ABSTRACT
One important field of interdisciplinary research is the comparative study of cultures, a field which we tend to regard as the special preserve of the anthropologist. This chapter suggests that some of the problems of crosscultural study may be clarified, possibly even illuminated, through the adoption of a phenomenological approach. The stubbornness with which the first person has maintained itself in every known human language would seem to support a firm place for it in a psychological phenomenology. The chapter examines the issue of what happens to the self when it is in a state of need and what the phenomenal properties of a goal are, and theorizes the basic needs or ultimate goals. The familiar dimensions of psychophysics are space, time, intensity, and the like. Strictly speaking, these are not coordinate in a phenomenological description with structures, properties, and relations.
