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Gendlin, E.T. (1992). Three learnings since the dreambook. The Folio, 11, 1, 2530. From http://www.focusing.org/gendlin/docs/gol_2007.html [Page 25] THREE LEARNINGS SINCE THE DREAMBOOK by Eugene T. Gendlin, Ph.D., University of Chicago Here I would like to present three points I have learned since my book on dreams [1] was published. Where Dream and Dreamer Disagree: The part of the method which consists of asking questions is elegant. Eventually something opens for the dreamer. Meanwhile, one is only asking questions, and showing the person how to get a felt sense in relation to each question, and how to take the question down inside so as to ask it to the felt sense. The part of the method I called "bias control" goes beyond asking questions. It consists in expecting a step from the side opposite to one's usual attitude. If in the dream a mugger is chasing me, and after a while I know what problem in my life that refers to, I ought not to settle for an interpretation that that thing is dangerous and I ought to protect myself. I might do that, too, but then I should continue and see if I don't get a step from the opposite side, that is to say, from the mugger (perhaps from "being" him so I can see what new energy comes in me). Neither dreamer nor helper knows how a step could possibly come from the opposite side. Yet the helper needs to keep the question in play for a while so that a step from the opposite side can become considered, and can then come in the body. Compared to just asking questions, the bias control part of the method is not so elegant. One has to struggle. This remains true. But in the book bias control was formulated in a rather complex way. I have developed a simpler way to say it. Sometimes it also provides a short-cut in practice:

Now I just look for where there is a disagreement between the dreamer and the dream. Usually (not always) there is. The disagreement might be between the dreamer and some other figure in the dream. Or it might be between the dreamer and how the dream makes the story go. For example: She dreams that three large black women stand on the path and bar her way. She means to go on as before; they say no, rather deal with us. Or, another example: The dreamer is on a train and realizes he forgot his baggage at the station. He gets off and struggles to go back to get it. But on the way back there is a "distraction": he climbs a wall and there is a whole new space. He keeps saying, "It's a distraction; I've got to get [Page 26] my baggage." But the dream says in effect: "Sorry, you're going this way, over this wall, into a new space.'' A large meeting room. In front people are debating some problem. It's smoky and foggy up there and the debating figures are fuzzy. Then there are chairs where an audience is sitting. But behind them from the back door some twenty or so people have arrived. They are all sharply outlined and smiling. They have the answer and they are just waiting for the fuzzy people up front to pause so they can announce themselves and tell the solution. The dreamer says he knows what problem they're debatinghe has been sunk in it for several weeks. But he doesn't know of even a hint of a solution, he says. In these and similar examples, one would not wish to stop working on the dream with a conclusion that didn't take account of the other side, the dream's side as against the dreamer's. In the first example we would surely invite her to "be" the three women (if they are different, one after the other). If we couldn't get that we would ask why that's hard to bodily be, what the women are like, and where in the dreamer some of that is. In the second we would suggest, "Of course that's you saying it's a distraction; of course we don't know but we could try out saying that you want to go back, but the dream is trying to take you some new way, perhaps? What does it feel like there, on the other side of the wall? What do you see there? Where have you ever seen a wall like that? What could be good about that? What might be something you need out of that?" Could you be that wall?

Hmm .... I'm holding something, holding something off. Uuhm, .... Oh, there is a whole space there on the other side! Later he said: "I've had this problem as a sort of point or clump. I didn't know there was a whole space there to go into." I find that it helps me to ask this question: "Where do dreamer and dream disagree?" Then I may wait a while to go there, but after a while I want to struggle a little for a possible step at that point. How should it go? This point is closely related to the first. What the dream presents is often just the present state of a situation. Since we want a step of movement, one way to find it is to ask: How should the situation be? This is an internally arising "should," and we won't know until a step comes. But I can ask in the direction of a universal human sort of "should." There was a dead man lying on top of this thing that was a cross between a bed and an altar (part of a longer dream). What feeling goes with that dead man? Who is he? [Page 27] Oh, that's my creative part. It's dead. (sigh) I know about that. Well, we don't want to leave your creative part dead. See if he can move or do something. Just wait to see what he does. He sat right up! With many dreams I ask what should happen. Should one's creative part be dead? Surely not. I use this, as I do the above, to generate possibilities. I am aware that this one can contradict the other one, but I don't insist on either. Either one can suggest avenues which, once thought of, enable us to try things. Like the first point above, this one has been implicit in the method all along. In the book there is a dream about a mother pig that acts very unlike how the real animal would act. So I asked the dreamer what a real mother pig would do. That gave us the step.

What is new here is to apply this more broadly. In any dream I can ask: What should happen instead? What would be a totally sound way it could be? Of course I don't know, but it leads to ways of working. The crucial bits of help a dream brings: Even when it is evident where in the dream the main issue lies, usually I do not ask into it immediately. I ask some of the questions, usually about the setting, the plot, the characters. Now I have a new addition: If we haven't already found some help, I go looking in the odd places and also among the ordinary objects in the dream until I find some help. What I mean by "help" is something positive that we want to take with us when we come to work on the main issue. It is something which will let us do better than we would if we went to the issue directly. In the book I pointed out that any living thing is positive in some way. Any green thing, any animal, a child. If there is a dog or a whale, we want to feel or be it, and have its new energy already with us before we tackle the tough part. Now I add: If something helpful, something with positive life energy doesn't already stand out, let's look for something like that. I think that if a dream brings an issue to work on, it also brings some help, some change in the usual set, something extra with positive energysomething, so that we don't just tackle a stuck issue in the way the person always does, and get stuck once more. I find it's worth looking for something like that so that we can process the issue in a new way that the dream helps us to have. Of course we would expect such help from any novel, odd and very noticeable things that some dreams bring. For example, if there are two sculptured bowls, or some odd box with sticks coming out of itor anything of that sortof course we would attend to [Page 28] anything like that before we tackled the main issue. After all, these are things the dream brought, things the dream made up, so we surely expect help from those. Tell me more about those bowls. They were sculpted with animals and plants that stuck out, the rest of the bowl was set back, and (more detail follows).

Please now feel those bowls (perhaps be those bowls), let your body feel (be) them. Take some time for that. (breath) Let's take that body-feeling with us, so it's with us now, as we go on. Another example: On the bridge an old man was standing. (Various questions about him; nothing much came out of those.) Let's have that old man stay with us as we go on. Does that seem possible, to have his company with us as we go on? One would surely attend to those bowls and that old man on the bridge. My point here has concerned less noticeable things, things that seem to be nothing, for example, the door, the bed, the wall. ("Where did you ever encounter a door like that?" "What is the feel-quality of this door?" "Be that door.") Where did you ever see a bed like that? I don't know, uhm....Oh, that was the bed where I used to go and sit while my parents were fighting. It was safe to sit there. Oh. Now please go and sit on that bed, feel yourself sitting on that bed from here on in. Let's make that our base of operations and from now on we'll do every thing from there. OK? Another example: Can I tell you only just a part of my dream? Sure, but have the rest of it with you so that inside you the whole dream is what you work with. It's about something painful. Then she told only the brief part she wanted to tell. She already knew what issue the dream was about. She didn't say what it was, but evidently it was very sore. Without knowing what it was, I had the feeling of it. I didn't want to ask into that issue before finding some help from the dream, but I didn't find anything more in the small part she told. So I said:
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In the rest of the dream is there perhaps an animal or a plant, or a baby, or some living thing or some beautiful thing? [Page 29] (Silence.) There was a child. Yes, that's what I mean. A child is always a good thing. I think there were more children. Can we have those children with us as we go on? Maybe could we have them all around us? Would that be all right? (Sigh.) Her whole body changed. It eased a little from that extreme sore tension she had had till now. I could see that those children brought some safetyor at least the possibility of safety. Then she said: I could use a whole army of children around me! [1] Gendlin, E.T., Let Your Body Interpret Your Dreams, Wilmette, IL: Chiron Publications. 1986. Eugene T. Gendlin Note to Readers:

How Do I Refer To This Document? An example reference is at the top of this page. Please include the Internet address in the reference, even if you cite the document in a printed article, so that others can find the Gendlin Online Library. Can I Link Directly To This Document? Yes. We encourage you to link directly to it from your own online documents. We have built "hooks" into this web page to make it very easy to connect to individual pages and headings in the text. For examples, see: How to Link to The Gendlin Online Library. Biographic Note: Eugene T. Gendlin is a seminal American philosopher and psychologist. He received his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Chicago and taught there from 1963 to 1995. His philosophical work is concerned especially with the relationship between logic and implicit intricacy. Philosophy books include Experiencing and
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the Creation of Meaning, Language Beyond Post-Modernism: Saying and Thinking in Gendlin's Philosophy edited by David Michael Levin, (fourteen commentaries and Gendlins replies), and A Process Model. There is a world wide network of applications and practices (http://www.focusing.org) stemming from this philosophy. Gendlin has been honored three times by the American Psychological Association for his development of Experiential Psychotherapy. He was a founder and editor for many years of the Associations Clinical Division Journal, Psychotherapy: Theory, Research and Practice. His book Focusing has sold over half a million copies and has appeared in seventeen languages. His psychology-related books are Let Your Body Interpret Your Dreams and Focusing-Oriented Psychotherapy. If you see any faults in this document please send us an email. Add a comment to the Gendlin Online Blog for this article. See the reference for this document in the Gendlin primary bibliography. More on Focusing-Oriented Psychotherapy from the Focusing Institute website. More on Focusing from the Focusing Institute website. The Gendlin Online Library is presented by the Focusing Institute, a not-for-profit organization. If you find the library useful, you can contribute to its maintenance and growth, at http://www.focusing.org/gendlin/gol_donations.asp.

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Gendlin, E.T. (1977). Phenomenological concept versus phenomenological method: A critique of Medard Boss on dreams. Soundings, 60, 285-300. From http://www.focusing.org/gendlin/docs/gol_2045.html [Page 285] PHENOMENOLOGICAL CONCEPT VS. PHENOMENOLOGICAL METHOD: A Critique of Medard Boss on Dreams

Eugene T. Gendlin I In this essay I wish to distinguish phenomenological method from phenomenological concepts. Boss interprets dreams with phenomenological concepts, but the method with which he applies these concepts to dreams and dreamers is open to question. Boss imposes his scheme of ideas and also his personal values onto a dream with as little justification as is done in the methods of interpretation he attacks. My critique is both positive and negative. I will first discuss Boss's great positive contribution. In what sense, exactly, is Boss's dream interpretation phenomenological and valuable? 1. During a lifetime of work Boss has helped us to break out of a view of human beings (and of dreams) which translated human experience into some other vocabulary. Behind or beneath human experience, supposedly, there were other forces more truly explanatory of us and of our dreams. The dream for Freud is a result of certain events in energy mechanics, partial discharges. Behind the dream, for Jung, the ancient pagan gods of mythology have their coming and going. Boss rejects these con- [Page 286]structions. Beyond the dream Boss considers only the actual waking life of the dreamer. In freeing us from these translations Boss has helped us move beyond a great deal of violence done to human experience. It is well known that many different interpretations can be constructed for any one dream within any one of these translational theories. There never were criteria to decide among several possible interpretations within any one theory. But this fact was rarely taken account of as a caution. Rather, an appeal was made to the public by a claim of "science." The dreamer was usually offered only one interpretation by a given practitioner. The supposed superiority or scientific validity of the translational vocabulary gave prestige and credibility to such an interpretation. Later I will point out a method with which even these translational dream interpretations can be used phenomenologically. But we are grateful to Boss for helping us break out of this scientistic-reductive mode of interpretation. 2. Boss's interpretive concepts are interactional rather than intrapsychic. Freud, Jung, (and others) interpret dreams in terms of a subjectivity. The human is conceived of as being within the skin envelope. Interactions with others are viewed as results stemming from this internal personality structure. For Boss, in contrast, humans are the interactional living. "We are nothing other than receptive, alert world-disclosiveness" [1, p. 237].

