The complexity of human beings and human behavior comes distinctly to light on occasion of psychic impairments and mental disorders. In order to understand complex modes of behavior we need complex methodologies. This is presumably the most basic and far-reaching insight we owe to Karl Jaspers’ methodological considerations in his General Psychopathology. Accordingly, he demands for combining methods of explanation and methods of understanding.¹ As far as the latter is concerned, Jaspers claims to bring together hermeneutics as known from Wilhelm Dilthey’s historically stamped “Lebensphilosophie” and Edmund Husserl’s phenomenological explorations of human consciousness. At first glance, this looks like a daring eclecticism since Husserl’s so-called pure and transcendental phenomenology seems incompatible with Dilthey’s or Heidegger’s hermeneutic projects. Jaspers’ approach, however, makes sense when we take into account that the young psychiatrist Jaspers, when he sought an investigative method for psychopathology, focused on Husserl’s early, pre-transcendental period and “reworked” Husserl’s phenomenological procedures “so that they incorporated the hermeneutic insights of Dilthey […], Simmel […] and Weber […]” (Schwartz and Wiggins 2004, p. 356). Correspondingly, it follows to conceive of complex methodologies as mixed methodologies composed of heterogeneous components. Indeed, it is a common notion that Jaspers bridges the gap between psychiatry and philosophy, on the one hand, and different philosophical traditions, on the other hand. This mixed methodological approach has gained recognition as an outstanding and paradigmatic project even though it fails (and always has done so) in representing mainstream psychiatric research.

The personal and philosophical relation between Jaspers and Husserl has been analyzed from different points of view.² Yet some aspects still await clarification. What is still missing, among others, is a reevaluation that takes into account the immanent hermeneutic potential of Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology , which has remained widely unacknowledged. Therefore, the focus can avoid thoroughly discussed issues like horizontal intentionality, association, original time-constitution and other forms of passivity that have already been dealt with via genetic-phenomenological investigations. Genetic phenomenology is the project Husserl follows in his last working period comprising roughly the 1920s and 1930s. As is well known, Jaspers’ interest in Husserl’s phenomenology does not address this period. It rather refers to Husserl’s early descriptive psychology as introduced in his two-volume masterpiece entitled Logical Investigations, which was published in 1900 and 1901. The influence exerted by the Logical Investigations on Jaspers’ psychopathological work has been extensively and controversially discussed. Jaspers scholars seem to agree tacitly that referring to Husserl’s transcendental philosophy cannot deliver any worthwhile findings given Jaspers’ specific and restricted concern for phenomenology. Admittedly, Jaspers did not know the first volume of Husserl’s Ideas, published in 1913, which was the breakthrough of transcendental phenomenology in his published works. Moreover, he explicitly rejects Husserl’s conception of eidetic knowledge, which is an indispensable part of transcendental phenomenology. Husserl considers his transcendental turn an attempt to introduce his phenomenological method in a more explicit and more sophisticated manner than he did in the Logical Investigations. The latter, according to Husserl’s retrospective self-criticism, was deficient insofar that it could not reliably ward off psychologism in the domains of logic and epistemology as long as the basic forms of human understanding remained conceived within the methodological framework of descriptive psychology.

In relation to the above-sketched methodological issues, the present paper aims at unfolding and supporting three theses. First, we contend that:

