Abstract

The aim of this article is to present the microphenomenological interview method as a second-person method in the study of experience. Researchers in the field of cognitive science are beginning to realize that third-person methods of studying experience have their limitations, namely that the researcher does not know what is happening at the level of the subjective consciousness of the person being studied. On the other hand, first-person methods do not work in empirical research, because they are based exclusively on the first-person perspective of the researcher-expert, who is also the subject of the experience being studied. Meanwhile, science is looking for more objective research methods, as well as those that take into account the results of research on a specific research group. In the face of such challenges, the second-person method of studying experience – which consists in conducting an interview with the person being studied about their subjective experience – proposed by the French phenomenologist Claire Petitmengin (2006), becomes very promising. This method responds to the challenges of contemporary problems of cognitive science related to the need to study experience from the perspective of the person being studied. Petitmengin calls her method an explication interview or an elicitation interview (Petitmengin, 2006), and in later and more contemporary works – microphenomenological interviews (Petitmengin, Remillieux, Valenzuela--Moguillansky, 2018). This method is called second-person because the interviewer enters into a relationship with the person being examined, directing the interview in such a way as to extract the diachronic and synchronic structure of the experience being studied.