The common sense view of humans in ordinary language (not only in a theory like Freud's and Jung's) also considers humans as individual and partly internal entities. Boss has helped us both in our ordinary language and in our theories to avoid seeing ourselves as isolated entities rather than as beings who are our interactions with others. Only if one explores phenomenologically one's seemingly internal feelings, does one always discover their intentionality. Our feelings are always about. . . . We are never just angry. We are always angry at . . . , afraid of . . . , confused in regard to. . . . Always some at first opaque, odd feeling opens into complex perceptions and sensings of . . . our situations and the other people in our situations, and how we are living at and with them. Boss says we "are never given to ourselves as . . . box-like," or as an "Xsubject . . . which happens to possess . . . one property [Page 287] among others" (p. 237). We are always "already 'out there' with that which we encounter" (p. 237). 3. Boss's main interpretive concepts are themselves powerful, and deserve to be adopted (among other concepts) as ways of considering a dream. Boss chiefly uses two concepts: how one in fact "bears" oneself toward others, toward the world and life; one's as yet unlived "possibilities" of bearing oneself toward life and others. These concepts are not at all obvious. They deserve attention. An ordinary person examining a dream might notice many aspects of it without noticing, as such, the dreamer's bearing towards others and the world. Similarly, an ordinary person might not ask: is there in this dream something which is ahead of the dreamer's present waking capacities, a possibility in life not yet actualized? Boss's contributions to dream interpretation, as I understand them, are these three: the rejection of translations of dreams into something other than human living; the interactional view of humans; the two basic concepts themselves, "bearing" and "possibility." Now, what exactly makes these contributions phenomenological? It is quite clear that they are. There is first the refusal to reduce human experience, dreaming or being awake, to theoretical constructs. There is, secondly, the phenomenological discovery that we are always already in the world, thrown in situations with others, and not primarily subjectivities, like a thing considered as a subject of traits. Thirdly, "bearing oneself toward" and "possibilities" are Heideggerian concepts which point to basic structural parameters of our actual living.

II Let us now turn from phenomenological concepts to phenomenological method. I will try to show that there is a great problem in Boss's method: many different interpretations of the same dream, using the same concepts of "bearing" and "possibility," can be made with any one dream. I will try to show this point with some of Boss's examples. This problem besets other methods of dream interpretation, too, as I have already said. As we saw, the general concepts "bearing" and "possibility" are [Page 288] phenomenological, but the mere use of these concepts does not assure the phenomenological groundedness of anything specific we assert about a given person's bearing or unlived possibilities. We can argue that a person is best characterized in these terms, or that any person will have some characteristic bearing and some unlived possibilities. But from hearing a given dream, or from observing the person in waking life, different interpreters will arrive at different conclusions. They will choose different dimensions to look at, and they may also disagree about the person on a given dimension. This variety of opinions is somewhat analogous to the different viewpoints in philosophy and in any other field. Let us ask how phenomenology grounds its assertions in terms of method. Let us then ask what would be an analogous method for dream interpretation. In a phenomenological method, as I shall elaborate it, each step of conceptualization provides itself with its own ground by lifting out an (until then hidden) phenomenal aspect. Once such an aspect is focused as it shows itself, it is then more than simply the conceptualization. If the phenomenon is not more than one's language, if one has only an assertion no matter how clear it might be, the approach and the language fail to fit out something that is showing itself and thereby lose their grounds for their meaning. In an analogous method for dreams, what might function as the phenomenon to be lifted out by a successful interpretation which other conflicting interpretations fail to lift out? How do we find the phenomenon? For example, if we characterize the dreamer's bearing in the dream-story as "passive and selfish," and someone else calls it "willing to grow and courageous," what exactly might be lifted out by some, but not all, of these interpretations? When discussing a dream and hearing oneself and others make various interpretive statements, quite often nothing beyond speculations happens in response. Then, suddenly, one interpretive statement leads to some piece of waking experience which becomes remarkably apparent, as though it pops in. Pursuing that occurrence, there may be a flood of aspects of living which are
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unmistakably related and brought out by the dream-plus-interpretation. New aspects or new imports may in addition present themselves with impact. Many further steps may be suggested and pursued. Each step of lifting out brings much [Page 289] more than each interpretive statement itself says. Might such an adaption of phenomenological method to dreams solve the problem of arbitrary or ungrounded interpretations of dreams? Let me illustrate the problem further. In one patient's dream (published by a Jungian analyst), the patient dreamt that the analyst is performing surgery on him. Then an unknown white-haired man appears, cuts two pieces of his own flesh out of himself and grafts them onto the dreamer's abdomen. Thereby the dreamer's life is saved. Boss rejects the Jungian interpretation that the white-haired man is the "old wise man," a mythological "higher" figure said to be found in many people's phantasies and dreams as well as in myths. Boss rejects this "higher" spiritual dimension, as well as the dreamer's experience of being helped, saved, and of gladly accepting experience. Boss's interpretation: . . . the possibility of being a masculine, mature, selfless helpful fellow-man dawns upon him while dreaming. The reason why the good dream-man is unknown might lie in the fact that this most mature way of being a human being is still very unfamiliar to the dreamer. . . . this possibility for bearing himself in the world could only appear as a stranger. It is disconcerting [that] . . .in the dream the saving of the patient's life was brought about through a transplant from another person. . . . The patient in surgery remains purely passive" (p. 242). Boss selects the "selfless" giving of one's own flesh as "good, mature" and a possible way of bearing oneself which would be new for the dreamer. But many people have done too much of that. How can Boss know to pick "selfless" as the right unrealized possibility? Boss selects "purely passive" as the bearing shown in the dream, and decides that it is a bad thing. The Jungian analyst thought it a good thing that the patient accepted aid. Boss views the passivity in relation to life. The Jungian analyst thought of it as accepting aid from a wider aspect of the patient than his ego. But it might well be that the patient usually over-controls and is not open to the wider living which he always already is. (One can readily transpose many Jungian and Freudian conceptions into the terms of "bearing" and "possibility" in the world, even though Jungians and Freudians do not usually use them that way.) How do we know whether active or receptive is good in this [Page 290] instance? And how does Boss light upon just this dimension, this pair of opposites, this issue?
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Boss also provides us with no warrant for selecting his characterization of the old man as one who is "selfless" and "masculine." It is not clear that just these adjectives would be more significant than many others. First there is "old" and "white-haired," which the dreamer himself used. But one could also call the old man's bearing courageous, insensitive to pain, coming in uninvitedly, powerful, fatherly, insistant. Much else could be said to characterize his bearing. The Jungian analyst who published this dream also offers no grounds (except the Jungian theory) for selecting the "higher power" characterization of the old man, and for ignoring "selfless" and "masculine" which Boss chooses. Both interpretations equally impose upon the dream and the dreamer's experience. For neither method is the interpretation integral to a quest for something new, directly experienced, which would emerge for the dreamer as a result of an interpretation. As they are discussed by Boss, dream interpretations are free floating. They have no phenomenological ground. Equally good alternatives could in the same terms easily be multiplied. Take, for example, the patient's supposed "passive" bearing, which Boss derives from the fact that the patient is passive in surgery. But surgery can also be said to be painful, bloody, unusual, expensive, dangerous, usually done by men, and constituting an emergency. There is much else one could say. The grafting of the flesh is a magical solution, perhaps, or a bloody one, or a guilt-provoking one. Any of these things might be said. If we saw an old man actually appear in a hospital and put his own flesh on a patient, the first thing we might remark upon, perhaps, would not be that the patient is passive. And we might not always think of passivity as disconcerting or negative, given such an instance. Boss's selections for the dreamer's bearing, and the old man's bearing, are as good as any others. So are some of my alternatives. But if the method of interpretation were phenomenological, then we would have to characterize not only the words, but what occurs when something new is lifted out. What exactly happens to a patient when there is this lifting out? When does one or another of these interpretations achieve its ground, and just [Page 291] what does such an achievement look like? How might we recognize it? These questions are not asked. Consider another dream Boss cites: . . . he began to kiss and fondle me on the street and say he would love to have intercourse. . . . we started to take our clothes off in the streetit was dark. . . . Then I realized how inappropriate it was to be naked in the street. I tried

