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What is Focusing?

生命自覺透過身體意感讓我們探索和認識已存在的未知部份，將注意力轉向內在而獲得身體剛衍生的訊息，使用生命自覺的六步(Focusing Steps)，去檢視和核對自己的意感，包括從身體感覺、情緒、日常的故事、圖象等多方面，讓身體連結內在的意義，對我們已堵著的狀況提供向前進的動力(Carrying Forward)

Introducing

Eugene Gendlin

Eugene Gendlin graduated a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Chicago from 1963 to 1995, where he also lectured. His philosophical work on "implicit philosophy" has been influential in many fields. He is an internationally recognized, prominent American philosopher and psychologist.

 

Gendlin is best known for "Focusing" and "Thinking At the Edge." These two thinking processes are more than patterns and concepts.

 

In the 1950s and 1960s, under the guidance of Carl Rogers, Gendlin conducted groundbreaking research demonstrating that the ability to achieve lasting positive changes in psychotherapy strongly depends on the ability to acquire nonverbal, physical sensations that cause issues. Genderin called this intuitive physical perception "sensations".

 

Recognizing that people can master these inherent life-changing skills, Gendlin published his best-selling book Focusing in 1978  which suggests a six-step approach to discovering a person's sense and capacity for personal development.

 

In 1985, Gendlin founded The International Focusing Institute (TIFI) to promote Focusing training and education in academic and professional communities, and to share his practices with the public.

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Eugene Gendlin

American philosopher  (1926 - 2017)

Awards :

  • 1970 : "Distinguished Professional Award in Psychology and Psychotherapy," from Division 29 of the American Psychological Association (Division of Psychotherapy)

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  • 2000: "Charlotte and Karl Bühler Award" (given jointly to Gendlin and The Focusing Institute), from Division 32 of the American Psychological Association (the Society for Humanistic Psychology)

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  • 2007 : "Viktor Frankl Award of the City of Vienna for outstanding achievements in the field of meaning-oriented humanistic psychotherapy," from the Viktor Frankl Foundation

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  • 2011 : "Distinguished Theoretical and Philosophical Contributions to Psychology," from Division 24 of the American Psychological Association (The Society for Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology)

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  • 2016 : "Lifetime Achievement," from the World Association for Person Centered and Experiential Psychotherapy and Counseling

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  • 2016 : "Lifetime Achievement," from the US Association for Body Psychotherapy

His writings on focusing and psychotherapy include:

  • Focusing (1978)

  • Let Your Body Interpret Your Dreams (1986)

  • Focusing-Oriented Psychotherapy (1996)

 

Many of Gendlin's writings are available online at the Focusing Institute and the Gendlin Online Library .

Gendlin's philosophical works include:

  • Experiencing and the Creation of Meaning: a Philosophical and Psychological Approach to the Subjective (1962)
     

  • Thinking Beyond Patterns: Body, Language, and Situations (1991)
     

  • The Primacy of the body, not the primacy of perception: How the body knows the situation and philosophy (1992)
     

  • Crossing and Dipping: Some Terms for Approaching the Interface between Natural Understanding and Logical Formulation (1995)
     

  • A Process Model (1997)
     

  • The Responsive Order: A New Empiricism (1997)
     

  • How philosophy cannot appeal to experience, and how it can (1997) (in D.M. Levin , Language beyond postmodernism: saying and thinking in Gendlin's philosophy, pp. 3–41 & 343).
     

  • "Introduction to Thinking At The Edge" (2004) (in The Folio, Vol 19 No 1, 2004).
     

  • Line by Line Commentary on Aristotle's De Anima, Volume 1: Books I & II; Volume 2: Book III. Spring Valley, New York: The Focusing Institute (2012). Available online in PDF.
     

Many of Gendlin's writings are available online at :

  • The International Focusing Institute 

  • Gendlin Online Library.

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