Though this certainly strikes one as unusual—if one considers Dilthey’s individualized biographical and historical brand of knowledge—“hermeneutics,” in the present context, indicates the mode of understanding and intuitively explicating those mental contents that are given in pure consciousness. As a result, we do not have a stake in concrete tokens of individual consciousness. Human consciousness, rather, is considered exclusively as a manifestation of a specific form, namely a nexus of intentional structures. The relevant structures are actually realized in a particular consciousness even though they might be realized in every other individual consciousness as well. For the sake of clarity, we therefore associate Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology with the project of rational hermeneutics in contrast to the more conventional individualizing and historicizing hermeneutics. Correspondingly, the notion of personal intuition , as we shall see later, does occur in Husserl’s investigations, but only in a very specific context and in a thoroughly subordinate meaning, whereas it is of crucial importance in Jaspers’ Psychopathology (cf. Jaspers 1997a, p. 313, 1973, p. 260). Presumably, there will be Husserl scholars who argue that emphasizing Husserl’s rational hermeneutics amounts to reading his work against the grain. To be sure, Husserl’s philosophy as a whole cannot be labeled as hermeneutic . It does not embody and, indeed, is incompatible with a full-blooded conception of hermeneutic philosophy. This is obvious if we, for instance, consider his quest for ultimate foundations and his goal of establishing a philosophical method in the form of rigorous science. Husserl himself is inclined to stick to traditional divisions when it comes to comparing such projects as hermeneutics and transcendental philosophy. However, in the course of several decades of research, Husserl became increasingly alert to the hermeneutic and aporetic aspects inherent to his project of intentional analysis. This inherent tendency typically appears when he considers the limits of phenomenological description , especially with respect to the original constitution of inner-time consciousness.⁴ In the following we shall not raise the special issue of an ineffable ultimate origin of consciousness. Rather, we shall be concerned with the general dynamics of a phenomenological description that comes into play due to its methodological framing. We contend that tracing out the hermeneutic aspects of transcendental phenomenology allows for gaining a more profound understanding of how to make use of an intuitive method to inquire into the multifarious manifestations of human consciousness. In particular, Husserl’s phenomenology offers refined notions of intuition and subjectivity that are suited to improve our understanding of what goes on in certain areas of psychological and psychiatric research without succumbing to subjectivism and dogmatism . Our second thesis runs as follows:

In terms of T1) and T2), we will devote our most extensive considerations to offer a plausible interpretation as to how phenomenology and hermeneutics interact. In doing so, we shall pave the way for a new defense of a phenomenological intuitionism.⁵ Throughout our reasoning, we will not dwell on a detailed discussion of Jaspers’ methodology in his General Psychopathology though, occasionally, we will indicate some of its crucial points. In this respect, the main thrust of our considerations can be summarized in the following thesis:

The idea that an entire philosophical theory could be grounded by accurately describing what is present to the mind is among the most fascinating and prolific projects of modern philosophy. In respect to method, this exciting project, which received a fresh impetus at the turn of the 19th to the 20th century, revolves around the notions of description and intuition . The phenomenological movement gathered momentum when Husserl, following the footsteps of his admired academic teacher Franz Brentano, called for cleaning the desk and gaining a new start by ignoring the sweeping (idealistic) philosophical systems of his age in favor of focusing on the immediately given contents of consciousness. Since then, turning one’s attention to the immediately given contents of consciousness has been called “phenomenology,” thereby indicating that one feels committed to go back to the things themselves, that is, to the phenomena. ⁶ Phenomena, spelled out in a phenomenological fashion, represent modes of appearances (of something) and modes of givenness , respectively.

According to Husserl, being able to justify one’s beliefs with regards to structures and contents of the reality in which we find ourselves immersed, regardless of whether it is natural, social or spiritual, ultimately requires the ability to grasp the given phenomena intuitively and to describe their intentional content adequately. Therefore, the precise nature of the intuitive evidence at issue varies in dependence on the respective types of objects or states of affairs that the relating acts are directed toward.

Genuine science and its own genuine freedom from prejudice require, as the foundation of all proofs, immediately valid judgments which derive their validity from originally presentive intuitions. The latter, however, are of such a character as prescribed by the sense of the judgments, or correlatively by the proper essence of the predicatively formed judgment-complex. (Husserl 1983, p. 36)

The quantity and nature of fundamental regions of objects that are discernible and the pertaining types of presentive intuitions, according to Husserl, cannot be postulated in advance or gained by way of deduction. One can only, as he maintains, “ascertain them by insight,” meaning that one has to disclose them by originally presentive intuitions and fix them by judgments “which are faithfully fitted to what is given in such intuition ” (Husserl 1983, p. 36). Proceeding like this, we cannot forestall that delusions, erroneous reports and inadequate linguistic representations of intuitive givenness occur.⁷ Hence, ultimately relying on presentive intuitions does not exclude misinterpretations and conflicts that may occasionally arise (cf. Husserl 1983, p. 37). Given that we bear in mind these qualifications, we can state the basic commitment of a phenomenological intuitionism as follows:

Immediate ‘seeing’, not merely sensuous, experiential seeing, but seeing in the universal sense as an originally presentive consciousness of any kind whatever, is the ultimate legitimizing source of all rational assertions. (Husserl 1983, p. 36)

