A wide range of authors from around the world bring fresh thinking to the meaning of Focusing and how Eugene Gendlin’ s work grew from and has developed different elements of philosophy and psychotherapy, making a unique contribution to Humanistic Therapy.
We usually speak about ‘our’ body, we take it as a given (a given to us and for us) but it is actually that which gives, an origin of giving-ness, a surplus of life, an excessiveness, inexhaustible fullness, essence of the world, life. We feel, we believe that sentience cannot be reduced to a concept; we feel that sensing is prior even to the usual modalities of sensory perceptions and representations, which always fail to depict its richness and its subtlety.
Judy Moore & Nikolaos Kypriotakis, Prologue
We usually speak about ‘our’ body, we take it as a given (a given to us and for us) but it is actually that which gives, an origin of giving-ness, a surplus of life, an excessiveness, inexhaustible fullness, essence of the world, life. We feel, we believe that sentience cannot be reduced to a concept; we feel that sensing is prior even to the usual modalities of sensory perceptions and representations, which always fail to depict its richness and its subtlety.
Judy Moore & Nikolaos Kypriotakis, Prologue
We usually speak about ‘our’ body, we take it as a given (a given to us and for us) but it is actually that which gives, an origin of giving-ness, a surplus of life, an excessiveness, inexhaustible fullness, essence of the world, life. We feel, we believe that sentience cannot be reduced to a concept; we feel that sensing is prior even to the usual modalities of sensory perceptions and representations, which always fail to depict its richness and its subtlety.
Nikolaos Kypriotakis & Judy Moore, Prologue
There is the absolutely best laboratory, as far as we know at least, in the whole cosmos, which you can have access to. Because the absolutely best laboratory in the whole cosmos, which has a direct line into whatever everything is, that’s a human being. And you have that with you. So anything that comes out of that laboratory has really great possibilities, even if it looks like a very small thing.
Gendlin's spoken words - Best laboratory
There is the absolutely best laboratory, as far as we know at least, in the whole cosmos, which you can have access to. Because the absolutely best laboratory in the whole cosmos, which has a direct line into whatever everything is, that’s a human being. And you have that with you. So anything that comes out of that laboratory has really great possibilities, even if it looks like a very small thing.
Gendlin's spoken words - Best laboratory
There is the absolutely best laboratory, as far as we know at least, in the whole cosmos, which you can have access to. Because the absolutely best laboratory in the whole cosmos, which has a direct line into whatever everything is, that’s a human being. And you have that with you. So anything that comes out of that laboratory has really great possibilities, even if it looks like a very small thing.
Gendlin's spoken words - Best laboratory
Focusing, FOT
and the Philosophy of the Implicit
Within these volumes many elements of Focusing theory and practice are addressed, including different takes on Focusing and Focusing-oriented Therapy as it is understood and practised in a variety of cultures and contexts.
The thinking and cultural precedents that prefigure and underpin Eugene Gendlin’s formulation of the Philosophy of the Implicit and Focusing-oriented Therapy are explored by a wide range of authors. Drawing on sources from philosophy, science, the Arts and religion, they demonstrate that ‘Focusing’ has existed in various forms across the centuries before it found its mid-twentieth century name and became itself reified into a ‘construct’.
Some of the many applications of Focusing are considered, including the use of body-mapping with children and adults, how Focusing can help when working with physical illness, how Focusing can be applied to dreams, how Thinking at the Edge (TAE) can bring new insight and understanding and how the practice of Focusing can help with decision-making and everyday living.
Gendlin’s own spoken words are interspersed throughout the volumes.
PCA/ PCE
Focusing originated in Client-Centred Therapy and in the close collaboration that existed in the 1950s and early 60s between Eugene Gendlin and Carl Rogers. Gendlin insisted that if early practitioners of Client-Centred Therapy had better understood the experiential response, i.e. ‘focusing on the felt edge of experiencing’, there would have been no need for there to be two separate therapies: Person-Centred Therapy and Focusing-oriented Therapy (FOT).
The early research into Client-Centred Therapy demonstrated that it is the ‘focusing’/ experiential response that is the critical factor in successful therapy.
In mainland Europe, Focusing is more commonly integrated into Person-Centred training as Person-Centred Experiential Therapy (PCE), but in some parts of the US and UK (and elsewhere) Focusing is often dismissed as a ‘technique’.
