Self-Esteem Research, Theory, and Practice Toward a Positive ...

56 SELF-ESTEEM RESEARCH, THEORY, AND PRACTICEshow how the fundamental structure involves the various interpersonaland social dimensions of anxiety. The result would be a more comprehensivepicture of anxiety than seeing it only as a “chemical imbalance” or a“lack of meaning;” although both views would be accounted for in thedescription. The same approach could be used for depression, schizophrenia,love, hope, and many other human phenomena.However, it is also true that using information generated from bothparadigms presents a difficult challenge in two ways. First, it is demandingwork because it requires being able to deal with a broad range ofmaterial from many points of view. Second, the results are likely to pleaseneither the hard-core empirically oriented, number-crunching social scientistnor the “touchy-feely,” literarily inclined, experientially oriented,postmodern counterpart. Even so, as Giorgi (1971, 1984) pointed outthere are ways these paradigms can balance each other. For instance,where psychology as a natural science focuses on measuring behavior, ahuman science approach deals with the meaning of behavior. Similarly,whereas the natural science paradigm looks for determined or causalreactions, the human science approach attempts to account for “free” orintentional ones. Where one method seeks identical repetition of a measureor outcome to reduce uncertainty, the other does so by searching foressential themes that are consistently present in a given phenomenon. Inshort, human subjects live simultaneously in external and internalworlds, both of which must be described if they are to be understood, letalone integrated. Unfortunately, it is easy to fall prey to methodologicaltunnel vision if we practice psychology from one perspective and ignoreor dismiss the other. Although integrated description has its limits, atleast it avoids this common paradigmatic trap and may even be able tohelp achieve some degree of “consensus” that Wells and Marwell (1976)claim is so important in this field.THE QUESTION OF VALIDITYAND RESEARCHING SELF-ESTEEMWe now have an idea of what the phenomenological method looks likeand how I am using it here, but the issue of whether such research is validmust also be addressed. If one accepts the scientific method as beingempirical, methodical, theory building, and self-correcting, then therecan be no doubt that the human science paradigm qualifies, providingone stays with the procedures outlined by Giorgi (1971, 1984). For example,the word “empirical” concerns experience, as well as observation, andwe can “observe” experience to a certain degree through techniques suchas introspection or interviews. Both external and internal observations are