As we shall explain in the next section, this phenomenological intuitionism requires further qualification. Still, it is clear that for Husserlian-style phenomenologists it is vital to acknowledge different types of intuitions according to different types of objects referred to. Therefore, our talk about “intuitions” remains ambiguous and misleading unless we specify the beliefs (and judgments) at issue and the relating types of legitimizing intuitive evidence . For instance, “intuition ” may refer to sensuous intuition, that is, perceptual givenness , or to acts of clear and distinct imagination. Equally, it may be the case that we seize specific concepts by means of rational insight. In this connection, we may be faced with pieces of a priori knowledge that cannot be warranted unless we intuitively grasp necessary relations between contents that either are of a purely formal character (e.g., relations of transitivity) or are materially determined. In the latter case we, for instance, contend that it is necessarily true that no spatially existing object can simultaneously be red and green all over. Whatever examples we have in mind, it should be clear that phenomenologists address a concrete manifold of different modes of intuitive givenness. This being so, a new understanding of “complex methodology” emerges. The relating complexity need not, without exception, result from bringing together fundamentally different methodological approaches such as statistical methods, on the one hand, and introspection, on the other hand. Methodological complexity may also arise due to different types of intuition that are involved in certain fields of research. If Husserl’s considerations are on the right track, we do not need to consider the interplay of different types of intuition as a merely contingent fact. Rather, we need only to direct our attention to the constitution of the objects at issue. Methodical issues cannot be detached from the concrete nature of the objects investigated. Clarifying our methodological tools and coming to know the peculiar nature of the objects at hand are two aspects of the very same process. In this vein, a phenomenological intuitionism in terms of the above-sketched multiple intuition approach can be of use to psychiatrists too, even if they do not share Husserl’s specific philosophical interest in eidetic knowledge.

Phenomenology, for many decades, has been acknowledged as a prominent and vigorous branch of philosophical theorizing. Yet it has met an equally permanent critical appraisal. The relevant critiques do not dwell on marginal and minor issues. They straightforwardly challenge the ideas of description and intuition which, according to the understanding of Husserl and other phenomenologists, constitute the very core of a phenomenological philosophy. In the present context, we need not enter into those detailed debates on methodological, epistemological and ontological issues that originate from and demonstrate the splitting up into different brands of phenomenological philosophies. Among others, these different brands are represented by Brentano, Husserl, Heidegger, Scheler, Sartre, Lévinas, and many others. However, it is important to note that, in addition and parallel to this philosophical variety of doing phenomenology, there is variety in another respect. For scientists who are affiliated to different empirical disciplines it is quite common to refer to (merely) descriptive tasks. Scientists are familiar with the experience that, while seeking out a proper evidential basis, the relevant phenomena, on certain conditions, can be given in an intuitive way. However, scientific utilizations of descriptive methods typically refer to limited parts of an overall research work and theory construction. Therefore, they should not be confused with the idea of description as a basic methodological principle of phenomenological philosophy. In scientific contexts, descriptions (and intuitions) function in a preparatory and ancillary way as part of an overall research activity that is meant to ultimately approach full-blown explanatory projects.⁸ As far as scientists are committed to the tasks of explanation and prediction, they do not subscribe to the idea that descriptions and intuitions actually warrant (or ever could warrant) the expected results, the basic principles or the main purpose of their work. From this brief description of the philosophical and non-philosophical varieties concerning the phenomenologically given it should be clear that any well-founded judgment of a phenomenological method requires adequately specifying the notions of description and intuition according to varying theoretical and practical contexts (cf. Rinofner-Kreidl 2004). It is both these specifications and the relative importance phenomenologists attach to the ideas of description and intuition that give rise to critical objections.

When Husserl reconsidered his project of describing the human mind in the first decade of the 20th century, his predominant endeavor was to distinguish sharply between phenomenological from non-phenomenological philosophical projects on the one hand, as well as philosophical-phenomenological analyses from scientific utilizations of descriptive methods, on the other hand. The appropriate methodological device to meet this requirement, according to Husserl, is the so-called phenomenological reduction.

