Experiential Triangulation

RESEARCH

A subtle challenge in phenomenological interviewing is helping someone move toward their immediate, pre-conceptual experience without making their initial description seem inadequate. I encountered an interesting example in an Experience of Being interview today.

When I asked the interviewee if there were any constant, stable, and ever-present aspects of her experience, she described what was constant for her in terms of “me, myself,” “a sense of being guided,” and “love.”

Rather than asking her to set those concepts aside, I asked: “Are these three aspects of the same thing?” She said they were. I then invited her to describe what remained if we removed the three aspects. What emerged was “a sense of energy that flows through me and guides me,” which she expressed with her hands and body no less than in words.

I think there may be a useful interviewing technique here, which I would tentatively call “experiential triangulation.” Instead of challenging an interviewees concepts, we can treat them as different pointers toward a their experiential source. By asking what they share and what remains when their labels are removed, we may help the interviewee move from conceptual interpretation toward more immediate and raw experience. The advantage is that we don’t imply that the original description was “not quite what we were looking for.”

Concepts are not necessarily a screen hiding and obscuring experience. Sometimes they can function like pointers, whose point of convergence is the experience itself.

Maybe “experiential triangulation” could become a useful addition to the phenomenological interviewers toolkit. I’ll keep experimenting with it.