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desperately to get away from this public place where I was totally naked. I awoke feeling anxious." (p. 248). This is again a dream published by someone else, by Rollo May who is himself interpreting the dream of another analyst's patient! Neither May nor Boss feel the need for the dreamer's wider present concrete experience from which to lift out something to ground their interpretations. Boss says: "But in all these cases it is not a matter of anxiety [as May had concluded], but rather of shame . . ." (p. 251). Thus Boss rejects the one bit of post-dream experience the dreamer herself is quoted as having expressed, namely that she was anxious after the dream. Boss denies that the man could stand for the patient's analyst, as May had thought. Boss says "her relationship to the analyst is by no means of such a personally close nature that he is able to secure entrance into the dream-world as . . . an erotically desirous man" (pp. 250-251). It isn't clear how Boss knows what May's colleague's patient's relation to her analyst is. Nor do I see how anyone could know without the patient's experience from which to lift out grounding aspects. Might this patient not find, for example, seconds after May's interpretation, that indeed her need to flee a sexual pull toward the analyst comes from how inappropriate sexuality feels in an office? Perhaps it feels to her as if it were in the street. But I do not know that, and I would not maintain it unless such an aspect emerged in the patient's experience in response to such an interpretation attempt. The man in the dream is a schoolmate whom the dreamer described as not at all close to her at present. Boss values closeness with one's sexual partner, and so he picks out her non-closeness as her "bearing." Since Boss does not like such non-closeness in sexual activity, it cannot be a "possibility," and hence it must be the patient's present bearing. Boss says he values sexuality ". . . in the warm bed of his own room, together with [Page 292] a . . . very close loved one." But Boss's values and his own good fortune do not really offer a firm basis for interpreting May's colleague's patient's issues or dream. Who knows, perhaps just now she lacks a close loved one and also rejects impersonal sexuality in her dream, just as Boss does. Or, a different vulnerability might be involved. Perhaps being more visible as a sexual being might be an advance which she rejects in the dream. Or, perhaps she has difficulty having love and sexuality with the same man, or perhaps she is sexually trouble free and is using sexual imagery to represent another issue, something she exposed of herself in conversation or in some other interaction. Or she might find that she longs to exhibit herself and show off, but feels guilty about that. Or she may have a "bearing" of being commanded, letting herself be ordered about, which she also rejects. Perhaps she usually rejects all sexual overtures unless she has herself
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initiated them, so that the dream might mark an important unrealized possibility of responding, as a bearing. Or, perhaps there is here a new possibility of getting herself out of situations she has not chosen. All these alternatives, including Boss's, are not really interpretations as much as they are attempts. Only some phenomenological response from the phenomenon could ground one or another of them. Boss's way of using interpretive concepts is not different from the ways used in other systems. Only the general concepts are phenomenological; the interpretations are seemingly quite arbitrary. The general direction of looking (how one bears oneself in life, or could bear oneself) is excellent and valuable. But no methodological criteria are offered for establishing this or that interpretation as the appropriate one. Boss's personal preoccupations and values seem to be the guide. Thus, in regard to method, Boss seems to operate like those he criticizes. Again only one of the many alternative interpretations possible in the system is given. Again the whole method of interpretation consists of coming up with an interpretation. There is no phenomenological showing of the phenomenon itself. Certainly we should consider Boss's examples in this paper as mere illustrations of his general method. But if the patient were present, Boss would still seem not to need a phenomenological grounding. Certainly Boss could try his interpretations, and when they fail to lift out anything new in the patient's experi- [Page 293]ence, he could then try other alternatives. But this approach is not part of his method. To see this point, consider Boss's way of asking the patient "questions": Based on the phenomenological dream-understanding, something like the following questions would be posed to the reawakened patient in the next hour of analysis: ". . . does it not seem obvious to you how little you know about . . .? how much on the contrary are you . . . in all your actions? Can you now perhaps see . . . how you not only do not know . . . as in the dream, but that you do not know . . . while awake . . .?" (pp. 251-252) Only if the patient were very hardy could she brush off such "questions" should they happen to lift out nothing new, and be able to attempt other statements that might lift out relevant and important aspects of her living. But phenomenology in a therapeutic context is difficult to learn, and she is unlikely to know of it. Without looking for new aspects to be lifted out, she is likely to impose some interpretation on her dreams, Boss's or some other. My point is the same whether a merely imposed interpretation were her own or Boss's.
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Boss continues: "With these questions, the patient would perhaps, for the first time in her life, become aware of the possibility for an entirely different bearing. . ." (p. 252). As we just saw, many different new possible bearings could be deduced from the dream, and pushed on her. It is difficult not to conclude that Boss might push the sameto him desirableways of being on the patient, dream or no dream. Certainly one cannot claim that it is the dream itself which unequivocally poses just these values and changed bearings. They far exceed the dream. Boss wishes to stay with the dream itself. He does not even wish to use associations, and almost never mentions them either here or in his book on dreams [cf. 2]. But it is one thing not to "re-interpret" a dream, "transforming the dream into our symbols" (p. 247), something Boss rightly eschews. It is quite another thing to exclude from consideration the dreamer's own associations and further experiences in response to interpretive attempts. This approach makes the dreamer's phenomenological responses "extraneous," as if they were an alien addition to the dream; yet it treats Boss's additions and interpolations as if they were just the dream itself. If we are to consider this a phenomenological method, we [Page 294] would have to think that when Boss interprets a dream, the phenomenon that shows itself in response is what Boss then notices in the dream. Even then, the phenomenon in its particular appropriateness would be some further aspect of the dream which fits or suddenly stands out, lifted up by the interpretation. Boss, however, says nothing like that. There is no phenomenological method here to ground the changes in mode of living which the therapist selects and reads into the dream. But let us take this lack upon ourselves as a further step that is needed. Boss has contributed so much already. Let us consider his approach further and more deeply, and also, let us move toward a method which would use all concepts phenomenologically, each step grounding itself in some way by lifting out something. III Boss says that beyond the dream is only the dreamer's waking life. We must therefore put the dream into contact with that waking life. There something new is shown. Boss also says that we are dealing not only with how the dreamer now lives life, but also with unrealized possibilities. We must therefore think of human life and experience not as finite things, factors, entities, finished defined patternings, but as containing unseen possibilities. It follows that Boss asks us to put the dream into contact with the dreamer's waking life, considered not as a collection of facts but as a complex of implicit possibilities. And this account
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hints that such possibilities could emerge for the dreamer much as in any hermeneutic: what was implicit suddenly stands out. Boss wants to move from the dream not to an internal realm down and back from the dream, but forward into the dreamer's life considered as capable of further possibilities and as capable of having aspects lifted out in it which are as yet unseen. Boss does not want to add something, but to find what is there, not yet seen. Heidegger wrote: " 'Behind' the phenomenon of phenomenology essentially nothing else stands, however that which is to become phenomenon may be hidden. And just therefore, because the phenomena are at first mostly not given, there is need for phenomenology." [5, p. 36]. The statement from Heidegger concerns ontology, but the method of phenomenology, if applied to dreams, could similarly require lifting out some- [Page 295] thing which then becomes phenomenon, as a result of the statement (as logos) lifting it out. Human experience is fundamentally capable of such lifting out. At bottom human experience is our relating in the world and to others, it is possibility through and through. Therefore it cannot be captured and circumscribed by definitions, even using concepts such as "bearing" and "possibility" (or any other concepts). Rather it can be conceptually contacted only by a lifting out role for concepts. [3] How may we describe exactly and recognizably what it is like when an interpretive statement regarding a dream lifts out an as yet unexamined aspect or an as yet unlived possibility? Elsewhere [3], [4, p. 304] I have offered recognizable characteristics of such lifting out. Among them is the fact that when something is lifted out by a statement, it is then often capable of leading further, to further aspects which could not be inferred from the statement alone. Secondly, such a directly lifted out aspect is often capable of leading us to change the very statement itself which at first lifted it out. Thirdly, the steps of such lifting out continue; many steps ensue which leave the first statement quite far behind. Fourthly, the progression is non-logical. It is not illogicalin fact one can fill logical units in, so that in retrospect it can be made to seem as if the steps came by logic. But the original series of statements do not bear logical relations, one to the previous. Each statement will be said to be important in the progression, despite the fact that it may be denied at the next step. That is another recognizable feature. All these characteristics stem from the fact that the individual has access to something other than the words only. What is said makes sense not only conceptually but in reference to something directly experienced as well, something now lifted out which can talk back, which can show itself as other and more than the words which lifted it out. Of course, in practice many statements in relation to a dream lift out nothing new at all. But when at last one statement does, the above described sequence of
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steps ensues. By the time a number of such steps have been taken, the "rightness" of the interpretation is beyond question. This rightness is not dependent upon either the therapist's judgment or the patient's; it rests upon what is lifted out. But as far as it goes, it is beyond question. Experts could appear and unanimously question the interpretation; nevertheless, the patient has what the interpreta- [Page 296]tion pointed to, and the further steps that ensued. These are now not just ideas, but experience. They are not just descriptions, but are themselves livings, "bearings" which have already changed the way in which the patient lives in the situations dreamt about. If the experts have other interpretations, perhaps these too can lift out something, but it would be something else, and additional. This relation of lifting out can be described in Heidegger's terms: Befindlichkeit (the sense of how one is situated), Verstehen (understanding), and Rede (speech). These notions are implicit in each other such that the hermeneutical talk lays out that understanding which was already implicit in Befindlichkeit. The continuity is that which holds between something implicit and its explication, and it is retrospective in time: one feels that what is now said explicitly was already there in how one felt one's being-in a situation, although one had not yet reflected upon it. In this part of my paper I do not insist that what I am saying explicates what Boss really means, or what Heidegger really meant in the statements I cited. But I do believe that if we take what they have said along the lines of a phenomenological method (or way of using concepts) and apply it to dreams, we lift out some experience of our living, and in a way which permits new aspects and possibilities to emerge from this living. Dream interpretations could be grounded by this approach. When dreaming and waking experiences come together in this way and an interpretation is successful with a dream, there is a distinct and impactful emergence. Outwardly, one can see the person's face come alive. There may be a large breath. As experienced by oneself with a dream of one's own, there is a flood, an opening and unfolding, an emergence. This distinct experience differs markedly from the merely cognitive sense that some interpretation "could fit," or "is interesting," or gives one some glimmer of sense, or intrigues one. The difference is the emergence of (or lifting out of) what is then a concrete aspect of one's living which cannot be made to disappear again (though it will lead to various further differentiations). Such an emergence may occur right after awakening. Or it may occur as one tells one's associations to the dream. Or it may occur later on, in answer to the many questions which can be asked of the dreamer in regard to the dream. Once it occurs, one knows beyond any question what the dream is about, or at least
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[Page 297] one knows one aspect of life that it is about. Sometimes one such emergence is not sufficient and still leaves much of the dream puzzling. Another is required. Sometimes such an emergence leaves one in no doubt at all concerning what the dream is about, but one has not learned anything new. The dream seems to be a metaphor for what one knew already. Further questions may lead to a further emergence which does let something new leap out. If the lifting out is made the basic criterion, then the more different ways in which one can illuminate a dream, the more the likelihood of an emergence. While Boss's concepts of "bearing" and "possibility" are excellent, and directly connect the dream with waking life, Jungian and Freudian concepts too can be used in the same way. Every aspect of the dream can be taken up with the question: "What in your life is like that?" The feelings in the dream can be pursued: "What in your life feels like that?" The plot structure can be phrased in various ways, not once but several times: "first you let yourself in for it, then it doesn't feel appropriate and you run away. What in your life is like that?" And then, perhaps, "You expose yourself in public, then it feels wrong. What in your life is like that?" the figures can be taken externally: "This man, what was he like? . . . Who is like that?" They can be taken as part of the dreamer: "Is there a way in which you are, perhaps not with much awareness, that is like that?"(In this last question I have translated Jung's notion of part-souls within into aspects of our living. If used phenomenologically, it comes to the same thing because what is lifted out will determine what we make of it, not the initial statement and its logical implications.) The place also can be examined: "What was that spot on the street like, have you ever been there?" One can even ask her: "Stand up and pretend for a moment that you are this man. What does he feel and act like?" With any of these questions, or none, something may emerge for the dreamer, more than just a thought or an interpretation, but a directly experienced aspect of living which can ground interpretation. I am not here talking about a feeling of conviction, or any other affective accompaniment of some interpretation. I am talking about the aspects of living which may emerge. Only the latter ground an interpretation phenomenologically. Thus a phenomenological method cannot interpret a dream in one [Page 298] step. There would be no opportunity for the phenomenon to talk back, to show itself as not simply what an interpretive statement says or posits. The phenomenon is not just flatly in the dream, else no interpretation would be needed. At first it does not show itself. Then it does. The words disclose it, but it must then speak in its own way, not just as the words. Boss, too, says that the new aspects are not in the dream: he says they are in the waking person's experience. The awakened dreamer fills these new aspects in. ". . . the givens . . . are laid before him as a waking person." Boss speaks of "the

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clearer perceptivity of his waking state . . ." (p. 260). The words "clearer perceptivity" imply that something new is lifted out, and in life, not in the dream. In my view, what is lifted out phenomenologically was already there implicitly for such lifting out. It cannot be just a new addition or imposition. The continuity between "was there implicitly," and a now "shows itself" is not an inference, not an addition by inference. It is emergence out of hiddenness. Whereas at first it seemed that Boss uses only the dream and his own values and interpretations, if we go more deeply we find him saying that in the dreamer's life there must be an emergence, and this, as I propose, is the real grounding for the dream interpretation. How does this grounding differ from an unconscious? Is there not now a hidden basement from which "repressed" (Boss says "avoided") material emerges? Boss writes: "That which gives, which sends the givens of my dream-worlds . . . is the event of Being as such, which enjoys a predisposing sway vis--vis all individual beings" (p. 262). The dream givens ". . . are laid before him . . . as something with which he must come to terms" (p. 261). ". . . it is not I who produce something out of myself and give it forth when I dream, but rather . . . something is given and sent to me" (p. 262). Is this not again an archetype-like being, against the backdrop of which we are shown how we are lacking? Boss does seem here to laud exactly the kind of bearing he rejected in the Jungian dream example: allowing oneself to be presented to, not from "I," but from something that stands "vis--vis all individual beings." We may think that the only difference, again, is the choice of concepts: not intra-psychic agencies, but "a giving 'Es' . . . out of [Page 299] whose hiddeness everything which presences comes . . ." (p. 262). Boss says this "Es" is like the "powers of nature, which stand above and beyond man, [and] give the rain" (p. 262). We thus think this being as the source of presencing anything, and differ conceptually from Jung. But what difference is there in how we bear ourselves in regard to this being "which sends . . .?" The difference lies, I believe, in the directly accessible, experienced relation of lifting out. The unconscious is only "un-," only inferred. So long as we remain without the lifting out, remain only with the dream and an interpretation, we cannot explain the difference between the unconscious of the other theories and "Being as such" in this one. The difference in the result is only a difference between imposed value choices. What is the difference between the Jungian interpretation which views the old
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man in the dream as standing for a higher power sent by the unconscious to lead the patient toward more receptivity and away from his over-controlling ego, and Boss's interpretation of the old man as the presencing of a possible bearing sent by Being as such, sent to lead the patient toward a more masculine and less passive bearing? There is a difference in value choice, but no difference in method. There is here no practical difference between how the unconscious sends its signals, and how Being as such does it. Both of them get their message through by means of the therapist's insights. I propose instead that there is a real difference between mere inference (or merely lighting upon one interpretation and value choice or another) and . . . emerging into unhiddenness. What corresponds here to that phrase is not only the dream itself, but also the aspects of living which emerge, which were already implicit and are now lifted out. This kind of emerging, always very striking in the case of dreams, can make possible a type of phenomenological method of dream-interpretation, often moving through many steps. Each step is grounded by something newly emergent. In such a method there is no question of staying on the surface by rejecting an unconscious and by claiming that our interpretation adds nothing. Instead, the distinctive way in which what-is-not-at-first-surface functions, is that it shows itself (rather than remaining inferred or verbal only) as aspects of life experience at every step. When it does, it is always more and different than the very statement which helped to lift it out. [Page 300] REFERENCES [1] Boss, M. "Dreaming and the Dreamed in the Daseinsanalytical Way of Seeing," tr. by Tom Cook. [2] Boss, M. The Analysis of Dreams. Tr. by A. J. Pomerans, New York: Philosophical Library, 1958. [3] Gendlin, E.T. Experiencing and the Creation of Meaning. New York: The Free Press, 1962. [4] Gendlin, E. T. "Experiential Phenomenology." Chapter in Natanson, M., Ed. Phenomenology and the Social Sciences. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973. [5]Heidegger, M. Sein and Zeit. Tbingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1960.