The phenomenological reduction appears in Husserl’s research manuscripts a few years after he published his Logical Investigations. The first public reference can be found in his lectures on The Idea of Phenomenology (1907). What does the phenomenological reduction achieve? Why should we consider it indispensable for a phenomenological analysis? The reduction demands that when doing phenomenology one restricts oneself to describing intentional relations to objects and states of affairs and, thereby, ignore all those existential beliefs that normally, in our everyday practice, are associated with the relevant relations. While ignoring all existential claims that are constitutive of our natural attitude , we do not deny that these objects truly exist beyond and independent of the intuitively or symbolically given mental representations of them as intentional objects. Asserting as well as denying the real existence of intentional objects is a metaphysical claim and hence has to be “bracketed,” as Husserl maintains. Doing so, we only talk about what is given in pure, that is, phenomenologically reduced consciousness. We do not judge about things themselves, that is to say, things that are thought to be mind-independent on principle. We rather judge how things appear and how they are meant to be according to the intentional content of the relating acts. Any description following this methodological rule is called a phenomenological description.⁹ Ideally, phenomenological descriptions report those and only those contents of our experience that correspond to a purified intuition . The purification of intuition occurs via a deliberate correlation of it with the phenomenological attitude; or put another way, the phenomenological reduction must itself be manifested in the subject’s attitude (cf. Rinofner-Kreidl 2000, pp. 179–183). In § 24 of the first volume of his Ideas, Husserl introduces the phenomenological principle of intuition (“the principle of all principles”) by stating

that every originary presentive intuition is a legitimizing source of cognition, that everything originarily (so to speak, in its ‘personal’ actuality) offered to us in ‘intuition’ is to be accepted simply as what it is presented as being, but also only within the limits in which it is presented there. (Husserl 1983, p. 44)

Introducing this basic principle, Husserl does not literally refer to the phenomenological reduction or the phenomenological attitude , respectively. Nonetheless, the latter is part of the above-stated principle. It is included (or hidden) in the closing phrase “only within the limits in which it is presented there.” Although it may be tempting to ignore this clause or to reduce it to an unspecified request for accuracy and prudence in doing our descriptive work, it actually urges us to understand the principle of intuition as qualified by the phenomenological reduction or any other attitude that defines the relevant scope of experience.

Astonishingly, it is in connection with a seemingly restrictive methodological operation that Husserl embraces a universally relevant insight and methodological technique whose impact goes far beyond the specific theoretical interests of transcendental phenomenology . The relevant insight is: What is given intuitively co-varies, in an explicable and a priori determined manner, with changing attitudes that are adopted and abandoned according to the requirements of varying situations. These requirements, at least partially, are defined by the theoretical or practical interests of the epistemic agent (cf. Husserl 1973, §§ 13–14). Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology explores this insight by inquiring into and describing possible forms of experience. Correspondingly, it redefines the task of a philosophical analysis in terms of an attitude concerned with attitudes and their pertaining possibilities of givenness . ¹⁰ It is from this meta-theoretical and transcendental point of view that Husserl throws light on the peculiar character and implications of different attitudes which amount to (mostly unconsciously practiced) techniques of veiling and unveiling certain aspects of reality. For instance, it is a distinctive feature of the so-called natural attitude that it does not dwell on its own techniques of grasping objects from a general point of view, thereby transcending its present interest. This holds good both for our life-world practice and the intellectual activities devoted to the positive (empirical and formal) sciences. It is part of our natural attitude that, in acting according to this attitude, we normally do not realize doing so. If this is true, the importance should be evident of a philosophical treatment of human understanding that yields a release from our daily tasks and commitments. It is due to this release that a phenomenological analysis of intentional experience is apt to bring to light the usually unchallenged conditions, that is, ontological interpretations and assumptions, lying beneath our everyday normal as well as pathological intentional life.

In connection with this, we should bear in mind that Husserl distinguishes between the phenomenological reduction that opens up the field of pure subjectivity, that is, the field of phenomenological description comprising all possible forms of intentional experience, on the one hand, and so-called thematic reductions, on the other hand (cf. Husserl 1983, §§ 56–61). The latter refer to all possible objects of description we can direct our attention to within the framework of pure phenomenology. Clearly, there is a great variety of description-projects we can embark on. For instance, we can inquire into the relation holding between presentation and judgment or the passive meaning-constitution processes that must have taken place whenever a judgment occurs in consciousness. Equally, we can analyze the mode of givenness of valuable objects (“goods”) and how it is related to value-perceptions. Or we can investigate the intentional structure of memory and phantasy. According to Husserl, all these projects require that we, first, perform the phenomenological reduction and, second, selectively explore the field of pure subjectivity. Observational guidance in terms of fixing a specific directedness and mode of turning toward possible objects of description is due to what Husserl calls “thematic reduction.” The research activity of non-philosophical sciences can also be analyzed in terms of specific thematic reductions that constitute the relating research fields (cf. Husserl 1989a, pp. 27–29, 189–194).

