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Nursing Inquiry 2001; 8(3): 191– 195

Feature

Michael Crotty and nursing

Blackwell Science, Ltd

phenomenology: criticism or critique?

Patricia Barkway
School of Nursing, Faculty of Health Science, Flinders University, Adelaide, Australia

Accepted for publication 19 February 2001

BARKWAY P. Nursing Inquiry 2001; 8: 191–195

Michael Crotty and nursing phenomenology: criticism or critique?
In 1996 Michael Crotty published the text Phenomenology and nursing research in which he criticised many nurse researchers’
interpretation of the methodology of phenomenology and their utilisation of phenomenology as a method for undertaking
qualitative nursing research. Crotty’s thesis proposes that the research conducted by nurses is not phenomenology according
to the European tradition, but a North American hybrid. Subsequently, debate has occurred amongst nurses as to whether
Crotty’s work is a scholarly, reasoned critique or a severe, judgmental, fault-finding criticism of nursing research. Considering
the increasing utilisation of phenomenology as a methodology that informs nursing research, this debate is an important one
and has implications for the conduct of research. This article examines this debate and the implications of Crotty’s work for
phenomenological research in nursing.
Key words: Crotty, nursing research, phenomenology, qualitative research.

Many contemporary nurse researchers have embraced
phenomenology as a methodological approach to inquiry.
In response to this, the late Michael Crotty (1996) published
an Australian text on the subject entitled Phenomenology and
nursing research. In the book, Crotty asserts that much of the
phenomenological research conducted by nurses, particu-
larly North American nurses, is not pure phenomenology as
espoused by its founding European philosophers. He identifies
two versions of phenomenology and argues that the one
embraced by nurse researchers, which he calls ‘new’ pheno-
menology is descriptive, subjective and lacks critique. Crotty
gained notoriety in nursing circles for his views, and attracted
a diversity of responses. Some nurse researchers rejected the
arguments espoused in the book, while others embraced
them for the contribution they make to nursing scholarship.
BACKGROUND
Michael Crotty was a man of integrity who not only had the
capacity to convincingly argue his stance on an issue, but also
Correspondence: Patricia Barkway, School of Nursing, Faculty of Health
Science, Flinders University, PO Box 2100 Adelaide 5001, Australia.
E-mail: <nupb@flinders.edu.au>
had the courage to defend his opinion in the face of strong
opposition. As Darbyshire, Diekelmann and Diekelmann
(1999) observed, Crotty enjoyed a challenge and sought to
stimulate the thinking of others. Historically, this is most
evident in Crotty’s questioning of the Catholic church’s 1968
papal encyclical, Humanae vitae (of human life), which
banned the use of artificial methods of contraception by
Catholics. Crotty, then a moral theologian, disagreed with
the advice of the conservative bishops and theologians of the
time and argued that the opinion of Pope Paul VI was not
infallible. Consequently, he advised Australian Catholics
that they could act on an informed conscience when making
a decision about whether to use birth control, or not. For these
views, Crotty attracted national and international atten-
tion, which both supported and denounced his outspoken
opinion. Throughout this time, Crotty’s steadfast belief in
the logic of his interpretation never wavered, even though it
led to his exile from Australia to the United States, and
contributed to his decision to resign from the priesthood
some years later (Noon 1998).
Since leaving the priesthood, Crotty’s varied career
within the human service field led him to join the school
of nursing at Flinders University (Adelaide) in 1989 as an
academic. Later, he joined the department of public health

