When Others Tell Us Who We Are

What Edmund Husserl and Paul Ricœur Can Teach Us About Understanding Other People

A professional care record is never merely an account of what happened. It is also an interpretation. When a professional writes about another person, the words chosen may influence how that person is subsequently understood and treated. Edmund Husserl’s philosophy of the lifeworld and Paul Ricœur’s hermeneutics help us understand why this is not simply a matter of documentation, but also one of professional judgment and ethical responsibility.

An elderly woman is sitting at her kitchen table when a home care professional arrives. On the table are a cup of coffee and a plate with half a slice of bread. The woman has taken a long time to prepare her breakfast. She is unsteady on her feet, and carrying things from the kitchen counter to the table has become difficult. The professional therefore believes that she should accept assistance. The woman shakes her head. “I want to do it myself,” she says. “It has always been my job.”

The professional is aware of the risk of falling and knows that the assistance is intended to make everyday life safer. Yet something in the woman’s response does not fit easily into the professional assessment. What does she really mean when she says that breakfast has always been her job? Is it simply an old habit she is reluctant to abandon, or is she telling us something essential about who she is?

When the professional later documents the visit, she must decide which aspects of the conversation to include in the care record. This choice is not merely a matter of documentation. It also concerns how the woman will be understood by those who subsequently provide her care. Good care therefore requires more than knowledge of another person’s lifeworld. It also requires responsibility for how we interpret and describe that person.

The Lifeworld – The World We Already Live In

Edmund Husserl was concerned with how human beings experience the world before it becomes an object of scientific investigation. In his later work, particularly The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology, he developed the concept of the lifeworld, Lebenswelt. The lifeworld is the world in which we already live and which we ordinarily take for granted, before we begin to explain it through theories, measurements, and scientific concepts.

We do not primarily encounter the world as a collection of objects possessing particular properties. We encounter it as a world that already has meaning for us. A kitchen table is not merely a physical object. It may be the place where a family has gathered for many years, where difficult conversations have taken place, and where each day still begins in a familiar way.

For the professional, breakfast may appear to be a practical task that needs to be carried out safely. For the woman, it may be part of her independence, her habits, and her sense of remaining the same person, even though her body no longer functions as it once did.

Both perspectives matter. The problem arises when the professional description takes precedence to such an extent that the woman’s own experience is no longer visible.

Husserl’s critique in The Crisis concerns how modern science has forgotten the lifeworld as its own foundation of meaning. Through mathematization and idealization, the sciences have developed an extraordinary capacity to describe and explain the world. Yet these objective descriptions rest upon a world that has already been experienced and endowed with meaning through human life.

A professional assessment of functional ability is not the same as the scientific idealization Husserl examined. Nevertheless, we can recognize a related problem. Professional descriptions also select particular aspects of reality and make them relevant for specific purposes. Such descriptions are necessary, but they cannot replace the full range of human experience upon which they depend.

The woman’s risk of falling is real. But it does not tell the whole truth about her breakfast.

Ricœur – From Experience to Interpretation

The French philosopher Paul Ricœur was profoundly influenced by Husserl. He studied phenomenology extensively and translated Husserl’s Ideas I into French. Over time, however, he developed a philosophy in which phenomenology and hermeneutics, the philosophical study of interpretation, became closely intertwined.

Husserl had taught him to investigate how the world appears to human consciousness. Ricœur also wanted to understand how our experiences are mediated through language, symbols, actions, and narratives.

This distinction does not mean that Husserl overlooked interpretation or that human experience, in his philosophy, lacked history or social context. His phenomenology also includes investigations of meaning and intersubjectivity. Ricœur’s distinctive contribution lies in his examination of how our understanding of ourselves and the world is mediated through interpretations from which we can never entirely step outside.

Consider again the woman at the kitchen table. When she says that breakfast has always been her job, she is expressing something about her own life. Yet the professional cannot immediately know what the statement means. It must be understood in relation to the woman’s experiences and circumstances.

Ricœur shows us that understanding is not simply a matter of retrieving a meaning that is already complete and waiting to be discovered. We seek understanding through interpretation, and our interpretations may prove incomplete.

This becomes especially apparent when the professional later transforms the conversation into a written care record.

When Conversation Becomes Text

After the visit, the professional sits down at her computer and writes:

“Service user resists necessary assistance with breakfast.”

The sentence is brief and recognizable within professional documentation. The woman has declined the assistance offered, and the professional considers that assistance necessary.

