Phenomenology of Perception, Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1962, pp. vii-viii) characterizes phenomenology as "a matter of describing, not of explaining or analyzing … (as an attempt) to give a direct description of experience as it is without taking account of its psychological origin and the causal explanations which the scientist, the historian, or the sociologist may be able to provide." Similar views are common in phenomenological psychiatry and psychopathology. The phenomenological psychiatrist, Wolfgang Blankenburg (1971/1991, p. 4, 27), e.g., explicitly denies that his account of the "basic disorder" (Grundstörung) in schizophrenia is intended to have any etiologic significance; he aims, he says, only to capture the "essence" of typically schizophrenic abnormalities (see also Buytendijk 1987, p. 130)." /> Phenomenology as description and as explanation - Sass Louis | sdvig press