Meeting July 27th

At PHAR on 27^th July we discussed Claire Petitmengin’s 2006 article ‘Describing one’s subjective experience in the second person: An interview method for the science of consciousness’. The author discusses some of the difficulties that arise when trying to become aware of one’s own subjective experience, and proposes an interview method that aims to get a precise description of it. The group discussed to what extent the interview technique was effective at overcoming the difficulties that the text mentions. The group also noticed that there are other aspects of the subjective experience that the article overlooks.

According to Petitmengin one of the key reasons why describing one’s own subjective experience is challenging is that a big portion of it is not conscious. People know how to make a cup of tea but are not aware of the mental operations involved in the process. In the meeting, the notions of ‘non-conscious’ and ‘pre-conscious’ experience were discussed. The article refers to a group of mental operations that people make when, for example, trying to memorize a list of names, imagine objects, relate to other people, or when they write. A theme the group raised for debate in relation to this point was whether our non-conscious experience can be explained solely via mechanisms of mental operations. A general concern was that there is some key psychological literature about the nature and study of subjective experience that is not considered in the article (e.g. Giorgi, Smith, Finlay, Langdridge and many others).

The discussion was followed by an analysis of the example of an interview presented in the appendix of the article. The example raised several questions. One of the concerns was related to the degree of guidance and intervention, the level of expertise required and the degree of control that the interviewer is given when conducting the interview. The group thought that the technique presents a tension between the degree of guidance proposed and the purpose of ‘encouraging the interviewee to find his own words’ (Petitmengin, 2006, p. 253) The group thought that this might leave little room for the participants to unravel their own experiences. The second theme was related to the purpose of the interview of turning the attention from ‘what’ to ‘how’. In the example the technique is applied for studying the experience of thinking about a specific object (in this case an elephant). The group considered whether the method could be adapted for doing research on other types of subjective experiences such as experiencing depression or loneliness which do not necessarily have specific objects. Another matter considered was whether the technique could be extended / adapted for therapeutic use. The third concern raised was that the literature on children’s subjective experience (e.g Trevarthen) which includes non-verbal aspects of memory, imagination, etc., was not considered.

Valeria Motta.