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Mr. Gendlin is in the Department of Behavioral Sciences at The University of Chicago. He combines interests in psychology and in philosophy in his teaching, research, and writing. His principal work is Experience and the Creation of Meaning. He is also author of A Theory of Personality Change. He has practiced psychotherapy for twenty-five years. He has been especially concerned with the relation between concepts and directly sensed experience. Note to Readers:

How Do I Refer To This Document? An example reference is at the top of this page. Please include the Internet address in the reference, even if you cite the document in a printed article, so that others can find the Gendlin Online Library. Can I Link Directly To This Document? Yes. We encourage you to link directly to it from your own online documents. We have built "hooks" into this web page to make it very easy to connect to individual pages and headings in the text. For examples, see: How to Link to The Gendlin Online Library. Biographic Note: Eugene T. Gendlin is a seminal American philosopher and psychologist. He received his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Chicago and taught there from 1963 to 1995. His philosophical work is concerned especially with the relationship between logic and implicit intricacy. Philosophy books include Experiencing and the Creation of Meaning, Language Beyond Post-Modernism: Saying and Thinking in Gendlin's Philosophy edited by David Michael Levin, (fourteen commentaries and Gendlins replies), and A Process Model. There is a world wide network of applications and practices (http://www.focusing.org) stemming from this philosophy. Gendlin has been honored three times by the American Psychological Association for his development of Experiential Psychotherapy. He was a founder and editor for many years of the Associations Clinical Division Journal, Psychotherapy: Theory, Research and Practice. His book Focusing has sold over half a million copies and has appeared in seventeen languages. His psychology-related books are Let Your Body Interpret Your Dreams and Focusing-Oriented Psychotherapy. If you see any faults in this document please send us an email. Add a comment to the Gendlin Online Blog for this article. See the reference for this document in the Gendlin primary bibliography. More on Philosophy of the Implicit from the Focusing Institute website. More on Focusing-Oriented Psychotherapy from the Focusing Institute website.
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Document #2045 version 071003 build 071008

Focusing Home > Gendlin Online Library > Some notes on the 'self'

Gendlin, E.T. (1985). Some notes on the "self." The Focusing Folio, 4(4), 137151. From http://www.focusing.org/gendlin/docs/gol_2107.html [Page 137] Some Notes on the "Self" Eugene T Gendlin University of Chicago Our concepts of the human self are too simple, even simplistic. In this paper I will be making some distinctions. Let me begin with four distinctions within the Freudian concept of "egostrength." Later I will make further distinctions. distinctions within "ego-strength": Ego-strength has sometimes meant the imposition of certain categories in the formation of experience, so that an intricacy exceeding them would not form in awareness. A second meaning of ego-strength is retaining control of non-ego experience in awareness. Thirdly, endlessly complexity can obstruct action. One can differentiate further and further, and find endless richness. That can lead to isolation, as we saw. One can become immobilized by subtle needs which no real situation or person seem to satisfy. "Ego-strength" can mean the capacity to cut through the complexity, to choose, to act and interact. A fourth kind is involved for the dialogue-steps we call "focusing." Here, again, are these four different capacities:

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a) Closing, no aware intricate experience; (What Freud called "the pathology of everyday life" usually remains unconscious). b) Imposing order upon aware intricate experience. It forms in awareness, but it is denigrated as "unrealistic" when in conflict with the usual categories. c) Choice. Ego and intricate experience both maintain themselves. The person can choose how and when to move with either. d) Many steps of dialogue, both ego and intricate experience contribute to change-steps.

[Page 138] In orthodox psychoanalytic theory a healthy ego prevents intricate experience from coming to awareness. That is a), the closing type. More recently the term "regression in the service of the ego" was added. That is ego-function b). The term "regression" says that non-ego experience is considered only as a return to infantile events. It is said that an artist has non-ego experience in awareness, but then imposes artistic order upon it. It is said that in therapy, also, one invites non-ego experience, but only to impose ego order on it more effectively. Ego-strength c) is the capacity to choose. Many people are currently between b) and c). They often denigrate their intricate experience from the ego standpoint. But sometimes they respect and act from intricate experience. I consider type d) optimal. In focusing, ego-strength means an active interaction with intricate experience, not just letting it flow, nor just one choice, one step. Many steps ensue. Ego and intricacy both contribute to the steps. how focusing differs from just having intricate experience: Many kinds of intricate experience exist today. The once odd experiences of poets and mystics have become common. Just consider imagery. For twenty-five centuries the theory of imagery was that it is some rearrangement of external perceptions. Of course it was always obvious to some people, that what comes in imagery is vastly richer, and not reducible to external perception. Visual imagery is only one dimension. More important is direct sensing of the body. There are a great many new ways of working with the physical body, which show that it is vastly more than a machine, and more than just drives and emotions.

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We live every situation with the bodynot only by the well-known emotional "reactions" such as glad, sad, scared, or angry, but with complex, kinaesthetic sensing in each situation. Many people now honor the physical sense of a situation as being more than their ego notions. [Page 139] But my concern here goes further than just respecting both ego and intricate experience. Between them there can be a dialogue with many steps. When the organism "talks back" it makes a bit of change and novelty at each step. characteristics of focusing steps: This dialogue of many steps is called "focusing." At each step there is, again, a fresh body-sense. Although indefinable and unclear, again, each time, one can sense that it is the body-sense of that situation or concern, the one being worked on. Or, if not, one can sense that it is not. The focusing process can occur in any setting, not just psychotherapy. These steps can occur with practical or intellectual work, aesthetic creation,anything. When psychotherapy goes well, people spend time sensing something they cannot at first define. What they just said seems trueand yet there is an odd, unclear sense that differs from it. Although true in itself, what they just said is not true of this sense. But, then, what would be right to say? What would speak for this unclear sense? They don't know. Then it is as if this unclear sense suddenly "comes into focus." It shifts, opens. One has a sense of knowing, now, what it is. Even so, there may not yet be a way to say it. It might take another minute for new phrases to form. Although such a step seems deeply true, soon a new "edge," a new felt sense comes, an unclear sensing. When that, too, opens, what had seemed so true may now be contradicted. Logically the next step can contradict the previous. The steps make sense, but in a non-logical way. In the following excerpt, please note this sort of progression, each step changing the previous content. And also, please notice how experience is much more intricate (and more realistic) than the usual social vocabulary and categories. Note the silence between each two steps. (I write it: ".....") [Page 140]

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I've been holding him off. But he is really very special, and nobody's perfect. I'm impossibly demanding. It confuses me. ..... (silence) ..... He says he cares about me, and I know he does, but I also doubt it. Uhm ..... (silence) ..... (sigh) No, he cares. I don't doubt that. I see it in his eyes. When I pull back even a little, he looks so hurt. It's me, I have trouble letting someone care about me. ..... (silence) ..... (sigh) It's not the caring, that gives me trouble. It's that when someone cares for me, then I have to get into this confusing feeling. ..... (silence) ..... He says he cares about me and what I need. And he wants us to be together. But it seems like he doesn't want to see what's true, what isn't working in our relationship. And it is mostly this not wanting to see, which is what's not working. But if he doesn't care about that, then it seems like he doesn't really cares about me-me. It's like he wants me, but only if I'm quiet and feel weird, like not-me. So he doesn't care about whether our connection is real or not. But it makes me feel crazy. Does it sound crazy to you? Therapist: Would it feel better if he said those things separately, something like: "I want you for me. I try to care about what's good for you, and I want to think I do. I'm scared of seeing anything about us, or about myself, that would get in the way? Yes, it would feel better if he said that. [Page 141] What comes in these steps cannot be said in the usual social vocabulary. ("He doesn't want to see what isn't working . . . And it is mostly his not wanting to see, which is what's not working." "He doesn't care about me-me.") It is more intricate than the usual social categories. Isn't it also more realistic? It may well be a better predictor of what will happen in their marriage, if it does not change in some way. In this example one could say that the ego is not fully formed (the feeling of "not-me.") Someone might say: If she had a "healthy ego," she would not be enmeshed in this complexity. With a healthy ego she would stand by her first statement, in which she imposed the common social form. She knows "nobody's perfect." If she cannot impose her ego's dictum, and live the non-mutuality, it must be ego-weakness. The experiential complexity interferes with social

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bonding. And, no doubt it includes infantile elements, as everyone's experience does. Using a-c above, one might say that her ego isn't strong enough to prevent notme experience from happening, or to impose form upon it, or to choose to move past it. But here is the other side of the question: Today women say that the traditional women's role does demand "being notme." Should she give in to the pull she describes? Recently, women have become much more aware and critical of this common social training: "If a man cares for me, I must do whatever he wants." There must always have been some women who had more intricate, more realistic perceptions even in ages when most people identified with the social forms. Was that only self-deception? When we say that this intricacy was there in those more traditional times, the word "was" works in an odd way. Now we say it "was" there, then. But, then, it was not there as it. Aware experience is a different process than what was. Binding women's feet was oppressive then, but did not quite mean what it would, if done today. It was not quite the same intricacy, covered up. But there was intricacy then, which was covered up. Similarly, at each new focusing step, we say "this is what the problem really "was." But here the word "was" makes a new time-scheme. There are now two pasts. In addition to what we remember, behind us, on the linear [Page 142] time line, there is a second past: what we now say "it" "was." So we have to let the word "was" define itself from how it works. I will return to this way words can work. There were always some people who experienced an intricacy and rejected official forms, overtly or silently. They were special people, certainly not less developed, but not "normal." This now common experience is, indeed, an incompleteness of the old type of ego, (type a). But we are at the start of a new, more intricate and more realistic development. the body and language: As philosophers we say that language is implicit in any experience.

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How is seemingly wordless experience possible, if this philosophical insight is right? Experience comes about in a languaged world and always has language implicit in it. It does, but the body "talks back" with more intricacy than common language and social arrangements. When therapy is working, people very often have a directly experienced "sense" for which there are, as yet, no words. It is a hallmark of ongoing therapy which later shows successful outcomes. Not only therapy shows this. Pilots fly "by the seat of their pants." Poets and artists work from a sense of what has not yet formed. Among business people it is well known that the best decisions are made by those who can size up a situation by the feel of it. Those who have this talent are admired as having "the business instinct." The body knows, and can create, more realistic intricacy than can be thought or said in extant forms. When there is a problem, we cannot just impose a solution. The thought-forms we already know don't help by themselves. They need to interact with the more intricate sense of the situation. This sense is the specific and unique uneasiness of just this aspect of just this situation. But, at first it is only a murky discomfort. And even when something does emerge, that is only one step. Many people stop there. But [Page 143] more steps can come. How do such steps come? From the body. But how can a body "talk back" with more intricate steps than our cognitions could make? We are used to a mechanical view, as if the body had no order of its own. The utter variety of human cultures made it seem that the body we all share had no behavior patterns of its own. Since human behavior is culturally various, if you abstract the variety away, no behavior seems left at all. Today that view can no longer be held. Every animal species has been found to have unlearned environmental interaction patterns, such as food-search, nestbuilding, mating dances, and so on. Culture and social arrangements elaborate the organism, but are never all its order. Therefore the body can "talk back" more intricately than the common phrases and social forms.

