Page 61 - Contribution To Phenomenology

54 RICHARD M, ZANER

phenomenology as a transcendental discipline, it has seemed to me that
certain versions of this method are at work in a variety of areas. It might
even be more accurate to say that there are a whole battery of
variational methods ([35]; [37]; [39], pp. 166-180, 190-216; 242-249); [42].
One specific type became clear, for instance, in the course of
reflection on certain clinical cases that seemed suggestive for the sense
of "self." Reflecting on cases of autism and those involving brain-injury,
for example, a crucial and distinctive ability of the self becomes pro-
minent precisely through its absence: "possibilizing*' or "thinking for the
possibly otherwise"—i.e. the ability to transcend the immediate present
([39], pp. 242-249). Just this striking absence of an otherwise normal
human capacity is forcefully presented in those cases—^while, at the same
time, its absence presents a patient as needing therapeutic attention ([39],
pp. 173-180).^^

VII. The ^Goods' of Practice

I have been considering various clinical encounters as examples of clinical
ethics involvement. It is essential at this point to be much clearer about
that "involvement."

emphasized that the method is the key for apprehending "essences." Feigning"
(Fiktion, Phantasie) is ''the vital element of phenomenology as of every other eidetic
science . . . ," such as geometry or pure grammatics. He was so impressed by this
form of systematic imagination (Einbildung) that he urged philosophers to "fertilize"
their imaginative abilities by means of "abundant and excellent" observat-
ions—especially, he wrote, in poetry and history ([14], p. 160).

^^ Once having apprehended this example of the method, many variations can
be recognized in other types of inquiry, each with its own specific objects, and
methodical and evidentiary requirements. For example, the sociologist D.
Polkinghorne provides an excellent case of an empirical variation of the method
([25], pp. 618-637). It deserves mention, too, that my own reflective inquiry into
variations of the method is itself a clear example of that very method—a reflexive
characteristic that is rich with implications. Kurt Goldstein, I believe ([39], pp. 173-
175), followed precisely this type of method in his work with brain-injured patients
([6]; [7]), as did the psychiatrist Gerhard Bosch [1] in his study of infantile autism
([39], pp. 182-198). This variational or exemplicative method can as well be found,
with interesting variations, within clinical medicine. For instance, clinical diag-
nosis—specifically its "detective-work" (methodical differential diagnoses) and
eventual selecting (with the patient) of the best for this patient, no less than the
ongoing conversations patients and families—all turn out to exhibit strikingly similar
features.