These volumes, which range in many directions to demonstrate myriad manifestations of ‘focusing on the felt edge of experiencing’ in different cultures and contexts also invite a re-evaluation of ‘focusing’ and a deeper understanding of its role in Person-Centred practice.
Biospiritual Focusing
Focusing and Spirituality
Mia Leijssen writes in the Foreword to volume II of Senses of Focusing that
‘On many occasions Gendlin embodied a way of living wherein a great Spirit comes forward and he demonstrates that Focusing is an innate process that unites human beings with The Larger System’.
Throughout these two volumes spirituality and spiritual understanding feature both implicitly and explicitly in descriptions of individual lives and spiritual practices in both Eastern and Western cultures. Embodied spirituality is most specifically addressed in the opening section of volume II which is entitled ‘Focusing, spirituality and dreams’. In this section a number of leading Focusing practitioners, including Fr. Peter Campbell, reflect on their experience and understanding of how our individual lives may be supported by the felt experience of ‘the Larger System’, ‘the Larger Ongoing Process/Mystery in which we are all involved’, ‘a Vast Oneness’, ‘the continuous freshly emerging well-spring of being [which is] the spiritual dimension’.
Books, Volume I & II
A general outline of volume Ι
This volume (volume Ι) is divided into seven sections, following an Introduction by Judy Moore.
The sections begin with reconsidering Focusing and reconsidering the Felt Sense then expand into reflections on Focusing in different cultures and contexts, Focusing and Existential Challenges, developing new practices, different ‘takes’ on the body, and conclude with Body Mapping and Children Focusing.
Contributors to this volume:
Sara Bradly, Ann Weiser Cornell, Frans Depestele, Akiko Doi, Akira Ikemi, Joan Klagsbrun, Nikolaos Kypriotakis, Mary Jeanne Larrabee, Sarah Luczaj, Greg Madison, Barbara McGavin, Kathy McGuire, Julian Miller, Claude Missiaen, Judy Moore, Tadayuki Murasato, Bart Santen, Astrid Schillings, Donata Schoeller, Ernesto Spinelli, Tine Swyngedouw, Hideo Tanaka, Alan Tidmarsh, Atsmaout Perlstein, Campbell Purton, Siebrecht Vanhooren, René Veugelers, Johannes Wiltschko, Jun Xu, Pavlos Zarogiannis
A general outline of volume ΙΙ
This, the second volume of Senses of Focusing, takes the explorations of the previous volume in new directions and again features Focusers from a range of cultures.
Following an Introduction by Nikolaos Kypriotakis, the volume is divided into seven sections.
Contributors to this volume:
Peter Afford, Stephanie Aspin, Friedgard Blob, Peter Campbell (with John Keane and David Young), Mick Cooper, Leslie Ellis, Isabel Gascón Juste, Svetlana Kutokova, Nikolaos Kypriotakis, Mia Leijssen, Monika Lindner, Nada Lou, Anna Magee, Judy Moore, Salvador Moreno-López, Tomonori Motoyama, Jenny Newman, Rob Parker, Fiona Parr, Michael Seibel, Yael Teff-Seker, Brian Thorne, Satoko Tokumaru, Zoe Voulgaraki, Greg Walkerden, Jen White
Editors
Nikolaos Kypriotakis has studied Physics (where he reads Physics as a kind of philosophy) and has been trained in Person-Centered & Focusing-Oriented Counselling/Psychotherapy and in Children Focusing. For two years he was the General Secretary of the Hellenic Association for the Person-Centered & Experiential Approach. Currently he teaches Physics and Science in a public junior high school in Greece and works as a Focusing trainer in the Hellenic Focusing Center (HFC). He has experience in teaching conventional and nonconventional educational objects to children with severe vision problems with the help of Focusing. He is the web administrator for the HFC and for the European Focusing Association (efa-focusing.eu) and he enjoys creating e-learning simulations. In recent years, his interest has been captured by the application of the experiential methods of Focusing and Thinking at the Edge (TAE) in educational/school programs. He is the editor-in-chief of the magazine Εποχή-Epoche (Psychotherapy, Phenomenology, Hermeneutics).
