Towards a developmental phenomenology

transcendental-ego and body-ego

Henry Elkin

pp. 258-266

in: Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka (ed), The later Husserl and the idea of phenomenology, Dordrecht, Reidel, 1972

Abstract

Husserl in his later years came to realize that his phenomenology, to become the properly foundational science that had always been his goal, would have to take on a genetico-historical focus. Freud, whose familial and cultural background strikingly parallels those of Husserl in some fundamental respects, formulated a theory of psycho-sexual development which greatly influenced Max Scheler’s latest work, and upon which Merleau-Ponty and Ricouer have elaborated their own thought. More recent Freudian studies on infancy, however, if examined from a phenomenologico-existential viewpoint, may apply more directly to Husserl’s goal by illuminating the very onset and development of consciousness. I wish here to present a theory, drawn mostly from Freudian investigations, which has served to clarify my own work as a psychotherapist, and which, I believe, may have an important bearing upon current phenomenological research and philosophy.

Cited authors

Merleau-Ponty Maurice

Husserl Edmund