Embodied Encounters
Focusing
(Felt Sensing)
What is Focusing?
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In Focusing, we engage with our natural, but often lost, ability to sense inward, enabling the intelligence of our body to shape and express itself through what is known as the Felt Sense. The resulting new, fresh verbalizations and other symbolizations in images, gestures or movements are invited to resonate anew in the body – enabling an experience that gradually facilitates change and forward movement in our lives.
What is the Felt Sense?
The Felt Sense, according to Gendlin, is a feeling situated in a zone between the conscious and unconscious, related to a specific life situation. It is a vague, unclear feeling that freshly forms each time we sense inside. Emerging from the bodily sensations, we create symbols – words, images, gestures, or movements – whose resonance in the body we subsequently explore anew. Although the knowledge and wisdom of the body, and with it the Felt Sense, are always far more than we are able to express, fresh symbolization has the ability to reverberate back to the sensed body and to enable forward movement.
Gendlin’s central questions
In his work as a philosopher and psychotherapist, Eugene T. Gendlin, the founder of Focusing, was guided by two central questions: firstly, the philosophical question of the connection between inner experiencing and language, logic, and meaning; and secondly, the predominantly therapeutic question of how personality changes, which lead to the success of the psychotherapy, can become possible, — a question also informed by studies conducted jointly with Carl Rogers. Gendlin formulated a philosophy of the implicit, which primarily understands the body as an interaction with the environment, as a body-environment. From this, he derived the implicit knowledge of the body, which is always more than we can express in words and which, at the same time, underlies all symbolization in language, images, gestures, movements, and logic. Because our symbolizations arise from a bodily felt meaning, and because these symbolizations, insofar as they are felt to be in accordance with this feeling, carry the experience forward, it is this specific kind of interplay which enables change in our personality. According to Gendlin, the only truly constant thing is the life process, which always carries forward and fundamentally moves towards life. Focusing is the facilitation of change that is already implicit but has not yet come to be.
Gendlin's life
Eugene T. Gendlin was born in 1926 into a Jewish family in Vienna. It was his father's "gut feeling" that prompted the family to flee to the United States in 1938, just in time to escape the Nazis. Gendlin eventually studied philosophy at the University of Chicago, where he earned his doctorate with a thesis on “The function of experiencing in symbolization". At the University of Chicago, he also became acquainted with Carl Rogers, a professor of psychology and the founder of "Client-Centered Psychotherapy". Gendlin trained as a psychotherapist under Rogers and, in various leadership roles, participated in numerous studies and research projects. From 1964 to 1995, he taught at both the philosophy and psychology departments at the University of Chicago. He authored a variety of books, including "Experiencing and the creation of meaning. A philosophical and psychological approach to the subjective" (1962) and his magnum opus, "A Process Model" (2018), in which he presented a comprehensive philosophy of the implicit. He also published numerous articles, including the psychotherapeutically significant "A Theory of Personality Change" (1964). For many years, he voluntarily led a group called "Changes," initially provided for advanced psychotherapy students who wanted to offer psychological help in their community. However, the group came to invite those who called the helpline to their meetings, turning "Changes" into an inclusive self-help community where members helped each other through specifically trained listening aligned with Focusing principles. In 1970, Gendlin received the "Distinguished Professional Psychologist Award" from the American Psychological Association (APA) for his groundbreaking work in psychotherapy. His book "Focusing" (1978) became particularly well-known as a self-help guide. Among therapists, his most recognized works include "Focusing-oriented Psychotherapy. A manual of the experiential method" (1996) and his anthology "Focusing in Practice. An intermodal method for psychotherapy and everyday life" (1999).