nature

is largely unknown. In such an Odyssey, I know little of the territory through which I must travel.

But one thing is certain, the mystery summons me and lures me “to let go of the known and

swim in an unknown current.”

Essentially, in the heuristic process, I am creating a story that portrays the qualities, meanings,

and essences of universally unique experiences. Through an unwavering and steady inward

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gaze and inner freedom to explore and accept what is, I am reaching into deeper and deeper

regions of a human problem or experience and coming to know and understand its underlying

dynamics and constituents more and more fully. The initial “data” is within me; the challenge is

to discover and explicate its nature. In the process, I am not only lifting out the essential

meanings of an experience, but I am actively awakening and transforming my own self. Self-

understanding and self-growth occur simultaneously in heuristic discovery. Buber (1961) has

brought to life the heuristic power of telling a story in the right way and the concurrent shift in

one's life and being. The story of a crucial human experience must be told in such a way that in

itself it enables self-transformation, as in Buber's tale of the lame grandfather who, while

imitating the way in which his holy Baal Shem would hop and dance while praying, suddenly

himself began to hop and dance and was dramatically cured of his lameness.

To capture the resources and powers of telling one's story, one engages the full range of self-

resources. One draws out all that is present in context and content in an active and lively

unfolding drama, and brings one's knowledge and experience into poetical depictions. Heuristic

research is a demanding process. It requires “rigorous definition, careful collection of data, and

a thorough and disciplined analysis. It places immense responsibility on the researcher.” (Frick,

1990, p. 79). In heuristic research the investigator must have had a direct, personal encounter

with the phenomenon being investigated. There must have been actual autobiographical

connections. Unlike phenomenological studies in which the researcher need not have had the

experience (e.g., giving birth through artificial insemination), the heuristic researcher has

undergone the experience in a vital, intense, and full way—if not the experience as such, then

a comparable or equivalent experience. For example, Nancy Bernthal (1990) studied the

experience of first-time parenthood with an adopted foreign child. Bernthal investigated the

topic using heuristic methodology, on the basis of first-time parenthood of her own “natural

birth” child.

The heuristic research process is not one that can be hurried or timed by the clock or calendar.

It demands the total presence, honesty, maturity, and integrity of a researcher who not only

strongly desires to know and understand but is willing to commit endless hours of sustained

immersion and focused concentration on one central question, to risk the opening of wounds

and passionate concerns, and to undergo the personal transformation that exists as a

possibility in every heuristic journey.

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