[e-mail: nikoskypriotakis@gmail.com]
Watch Nikos talking about the books, his chapter and Introduction, for the UEA book-launch event:
Judy Moore, PhD was based at the University of East Anglia (UEA), Norwich, UK for 25 years. She was a student counsellor throughout the 1990s and ran the University Counselling Service from 1998-2013. She was also Director of UEA’s counselling training unit, the Centre for Counselling Studies, from 2003-2013. She was originally trained in the Person-Centred Approach in the 1980s, taught on the postgraduate Diploma in Person-Centred Counselling at UEA throughout the 1990s and was involved in the development of Focusing training at UEA in the early 2000s. She was also involved in the hosting of PCE 2008 and several smaller conferences—including colloquiums on Gendlin’s philosophy—during her time as Director of the Centre for Counselling Studies. She is a Certifying Coordinator of The International Focusing Institute and, having left full-time employment at UEA in 2013, she now works in private practice and as a freelance trainer and consultant. She has previously co-edited books on counselling and psychotherapy and published several articles and chapters on the Person-Centred Approach and Focusing.
[e-mail: moore.judy@hotmail.com]
Watch Judy say a few things about his chapter and Introduction, for the UEA book-launch event:
Here you can watch a general presentation for the two volumes:
YouTube General presentation, SoF, Vol. I & II
Read the Prologue of the Volumes.
This two-volume work is not just any book on Focusing. It is a ‘jewelry case’ containing a rich assortment of jewels in Focusing finely selected from many regions of the world and polished to shine by the editors.
The readers can surely appreciate each chapter which crystalizes the thinking of over 50 authors who contribute to this work.
It is a testimony to the breadth and depth of how Focusing and the Philosophy of the Implicit has carried forward from the works of the late Professor Eugene Gendlin from whom all this originates.
Akira Ikemi, PhD Professor, Kansai University Graduate School of Psychology, Link to Akira's websiteI believe that Gene Gendlin would ‘sense’ these distinctive volumes with great contentment. The spirit of Focusing, as it is unfolded in this work, will allow both the experienced Focuser and the lay reader to feel deeply enlightened by the diversity of wide-ranging studies and innovative chapters, written by professionals from a range of approaches. A phenomenological thread runs through existential, experiential, person-centred and many other perspectives. It is an anthology of knowledge and experience that carries forward Gene’s vital principles.
If readers allow themselves to attend to the ‘dialogues’ contained within these volumes, they can treasure the new steps that may spring from the ‘more’ (…) of Gene’s pioneering philosophical work A Process Model.
These volumes will undoubtedly prove rewarding to any therapist or student of Psychology.
Anna Karali, Hellenic Focusing Center, Athens, Greece, Visit HFC websiteIt’s a joy to always discover new facets emerging from the living process and to experience this multiplicity in ‘Senses of Focusing’.
May this work serve as a bridge to a body of knowledge from which everyone can receive their next steps in carrying forward.
Mia Leijssen, PhD, Professor Emeritus, Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy, University of Leuven, Belgium, Mia Leijssen on edXThese impressive volumes provide a panoramic view of Focusing and Focusing-oriented therapy at the end of the second decade of the twentieth century. They present the work of a wide range of international scholars, including Asian, phenomenological and existential perspectives.
These volumes will be essential reading for anyone who wants to keep up-to-date about what is happening in the Focusing world today.
Campbell Purton, PhDI was both curious and pleased to hear of the announcement for this work and especially its title, Senses of Focusing. Since entering the world of Gene Gendlin’s experiential Focusing in 1992 by attending a weekend workshop with Gendlin on dreams, I have been intrigued by the two sides of the term ‘sensing’ and its associated terms ‘sense’ as verb and ‘sense’ as noun that are at play. The two sides dovetail beautifully with the two aspects of the process called ‘Focusing’ which are of greatest importance—we are to attend to our body’s sensorial nudges because they give us information about ourselves right now and then let the sense/meaning of that unfold.
To use the term ‘senses’ with the qualifying phrase ‘of Focusing’ consequently lit a metaphoric bulb for my curiosity.
Were the editors speaking to the different meanings that the term ‘Focusing’ can have for people? Or does the term point to the sensings that we might have in doing Focusing, that is, the way in which Focusing, a clearly body-based practice, is showing up in our lived organism? I suggest most likely both, yet perhaps much more?
Mary Jeanne Larrabee, PhD, DePaul University, Chicago, US, Webpage on DePaul University