The phenomenological text as object of the consciousness processes analysis

Introspective first person reports constitute the only available source of information about consciousness. Nevertheless, in order to develop and standardize techniques of analysis of subjective reports which are relevant to consciousness research, it is necessary to fulfill four requirements: (1) to demonstrate their reliability and relevance, (2) to establish criteria for selecting or obtaining the most appropriate reports, (3) to develop a system for detecting the items in the text which are indicative of conscious processes and, finally, (4) to develop procedures to represent such items and their structure and dynamics with the aid of suitable formal devices. A narratological method which meets the first two requirements and criteria is advanced. Despite their obvious limitations, introspective reports can be considered to yield relevant and reasonably reliable information about consciousness. Since certain introspective reports seem to be more relevant and reliable than others, the question arises of discerning the most reliable reports. The modern novel in the lines developed by Proust and joyce may constitute the best representation of consciousness available. Despite the fact that two examples from these novels show the extraordinary capability of language to convey mental states, the interior monologue or the psychonarration of the modern novel are not optimally suitable to infer actual streams of consciousness because they are simulations. In some monologues, journals, autobiographies, and soliloquies the writer expresses conscious mental states directly from his/er awareness eliminating to a large extent the communicative intent. Thus, these narratives retain more authentic traces of experience and they become the most adequate targets for analyses of conscious processes. Carefuly selected excerpts from the journals of Virginia Woolf, Anne Frank, Miguel de Unamuno and others show these characteristics. Other relevant items are constituted by verbatim transcripts of psychotherapeutic or self-experiment sessions. In all cases it can be asserted that these are the most faithful reports of conscious mental states, and they are called "phenomenological texts". Once a suitable phenomenological text is selected or obtained a method to analyze it is required. It is proposed that the text can be treated with some of the procedures developed by quantitative ethology and which include as a central requirement an inventory of categories and a system of attribution and sampling. Nine mental category terms (sensation, perception, emotion, thought, judgment, reasoning, image, recall, intention) were used to analyze an excerpt from the journal of a patient studied by Pierre Janet. Carefully selected first person reports constitute "phenomenological texts" suitable as targets of analyses for consciousness dynamic structure and process.