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When I say "the body talks back," the word "body" works differently. The word has to be grasped from the "talking back." "The body" must be thought of in a different (but not unfamiliar) way: We live most of life through kinaesthetic body-sensing. We walk into a room and know who is there and what to do. We have to think few things in explicit separable forms. The body-sense of our social context is much more often what guides us. Some people think of culture and language as if they were forms that are "encoded," stamped in. Language-acquisition research used to be in terms of encoding. Just now it is changing that assumption. (Bickhard, M. H., Cognition, Convention, and Communication. N.Y.: Praeger, 1980.) It is now said that social interaction contexts precede language and determine its acquisition. In the newer approaches the word "social" works precisely for what are not encodable forms, but various body-behavioral interactions. These give language its functional organization. Language cannot consist only of encodable forms. It has the different kind of "order" that body-behavior-interaction has. That is what allows so much creativity in language. You can see this, if you notice how words create meaning as they work [Page 144] in new sentences. Words are not defined forms, applied and stamped in. Their old definitions play a role, but words work beyond definitions. Language is implicit in what one cannot say. The body knows the language and the situation. That is how one knows that what one can say is wrong. One is stuck until, from the body-sense, new phrasings emerge. It shows that the body lives the language, and can alter and augment it. During the time one cannot say, the newly working phrases have not yet emerged. When they come, they emerge changed. All understanding is to some degree bodily sentient. As you follow any sentence you sense the point being made, long before it is made. Without that, you wouldn't get the point when it comes. And when you've got it, even then the point is not just the words. If you can only repeat the words, we know you didn't get the point. Understanding the point is a lot like those silences, in therapy, from which focusing steps come. You understand by having a ...... From this "blank" which is not blank, you could say quite a lot more than the words. We think in these .....'s. We might have to read something over and over, till we say we "have it," we "get" the point, but then our further thinking is with ..... These words, "body." "language," "knows," "says," "sense," "situation," "step," all work freshly here by "coming" here. So you "follow" me here, as my word
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"follow" makes this kind of sense. And many more words could come in such a fresh way, if we went on to say more about body, situations, and language. Now someone may object: Very welllet language and culture be a creative interactional organismic functioning, rather than formed forms. But such a functional system would even more foster the illusion of being one's own source, while remaining within unconscious controls. For example, Foucault views the self as always unknowingly controlled by social practices. To what extent do the steps of this process "remain within" the given context of control, and to what extent do they exceed it? But "exceeding" and "remaining within" are not a simple either/or. There are different kinds of "remaining within." Whatever "remain within" might mean for our process, it cannot mean [Page 145] "logically within." Such a step cannot be deduced from the previous. It is not analytically implied or made by the forms in the previous step. Rather, the step changes the forms from which one would have tried to deduce or explain it. The steps of the focusing process violate local continuity. We can say they are "discontinuous." Or, we can say the steps do follow with some sort of continuity. You follow them, and you follow my saying that. What sort of "continuity" do you follow? The word "follow" works newly, in this way. This "continuity" and "discontinuity" is made by these steps. Since, at each step, the whole situation can change, we see: A human situation or problem is not an "it" like a thing, or a thought. Neither is that ..... an entity, an "it" that has only one definition. At each step "it" truly reveals itself, and yet that is only a step to something further. In a small step the forms change, but not exactly into different forms. They change how they sit, their quality, their implicit role, how they work ... again the words about such steps define themselves from how they follow here about such steps. But different words don't say the same thing. Each brings its old uses and works differently in new sayings. Such steps cannot be explained from how you know yourself. You are not a subjective entity, a self-known thing with one set of definitions. Rather, the steps change that self-known person.

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Nor can the steps be explained by an unconscious continuity because these steps change the unconscious as well. What emerges, as people say, "from the unconscious," was not there as that datum, before. The coming of a datum changes the whole. The words "steps" and "progression" are not explained by one time-scheme. These steps make more intricate kinds of time. For example, when a step comes, we say "Now I know what the trouble was." But here the word "was" works in a way that fits no usual time scheme. Rather than subsuming these steps under our old notions of freedom or control, let them first show their own, intricate ways. Let us not settle for one overall pattern of control. Perhaps there are many patterns, not just one notion of freedom and one notion of control. [Page 146] The progression of steps is experienced as "more truly me" than any single content or step. Although I say each time that this, now, is truly what "it" is, or what "I" am, the progression continues. The steps of self-response can seem more truly myself, than any content. We will not explain the steps with some one notion or continuous scheme, since the steps change all such schemes and continuities. So we will also not impose such an artificial scheme-continuity on "the" self. patterns of "the self": We reject the old notion of one internal, subjective self-thing, which has the thing-continuity of a brick or a stone. But, in rejecting this one thing, have I substituted two subjects, two self-things? Two systems do seem to be operating in what I said so far: ego and intricate body-experience. Only both of them make a focusing-step in which they both change. Separated, the body-sense was only a murky physical discomfort. Taken separately the thought-content is each time only the old categories helplessly unable to change actual living. Both are social realities, the forms and the more intricate bodily living. But which one is my self, the one that does the finding out about myself, or the found-out object which I say "is me," when it comes? Or is "dialogue" an oldfashioned dialectic between the two?
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One man complained about feeling a tension all the time. I said "Welcome the tension in, so it can be here. Perhaps it will open and show what it is." He tried. "How can I welcome it? I hate it!" He tried again to welcome it. There was a long silence. Then he said: "When I welcome it, it eases and dissolves." That shows he wasn't two separate selves. The scheme of a subject-knower and an object-known doesn't get at the self very well. The orthodox notion of knowing splits knower and object. In a dialectical scheme knower and known turn into each other. That is [Page 147] somewhat more sophisticated, since it splits-and-reunites knower and known. People say "this is me." The "I" can identify itself with what it finds. But it is wrong and careless to follow dialectical logic, and say that by identifying with the content, the "I" turns into the content it finds. Another pattern is the self that relates "to itself." Heidegger, Sartre, and Foucault all use it. Heidegger said that humans can choose to be what they already are, or they can avoid it. That is a somewhat subtler scheme than a single subjective self-thing, or two dialoguing with each other as if separate. But when we examine therapy, focusing, poetry, and even just ordinary language-use, these schemes of the self seem absurdly simple. Obviously "the self" is at least as complex as what we find and see all the time. Why try for a simpler scheme? And why one scheme? We can't expect one scheme to stay logically consistent about non-logical process-steps. Instead, let us also study the process of schememaking, moving with many schemes. The self cannot be simpler than how words work in logically irreconcilable new ways. Of course, it has long been known that selves are complex, but that was thought to be psychology. In a psychological theory, for example the psychoanalytic theory, all the terms have certain assumptions. We have added certain distinctions within that theory. The theory can now be used to ask about intricate experience. But we did not change the kind of concepts the theory uses. Philosophy examines assumptions in a different way. It examines not so much what the theory says about types of human, infants, and so on. Rather, it hits at the type of concept being used, for example the type which makes everything into entities, brick-like things. Freudian concepts render mental contents as if they sit in us like buried things. Philosophically, we cannot remain satisfied with our two that dialogue with each other, either.
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In doing the philosophical job, one uses an alternative scheme, a better one, perhaps, but still a scheme. For example, Hegel's dialectical poles that turn into each other are a subtler scheme, than the knower/known split. Or, Heidegger's philosophy criticizes inner brick-like entities, [Page 148] and replaces them with self-relating: In choosing what one is and has to be, one is being in a further way. Here the words "is" and "be" work in a more complex pattern than the simple "is" of a brick. In his later years, Heidegger emphasized "letting be." For him, as for us, what one chooses or lets be is more than cognitive. Now I am saying that such philosophical schemes are themselves still simplistic, although they do have the philosophical function of undercutting more simplistic ones. The self shows many patterns subtler than the usual kinds of schemes. I propose that we do not reduce these patterns to simpler ones, but let them stand, and let each function philosophically to undercut the others. Even considering only the focusing steps, we see more complex patterns than Heidegger's. One may choose to be, refuse, or let be "what one already is" in many ways. Each way lets the words "choose" or "refuse" work differently. So we are incorrect to speak as if there were one pattern that holds across, common to them all. Nor is such choosing all in one step. "What one is and has to be" comes freshly again at each step. Sometimes neither choice nor "letting be" is possible, only further steps. In the pattern: "the self relates to itself" the whole puzzle is packed into the word "relates," as if it had one meaning that holds across. Are there then many selves with nothing unifying them? Oh no, there is one self; that is always there, too. But this is not because we impose the simple habitual scheme of a single "something" that lasts through observer-time, like a brick. The usual time-space continuity requires an observer, as in physics. That scheme of time does not determine the selfit depends on an assumed, abstracted self, "the observer." Don't reduce the self to one logical continuity. I have been criticizing three schemes: The first was Freud's type, where thinglike entities are set up, and remain continuously distinct: the id, the ego, the super-ego. The second is the dialectical, where they turn into each other. The third is the scheme called "relates to itself," which is at least more than a content, and more than cognitively defined. [Page 149]
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I have already said that the "I" which looks or finds, does not turn into the content that arises. Sometimes the I says: "that's really me." But the "I" has no content; it is always again there, and cannot really "change" to "be" the content. Freud did not make that distinction. He identified the "I" with the content of the social content of the ego. (The Latin word "ego" was the English translator's contribution. Freud's work for the "ego" is das Ich, the "I.") Thereby he followed the usual, traditional people who do take the social content for themselves. He identified the (social) content with the I-person who looks. He rightly pointed out that "the ego" can identifyespecially with a parentbut also with many other things in many ways. The gazer has a great capacity to identify with various people, and with various contents of experience. That very fact tells us that theory should not lump the gazer in with content. There are also so-called "part-selves" which seem as if they were people inside people. They organize speech and action, and can feel like "me." The I-person can "identify" with many of them. (But though the words are similar, splitpersonality is another condition.) Identifying is a basic human process, but just therefore our theory must not identify this toward simplified self-things. The obvious pattern is already more complex than any of the concepts I looked at, so far. (Perhaps Levinas is talking about this contentless gazer. I am not sure.) We were all taught that infants don't develop into people before the age of one or two. It isn't so. In contrast to developmental theory, the newer research studies show the newborn with much more perceptual and response capacity. The infant is a person right from the start. Boukydis (Focusing Folio, Vol. 4-1) works with infants. In response to a question I asked him, he said: I have studied more than two hundred newborns, including many who were born prematurely at seven months, and "I was always seriously regarded." At least this one researcher, experienced with so many infants, senses himself in interaction with a person looking. The statement about newborns at seven months also tells us that infants are persons long before most of [Page 150] them emerge from the birth canal. Of course, many people recall prenatal experiences. The sensitive worker with the aged knows the same thing. One of them said of "senile" people: "If you respond to them in a certain way, they come out. Then they're not senile."

