Steps to 're-enliven'

Reflections on Amos, I. (2016). Interpretative phenomenological analysis and embodied interpretation integrating methods to find the ‘words that work’.  Counselling and Psychotherapy Research, 16(4): 307-317 by PHaR members Kisane Prutton and Will Day.

The significance of the body in phenomenological philosophy is well explored, yet what do we know about how the body is actually employed? How is the body used as a formal device, within phenomenological research?

Amos’s article caught our interest: offering to illuminate how researchers might engage their body systematically within IPA. Whilst at risk of oversimplifying what Amos is proposing in her article, the suggestion seems to be that IPA can be adapted by, in essence, topping and tailing the ‘IPA steps’ with a pre and post phase of focussed reflection. In these stages of reflection, the analyst is to tune into their body and reflect on how their body is responding before and after exposure to the participants’ experiences. Subsequent writing, particularly around theme names, should be refined with the aim of ‘re-enlivening’ the phenomenon.  

As many of us present in the discussion were early careers researchers, we could see how newcomers to a particular research method, would be attracted to the offer of a staged approach, as a means to reduce the fear of the unknown and the fear of 'getting it wrong'. Amongst the PHaR members, this was likened to the work of Sally Goldspink and Hilary Engward, whose use of reflexivity was similarly articulated in as an ‘addition to stepwise’ type fashion. However, it wasn’t long before the counterarguments to a stepwise approach were surfaced. Our conclusion was that the risks of an overly mechanistic method were high and that we would wish to work in more fluid, and integrative fashion in order to retain the aesthetics of phenomenological practice.

Our discussion diversified and opened up to a number of related, but separate points:

• How theme titles need to express not just the content, but the quality of the experience being captured
•  How language is limited; this was explored by Sartre who noted that as soon as you put a name to a bodily experience, it seems to lose its meaning
• Connected to this point, we also thought of ‘early stage’ Wittgenstein (i.e. "what we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence”) and how difficult it is to articulate some pre-reflective bodily sensations (e.g. the feeling of parental intuition), particularly when having to translate these inadequate verbalisations into writing.
• Phenomenological researchers working in an embodied way need to consider self-care and protect themselves from absorbing the emotional experiences of their participants

To conclude, we found Amos’s article initially highly promising, but as it progressed we felt it didn’t quite deliver the sensitivity that we would want from a phenomenological practice involving the body. We would recommend Eatough and Shaw’s paper “It’s like having an evil twin”: an interpretative phenomenological analysis of the lifeworld of a person with Parkinson’s disease’ (2019) as an emotive example of embodied language.

Further Reading

Eatough, V., & Shaw, K. (2019). “It’s like having an evil twin”: an interpretative phenomenological analysis of the lifeworld of a person with Parkinson’s disease. Journal of Research in Nursing, 24(1–2), 49–58. https://doi.org/10.1177/1744987118821396

Goldspink, S., & Engward, H. (2018). Qualitative Research in Psychology Booming clangs and whispering ghosts : attending to the reflexive echoes in IPA research. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 00(00), 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1080/14780887.2018.1543111

Todres, L. & Gavlin, K. T.  (2008). Embodied interpretation: A novel way of evocatively representing meanings in phenomenological research. Qualitative Research, 8: 5. 568-583. Sage Publications

Todres, L. (2007). Embodied Enquiry: Phenomenological Touchstones for Research, Psychotherapy and Spirituality. Palgrave Macmillan