nexmin term
Phenomenological process model
The phenomenological process model is the approach nexmin uses to analyse sessions, drawn from the phenomenological and humanistic tradition: describing experience as the person expresses it, in their own words, before interpreting it, and following how that expression changes over the process.
Phenomenology, founded by Edmund Husserl in the early twentieth century, studies experience as it presents itself to the person living it. It reached psychotherapy mainly by two routes: Carl Rogers’s person-centred therapy, which placed the person’s own perception of their experience at the centre, and the existential tradition. Ernesto Spinelli sums up the phenomenological method in three rules: setting aside one’s own assumptions (epoché), describing before explaining, and not ranking what appears in advance. Eugene Gendlin also studied how the way a person lives and expresses their experience changes over the course of therapy.
Fictitious example
The person says: “When I walk into the house my chest tightens.” A phenomenological description records that sentence and when it comes up; an interpretation such as “anxiety about a family conflict”, if suggested, is marked as a hypothesis to be tested.
What to check
- That observations quote what the person said, not a summary that already interprets it.
- That whatever is interpretation is marked as a hypothesis.
- That the session’s theoretical framework is the one you meant to apply.
Inside nexmin
It is the underlying orientation of nexmin’s analysis and works alongside the theoretical framework you choose for each session, such as cognitive behavioural or systemic. It shows in how the tasks are divided: Scriba describes; Pensa formulates the working hypotheses, in their own block, and follows how things evolve. In the process variables, each score rests on sentences from the session, with their minute when the transcript has timestamps.
Limit
It is not a diagnostic system or a validated scale. Research instruments from this tradition exist, such as the Experiencing Scale by Klein, Gendlin and colleagues; nexmin’s scores are estimates to guide your review.
Related terms
Sources
- David Woodruff Smith. Phenomenology. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2003, revised 2013).
- Carl R. Rogers. Client-Centered Therapy: Its Current Practice, Implications, and Theory. Houghton Mifflin (1951).
- Eugene T. Gendlin. Experiencing and the Creation of Meaning: A Philosophical and Psychological Approach to the Subjective. Free Press of Glencoe (1962).
- Marjorie H. Klein, Philippa L. Mathieu, Eugene T. Gendlin and Donald J. Kiesler. The Experiencing Scale: A Research and Training Manual, vol. 1. Wisconsin Psychiatric Institute (1969).
- Ernesto Spinelli. The Interpreted World: An Introduction to Phenomenological Psychology, 2nd ed. SAGE (2005).
- Carl R. Rogers. A process conception of psychotherapy. American Psychologist, 13(4), 142-149 (1958).
Sources checked on 04/10/2026.
Last updated: 2026-10-05