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Knowing this, made me able to work with a "crazy" or mute patient. I would sit silently much of the time, but also talk sometimes, without any response from the patient. Hospital staff, observing, would make snide comments about both of us. Later, such patients would say something like: "Why were you so shy, then? Why didn't you say more? Didn't you know that helped?" Freud said it as well: . . . one learns from patients after their recovery, that at the time in some corner of their minds, as they express it, there was a normal person hidden, who watched the hubbub of the illness go past . . . (OP p. 115) This shows that he didn't miss the one who looks, but he did call that one the same as that ego which is the organization of content. The one who is there, and can gaze at me, is really all I care about. Anything else seems valuable only in relation to that one. But that one can feel thin, floating, empty, nearly not therethat is how people often describe themselves prior to "getting in touch with their feelings." So feelings and body-sense are in some way vital, too. At least we can let the complexity stand. The various patterns we find can philosophically undercut each other. How does a pattern philosophically undercut another? How can we avoid making the self into a continuous brick-like thing? For example, we might be tempted to say that the gazer is also the one that can identify with something. But gazing and identifying are two different patterns. We would have to continue the one artificially into the other, giving it the continuity of a thing. We can try out thinking that, but why impose it? Another example: How my words worked, just now, is not fixed. The [Page 151] words "is always there" work another way, when I tell you that many people (in quite ordinary states) are "not there", not reachable through their eyes. They don't speak as that self. Instead, they often say whatever is convenient. As person "who is there" (which now says the person is reachable just now) can get very hurt, imagining that others are always reachably there. The horrible things people say and do are incomprehensibly hurtful that way. It's easy if you realize their saying and doing is superficial, and they are not reachably there. Don't take this seeming contradiction as just about people. I am concerned with undercutting my scheme. When I say: "the one who is always there," that one
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seems to have the scheme of a thing, brick, or atoma scheme of continuity through time. If I say about another self-aspect: "This one is the same as that one," then I continue that one into this next aspect, as if it were a same thing defined by my space and time scheme. I am refusing to make the scheme provide this artificial continuity. The self of "superficial vs. reachably there" cannot be made continuous with the one who is "always there." Why reduce the self's more intricate patterns to a single continuity only slightly more intricate than a stone's? Is the self one, or many? We cannot answer that except in specific respects. For example, "one" may mean that some action is sometimes right with all the multiplicity at once. "One" and "many" mean complex patterns of self, not many selves. There is not one scheme of the self. Is that dismaying? But why not grant the human self its intricacy? To do that is not less than a scheme. We don't just say vaguely that the self is beyond schemes. Rather, we let each of its ways stand. We do not impose a scheme from one of its ways on the others. Then we can study its many kinds of processes, many kinds of steps. Please send me your comments, suggestions, and mark spots that are unclear. Eugene T. Gendlin Note to Readers:

How Do I Refer To This Document? An example reference is at the top of this page. Please include the Internet address in the reference, even if you cite the document in a printed article, so that others can find the Gendlin Online Library. Can I Link Directly To This Document? Yes. We encourage you to link directly to it from your own online documents. We have built "hooks" into this web page to make it very easy to connect to individual pages and headings in the text. For examples, see: How to Link to The Gendlin Online Library. Biographic Note: Eugene T. Gendlin is a seminal American philosopher and psychologist. He received his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Chicago and taught there from 1963 to 1995. His philosophical work is concerned especially with the relationship between logic and implicit intricacy. Philosophy books include Experiencing and
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the Creation of Meaning, Language Beyond Post-Modernism: Saying and Thinking in Gendlin's Philosophy edited by David Michael Levin, (fourteen commentaries and Gendlins replies), and A Process Model. There is a world wide network of applications and practices (http://www.focusing.org) stemming from this philosophy. Gendlin has been honored three times by the American Psychological Association for his development of Experiential Psychotherapy. He was a founder and editor for many years of the Associations Clinical Division Journal, Psychotherapy: Theory, Research and Practice. His book Focusing has sold over half a million copies and has appeared in seventeen languages. His psychology-related books are Let Your Body Interpret Your Dreams and Focusing-Oriented Psychotherapy. If you see any faults in this document please send us an email. Add a comment to the Gendlin Online Blog for this article. See the reference for this document in the Gendlin primary bibliography. More on Philosophy of the Implicit from the Focusing Institute website. More on Focusing-Oriented Psychotherapy from the Focusing Institute website.

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Focusing Home > Gendlin Online Library > Focusing specifics

Gendlin, E.T. (1983). Focusing specifics. The Focusing Folio, 2(4), 38. From http://www.focusing.org/gendlin/docs/gol_2172.html [Page 38] FOCUSING SPECIFICS I may or may not know what I want. But if I knew a lot more, or if I could know the future, I might want something different. I can tell you right now that I'd rather have that, even though I don't know what it is. Instead of wanting what I can now think, I can want what I would want, if I knew everything. Of course I want that, and I can want that now.

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If you think this and attend in the body, that wanting comes as a bodily quality of being whole, unconflicted, all in one piece, free to want and choose. Feeling this bodily quality for a time helps specific steps to come. To work on something bad, it helps to recall what is good, where I am sound. That may seem to be a silly palliative. Of course I don't want to deny what is wrong. But my body will work better on what is wrong, if I first let it feel whole and sound, and then turn to what is wrong. Find your child-place inside. Now sense how you relate to it. Then feel towards it as you would feel toward an actual little kid, if one were right there. Chances are you would like the child. You would pick up, hug, and feel a warm flow toward a child. . .any child. That is right also with this inside one. Work on whatever is wrong, but let this warm flow be around it. In focusing one attends to the middle of the body. Many people don't take this literally enough, and don't look for the felt sense of a problem to come in the body. It comes in the same place in the stomach where an elevator going down can make a sinking feeling come. Or, it comes in the chest: as one person once told me: "I know I'm breathing, but it feels like I can't." In these places each different problem makes a different quality come. Some people have to practice letting their attention go into the middle of the body, until doing so becomes easy. When one first senses that fuzzy, bodily uneasiness, it seems very unpromising. One thinks, "Oh, nothing much can come from this!" This unpromising murk is one way to recognize it. Skip the known feeling-places. Go directly to the not-so-wonderful body-sense which is probably there, in the middle of your body. In one way we are quite gigantic, as dreams and altered states can show. But these dimensions are universal and alike in all of us. They are already perfect. In comparison, my small conscious person is certainly discouraging. But we must not give up on developing the unique person. Focusing is at the edge of ordinary consciousness, at the juncture between these two. The small steps that come at the bodily sensed edge are always already integrated bits of unique further living. Eugene T. Gendlin Note to Readers:

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How Do I Refer To This Document? An example reference is at the top of this page. Please include the Internet address in the reference, even if you cite the document in a printed article, so that others can find the Gendlin Online Library. Can I Link Directly To This Document? Yes. We encourage you to link directly to it from your own online documents. We have built "hooks" into this web page to make it very easy to connect to individual pages and headings in the text. For examples, see: How to Link to The Gendlin Online Library. Biographic Note: Eugene T. Gendlin is a seminal American philosopher and psychologist. He received his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Chicago and taught there from 1963 to 1995. His philosophical work is concerned especially with the relationship between logic and implicit intricacy. Philosophy books include Experiencing and the Creation of Meaning, Language Beyond Post-Modernism: Saying and Thinking in Gendlin's Philosophy edited by David Michael Levin, (fourteen commentaries and Gendlins replies), and A Process Model. There is a world wide network of applications and practices (http://www.focusing.org) stemming from this philosophy. Gendlin has been honored three times by the American Psychological Association for his development of Experiential Psychotherapy. He was a founder and editor for many years of the Associations Clinical Division Journal, Psychotherapy: Theory, Research and Practice. His book Focusing has sold over half a million copies and has appeared in seventeen languages. His psychology-related books are Let Your Body Interpret Your Dreams and Focusing-Oriented Psychotherapy. If you see any faults in this document please send us an email. Add a comment to the Gendlin Online Blog for this article. See the reference for this document in the Gendlin primary bibliography. More on Focusing from the Focusing Institute website. The Gendlin Online Library is presented by the Focusing Institute, a not-for-profit organization. If you find the library useful, you can contribute to its maintenance and growth, at http://www.focusing.org/gendlin/gol_donations.asp.

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Focusing Home > Gendlin Online Library > An introduction to focusing: Six steps

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Gendlin, E.T. (1996). An introduction to focusing: Six steps. New York: The Focusing Institute. From http://www.focusing.org/gendlin/docs/gol_2234.html An Introduction to Focusing: Six Steps Introduction Most people find it easier to learn focusing through individual instruction than through simply reading about it. The actual process of focusing, experienced from the inside, is fluid and open, allowing great room for individual differences and ways of working. Yet to introduce the concepts and flavor of the technique, some structure can be useful. We offer one approach here: six steps. Although these steps may provide a window into focusing, it is important to remember that they are not THE six steps. Focusing has no rigid, fixed agenda for the inner world; many focusing sessions bear little resemblance to the mechanical process that we define here. Still, every Focusing Trainer is deeply familiar with these six steps, and uses them as needed throughout a focusing session. And many people have had success getting in touch with the heart of the process just by following these simple instructions. There are other ways of describing the focusing process. Indeed, every Focusing Trainer has his or her own way of approaching it. Click here to see short forms of steps that other Focusing Teachers have developed. So, with the caveat that what follows is a simple scaffolding for you to use as long as it's useful and then to move beyond, we offer to you six steps, a taste of the process. What follows is a lightly edited excerpt from The Focusing Manual, Chapter Four of the book Focusing[*] The inner act of focusing can be broken down into six main sub-acts or movements. As you gain more practice, you won't need to think of these as six separate parts of the process. To think of them as separate movements makes the process seem more mechanical than it is or will be, for you, later. I have subdivided the process in this way because I've learned from years of experimenting that this is one of the effective ways to teach focusing to people who have never tried it before. Think of this as only the basics. As you progress and learn more about focusing you will add to these basic instructions, clarify them, approach them from other
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angles. Eventually perhaps not the first time you go through it you will have the experience of something shifting inside. So here are the focusing instructions in brief form, manual style. If you want to try them out, do so easily, gently. If you find difficulty in one step or another, don't push too hard, just move on to the next one. You can always come back. Clearing a space What I will ask you to do will be silent, just to yourself. Take a moment just to relax . . . All right now, inside you, I would like you to pay attention inwardly, in your body, perhaps in your stomach or chest. Now see what comes there when you ask, "How is my life going? What is the main thing for me right now?" Sense within your body. Let the answers come slowly from this sensing. When some concern comes, DO NOT GO INSIDE IT. Stand back, say "Yes, that's there. I can feel that, there." Let there be a little space between you and that. Then ask what else you feel. Wait again, and sense. Usually there are several things. Felt Sense From among what came, select one personal problem to focus on. DO NOT GO INSIDE IT. Stand back from it. Of course, there are many parts to that one thing you are thinking about too many to think of each one alone. But you can feel all of these things together. Pay attention there where you usually feel things, and in there you can get a sense of what all of the problem feels like. Let yourself feel the unclear sense of all of that. Handle What is the quality of this unclear felt sense? Let a word, a phrase, or an image come up from the felt sense itself. It might be a quality-word, like tight, sticky, scary, stuck, heavy, jumpy, or a phrase, or an image. Stay with the quality of the felt sense till something fits it just right. Resonating Go back and forth between the felt sense and the word (phrase, or image). Check how they resonate with each other. See if there is a little bodily signal that lets you know there is a fit. To do it, you have to have the felt sense there again, as well as the word. Let the felt sense change, if it does, and also the word or picture, until they feel just right in capturing the quality of the felt sense. Asking
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Now ask: what is it, about this whole problem, that makes this quality (which you have just named or pictured)? Make sure the quality is sensed again, freshly, vividly (not just remembered from before). When it is here again, tap it, touch it, be with it, asking, "What makes the whole problem so ______?" Or you ask, "What is in this sense?" If you get a quick answer without a shift in the felt sense, just let that kind of answer go by. Return your attention to your body and freshly find the felt sense again. Then ask it again. Be with the felt sense till something comes along with a shift, a slight "give" or release. Receiving Receive whatever comes with a shift in a friendly way. Stay with it a while, even if it is only a slight release. Whatever comes, this is only one shift; there will be others. You will probably continue after a little while, but stay here for a few moments. IF DURING THESE INSTRUCTIONS SOMEWHERE YOU HAVE SPENT A LITTLE WHILE SENSING AND TOUCHING AN UNCLEAR HOLISTIC BODY SENSE OF THIS PROBLEM, THEN YOU HAVE FOCUSED. It doesn't matter whether the body-shift came or not. It comes on its own. We don't control that. Instructions for Not Following Instructions Isn't it wrong to publish instructions for inward personal process? One danger with a set of instructions is that people might use them to close off other ways. Anything human involves more than one method. Please notice, we don't say that this method is all you need or might find valuable. Had we said that, we hope you would have thought us stupid. Anything you learn here can go well with anything else that you may find helpful. If there seems to be a contradiction, go easy. Let your own steps find the way to reconcile the contradiction. There are other reasons one might not like specifics such as these steps. Instructions may seem to diminish mystery and openness, although that is not so.

