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Beginning in the late 1960s, Constance Fischer wrote a series of articles on phenomenological psychology and its application to various procedures within psychological testing and evaluation. In her writings, the theoretical groundwork for individualized and collaborative assessment practices, where the patient is considered an informed participant in the entire process, came from European continental philosophers. Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, and Husserl are quoted at length in these early studies (Fischer, 1970, 1973a, 1973b, 1976, 1979, 1985/1994). In each paper, Fischer argued for a balance between the science and the art of psychological testing. For her, the art of testing stemmed from the tradition of Husserlian phenomenology, which "involved a turning toward the manner of appearance, in a concrete analysis of our existential life-world, not in some idealist dialectic as in Hegel" (Kearney & Semonovitch, 2011, p. 7). Thus, from the human science perspective, what is 'scientifically" true about people can only be understood if we understand them in the context of their lived experience.

DOI: 10.1057/978-1-349-95038-6_7

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