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P Barkway
where he worked until his death in 1998. It was through his
experience of teaching qualitative research to nurses and
supervising Master of Nursing students that Crotty came to
his conclusion that the methods of nursing phenomeno-
logical research were not what they claimed to be, and once
again, his opinion was controversial.
CROTTY ON PHENOMENOLOGY
Phenomenology began as a philosophical mode of inquiry
in Continental Europe around the turn of the twentieth
century. Its acknowledged founder is the German philo-
sopher, Edmund Husserl (1859 – 1938). Husserl’s purpose
was epistemological. He was seeking an indisputable basis
for all human knowledge (Husserl 1969). According to Crotty,
phenomenology was also used for many other purposes by his
followers. Max Scheler, for instance, found phenomenology
to be a way of elaborating the philosophical anthropology
he was after (Crotty 1996). Martin Heidegger used phenom-
enology to explore the meaning of ‘Being’. He wrote, ‘Only as
phenomenology is ontology possible’ (Heidegger 1962, 60).
Phenomenology also became linked with existentialism.
This occurred primarily in France where Jean-Paul Sartre
and Merleau-Ponty were also influential (Crotty 1996).
In this original form, phenomenology is a critical
methodology that invites us to revisit our conscious experi-
ence and open ourselves to the emergence of new meaning
or at least the authentication and renewal of our present
meanings. It is essentially a first-person experience. How-
ever, particularly in the North American context, it came to
be applied to the study of other people’s experience, which
is reported in the third person and, as Crotty argues, to be
linked with and informed by the intellectual tradition of that
continent. Crotty describes the North American tradition as
a strong cohesive one, in which pragmatist philosophy,
symbolic interactionism and humanistic psychology make
important contributions.
Symbolic interactionism
What we know today as symbolic interactionism stems from
the thoughts of pragmatist philosopher and social psycho-
logist, George Herbert Mead. As Crotty has stated, Mead’s
social behaviourism embodies a thoroughly social point of
view. In Mead’s analysis, human behaviour is social in origin,
shaped by social forces, and permeated by the social, even in
its biological and physical aspects. Mead (1964, 337) wants us
to ‘see the world whole’. Our ability to do that is developed
socially through ‘entering into the most highly organised
logical, ethical, and aesthetic attitudes of the community’
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and coming to recognise ‘the most extensive set of inter-
woven conditions that may determine thought, practice,
and our fixation and enjoyment of values’ (Mead 1964, 337).
Mead, in fact, attributes personhood itself to one’s entry
into a human community in this fashion. This cannot occur
without our putting ourselves in the place of others, and this
notion of ‘adopting the role of the other’ became central to
symbolic interactionist thought. ‘Methodologically’, writes
Denzin (1978, 99), ‘symbolic interactionism directs the
investigator to take, to the best of his [sic] ability, the stand-
point of those studied’.
These underpinnings are obvious in the type of phenom-
enology utilised by nurse researchers (O’Brien and Flöte
1997; Barkway 1998; Poslusny 2000; Jonsen, Athlin and Suhr
2000). In these studies there is a sustained attempt to adopt
the standpoint of those interviewed, and to report their
accounts of experience on their own terms. In this respect
‘new’ phenomenology reflects the symbolic interactionism
from which, in part, it originated.
Social constructionism and constructivism
The symbolic interactionism, which informs the ‘new’
phenomenological approach, is influenced by both a con-
structivist and constructionist epistemology. Although there
is no consistency in how the terminology is used by different
authors, the distinction used here between constructivism
and constructionism has some basis in the literature (see
Crotty 1998).
Constructivism proposes that the meaning attributed to
realities in our world (and to the world as such) is a construc-
tion and interpretation on our part as conscious (and self-
conscious) human beings. The foundation of constructivism
is that we humans are organisms who live ‘from the inside
out’. As a philosophical counterpoint to naïve realism, con-
structivism suggests that we are proactive co-creators of the
reality to which we respond.
This is not to say that reality does not exist independent
of consciousness. It is to say, however, that no meaningful reality
exists independent of consciousness. In the ‘natural attitude’,
that is to say, one takes it for granted that, say, water exists as
water, regardless of whether there are any minds to construe
it as such. However, from the constructivist viewpoint, that is
not the case. Of course, there is something there independ-
ent of any mind, but it is not ‘water as such’. What is there,
independent of any mind, is something we construe to be
water — a phenomenal reality, not a meaningful reality.
Thus the constructivist viewpoint emphasises that for all
of us, human understanding is a construction and an inter-
pretation. It is not the grasping of objective meaning, i.e. of
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meaning inherent in objects and independent of human
consciousness. In constructivism conceived in this fashion,
the focus is clearly on individuals. Essentially, this is a psycho-
logical, albeit a social–psychological, explanation.
What is emphasised in constructionism, on the other
hand, is that meaning is not primarily constructed by indi-
vidual persons as they encounter phenomena one by one.
Instead, it is socially constructed. It comes into being in, and
out of, human interaction, and, importantly, becomes a
legacy and tradition. Each of us is born into a world of mean-
ing, inheriting the system of significant symbols that we know
as our culture. This is essentially a sociological orientation.
Each of these orientations has something different to