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Also, written instructions cannot avoid misunderstandings. No formula fits every person. Anyway, one must find one's own path. These problems occur with all types of knowledge about humans. Adopt a "split-level" approach to all instructions: On the one hand follow the instructions exactly, so that you can discover the experiences to which they point. On the other hand be sensitive to yourself and your own body. Assume that only sound expansive experiences are worth having. The moment doing it feels wrong in your body, stop following the instruction, and back up slightly. Stay there with your attention until you can sense exactly what is going wrong. These are very exact instructions for how not to follow instructions! And, of course, they apply to themselves, as well. In this way you will find your own body's steps, either through the instructions, or through what is wrong with them. Focusing is always like that: You don't push on if it doesn't feel right, but you don't run away either. You go no further, but you back up only a little, so that you stay until what is in the way becomes clear. Focusing is quite safe. It may not work but it is not negative. So, if you sense something that does not feel life-forwarding and sound in your body, sense what that is until that opens. But isn't it the height of self-contradiction to give exact steps for how not to follow instructions? Indeed. One often needs several attitudes at once. In a society increasingly skilled at human processes, of course we share the specifics we learn. Shall we teach the specifics of driving a car and not the specifics of finding and opening the bodily felt sense? But, human processes do give rise to more different specifics than can be logically consistent. Human nature is not fixed and not knowable in some single system. That is fortunate. No knowledge can push you out of the driver's seat of your life. Especially not our knowledge here, which is to be about finding your own process! Therefore this knowledge, here, must arrange for itself to be superseded by you, as you sense for what feels sound, inside you. Instructions for not following instructions are the essence of focusing one's own inwardly opening steps.

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If you stop and sense what's wrong at any point, and if you wait there until that opens and reveals itself, you can make good use of all sorts of methods and instructions. You do any method better than its authors can arrange. [*] Gendlin, E.T. (2007). Focusing [Reissue, with new introduction]. New York: Bantam Books. Note to Readers:

How Do I Refer To This Document? An example reference is at the top of this page. Please include the Internet address in the reference, even if you cite the document in a printed article, so that others can find the Gendlin Online Library. Can I Link Directly To This Document? Yes. We encourage you to link directly to it from your own online documents. We have built "hooks" into this web page to make it very easy to connect to individual pages and headings in the text. For examples, see: How to Link to The Gendlin Online Library. Biographic Note: Eugene T. Gendlin is a seminal American philosopher and psychologist. He received his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Chicago and taught there from 1963 to 1995. His philosophical work is concerned especially with the relationship between logic and implicit intricacy. Philosophy books include Experiencing and the Creation of Meaning, Language Beyond Post-Modernism: Saying and Thinking in Gendlin's Philosophy edited by David Michael Levin, (fourteen commentaries and Gendlins replies), and A Process Model. There is a world wide network of applications and practices (http://www.focusing.org) stemming from this philosophy. Gendlin has been honored three times by the American Psychological Association for his development of Experiential Psychotherapy. He was a founder and editor for many years of the Associations Clinical Division Journal, Psychotherapy: Theory, Research and Practice. His book Focusing has sold over half a million copies and has appeared in seventeen languages. His psychology-related books are Let Your Body Interpret Your Dreams and Focusing-Oriented Psychotherapy. If you see any faults in this document please send us an email. Add a comment to the Gendlin Online Blog for this article. See the reference for this document in the Gendlin primary bibliography. More on Focusing from the Focusing Institute website. The Gendlin Online Library is presented by the Focusing Institute, a not-for-profit organization. If you find the library useful, you can

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contribute to its maintenance and growth, at http://www.focusing.org/gendlin/gol_donations.asp. Document #2234 version 071008 build 071008

Focusing Home > Gendlin Online Library > The first step of focusing provides a superior stress-reduction ...

Gendlin, E.T. (1999). The first step of focusing provides a superior stressreduction method. The Folio, 18(1), 178. From http://www.focusing.org/gendlin/docs/gol_2085.html [Page 178 ] THE FIRST STEP OF FOCUSING PROVIDES A SUPERIOR STRESSREDUCTION METHOD by Eugene Gendlin, Ph.D. In relaxation and meditation a physical residue of tension often remains in the body in spite of the fact that one is deeply relaxed. Sometimes this is noticed as a gray climate or unpleasant atmosphere. Most often nothing of that sort is noticed, but the body continues to carry tension outside of awareness. People who know focusing rarely employ only the usual methods of stress reduction, because they know a superior way of dealing with stress, which they employ before the usual methods. Deep relaxation would be moved to after this procedure. The procedure itself does also bring a degree of relaxation, but not to the usual degree, not deeper than the entry level to altered states. We find a much greater stress reduction if we first institute the bodily release attained by the first movement of focusing. The stress most people carry in their bodies almost always consists of several life issues, not just one. It is typical to find that one's body is carrying one or two major long-term stresses along with several minor but acute stresses from events of the day. All the stresses are what we call crossed in the body. Rather than being next to each other, each "gets into" the others so that they add weight to each other. A large overall stress weight results.
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The usual methods of stress reduction deal only with the overall stress weight as a whole. In the first step of focusing the stresses are "sorted out". In our procedure a single stress comes up, and separates itself from the rest of the overall weight. We have a way in which this is "put down" (placed outside the body). Now there is a way to attend so as to check whether that particular stress has indeed gone out of the body so that the body feels somewhat released. If not, there are more specific ways to insure that it will. Then our procedure lets another stress come up, again single and separate. It is "put down," and so on, until one has put down the stresses that were being carried just then. A much greater degree of stress reduction is attained and directly experienced in this way, than with the usual methods. We find that each stress is far lighter when released from crossing with the others. Even when working on them is the aim, rather than stress reduction, sorting them out makes them much more bearable than they were before. They do not reconstitute the same degree of weightedness as when they were crossed. The first movement of focusing can be taught to people who don't know focusing, although it will be natural to continue into some focusing instruction from it. Some people can find this procedure immediately upon being given our series of instructions. Others must first learn to sense their bodies from inside, then a certain kind of inward bodily attention characteristic of focusing. Average training time is about four or five one hour sessions. Eugene T. Gendlin Note to Readers:

How Do I Refer To This Document? An example reference is at the top of this page. Please include the Internet address in the reference, even if you cite the document in a printed article, so that others can find the Gendlin Online Library. Can I Link Directly To This Document? Yes. We encourage you to link directly to it from your own online documents. We have built "hooks" into this web page to make it very easy to connect to individual pages and headings in the text. For examples, see: How to Link to The Gendlin Online Library. Biographic Note: Eugene T. Gendlin is a seminal American philosopher and psychologist. He received his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Chicago and taught there from 1963 to 1995. His philosophical work is concerned especially with the relationship between logic and implicit intricacy. Philosophy books include Experiencing and the Creation of Meaning, Language Beyond Post-Modernism: Saying and Thinking in Gendlin's Philosophy edited by David Michael Levin, (fourteen commentaries and Gendlins replies), and A Process Model.
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There is a world wide network of applications and practices (http://www.focusing.org) stemming from this philosophy. Gendlin has been honored three times by the American Psychological Association for his development of Experiential Psychotherapy. He was a founder and editor for many years of the Associations Clinical Division Journal, Psychotherapy: Theory, Research and Practice. His book Focusing has sold over half a million copies and has appeared in seventeen languages. His psychology-related books are Let Your Body Interpret Your Dreams and Focusing-Oriented Psychotherapy. If you see any faults in this document please send us an email. Add a comment to the Gendlin Online Blog for this article. See the reference for this document in the Gendlin primary bibliography. More on Focusing from the Focusing Institute website. The Gendlin Online Library is presented by the Focusing Institute, a not-for-profit organization. If you find the library useful, you can contribute to its maintenance and growth, at http://www.focusing.org/gendlin/gol_donations.asp.

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Focusing Home > Gendlin Online Library > Focusing: The body speaks from the inside

