Algumas contribuições de Merleau-Ponty para a Psicologia em “Fenomenologia da percepção”

This essay consists of the author’s theoretical examination in the Selection Process of Assistant Professor for the Department of Psychology at the Federal University of Paraná, submitted in June, 2002. It succinctly presents contributions to psychology in Merleau-Ponty’s doctoral thesis of 1945, entitled “Phenomenology of Perception.” Merleau-Ponty sets out to discover original meanings as a road for perceiving human understanding. In his proposal, rationality takes on the status of science by preserving both subject and object. In other words, one finds in the world what it is fact and, on this basis, what perceptions can be confirmed or denied. Merleau-Ponty re-posits Husserl’s transcendental question: based on the natural and the social we discover the ambiguity of life, of being “in the” world and being “of the” world. We are questioned by it and we are free to choose. Contributions to psychology are discussed based on Merleau-Ponty’s perspective of the organization of the perspective field carried out by subject-body in situation.