It is now some 50 years since existentialism swept through the salons of European intellectual life. Few philosophers today are interested in this approach, but for some psychologists the influence of existentialistic ideas has been profound. Instead, the existentially-aware psychologist avoids pinning fixed labels on patients. Thus, phenomenology enters the study of human behaviour. But man is a living creature, always changing, and thus beyond psychiatric rubrics.
Most patients confound diagnostic labelling.
Sartre adopted the phenomenological method from Husserl by way of Heidegger. But he was the first to apply it rigorously to understanding human action. Another notion he took from Husserl was the idea that there is always some object for our conscious perception. Sartre's small book on the emotions extends this study of the phenomenology of consciousness. Here he points to the startling conclusion that an emotion is a way of apprehending the world.