An affirmation of the phenomenological psychological descriptive method: a response to Rennie (2012)

Rennie (2012) made the claim that, despite their diversity, all qualitative methods are essentially hermeneutical, and he attempted to back up that claim by demonstrating that certain core steps that he called hermeneutical are contained in all of the other methods despite their self-interpretation. In this article, I demonstrate that the method I developed based upon Husserlian phenomenology cannot be so interpreted despite Rennie's effort to do so. I claim that the undertaking of a psychological investigation at large can be considered interpretive but that when the phenomenological method based upon Husserl is employed, it is descriptive. I also object to the attempt to reduce varied theoretical perspectives to the methodical steps of one of the competing theories. Reducing theoretical perspectives to core steps distorts the full value of the theoretical perspective. The last point is demonstrated by showing how the essence of the descriptive phenomenological method is missed if one follows Rennie's core steps.