Focusing

In psychotherapy-related disciples, the term focusing is used to refer to the simple matter of holding a kind of open, non-judging attention to something which is directly experienced but is not yet in words. Focusing can be used to become clear on what one feels or wants.^[1] Focusing is set apart from other methods of inner awareness by three qualities: something called the "felt sense", a quality of engaged accepting attention, and a philosophy of what facilitates change.^[2]

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.

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.^[3]

Eugene Gendlin found that successful clients intuitively focused on a very subtle and vague internal bodily awareness, which he termed a "felt sense". However Gendlin himself says: "I did not invent Focusing. I simply made some steps which help people to find Focusing."

What is a "felt sense"?

Much of what a person knows has never been consciously thought or verbalized. Felt sense is the name Gendlin gave to the unclear, pre-verbal 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 an awareness of a situation or an old hurt, or of something that is 'coming' — perhaps an idea, or the next line of a poem, or 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 it is always more than any attempt to express it verbally.

The focusing process makes a felt sense more tangible and easier to work with.^[3] In order to help the felt sense form, the focuser may try out words that might express it. These words can be tested against the felt sense: the felt sense will not resonate with a word or phrase that does not adequately 'say' it. When the felt sense does form, it is always tangible, something the focuser can feel in his/her body and to which s/he will have an emotional reaction.

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.

Learning and using the technique of Focusing

Gendlin (and others) devised teaching steps for the process he had observed. His six steps are detailed in the book Focusing.^[3] Ann Weiser Cornell teaches Focusing as a four step process,^[1] while emphasizing that there is an essence to Focusing that is beyond steps.^[2]

Focusing is now practiced all over the world^[4]. 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.

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.

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.

References

Bibliography

• E. T. Gendlin. Focusing. Second edition, Bantam Books, 1982. ISBN 0-553-27833-9.
• John J. Shea. Religious Experiencing: William James and Eugene Gendlin. Rowman and Littlefield, 1987. ISBN 0-8191-6136-5.
• E. T. Gendlin. Focusing-Oriented Psychotherapy: A Manual of the Experiential Method. Guilford Publications, 1996. ISBN 0-89862-479-7.
• E. T. Gendlin. What happens when Wittgenstein asks “What happens when...?”. The Philosophical Forum Volume XXVIII, No. 3, 1997.
• E. T. Gendlin. A Process model. Unpublished manuscript, 1997.
• Ann Weiser Cornell. The Power of Focusing New Harbinger Publications, 1996.
• Helene Brenner, I know I'm in there somewhere. Gotham Books; Reprint edition (May 2004)ISBN 1-59240-060-4

External links

• The Focusing Institute
• Directory of Focusing Trainers using Inner Relationship Focusing
• Rob Foxcroft on experiential focusing
• Recovery Focusing
• Work on General Sensate Focusing (a related concept) by Ilan Shalif
• Interamerican Focusing Institute
• Focusing Institut Berlin
• Japan Focusing Association
• Focusing-Oriented Arts Therapy