Lived Phenomenon Research Articles

Multiple-case depth research: Bringing experience-near closer

The term “experience-near” has become associated with a variety of alternatives to mainstream clinical research. These alternatives converge on one basic methodological goal—faithfulness to clinical phenomena as lived. This article presents one approach to lived clinical phenomena that I term multiple-case depth research or MCDR. MCDR is a novel and highly sensitive methodology that combines both in-depth case investigation with experiential therapeutic principles. To illustrate the power of MCDR, I present a hypothetical process and outcome study involving three client cohorts (those who undergo respectively cognitive-behavioral therapy, intersubjective psychoanalytic therapy, and existential-humanistic therapy). I detail the structure of this hypothetical study, the steps by which it proceeds, and the yield that it portends. I conclude that, if conducted properly, MCDR can provide rich, valid, and unprecedented insight into effective psychotherapy. © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Clin Psychol 55: 1531–1540, 1999.

Multiple-case depth research: bringing experience-near closer.

The term "experience-near" has become associated with a variety of alternatives to mainstream clinical research. These alternatives converge on one basic methodological goal-faithfulness to clinical phenomena as lived. This article presents one approach to lived clinical phenomena that I term multiple-case depth research or MCDR. MCDR is a novel and highly sensitive methodology that combines both in-depth case investigation with experiential therapeutic principles. To illustrate the power of MCDR, I present a hypothetical process and outcome study involving three client cohorts (those who undergo respectively cognitive-behavioral therapy, intersubjective psychoanalytic therapy, and existential-humanistic therapy). I detail the structure of this hypothetical study, the steps by which it proceeds, and the yield that it portends. I conclude that, if conducted properly, MCDR can provide rich, valid, and unprecedented insight into effective psychotherapy.

Complaining about chronic pain

This paper examines how a group of working class people describes and experiences chronic pain. This hermeneutical–phenomenological study concentrates on the lived body of pain from three perspectives, drawing on interviews with 14 people who were attending a pain management program. First I consider the terms in which pain is circumscribed in the narratives, stories told in the context of learning to manage pain. These terms are polarities, ways of specifying and legitimating pain in relation to “mind” and “body.” Pain, in the discursive polarities that define it, is the private property of an individual, who must in some fashion prove that pain exists in an objective manner. The speaker, in this discourse, stands as the one responsible for the production of pain. In the second part, the analysis turns to what this discourse reveals about pain as a lived body phenomenon. Here the analysis centers upon the torment of having to inhabit the intolerable, upon how pain unmakes the lifeworld of the sufferer, and how, simultaneously, people make pain. The place of pain is the body, as body-in-place. The place of pain is at the boundaries of human dwelling, a kind of non-place, expressed metaphorically as “prison” or “homelessness.” Finally, after these considerations of how pain is described, in part three, I turn to the act of “saying” pain, that is, to the narratives as addressed to someone else. The participants were not simply dispensing information; they were saying something to me. The narratives had the form of complaints. The form of the narratives, in the context of the pain program, was a quasi-legal call to rectify wrongs.

Geodynamic implications of short time scale changes in the geomagnetic dynamo

The discovery of the geomagnetic jerk of 1969 has again focussed attention on short time scale phenomena in the core. The irregular fluctuations in the length of the day and the excitation of the Chandler wobble have characteristics strongly suggesting ‘impulsive’ torques on the mantle. These are believed to result from electromagnetic phenomena associated with disturbances in the core dynamo, the time scales of which depend on Alfven waves. Search for correlations between short lived magnetic phenomena arising in the core and similar short term geodynamic phenomena have yielded some interesting results. Future satellite surveys of the geomagnetic field need to be designed to distinguish such short term core phenomena from external magnetospheric ones. Future geomagnetic charts of the world require much better understanding of discontinuities in the first and second derivatives of the geomagnetic field elements.

Chemical and biological weathering of oil, from the Amoco Cadiz spillage, within the littoral zone

The spillage of oil from the wreck of the supertanker Amoco Cadiz resulted in massive oiling of the littoral zone along 320 km of shoreline of the Brittany Coast. This study examined the fate of Amoco Cadiz oil which entered the intertidal zone. Biodegradation by indigenous microbial populations was an extremely important process in the weathering of the oil. Alkanes were preferentially degraded but branched alkanes and polynuclear aromatic compounds also were subject to microbial attack. The chemical evolution of the residual ‘hydrocarbon mixture’ within the littoral zone led to a relative enrichment of isoprenoid alkanes, naphtheno-aromatic and napthenic compounds, alkylated phenanthrenes, aromatic organic sulfur compounds e.g. dibenzothiophenes, hopanes and C27−C31 alkanes. These classes of compounds appear to be most resistant to biological and chemical weathering. Continued inputs of relatively unweathered oil, which may be preserved in subsurface anaerobic sediments, and pooling of oil becomes increasingly important with time, producing a patchy distribution of oil, which has been weathered to varying degrees. The presence of hydrocarbons within the littoral zone, as a highly weathered residual oil, appears to be a long lived (multi-year) phenomenon.

Flare-associated coronal expansion phenomena

Two classes of coronal expansion phenomena have been studied in Sacramento Peak coronal movies: Slow, slightly decelerated expansion phenomena (v=∼10− =∼ 2 km/sec) and fast, accelerated, quasi-exploding arches (v =∼ 10 - > 100 km/sec). The various phenomena were found to be associated with flares in different ways: The slow expansions were long lived post-flare phenomena initiated by the flare; the accelerated expanding arches were either (a) arches expanding prior to and apparently exploding at flare onset, or (b) arches apparently emerging from the flare (probably in its initial phase) and rapidly expanding and exploding, or (c) the expansion and disruption of (originally stable) coronal arches during occurrence of a distant flare. These expansions may be considered as evidence for corresponding flare associated changes in the coronal magnetic field.