Philosophy, in a Husserlian vein, is characterized by a specific form of detachment. It calls for going beyond the particular purposes, tasks, and intellectual projects that render invisible all those parts of reality that do not seem fit from the point of view of our daily interests. While philosophizing, we abandon our usual modes of being immersed in everyday concerns. A transcendental phenomenologist does not deal with, for instance, the concrete contents and epistemological quality of the experiences a schizophrenic patient undergoes. Digging into such concrete empirical concerns is not in the philosopher’s province. From a transcendental point of view (according to Husserl’s brand of transcendentalism), our main concern is neither how specific forms of intuition could be utilized in order to gain suitable and workable categorizations of mental illness nor how “seeing” precisely informs the processes of analyzing, interpreting and commenting on case studies. (Jaspers whose phenomenology operates at a descriptive-psychological level has a clear stake in both these issues.) Our main concern, as philosophers, is to understand what we do when we embark on these very activities. What are the tacit presuppositions of describing human behavior? We are interested in specifying how different types of attitudes, different types of intentional experience and different kinds of objects and states of affairs, respectively, are correlated with each other. Within this field of “pure” intentional analysis we then discover that we need hermeneutic abilities since our intuitions do not occur as a succession of isolated impressions. Intuitive givenness is the result of a process of exploration that, step by step, lays bare different aspects and meaning-layers of intentional experiences.¹¹

As long as one adheres to the phenomenological attitude one “seeks to understand the ‘how’ [of person perception, SR] by illuminating the constitutive perceptual framework (Einstellung) of the perceiver.” (Churchill 1998, p. 181) This wording is correct and instructive for the following reasons. First, it emphasizes the demand for understanding intentional experience as distinguished from explaining why certain experiences occur at certain instants of time or within certain periods. Secondly, it recognizes that a phenomenological investigation does not dwell on the varying material contents of the diverse types of experience but, instead, deals with formal qualities in terms of the intentional structure of the relevant experiences. Thirdly, the correlation holding between noetic and noematic aspects, that is, between the specific type of act performed and the specific way an object or state of affair is referred to, is implicitly acknowledged. Accordingly, it is evident that in order to inquire into the “how” of perception, judgment, remembrance, imagination and so on, one must notice the subject’s overall attitude taken while performing the respective acts.

Attitudes are responsible for the specific way we approach situations in order to grasp phenomena (cf. Churchill 1998, p. 181 f). This includes two important insights going beyond what we normally expect from intuitive methods. On the one hand, the relevant intuitive grasping cannot simply “depict” an omnipresent und unproblematic reality without our having taken a specific attitude beforehand. On the other hand, the evidential presence of the phenomenon does not occur in an accidental way since it is the researcher who willingly and actively gives rise to the object’s appearance by taking an appropriate attitude. Of course, giving rise to the appearance of an object (or, allowing the phenomenon to come into view) must not be confused with giving rise to the existence of the appearing object.¹² If it is correct that we channel appearances by using the methodological tool of (different types of) reductions, we must acknowledge that our intuition -based phenomenological analysis, to some extent, harbors constructive as well as hermeneutic ingredients. The phenomenological notion of intuition, therefore, qualifies as a complex notion. Due to its methodological underpinning, it does not represent a naively posited claim for immediacy. Rather, we should argue that whenever someone takes for granted having given intuitively some object, state of affairs or person, that it must then be possible to specify those purposes and thematic interests that have been brought to bear. Nothing can be intuitively given without there also being, at the same time, some effective purpose or interest (whether the agent is actually aware of it or not).¹³

