Qualitative analyses is a phenomenological-oriented framework for psychopatological research useful in hypothesis formulation and exploratory studies, as well as in assessement of real world, first-personal experiences of laboratory findings or sub-personal impairments. Its aim is a wide range understanding of the patient's morbid subjectivity, not constrained in a priori fixed schemata.

We describe the basic principles of this method applied to psychopathological research. The qualitative approach to anomalous experience is concerned with bringing forth the typical feature(s) of actual personal experiences. A three-step procedure is described entailing assessement of subjective experiences, positing of subjective experiences within personal narratives and finally the construction of trans-personal prototypes. Qualitative research method is based on systematic but flexible interrogation of initially unstructured phenomena; it requires maximum elasticity in generating new categories from phenomena and enhances dense conceptual development and dialectical process between phenomena and the clinician's conceptualizations. It promotes also clinical setting as a source of relevant data of research; it also allows knowledge of single patients deeper than the experimental setting and may promote s a more circunstantiated comprehension of them.