Amadeusz Citlak

Qualitative psychology of the Brentano school and its inspirations (another look at empirical qualitative research)

  • History and Philosophy of Science
  • General Psychology
Save to CiteDrive Show PDF

This article explores a psychological tradition inspired by or originating from Franz Brentano and which played a vital role in the development of qualitative empirical psychology. This was the psychology of acts with a focus on the analysis of mental phenomena and a first-person perspective. Brentano’s psychology directly influenced the emergence of the main schools of European psychology in the first half of the 20th century: the Würzburg School, Gestalt psychology, phenomenological psychology, the Dorpat School, and the Lvov–Warsaw School. These schools cultivated a psychology of mind and consciousness par excellence, the theoretical and methodological assumptions of which effectively inhibited reductionist tendencies. The aim of this article, however, is not so much to reconstruct the historical achievements but rather to indicate their relevance for contemporary qualitative psychology, which can be seen in a broader perspective than simply as an alternative to quantitative research.

Need a simple solution for managing your BibTeX entries? Explore CiteDrive!

  • Web-based, modern reference management
  • Collaborate and share with fellow researchers
  • Integration with Overleaf
  • Comprehensive BibTeX/BibLaTeX support
  • Save articles and websites directly from your browser
  • Search for new articles from a database of tens of millions of references
Try out CiteDrive

More from our Archive