Understanding more fully: A multimodal hermeneutic-phenomenological approach

This article shares a research methodology that we argue supports human science researchers in their aim to understand lived experiences more fully. Drawing on Merleau-Pontian thinking, the paper outlines three dimensions of sense experience that underpin our approach: the felt-sense, aesthetic aspects of language, and visual imagery. We then detail this approach: the data-collection phase is a creative interviewing method, adapted from Imagery in Movement Method (Schneier, 1989) and focusing technique (Gendlin, 1997). This results in multimodal data: drawings, bodily and verbal accounts, rich in imagery. The analysis is an expanded hermeneutic-phenomenology, and in this article we focus in particular on our method for interpreting visual data. Three examples taken from a case-study about feeling guilty are provided to illustrate the potential of the approach. The paper concludes with some reflections on the impact of using a multimodal approach in human science research.