contribute to what Crotty (1996) calls ‘new’ phenomenology.
Where constructivism taken in this sense identifies the
unique experience of individuals (thus suggesting that each
one’s way of making sense of the world is valid and to be
respected and, thereby, tending to prevent critique), social
constructionism emphasises the hold our culture has on us:
it shapes the way in which we see things (even feel things)
and gives us quite a definite view of the world. In the light of
that, while the shaping of our minds by culture is seen as
what makes us human and endows us with the freedom we
enjoy, social constructionism suggests that culture is limiting as
well as liberating, and for that reason, while being welcomed,
should also be called into question. On these terms, it can be
said that constructivism tends to resist the critical spirit,
while constructionism tends to foster it.
Social constructionism can therefore be seen as having
particular relevance to the more traditional phenomen-
ology referred to above. This is the kind of phenomenology
that invites us to free ourselves from the constraints of cul-
turally derived understandings and to view things anew, or as
Merleau-Ponty (1962, viii) suggests, to slacken ‘the inten-
tional threads which bind us to the world’.
Humanistic psychology
Humanistic psychology, founded by Maslow and Rogers also
served to shape the North American form of phenomenology.
Crotty (1996) points out that this is evident in the congru-
ence between the chief tenets of humanistic psychology and
what nursing phenomenological researchers have to say
about their approach.
It is relevant to note that taking the place of the other, or
adopting the role of the other, so central to symbolic inter-
actionism, is also a pivotal notion in humanistic psychology,
where it is known as ‘empathy’ (Rogers 1980). In literature
dealing with the phenomenology used by nurse researchers
there is much talk of empathy. Phenomenological inquirers
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Michael Crotty and nursing phenomenology
attempt to lay aside their construction of a phenomena,
their prior knowledge and presuppositions, and seek to see
the phenomena from the other person’s point of view.
CROTTY ON NURSING PHENOMENOLOGY
Crotty made a distinction between European phenomeno-
logical research and the ‘new’ phenomenological research
(as he called it) emanating from the English-speaking world,
principally North America. In his book, he cites 30 examples
of phenomenological research conducted by North American
nurses, which he argues are concerned with a third-person
subjective description of the phenomenon being investigated,
not a critical examination of the phenomenon itself (Crotty
1996). He concluded, therefore, that the phenomenological
methods utilised by most nurse researchers in the English-
speaking world were descriptive, not critical, and offered
little more than symbolic interactionism and humanistic
psychology (1996). Implicit in this assertion is the suggestion
that symbolic interactionism and humanistic psychology,
along with nursing phenomenology, are inferior to the more
critical methodology of phenomenology in the European
tradition. This is another assertion that begs debate; however,
it is not within the scope of this article to do so here.
Nevertheless, Crotty’s main concern was not with the
purpose or outcomes of nursing research, but primarily with
the methods undertaken and what nurse researchers were
calling what they were doing. Additionally, he was not only
concerned with what nurses were doing when they under-
took phenomenological research, he was also critical of
what he thought they were not doing. He suggested that
an uncritical acceptance of the participant’s account of the
experience would not shed new light on the phenomenon
under investigation — that a person’s experience of a phenomenon
is not the phenomenon and that this subjective approach was
impoverishing to nursing research.
This is not to say that Crotty opposed a subjective
approach; he didn’t. He acknowledged that an understand-
ing of the subjective experience of patients was integral to
nursing work. However, Crotty did argue that to accept
uncritically what others tell us, when their perception may,
in fact, be mistaken, is not phenomenology in the philo-
sophical tradition.
NURSES’ AND OTHER RESEARCHERS’
RESPONSE TO CROTTY’S ARGUMENT
Nurse researchers’ responses to Crotty’s book and his argu-
ment are polarised. Benner (1996, 258) describes the book
as ‘uncritical and unobjective’ — the very criticism that Crotty
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P Barkway
levels at nursing phenomenology. Turale (1997, 35) describes
it as a ‘must read for nurses interested in the philosophy and
methods of phenomenology’, and Garrett (1998, 6) calls it
a ‘gift’ to nursing. Darbyshire, Diekelmann and Diekelmann
(1999, 17), on the other hand, assert that Crotty’s interpreta-
tion is a ‘narrow, existentialist view of Heidegger’s work’,
which is ‘often misguided and poorly informed’.
de Laine’s (1997) research text directs students to Crotty’s
book and Beanland et al. (1999, 245) refer to it as ‘essential
reading for those students pursuing this particular [pheno-
menological] research approach’. Madjar and Walton (1999),
in their nursing phenomenology text, do not cite Crotty at
all as a reference, although they do state that theirs is not a
book about method and it was method that Crotty was most
critical of in his critique of nursing phenomenology.
Giorgi (2000) agrees with Crotty that there are two
phenomenologies, though he calls them ‘philosophical’ and
‘scientific’. Here, however, is where the consensus ends.
Giorgi (2000, 12) states that Crotty is erroneous in claiming
that ‘new’ or ‘scientific’ phenomenology is not phenomeno-
logical, arguing that that nurses seek an ‘objective under-
standing of a subjective experience’ and therefore ‘objectivity
is not, in principle, missing from nursing research’ (14).
In the school of nursing at Flinders University a discus-
sion group was formed following publication of Crotty’s
book. On several occasions throughout one semester, this