Gendlin, E.T. (2007, June). Focusing: The body speaks from the inside. [Transcript of talk given at the 18th Annual International Trauma Conference, Boston, MA]. New York: The Focusing Institute.. From http://www.focusing.org/gendlin/docs/gol_2235.html Focusing: The Body Speaks From the Inside Eugene T. Gendlin Talk given at the 18th Annual International Trauma Conference PSYCHOLOGICAL TRAUMA: Neuroscience, Attachment and Therapeutic Interventions Boston, MA, June 20-23, 2007 Transcribed from the audio by Jill Drummond
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Gendlin: Hello. [Audience responds "Hello."] Gendlin: I'm glad to be here. I want to thank Rob Parker, whom some of you know already, one of our people who uses focusing with trauma work. He arranged for the three of us to come and didn't arrange for himself up here. So I need to mention him and thank him for all the work and coordinating especially me. Then I want to tell you that focusing, by itself, is not a "method." Focusing deepens everything that we do, unless we don't do it. So I tell people, "Don't do focusing by itself, please." Do it with interaction and body work and every other thing. I agree with what was just said here: that we need to pull all the resources we can get together. Focusing comes from inside, so it fits in with everything you're doing. It will deepen whatever you're doing. It's not something separate although when you learn it, then for a little while it seems like something very separate. But once you have it, it's no longer separate. I want to introduce myself all over again, because I'm really a philosopher. My training is in philosophy. My degree is in the Department of Philosophy, and I've been doing philosophy all my life. It happens that the practical side of it got well-known. So I have to tell you this right away. Philosophy is something that's very difficult to read. You have to read everything five or six times, sentence by sentence, like a crossword puzzle that you're solving. So most of what I have put out in print and published is not philosophy. It's coming off of philosophy; it's trying to be simple and clear. But a lot of what I have published you already know. So today I want to introduce you to the philosophy part of it. Philosophy works with . . . not even concepts. It doesn't have any content. It's not about anything. [Laughter] Gendlin: Philosophy is about the concepts, but not even the concepts. Theoretical people work on concepts. Philosophy works on kinds of concepts. This is a funny notion to most people. What I need to talk about is the kind of concept that we're developing, a kind of concept that's really different from all the concepts that we mostly use. It's a kind of concept that comes from studying living things first. This is not done. Our concepts ape mathematics, which has been so powerful in making all
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of our technology. I'm certainly not criticizing it, putting it down or any silly thing like that. I'm talking into a microphone. I write on computers. There are lights here. I wouldn't be here if it weren't for technology. But, technology is not a good model for living things. Because it has to do with making separate parts and putting these parts together. Living things are not made out of separable parts. I'll get back to that. There are two main points that I want to make. The first one is that for living things you need a kind of concept where you understand that nothing is. Everything we usually think about "is." Nothing "is" that lives. It always is and also implies forward. It is-and-implies. It never just is. It always is and has an implying of something that hasn't yet happened. And that something-that-hasn'tyet-happened is not fully structured. It's very, very (what Freud called) "overdetermined." It's not indeterminate at all. It's very, very, very finely prestructured and yet it's also open; it hasn't yet happened. Only things that happened are fixed in structure. So my main point here is: there is no "is." It's always an is-and-implies. Secondly, there is no "body" apart from the environment. The body generates itself in the environment, out of environment. Between "environment" and "body," only human beings make a distinction. And it's a very important distinction. It helps us with science and chemistry and neurology, and all those things that are very important and very helpful, and make things. But living things are not made things, made-out-of-parts-things. Living things are not made by a separation between us and what we see or what we work on. Living things are always already both body and environment. So, no "is." Always "is-and-implies." And no "body." Always "body-andenvironment." It's some next event in the body-environment interaction, in the body-environment unity. The next event that's implied is a . . . look at my hand. (Gene laughs) That's good enough there. It's forward and it's out here. So, we have to both use, respect and also change the notion that we have of the body. It's not a structure that fills space and time. We need to consider it that way, so we can analyze it and have medicine and chemistry and neurology and all these very important things. But the body is not a structure that just "is" in the environment, in space, like you see me sit here. The body is where I am out here talking to you, where I'm all the way out there, and without this, (gestures) my body wouldn't be the way it is right now. The words wouldn't come out right, if I weren't a body-environment unity, and if I weren't implying forward. So my words come. Sometime you can wonder where your words come from, and how they come. People don't wonder enough. They open their mouth and the words come out.
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[Audience laughs.] Gendlin: How is that? [Laughter and applause.] Gendlin: And then if they don't come out, what do we do? Well, we say, "Excuse me, I don't mean that. Wait a second." And then what do we do? Well, we wait and hope and then some more words come out, and hopefully they are right. OK, so those are my two points. No "is", and no "body." [Laughter from audience.] Gendlin: The next thing I want to say is that there has to be an understanding that we are not only human. We're also animals, and not only animals; we're also plants. We're tissue-process. And it's the tissue-process that has developed the capacity to be an animal. There are no animals without tissue-process. But there's something very mysterious about animals: they behave. All the studies of ethology for a hundred years now have shown that the complexity of behavior is what they call "built-in. Animals learn, of course. They learn a lot. But even what they learn, like little kittens learn how to jump on mice, they learn that when the adult cat demonstrates it once. So even learning is based on built-in capacities. And if you stimulate certain brain cells, you get the jumping anyway without any adult cat. And so forth. A squirrel that's raised in a metal cage will bury nuts in a metal cage at a certain age. If you give it a nut, it'll scratch the metal cage and put the nut there. The whole complexity of animal behavior is built-in. But what is "built-in"? What does it mean? A physiological understanding of the body does not permit behavioral complexity to be built-in the body. You have to think it, with a different kind of concept. You have to think that the tissues are not just structure and space, the tissues imply forward. And they are not just tissues within the skin; they're tissues in the environment that it makes itself out of, to have even a skin. You have to understand that the body, our body, your body sitting there, is tissues that have the animal behavior complexity. You can read that human beings don't have instinct anymore, but that's ridiculous. "Instinct" is just a word for this "built-in." "Instinct" is just like "built-in." Somebody says, "Yes, I recognize that there's this huge animal complexity, but I don't know how it's 'out of the body.' These animals don't have
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concepts and all that. So how do they do this?" Well, "by instinct," we all learned in school. And then they didn't tell us what that is. Right? Well, the tissues develop this extra capacity to have an external environment in which they behave. And then only come human beings. And we are completely continuous with that. Just our science of human beings is separate. We study culture and history and all these wonderful things as if they came down from the sky. But obviously they came up from the earth through us, into where we are now. So the human level of culture and patterns and making and technology, all that comes as a bodily process. Where does a scientist get a new hypothesis? They never tell you. [Audience laughter.] Gendlin: Once in a while someone will write, "Oh, I developed the double helix from a dream." Or somebody will say, "I got this in the shower." [Audience laughter.] Gendlin: So those three levels you're sitting there being. And they're familiar; just the concepts are new. We need a new kind of concept. I worked these out over the last forty years. It's not easy to read, but I invite you to look at it. It's on the web; you can find it. It's called "The Process Model" [*] and you might like the first few pages, even though it might take you a while to read them. [Audience laughter.] Gendlin: Now, what I'm really here to say is that there's a fourth level, on top of the plants and the animals and the human beings with culture. Not the emotions . . . the emotions are within the cultural patterns. When you get mad, when you are disappointed, all these things are within cultural stories. You don't get mad unless you are treated in some way that the culture teaches shouldn't happen. As long as everything runs routinely, you don't get mad. In another culture, you would, being treated like that. But in that culture, they have different stories. So emotions are always within the stories that we learn. Culturally, we're made out of stories. That's why we dream them at night, you know. Stories are not just told. Stories are very deeply culturally patterned. Human beings are not only cells, they're not only animals, they're also cultural stories. But there is now another level. The other level is where focusing comes from. The other level is that the body is capable of giving itself still another kind of object. I should have mentioned objects, but it's too complicated. At each level
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there are different objects. The world is not made of objects. The world is made of living interaction. And it has living things in it. They tell you the world is just burning gas, but that's only from the outside, observed by mathematics. From the inside, the world has us in it. The universe has us in it. And the universe is at least as much as a dog or a horse or you and I. It includes us, since we're here. They can't tell us we're not here, you know that much. [Audience laughter.] Gendlin: Since we're here, there are these capacities of the living thing. And there is one more. The body can give itself an object that is in a different space and in a different time. It can give itself an object of a situation, of a whole situation. But this happens in a funny, different space. It's a different space where that happens. A person usually starts with a discomfort that's diffuse. Like, I'm angry and "Aaargh, gr-r-r-r-r." You know. And it's hard to do anything with that. But there is a place where a person can say, "Oh!" Once you've learned that place, then the object changes. It's no longer an emotion in a story. It's the whole damn thing together, the story and what happened and how I am and everything else that ever happened, all of my background and my animal-ness and my tissues. All of that together becomes an "Oh!" Becomes a "that." And then I am different. Then I am somehow changed. I'm in this larger space and I have this "that" here. So, as you will see in the two demonstrations that I bring you, a person will say . . . in Afghanistan language, a person will say, "Oh, I'm uncomfortable. I'm angry. I think I'm furious. I'm about to go out and kill people. But I think I have a 'guest.' Oh, I think I have a 'guest.'" And instead of rushing out with the guns, which he's already gotten, he puts those down and he sits down and he says, "I think I have a 'guest.'" He goes, or she goes, to a place that, with a little focusing training, the person has learned. "Go to a place" means "get quiet, sit there and go to where the 'guest would be." This is a distinct action, an internal action. The guest isn't already there, just this diffuse "Aa-aa-rr-rr" fury is there. But the "guest" is not there. Or the anxiety is there but the "guest" isn't there. So what's the "guest"? Well, the "guest" is a "that." You say, "O-o-oh." It takes a few seconds or a minute or two minutes for this "that" to form, because it isn't there as a "that." Emotions are already there, you know. You feel them and you say, "Oh, I'm furious. Yeah, that's right." But this we call the felt sense. And there's a fair amount of literature about the felt sense. But you can call it anything you want. I call it a "that," because when it forms, then it's so distinct. It's in a different
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space. And time slows down there also. It's in a different space. It's "Oh, I have that." The person is actively looking for it, actively inviting it. Not inviting the anger. That's a different thing. Inviting the "guest." Inviting the "that." And then it comes. The person is still actively interrogating this "that." "What are you?" Thereby the person is a much larger person, and the space is a much larger space. And that's what these people are now going to demonstrate. Thank you. [End of audio] [*] Gendlin, E.T. (1981). A process model. Unpublished manuscript (422 pp.). Revised version published (1997) (288 pp.). New York: The Focusing Institute. This revision is also available since 1998 at http://www.focusing.org/gendlin/docs/gol_2161.html, in a version with several typographical corrections made in 2001. Eugene T. Gendlin Note to Readers:

How Do I Refer To This Document? An example reference is at the top of this page. Please include the Internet address in the reference, even if you cite the document in a printed article, so that others can find the Gendlin Online Library. Can I Link Directly To This Document? Yes. We encourage you to link directly to it from your own online documents. We have built "hooks" into this web page to make it very easy to connect to individual pages and headings in the text. For examples, see: How to Link to The Gendlin Online Library. Biographic Note: Eugene T. Gendlin is a seminal American philosopher and psychologist. He received his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Chicago and taught there from 1963 to 1995. His philosophical work is concerned especially with the relationship between logic and implicit intricacy. Philosophy books include Experiencing and the Creation of Meaning, Language Beyond Post-Modernism: Saying and Thinking in Gendlin's Philosophy edited by David Michael Levin, (fourteen commentaries and Gendlins replies), and A Process Model. There is a world wide network of applications and practices (http://www.focusing.org) stemming from this philosophy. Gendlin has been honored three times by the American Psychological Association for his development of Experiential Psychotherapy. He was a founder and editor for many years of the Associations Clinical Division Journal, Psychotherapy: Theory, Research and Practice. His book Focusing has
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sold over half a million copies and has appeared in seventeen languages. His psychology-related books are Let Your Body Interpret Your Dreams and Focusing-Oriented Psychotherapy. If you see any faults in this document please send us an email. Add a comment to the Gendlin Online Blog for this article. See the reference for this document in the Gendlin primary bibliography. More on Focusing from the Focusing Institute website. More on Philosophy of the Implicit from the Focusing Institute website.

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Focusing Home > Gendlin Online Library > New specifics [Part 1 of 2]

Gendlin, E.T. (1982). New specifics [Part 1 of 2]. The Focusing Folio, 2(2), 4447. From http://www.focusing.org/gendlin/docs/gol_2171.html [Page 44] NEW SPECIFICS DON'T DO VIVISECTION: In focusing, when we speak of "a problem" or "a concern" we do not mean the problem as you already define it. Rather, we mean the problem as it happens to be in the bodywith whatever goes with it (you don't know all that) and in whatever shape and form the body will now show it to you (different from what you call the problem). To let the bodily felt sense of a problem come, you have to let it come as it happens to come. If you insist on your problem-definition as you cut it up on your mental map, there may be no bodily sense of it that way. But, if you begin with "however you have defined it," and then ask your body about "all that" (however it discovers the problem and whatever now goes with the problem), the felt sense of "all that" will come. People will think many thoughts which give them very real "gut feelings." On my mental map I can cut myself up into various pieces. Every time I cut, it hurts. I can sure feel that! What I feel is the pain of cutting myself up that way. It isn't just head trips. It is what we call "vivisection." Don't cut your gut. The body-sense feels whole, it feels good when it comes. However you mentally cut, ask your body for whatever the problem is as the body has it. If you ask in that
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spirit, then it doesn't matter how you have defined the problem mentally. Your problem might be very specific, but still you want the body sense of all that, which will come and be how the body really does carry that (newly grasped) specific. HOW TO KEEP A BIG SHIFT: See if you can repeat it several times. What did you just say or think, which made that shift? Was it......(No, that doesn't bring the shift again.) Was it...... (No, not that either.) Was it......Ah....there is the shift again. Now repeat that, get more shifting every time you say it. Then keep and remember that. Later in the day or tomorrow, see if it still makes a shift. (If not, see then what freshly comes.) It also helps to recall what you said or felt just before the shift came. ("Oh, first I said there are many points of view, then I suddenly [Page 45] said to myself, "No, only one way is The Right Way, and that gave me a shift and a laugh and a breath...") Protect your shift against all the arguments that often come instantly in your mind. ("Yes...yes, it may be unrealistic, but I'll look at that later. I want to stay with what just came.") IF IT IS NEW, GO WITH IT. IF IT IS OLD AND FAMILIAR, YOU LOSE NOTHING TO PASS IT BY: We have been taught to feel every feeling all the way, especially bad ones. But if it is a familiar path you have gone many times, don't go. One more time won't help. