Inspired by his discovery of ‘Focusing’ and its roots in the ‘Philosophy of the Implicit’ (1997b), Gendlin developed focusing-oriented/experiential psychotherapy (e.g. Gendlin, 1961, 1968, 1973b, 1981, 1996, 1997a). It had some
support from Rogerian psychotherapy (Rogers, 1951) after Gendlin teamed up with
Carl Rogers’ group at the Counselling Centre of the University of Chicago in the 1950s. The first research on Focusing began in 1957. Subsequently, over 100
research projects (Hendricks, 2002a) have indicated that Focusing is an important
success variable in psychotherapy, and also that it correlates with personality and
physiological measures.
The Focusing Institute, which was founded in New York in 1986 as a
non-profit corporation, is a world-wide membership organisation. According to
The Focusing Institute website, ‘its mission is to make focusing available to the academic and scholarly communities and to the public at large.’ The Folio,
published in 1981 to disseminate developments in Focusing, became the journal of
the Focusing Institute. In recognition of the self-help and community development
skills it has brought to the public and the contributions of its psychotherapists, The
Focusing Institute gained the Charlotte Buehler award from the Humanistic
advanced diversity of practice among focusing teachers. Statistics show that in
2005 there were approximately 1,500 non-voting subscribers spread over fifty
countries. The training of an international network of focusing teachers
commenced in 1987. The underlying reason was that focusing is a teachable
procedure that any of us can use to gain entry to the deeper, implicit knowledge
that comes about from having lived with a problem. For the purposes of expanding
training opportunities and protecting diverse ways of teaching, a ‘Certifying Coordinators’, structure for teacher training was developed eight years later. The international website (http://www.focusing.org), created in 1995, consists of an
online bookstore, in-depth publications, related links and referrals to focusing
teachers, therapists, and partners.
First described in 1964 by Gendlin (1964; Cornell, 1993; Purton, 2004),
Focusing is currently extensively used in such diverse fields as psychotherapy,
writing, education, meditation, medicine, business, architecture, and creative
processes. Gendlin describes it in his book Focusing (1978/1981/2003). Over
400,000 copies have been sold and it is available in French, German, Spanish,
Dutch, Danish, Japanese, Swedish, Hungarian, Italian, Hebrew, Chinese and Greek.
The aim of this book was to make Focusing accessible to the public; Gendlin has
also published over 240 professional articles and books.
3) Philosophical aspects of Gendlin’s theory
In his early book, Experiencing and the Creation of Meaning
(1962/1997), Gendlin explores how ‘concepts’ relate to ‘experiencing’. He explains
how experiencing functions in our cognitive and social activities, and he developed
concepts from those relations. For him (1997) logical do not exist purely and
simply on their own; the implicit experiential content is also always there. Hence in
concepts is fundamental. Concerning the characteristics of the relationship between
experiencing and symbols, Gendlin (1997, p.xii) states:
[E]xperiencing and concepts (or symbols) are surely not two separate things that have to become “related.” Each is always already implicit in the other. There is no “unsymbolized experiencing” anymore than there is “pure logic.” Even without explicit words or concepts, experiencing is “symbolised” at least by the interactions and situations in which experiencing happens… If every moment is both, it has seemed impossible to know what is done by the one rather than the other. But there is a way to discern their different roles in the transitions from one statement or action to another.
The concepts or symbols allow our experience to become more explicit (Purton,
2002). For Gendlin, the concepts neither represent nor give us a picture of
experience. It is not possible to study experiencing as something by itself.
Experiencing can only be studied in being carried forward by some kind of
expansion. Gendlin’s concepts address themselves. They expand the process by
which they were enlarged upon (Hendricks, 2002a). By looking at how
experiencing functions in several kinds of explicating, Gendlin is able to formulate
“characteristics of experiencing” (Gendlin, 1961, p.234) as it functions in explication.
In A Process Model (1997), Gendlin lets these relations of explication
and experiencing unfold into a model that is capable of reformulating basic terms
in any field (Hendricks, 2002a). The fundamental standpoint of that model is
derived from Focusing and the process of explication in activities where there is
the creation of meaning. In explication, with every bit of life the next step is
‘implied’ in a new sense of ‘implies’. Implying is the converse of carrying forward: the second event carries forward the first when one event implies another (Purton,
2004). Accordingly, each additional occurring changes the implying so that there is
the implying of another fresh occurring (Hendricks, 2002a). Hunger is a good
forward. Hunger implies eating, eating shifts the hunger, but this sense of
‘implying’ is more expansive, indefinite and unlimited than the typical meaning of ‘implies’ (Walkerden, 2000). Gendlin postulates a continuity of internal relations, not just external relations for every occurring that implies a next occurring which
will change it (Hendricks, 2002a).
Since another fundamental concept in A Process Model is the identity of
body and environment in any moment of living, Gendlin’s philosophy is relevant to understanding the human body that is an intricate interaction around us. Gendlin
(2003, p.viii) states:
My philosophy leads to new concepts in physics and biology, to understand the human body differently. Your body is not a machine, rather a wonderfully intricate interaction with everything around you, which is why it “knows” so much just in being. The animals live intricately with each other without culture and language. The different cultures don’t create us. They only add elaboration. The living body is always going beyond what evolution, culture and language have already built. The body is always sketching and probing a few steps further. Your ongoing living makes new evolution and history happen now.
Working on the premise that living bodies are environmental interactions,
bodily experiencing is not subjective. The body is interaction and as such it always
embodies the complexity of the environment, which takes in all of our human
situations. Bodily living in each and every situation embraces the implicit intricacy
of that situation and the next steps it implies. Gendlin’s concepts of human process
are consistent with the concepts of animal behaviour and bodily tissue process
(Hendricks, 2002a). For example, if one pays attention to the middle of his body
just now, he will find his intricate body sense of the present which consists of his
situations or problems.
In Gendlin’s range of vision our body can guide and speak to us and we can speak directly from the body about many things especially the body and
ordinarily understand. Language is not merely a dictionary of words, phrases, and
terminology. The language belongs to a single system that includes the situations
we happen to be in. Language is implicit in the human process of living. The words
we need to say come directly from the body as our body wisdom speaks for itself.
In the realm of body-knowing we have no language other than that which the body
provides.
The fresh colourful new phrases that come from the bodily sense are far
more energising and forward moving than the usual big vague words and phrases
that hold us back. We can articulate what we want words to mean in one or more
whole sentences provided we use words in a fresh and creative way. This means
that a word can be expanded to include more than its usual meaning so that it
speaks from the felt sense (Gendlin, 2004). By using the relations between sensing
and speaking, Gendlin (2004 p. 4) mentioned that:
Once one experiences this “speaking form,” the way it carries the body forward becomes utterly recognisable. Then, although one might be able to say many things and make many new distinctions, one prefers being stuck and silent until phrases come that do carry the felt sense forward.
The possibility of new phrasing then lies in the fact that language is
always implicit in human experiencing and ingrained in what experiencing is. A
fresh statement neither reduces nor limits what one implicitly lives and wants to
say. Instead, it is physically an expansion of what one senses and means to say.