The PHD Method for Psychotherapy: Integrating Phenomenology, Hermeneutics, and Psychodynamics

This paper, endorsing the dialogical perspective in psychotherapy, provides a synopsis of the PHD psychotherapy method, based on the integration of phenomenology, hermeneutics and psychodynamics. The first section covers the background knowledge required for PHD psychotherapy, consolidating and extending three basic concepts: life-world (the originary domain of a person’s experience), dialectical principle (psychopathological symptoms are the result of a disproportion between the occurrence of alterity and the person’s capacity to make sense of it), dialogical principle (individual human consciousness is inherently dialogical since it is formed in the dynamic interrelation of self and other). The second section describes the know-how or practical implementation of these principles, including (1) the phenomenological unfolding (P) of the patient’s experiences, which equips the clinician and patient with a systematic knowledge of the abnormal phenomena that affect the patient and are part of her life-world; (2) the hermeneutic moment (H), which focuses on the patient’s default interpretation of her experiences and then encourages her to actively take a different perspective towards her experiences, aiming at the resignification of these experiences in order to restore a sense of agency or responsibility; (3) the (psycho-)dynamic moment (D), which aims to contextualize the patient’s psychopathological experiences and position-taking within the personal life-history in which they are embedded, and to trace back psychopathological symptoms to the limit-situation from which they emerge. The final section discusses the “something more” or knowing how-to-be that is required of a clinician who aims to apply this therapeutic method; it includes a concise discussion of how psychotherapeutic dialogue is a kind of practice that moves in unpredictable directions to experience something new for both partners.