Yet something has happened to the conversation at the kitchen table.

The woman’s wish to do something herself has become resistance to assistance. Her words about breakfast always having been her job have disappeared. An action that may be connected to independence and personal history has been described as a problem in the delivery of a service.

This is more than a shortened account of the conversation. It is an interpretation.

Ricœur examined how a text acquires a certain autonomy once it has been written. He described this process in terms of distanciation. The original conversation and the situation from which the text emerged are no longer immediately available to the reader. The text can be read in new contexts and acquire meanings that are not entirely controlled by its author.

This insight is particularly important for understanding what happens to the care record.

While the professional was sitting at the kitchen table, she could see the woman, hear her voice, and ask further questions. Their conversation took place within a shared situation in which both could attempt to clarify what they meant.

When the conversation becomes a written record, much of this context disappears. What remains are the words the professional has chosen.

The following morning, another professional reads the note. This person was not present at the kitchen table and may know nothing about the woman’s reasons for declining assistance. What is now available is a text describing her as a service user who resists necessary support.

Ricœur helps us understand that the text does not simply transmit information. It also opens the possibility of new interpretations.

But the care record possesses a feature that makes the situation particularly significant: it is not just any text. It belongs to an institutional context in which it may provide the basis for assessments, decisions, and actions.

When an interpretation is entered into the care record, it acquires the status of documented knowledge. Other professionals may base their assessments upon it without having heard the woman’s own words. In this way, a provisional interpretation can gradually acquire the character of an established fact.

This is a practical implication we can draw from Ricœur’s philosophy of texts. He was not writing about record-keeping in home care services, but his analysis of textual autonomy provides a way of examining what happens when an oral conversation becomes a document on which others are expected to act.

When an Action Acquires a New Meaning

Ricœur was also concerned with the relationship between text and action. He showed how meaningful human actions can be interpreted in ways that resemble the interpretation of texts.

An action has meaning within the situation in which it is performed, but it may also be understood differently when viewed retrospectively.

The woman’s refusal of assistance offers an example.

For the woman, refusing assistance may express a desire for independence. For the professional, it may appear to be a rejection of necessary care. When the refusal is subsequently documented, it acquires another meaning as part of the service’s professional record.

None of these perspectives can automatically be treated as the whole truth.

Nor is it certain that the woman herself can fully explain why breakfast matters so much to her. Human actions are not always transparent, even to those who perform them.

Ricœur’s point is therefore not that we should replace the professional’s interpretation with the woman’s own account. Rather, understanding requires a willingness to consider different possible meanings and to remain open to the possibility that our initial interpretation may be inadequate.

For the professional, this becomes a question of judgment.

She must distinguish between what she has observed, what the woman herself has said, and the professional assessment she makes.

“She declined the offer of assistance with breakfast” describes an event.

“She resists necessary assistance” also contains an assessment of the woman’s action and the necessity of the support.

Both may be relevant, but the distinction should remain visible.

When writing about other people, we should therefore ask ourselves what we actually know, what we are interpreting, and how the text may be understood by someone who was not present.

Understanding Does Not Mean Agreeing

The professional still faces a problem. The woman remains unsteady on her feet, and the risk of falling has not diminished simply because breakfast has personal significance.

Ricœur’s philosophy does not imply that we should allow people’s own narratives to replace professional assessments.

He emphasized the relationship between understanding and explanation. We do not have to choose between them. Explanation can contribute to better understanding, while understanding can reveal which questions require further investigation.

The professional must therefore take the woman’s wishes seriously while also assessing the risk of falling. Practical adjustments may make it possible for her to continue preparing parts of her breakfast independently. Yet such arrangements must also be assessed in relation to the specific circumstances. Good intentions do not necessarily make an action safe or professionally justifiable.

Practical judgment is not merely a matter of applying general rules to individual cases. It also involves understanding what is at stake in a particular situation and considering how different concerns can be accommodated without allowing one automatically to override all the others.

For professionals in health and social care services, this implies a particular approach to practice. We must ask what an action means to the person concerned, investigate the possibilities available, and document both the person's expressed wishes and our professional assessments.

This does not mean that we can always fulfil those wishes. But when we cannot, we should be able to explain why without reducing the disagreement to a problem located within the person.

A Story That Can Still Change

Ricœur developed the concept of narrative identity to understand how human beings establish continuity in their lives through stories.

