Focusing-Oriented Psychotherapy

Focusing-oriented psychotherapy was developed by Eugene Gendlin, who is a philosopher, psychologist, and psychotherapist. While earning his Ph.D. in philosophy at the University of Chicago, he became a student of Rogers at the University of Chicago Counseling Center during the early 1950s. He joined the faculty of the University of Chicago in 1963 and taught there until 1995 when he retired.

Gendlin’s original contribution is the concept of experiencing, which refers to “the process of concrete, bodily feelings, which constitute the basic matter of psychological and personality phenomena” (1970, p. 138) and to the awareness of an inwardly sensed, bodily felt event of an ongoing process. Gendlin views psychological disturbance as an impairment or block in the person’s capacity for processing experience because, without this vital source of personal meaning, there is a constriction in living.

Gendlin now calls his approach focusing-oriented psychotherapy (1996). He fully acknowledges that his approach is grounded in a supportive relationship and client-centered listening. During the process of focusing-oriented therapy, the therapist helps the client become aware of and focus on the emerging bodily felt sense of the client’s problem. Experiential focusing enables the client to draw on the wisdom of bodily knowing that creates a fresh understanding of a troublesome experience and points toward a more effective manner of living. In focusing-oriented psychotherapy, each felt sense is unique to the individual in the immediate moment and generates specific language to describe the experience. This contrasts with the way clients often describe their feeling states with words that are an imprecise approximation or general understanding rather than a specific moment’s exact meaning.

The focusing process generally occurs in a number of definable steps. First, the client becomes aware of something at the edge of his or her consciousness. Initially this experiential awareness is vague, unclear, a bit illusive, and hard to grasp. The client senses something inside but doesn’t yet know what it is or have words for it. As the client attends to the felt sense, awareness of the bodily, somatic sensation of the problem emerges clearly enough to be contacted and referred to. This sensation is experienced as an intricate whole. As the client attends to this bodily felt sense, words or images (sometimes sounds or gestures) may come that exactly express the implicit message or meaning. For example, the client might describe the felt sense as a “feeling of dread about dealing with a difficult person.” As the client attends further, the felt sense unfolds and becomes clearer, and a “shift” or step occurs in which the felt sense changes subtly and another level of understanding occurs. For example, the client becomes clear that the dread is about being criticized or belittled by her boss. As the therapist arid client attend together to the emerging felt sense, further shifts in the bodily sense continue and new meanings become clear. These shifts come with a sense of “rightness” and relief since what was once fuzzy and murky is now clear. The client often experiences something like “Oh, that’s what it is!” This distinct sense of movement is bodily and is called a “felt shift” or “carrying forward “Even though what is now clearly understood may be unpleasant, there is a sense of relief and calmness that one knows the meaning of the felt sense. Often there are a series of shifts and steps forward as the client moves from one understanding to a fresh variation. These steps tend to lead to a sense of freshness and personal insight that becomes more refined as the client continues to reflect on its meaning and implications for more effective living.

A client of mine, upon reporting what she experienced as she completed a session of experiential focusing commented that she felt “fresh” and “new.” Many clients report similar experiences, including a feeling of confidence in the “ring of truth” that typically occurs as the felt sense unfolds and clarifies. It is not unusual for clients to experience some surprise over what is discovered, partly because their initial cognitive explanation of the felt sense turns out to be something other than what was imagined initially. The focusing process itself is often experienced as “freeing” as what was once a mysterious unknown has transformed into a sense of clarity. The process of focusing seems to have its own therapeutic value as clients become better attuned to themselves, learn to live well in the moment, feel pride and confidence in their developing capacity for inner knowing, and trust their ability to make grounded decisions. Over time clients learn to focus on their own and tend to pay more attention to the unclear stirrings they experience in everyday life, thus becoming their own therapists.

Gendlin’s focusing-oriented therapy, and especially the process of experiential focusing, have been incorporated into the practice of various forms of person-centered therapy, often in a seamless manner. The next section presents a case example of focusing-oriented psychotherapy.