PHENOMENOLOGY 1069
Instead of the matters themselves, the values, goals, utilities, etc., we regard the subjec-
tive experiences in which these “appear.” These “appearances” are phenomena, whose
nature is to be a “consciousness-of” their object, real or unreal as it be. Common
language catches this sense of “relativity,” saying, I was thinking ofsomething, I was
frightened ofsomething, etc. Phenomenological psychology takes its name from the
“phenomena,” with the psychological aspect of which it is concerned: and the word
“intentional” has been borrowed from the scholastic to denote the essential “reference”
character of the phenomena. All consciousness is “intentional.”
In unreflective consciousness we are “directed” upon objects, we “intend” them, and
reflection reveals this to be an immanent process characteristic of all experience, though
infinitely varied in form. To be conscious of something is no empty having of that some-
thing in consciousness. Each phenomenon has its own intentional structure, which analysis
shows to be an ever-widening system of individually intentional and intentionally related
components. The perception of a cube, for example, reveals a multiple and synthesized
intention: a continuous variety in the “appearance” of the cube, according to differences in
the points of view from which it is seen, and corresponding differences in “perspective,”
and all the difference between the “front side” actually seen at the moment and the “back-
side” which is not seen, and which remains, therefore, relatively “indeterminate,” and yet is
supposed equally to be existent. Observation of this “stream” of “appearance-aspects” and
of the manner of their synthesis, shows that every phase and interval is already in itself a
“consciousness-of” something, yet in such a way that with the constant entry of new phases
the total consciousness, at any moment, lacks not synthetic unity, and is, in fact, a
consciousness of one and the same object. The intentional structure of the train of a
perception must conform to a certain type, if any physical object is to be perceived as there!
And if the same object be intuited in other modes, if it be imagined, or remembered, or
copied, all its intentional forms recur, though modified in character from what they were in
the perception, to correspond to their new modes. The same is true of every kind of
psychical experience. Judgment, valuation, pursuit, these also are no empty experiences
having in consciousness of judgments, values, goals and means, but are likewise experi-
ences compounded of an intentional stream, each conforming to its own fast type.
Phenomenological psychology’s comprehensive task is the systematic examination
of the types and forms of intentional experience, and the reduction of their structures to
the prime intentions, learning thus what is the nature of the psychical, and comprehending
the being of the soul.
The validity of these investigations will obviously extend beyond the particularity
of the psychologist’s own soul. For psychical life may be revealed to us not only in self-
consciousness but equally in our consciousness of other selves, and this latter source of
experience offers us more than a reduplication of what we find in our self-consciousness,
for it establishes the differences between “own” and “other” which we experience, and
presents us with the characteristics of the “social-life.” And hence the further task accrues
to psychology of revealing the intentions of which the “social life” consists.
PHENOMENOLOGICAL-PSYCHOLOGICAL ANDEIDETIC
REDUCTIONS
The Phenomenological psychology must examine the self’s experience of itself and
its derivative experience of other selves and of society, but whether, in so doing, it can
be free of all psycho-physical admixture, is not yet clear. Can one reach a really pure