Focusing

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Focusing is a naturally occurring human process. Here is a clear description of it, from "The Stream of Consciousness" (1892) by William James:

"The object before the mind always has a 'Fringe.' There are other unnamed modifications of consciousness just as important as the transitive states, and just as cognitive as they...

Suppose we try to recall a forgotten name. The state of our consciousness is peculiar. There is a gap therein; but no mere gap. It is a gap that is intensely active. A sort of wraith of the name is in it, beckoning us in a given direction, making us at moments tingle with the sense of our closeness, and then letting us sink back without the longed-for term. If wrong names are proposed to us, this singularly definite gap acts immediately so as to negate them. They do not fit into its mould.

"And the gap of one word does not feel like the gap of another, all empty of content as both might seem necessarily to be when described as gaps. When I vainly try to recall the name of Spalding, my consciousness is far removed from what it is when I vainly try to recall the name of Bowles. There are innumerable consciousnesses of want, no one of which taken in itself has a name, but all different from each other. Such feeling of want is totally other than a want of feeling: it is an intense feeling...

"The traditional psychology talks like one who should say a river consists of nothing but pailsful, spoonsful, quartpotsful, barrelsful, and other moulded forms of water. Even were the pails and the pots all actually standing in the stream, still between them the free water would continue to flow. It is just this free water of consciousness that psychologists resolutely overlook. Every definite image in the mind is steeped and dyed in the free water that flows round it. With it goes the sense of its relations, near and remote, the dying echo of whence it came to us, the dawning sense of whither it is to lead. The significance, the value, of the image is all in this halo or penumbra that surrounds and escorts it, - or rather that is fused into one with it and has become bone of its bone and flesh of its flesh; leaving it, it is true, an image of the same thing it was before, but making it an image of that thing newly taken and freshly understood.

Let us call the consciousness of this halo of relations around the image by the name of 'psychic overtone' or 'fringe.'"

Eugene Gendlin, a philosopher and psychotherapist based at the University of Chicago, realised three things: (1) that Focusing is of central importance; (2) that very many people have little of no access to this process; and (3) that it is teachable.

Since the 1960s, Eugene Gendlin has presided over a communal effort of teaching and reflection, which has made it possible for Focusing to become accessible to countless people all over the world.

Gendlin brought the concepts of Focusing to the attention of psychotherapists and developed a technique that can be successfully used in any kind of therapeutic situation, including peer-to-peer sessions.

Contents

[edit] Origins of the concept

For fifteen years, Eugene Gendlin was engaged in research at the University of Chicago into psychotherapy and counselling. He was examining what makes psychotherapy successful or unsuccessful; and, like other researchers, he found what he was expecting to find. He already knew the vital importance of Focusing, not least from seeing its role in his family's decision-making during their flight from Nazi-occupied Austria in 1938.

He found, as he foresaw, that it is not the therapist's technique that determines the success of psychotherapy, but something the client does during therapy sessions. Though this 'something' is an inner act, it is one which is consistently marked by an observable set of behaviors, so that it was possible for Gendlin to see in his research when this inner act was happening, and when it wasn't.[1]

Eugene Gendlin found that successful clients intuitively focused on a very subtle and vague internal bodily awareness, which he termed a "felt sense." They are doing the sort of thing which William James describes in the citation above.


[edit] What is a "felt sense"?

Much of what a person knows has never been consciously thought and verbalized. Felt sense is the name Gendlin gave to the unclear preverbal sense of 'something', as that something is experienced in the body. It is not the same as an emotion. This bodily felt 'something' may be of a situation, or of something that is 'coming' like an idea or the line of a poem. It is not necessarily of something that will be expressed in words, for instance it might be the right line to draw next in completing a drawing. Crucial to the concept as defined by Gendlin, is that it is unclear and vague and is always more than any one expression from it. Hence, the felt sense is not the words that come from it. On the contrary, words that may express it can be tested against the felt sense. The felt sense will not resonate with a word or phrase that doesn't adequately 'say' it. Finally, a felt sense forms, and is always tangible. The focusing process makes a felt sense more tangible and easier to work with. [1].

[edit] And then what happens?

Gendlin observed clients, writers and people in ordinary life ("Focusers") turning their attention to this not-yet-articulated knowing. As a felt sense formed, there would be long pauses together with sounds like 'uh....' Once the person had accurately identified this felt sense, new words would come, and new insights into the situation. There would be a sense of felt movement (the felt shift), and the person would begin to be able to move beyond the "stuck" place, having fresh insights, and perhaps action steps.


[edit] Learning and using the technique of Focusing

Gendlin (and others) devised teaching steps for the process he had observed, so that it could be shown to people who to whom it was unknown. His six steps are detailed in the book Focusing.[1]

Focusing is now practiced all over the world[2]. Focusers often like to have a listener present who has been trained in "experiential listening", a way of listening to felt undercurrents as much as to the surface, which supports the Focusing process.

At other times, people do Focusing alone, with the company of a journal or a sketchbook. Drawing and painting are especially vital to the Focusing processes of children.

In the main, Focusing and listening sessions take place informally between ordinary people in everyday life; but Focusing also has a life in professional settings with Focusing trainers, Focusing-oriented therapists and Focusing-oriented life-coaches.

A focusing session can last from a few minutes to an hour.

The Focusing-oriented psychotherapist, among other things, attributes central importance to the client's capacity to be aware of his/her "felt sense," and the meaning behind the words or images s/he choose to represent the felt sense. The client's ability to sense into feelings and meanings which are not yet formed is also important.[vague] Additionally, the therapist pays attention to his/her own felt sense as a source of information and insight during the therapy process.

[edit] Gendlin the philosopher

Gendlin's training in German Romantic and American Neo-Pragmatist Philosophy before he became a psychotherapist and researcher is relevant to the history of Focusing. His philosophical investigations, which concerned themselves with the nature of 'the implicit', made it easy for him to notice that there was something being attended to by successful clients which was not yet explicit. His philosophical work is referred to as 'The Philosophy of The Implicit', see www.focusing.org. His later philosophical work also builds on what he learned as a psychotherapist and researcher. The whole of Gendlin's philosophical work forms a framework for understanding what the felt sense 'is', and what makes Focusing possible. Most of his written works are now available online at the Gendlin Online Library.

[edit] Other applications of focusing

Focusing happens in other domains besides therapy. Attention to the felt sense naturally takes place in all manner of processes where something new is being formed: for example in creative process, learning, thinking, and decision making. See Focusing Oriented Pyschotherapy, Gendlin, 2001.

Eugene Gendlin himself says: "I did not invent Focusing. I simply made some steps which help people to find Focusing."

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b c E. T. Gendlin. Focusing. Second edition, Bantam Books, 1982. ISBN 0-553-27833-9.
  2. ^ www.innerrelationship.com/directory

[edit] Bibliography

[edit] External links

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Focusing"
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