ABSTRACT
Phenomenological theory and methods have influenced Paulo Freire's (1989a) work, have shaped and been shaped by psychoanalytic theory and methods (Ricoeur, 1970), have influenced critical theory (Horkheimer, 1937; Roderick, 1986), and have paralleled some aspects of symbolic interaction theory (Berger and Luckman, 1966; Luckman, 1978). It is essential to our praxis that phenomenology moves us, in Husserl's words, to "dich an sich," i.e., to the thing itself For human service workers doing clinical work, the thing itself is the clinical encounter. The clinical encounter includes those structures and processes, both psychological and sociological, that interact constantly between workers and the people they serve in social institutional contexts.
