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Eugene Gendlin was a philosophy student at UChicago in the 1950s. He was touched by existentialist phenomenology, early pragmatists. He wanted to know—how do ideas come into being? He couldn’t get away from this sense that there was a preverbal sense driving ideas and meaning.
A kick-ass one at that too. He did for years. A student of therapy, a client, and a therapist too. He won awards for this stuff. He was good. Eventually, he started running studies with Carl Rogers to sort what made good therapy work. Why did some clients recover and others not?
Firstly, the therapist’s presence among the client (my words), and secondly, the client’s presence with their own selves. Those who checked, slowed down, were with the subconscious, automatic, somatic of their experience—they experienced something.
That quality, of being able to express what one felt in a way that felt true—it was healing, and they received it well. Focusing was the formalisation of this process in a way that was widely teachable and worked to bump more clients into experiencing.
Without that desire to change. That quietness and humility . . . and pride in saying what feels truly right. Our brains move too fast, you see. We spin up all sorts of ideas and feelings and even felt senses, to play to an image, and this playing to makes us unhappy.
More so, it keeps us where we are. One must admit with totality the content of our experience. https://t.co/exQ0piRYiC
We are looking for a reality with an oomph to it. Focusing, and truly /feeling/ yes, this /is/ my actual felt experience now, is something else. https://t.co/z16T2zvYKz
Does posting this have an oomph to it? Not quite. It’s starting to. This is already real. I feel I have waited all my life for this moment to step inside the house as people say, “Welcome.” Welcome to a world that feels real, and experiences and actions have that oomph to them
An entry port into living life like a 1-player game. https://t.co/xHAi6Xwo9H
</editorialising> Source for the origin story above: Cornell, A. W. (2013). Focusing in Clinical Practice: The Essence of Change. https://t.co/aJbJOQcT1s
More on the research basis, with vivid quotes and examples. https://t.co/03K12BEB1R
oh, and if you haven’t seen this, how a lot of people on this corner of twitter ended up hearing about gendlin https://t.co/wTVVQUSqB2
connection to phenomenology, and merleau-ponty https://t.co/PRr71FY1e2
Interesting connection for those of you who’ve heard of Eugene Gendlin or Focusing: Gendlin was initially a philosophy major. part of the reason he came to develop focusing was reading Merleau-Ponty and company. If you haven’t heard of Gendlin: https://t.co/AK5AhBrNS0