Attitudes can be spelled out in different ways. Husserl did not put much emphasis on this requirement. However, applying his idea of a phenomenological analysis to empirical projects of investigating consciousness, it seems appropriate to offer a more explicit and sophisticated conception of attitude . For instance, we may draw on dispositions, habitual ways of comportment, elements of tacit knowledge and passivity including, among others, specific modes of bodily vulnerability that strongly form our daily experiential life as constitutive parts of specific attitudes.¹⁴ Scientific as well as philosophical attitudes are typically and predominantly composed of explicit moments that are accessible to processes of deliberation and rational choice. Scientific and philosophical attitudes are not brought to bear in a mute, obvious, and matter-of-fact way. Rather, they are utilized in a problematic and fluid manner by accommodating changing interests and tasks of research work. It is only with regard to these reflexive modes of attitudes that we can literally say that someone consciously adopts a specific attitude in order to grasp specific types of objects or states of affairs.¹⁵

According to Husserl’s investigation in the Crisis (1936) (cf. Husserl 1970b), scientists tend to rule out time-consuming processes of comprehension, which elude exact measuring, by replacing them with purely symbolic representations. The latter, if possible, refer to research material that is made available in terms of quantification. To the extent that such a replacement of intuitive givenness by symbolic representation takes place not only sporadically but also in a systematic manner, scientists are inclined to interpret ontologically that which is nothing but a well-established and approved methodological approach. This process, according to Husserl, thus combines a considerable loss of intuitive evidence with a misidentification of methodology and ontology. Yet it would be misguided to consider this interpretation as a merely psychological failure or individual inability to adequately perform acts of cognizance. On the one hand, following this procedure does not hinder successful scientific explanations and, therefore, should not be considered from an exclusively critical point of view. On the other hand, the modern conception of science is based on the ideas of technically supported observation, quantification, and efficient calculation. Hence, it is biased in favor of symbolic representations. Accordingly, it gives rise to an idea of objectivity that is not impaired by individually varying abilities of perception and the like. Objectivity, therefore, requires abandoning all those elements that seem to falsify the expected results due to their subject-dependence, the latter referring to varying qualifications for intuition , remembrance, cognition, and so on. This being the case, our scientific projects flourish on condition that they restrain subjectivity or, as Husserl maintains, that they are accompanied by self-forgetfulness.¹⁶ Scientists are caught up in a state of self-forgetfulness, which renders their scientific attitude invisible (this, of course, varies according to the scientific discipline in question). It is only due to our philosophical efforts that we are capable of seeing through these processes involved in our scientific activities. Philosophy aims at discovering and querying variable ways of relating to the world on different levels of human experience. Although Jaspers’ notion of philosophy does not correlate with Husserl’s, they both stress the intrinsic tendency of science to be ignorant of its own limits. Therefore, scientists, by taking their respective methodological approaches as absolute, are inclined to render invisible the diversity of possible modes of relatedness to the world.

[…] the sciences also tend to obscure Being itself by the knowable facts and keep us tied to preliminaries without end. They tend to make absolutes of our limited insights and convert them into a supposed knowledge of Being itself. They tend to make us forget the essential and restrict our free view of phenomena, narrow down our experiences, images and ideas to rational definitions and paralyze our psychic activity with rigid concepts that follow from too much learning and knowing. But it is a mistake to complain that we know too much, that knowledge is a tyrant, that there is nothing more to know and that knowledge paralyses life. There is no need for this to be so and it only arises from a misunderstanding departure from true learning. (Jaspers 1997b, p. 771, 1973, p. 644)

The philosopher’s challenge is to offer assistance for gaining a more lucid and encompassing understanding of those aspects of experience and meaning-constitution that permanently elude our attention as long as we are caught up in the natural attitude (as Husserl says). As soon as we abandon the phenomenological attitude and return to the natural attitude, that is, to our daily business as parents, lovers, lawyers, taxpayers, entrepreneurs, or psychiatrists we can still profit from our philosophical activities in an indirect way. By doing phenomenology, according to the above delineation, we come to realize that even the most empathetic understanding, which leads toward total identification with another person or living being in general, can take place within a framework that ensures some kind of methodological detachment. From a practical point of view, this should not surprise anyone engaged in therapeutic work. Doing this work efficiently requires being able to imaginatively transpose oneself into the position of the patient and, nonetheless, keep one’s distance insofar as a mere empathetic “doubling” of the patient’s experience would undermine the therapeutic aim. Keeping track of this aim necessitates that, to some extent and in some specifiable way, the therapist maintains her autonomy and self-control.