Bracketing (also called epoché or the phenomenological reduction) is a term derived from Edmund Husserl (1859-1938) for the act of suspending judgment about the natural world that precedes phenomenological analysis.
Bracketing involves setting aside the question of the real existence of the contemplated object, as well as all other questions about its physical or objective nature; these are left to the natural sciences. For example, the experience of seeing a horse qualifies as an experience, irrespective of whether the horse appears in reality, in a dream, or in a hallucination. By bracketing the horse as object of this experience (and, ordinarily, the entire objective world to which the horse belongs if it is real), the phenomenologist puts aside all questions concerning its objective existence or non-existence and considers only the experience that he or she has of it.
The concept can be better understood in terms of the phenomenological activity it is supposed to make possible: the "unpacking" of phenomena, or, in other words, systematically peeling away their symbolic meanings like layers of an onion until only the thing itself as meant and experienced remains. Thus, one's subjective perception of the bracketed phenomenon is examined and analyzed in its purity.
Moustakas, C. (1994). Phenomenolgical research methods. Sage, Thousand Oaks (CA).
Creswell, J.W.(2007). Qualitative inquiry and research design. Sage, Thousand Oaks (CA).