group met to discuss, debate and critique ideas that were
espoused in the text. Discussion focused around whether
Crotty’s book was dismissive of nursing research, or whether
it offered an opportunity to critically examine nursing
research methods. A consensus was not reached; opinions
varied among participants, just as they did in the wider
nursing community.
CRITIQUE OF CROTTY’S BOOK
Benner (1996, 257) describes the tone of the book as ‘pejora-
tive’, which, I believe, is a valid criticism. This tone is evident
to me in Crotty’s use of terms like ‘so-called phenomenology’
(1996, 7) and Crotty’s portrayal of ‘caring’ (as it applies in
nursing) as a ‘weasel word’ meaning ‘anything and every-
thing’ (178), and his comment that articles about caring in
nursing are the ‘usual rhetoric’ (178). In my view there is no
argument here about the tone of the writing being disparag-
ing or not; it clearly is. However, one must be careful not to
dismiss what Crotty is saying on the basis of how he says it.
While as nurses we may justifiably feel offended by the manner
in which Crotty discusses nursing and nursing research,
caution is called for. If Crotty’s argument is to be dismissed
this must be done on the basis of a critical evaluation of the
194
content of his writing, not on an affective response to the
tone of his writing.
Therefore, given that the purpose of philosophical
phenomenology is to lay aside preconceived meanings, to look at
things afresh and to return to the things themselves perhaps we
could consider the message that Crotty proposes. This would
involve laying aside or bracketing notions of what nursing
(and nursing research) is, and asking the questions; ‘what is
nursing?’ (or nursing research), without the imposition of
existing meanings, particularly the concept of caring. When
Crotty (1996) himself did this about nursing he perceived it
as support ‘at all times and in all kinds of ways’ of ‘the whole
person’ (180).
Perhaps Crotty’s reflection on the essence of nursing is
indicative of another problem that nurses have with his
book: in other words, he is critiquing nursing, but he is not
a nurse. Furthermore, is it possible that nursing, a profes-
sion, which has only in recent years defined itself as distinct
from the medical domain, is sensitive to disciplines other
than nursing commenting critically on its practice? Other
writers do write about nursing, for example, van Manen in
Madjar and Walton (1999); however, van Manen writes pos-
itively about nursing research. Could it be that only when
other disciplines commend nursing activities are their com-
ments acceptable? If this is so, such parochialism can only
serve to limit the continuing development of nursing and
nursing research.
IMPLICATIONS OF CROTTY’S ARGUMENT
FOR NURSING RESEARCH
Many nurses responded to the challenge of Crotty’s book by
reflecting on their research methods and pursuing primary
sources in the literature (Garrett 1998). Others, however,
were affronted by his work. I suggest that this negative
response to the message in the book is an affective reaction to
a perceived put-down implied in the tone of Crotty’s writing.
The problem with an affective response from nurses is,
that in critiquing Crotty’s work, the focus of attention is on
the intention of Crotty’s thesis not its content. To ignore the
content means that the accuracy, or not, of Crotty’s assertion
that many nurses are researching participants’ subjective
experience of the phenomenon, not the phenomenon itself
(without recognising the difference), is not being addressed
or debated. This is a critical omission because whether
Crotty’s observation is correct or incorrect has implications
for nursing research with regards to the methods nurses
utilise to apply the methodology of phenomenology.
Regardless, even if there are (at least) two phenomen-
ologies as Crotty (1996) suggests, it does not necessarily follow
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that either is preferable as a methodology that informs
nursing research methods. Researchers must choose a method
that suits the purpose of their question. Therefore, if a sub-
jective understanding of the experience of the phenomenon
from the participant’s perspective is sought (as is often the
case in nursing research), then what Crotty’s calls ‘new’
phenomenology is an appropriate method, particularly if
the subjective experience is objectively scrutinised, as sug-
gested by Giorgi (2000). On the other hand, European or
‘philosophical’ (Giorgi 2000) phenomenology would be
the method chosen to explore an understanding of the
phenomenon itself, or the object of the participant’s experi-
ence. What nurse researchers need to be mindful of though,
according to Crotty, is not to claim Husserlian or Heideggerian
influences on research that utilises ‘new’ phenomenological
methods.
CONCLUSION
Crotty’s book challenged the interpretation of phenomen-
ology, and the conduct of phenomenological research by
nurses. Consequently, his views have stimulated fierce
debate in nursing circles. Crotty, himself, would have wel-
comed this. As a teacher, he encouraged students to dia-
logue with him in a journey of discussion, debate and mutual
learning, and this is what his book has to offer nursing
research.
In closing, therefore, I return to the question posed as the
title for this paper. Is Michael Crotty’s book Phenomenology
and nursing research a judgmental, fault-finding criticism
and a censure of nursing phenomenology, or is the book a
reasoned critical review of the research conducted by nurses?
My view is the latter: that Crotty’s thesis is a well-argued
critique of nursing phenomenological research, which offers
a challenge to nursing that cannot be ignored. The challenge
is phenomenological: for nurses to lay aside preconceived
attitudes to the book, those that spring from an affective
reaction to the critical tone of the writing, and to engage and
debate with the critique that Crotty articulates. In this way
nursing may avoid the mistake of history when in 1969 Crotty
dared to speak the unspoken and, as many believe, a major
warning was missed (Noon 1998).
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