Looking into Self-Exploration Attitudes and Ways of Constructing Experience
Ioana Laura Popa, Urban Kordeš
Interdisciplinary Description of Complex Systems October 31, 2014 DOI: 10.7906/indecs.12.4.5 (opens in new tab) via DOAJ
Summary
AI-generated from the abstractPeople construct their subjective experiences in at least three distinct ways, termed personal epistemologies, which correlate with their attitudes toward self-exploration. This finding emerged from research originally focused on Holotropic Breathwork experiences. The work offers a new model of experience construction and highlights limitations of phenomenological interview techniques.
Study at a glance
| Characteristics | Qualitative study Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Intervention | Holotropic Breathwork |
| Keywords | Empirical phenomenology Explicative interview Constructing experiences Personal epistemology |
| Key finding | Three types of personal epistemologies—ways of constructing subjective experience—were identified, correlating with attitudes toward self-exploration. |
Abstract
Empirical phenomenology – study of lived subjective experience is the latest addition to the interdisciplinary efforts aiming at understanding the human mind. We present the research, which was originally aimed at investigating the experiences of Holotropic Breathwork, however, results of the analysis convinced us to move the focus of our interest to differences between individual ways of constructing experience. We have identified three types of personal epistemologies (i.e. ways of constructing the subjective experience) and found the correlation with individual attitudes towards self-exploration. The paper aims at providing a novel model with regard to how experience is constructed and expands the understanding of the limitations of the phenomenological interview techniques.