PSYCHOLOGY PHILOSOPHICALLY SPEAKING: HERMENEUTICS HELPING HEALTH STUDIES

Hermeneutic philosophy can shape psychology analysis, generating formats structuring an application to data. These formats are suggested to be Hermeneutic Underwriting Themes (HUTS), behaviorally focused themes evident in Aristotle, Heidegger, Gadamer and Ricoeur’s philosophy, central to their thinking. Their uses can be valuable for exploring research participant experience. In this paper, which draws intermittently on earlier publications, I am suggesting engaging with hermeneutic phenomenologists further is helpful in coming to terms, or thematizing, a health studies research participant narrative contribution. Central to these hermeneutic phenomenologists’ scholarship, thus plausibly regarded as being philosophical hermeneutic underwriting themes, are fundamental themes, HUTS, to which participant narratives can be related, located, placed within, so enabling the researcher to structurally establish their primary thematic identity. Pursuing this procedure enabled by hermeneutic theorists, a set of questions can be directed at participant experiential responses in discussion, assisting their allocating to the most appropriate Hermeneutic Underwriting Theme (HUT). Located within, named in terms of their respective HUTS, participant existential themes are generated from responses, enabling the structured presentation of respondent narrative reflections. On the following pages, eight questions focused upon this data are presented, allowing the responses to be identified, named thematically and so appropriately located within HUTS. Discerning in analysis or question a research Hermeneutic Underwriting Theme such as a person articulating their personal identity can position this narrative with further psychological perspectives (e.g. identity development in Attachment Theory (Bowlby).