We recognize ourselves through habits, experiences, and relationships. At the same time, we are not entirely determined by who we have been in the past. We can change, make new choices, and understand our lives differently.

Ricœur distinguishes between what remains recognizable about us over time and the selfhood expressed through our actions, responsibilities, and relationships with others. This is the distinction between sameness (idem) and selfhood (ipse).

We are therefore not simply the sum of the habits and characteristics that make us recognizable. We are also human beings capable of taking a position on who we wish to be, even as the circumstances of our lives change.

The woman may lose the ability to prepare breakfast in the way she once did without thereby losing the capacity to express how she wants her morning to begin.

Having prepared breakfast herself for many years may be an important part of her identity. But this does not mean that she will always wish to do it in the same way. One day, she may welcome assistance. On another, she may experience the same assistance as a loss of independence.

This also makes the care record important.

When we write that a person “resists assistance,” the description can easily begin to resemble a lasting personal characteristic. Yet what was observed was an action in a particular situation.

Ricœur’s understanding of narrative identity reminds us that a person’s story is not finished while life continues. The past gives meaning to the present, but it does not determine every future action.

A good professional record should therefore do more than describe accurately what has happened. It should also avoid language that unnecessarily confines a person to a particular understanding of who they are.

The Following Morning

The next morning, the professional returns. The woman is sitting at the kitchen table. Her coffee cup is still on the kitchen counter, and breakfast has not yet been prepared.

“I have been thinking about what you said yesterday,” the professional says. “You told me that breakfast has always been your job. What matters most to you about being able to do it yourself?”

The woman shrugs.

“I don't know. I just don't want other people deciding everything for me.”

The professional asks whether they might look at ways of making breakfast safer. The woman does not answer immediately. She looks towards the kitchen counter and finally says that she does not want someone standing over her, watching everything she does.

It is not an answer that resolves the problem.

The professional remains concerned about the risk of falling. She still believes that the woman needs assistance, but she now understands more clearly why the offer feels difficult to accept. She tries to explain her concern without treating the woman’s resistance as evidence that she does not understand her situation.

They do not reach an agreement that morning either.

Nevertheless, something has changed. The professional has gained a better understanding of what receiving assistance may mean to the woman, and of the issues on which they continue to disagree.

When she subsequently writes in the care record, she uses different words:

“Service user wishes to prepare her own breakfast and expresses concern about losing control over her everyday life. She has been informed about the risk of falling, which continues to be assessed as significant. Possible adjustments were discussed, but no agreement was reached. Further discussion and assessment are required.”

The new note does not eliminate the risk of falling. Nor does it remove the professional’s responsibilities. But it provides a different starting point for the next person who reads the record.

The woman no longer appears simply as someone who refuses assistance. She also appears as a person attempting to preserve influence over her own everyday life.

At the same time, the professional disagreement remains visible. The note conceals neither the uncertainty nor the need for further assessment.

Ricœur’s insight into the autonomy of texts thus becomes a practical question: How can we write in such a way that those who subsequently read our words have an opportunity to understand the situation without uncritically adopting our interpretation?

No formulation can guarantee this completely. But we can write in ways that make the distinction between events, statements, and assessments visible, while leaving room for further questions.

Allowing Others to Participate in Their Own Stories

Husserl’s philosophy of the lifeworld reminds us that human experience provides the foundation for the descriptions we develop of the world. When we forget this foundation, our professional categories may appear more complete than they really are.

Ricœur develops this insight further by showing how our understanding of experience is mediated through interpretation. Once interpretations become texts, they may also acquire significance far beyond the situations in which they originated.

This is especially important when we work with people who depend on the assistance of others. The person who needs support may also be the person who has the least influence over how their own situation is described. Others observe, assess, document, and plan.

We can never describe another person’s life completely. We must select what is relevant, and we must make professional judgments. But we can do so in ways that show what the person has expressed, what we have actually observed, and what we do not yet know.

Responsibility for others thus also becomes responsibility for the words we use.

The woman is still sitting at the kitchen table. Breakfast is not quite ready, and she and the professional still disagree about how assistance should be provided. The risk of falling has not diminished. But the care record now says something different from the claim that she resists necessary assistance.

It also records what she herself wants, what concerns the professional, and what they have not yet agreed upon.

Perhaps this is where responsibility towards another person reveals itself: not in the belief that we have finally understood who that person is, but in our willingness to keep our own account of the other open to further understanding.

For none of us should have to continue living within a story that others have already brought to a conclusion on our behalf.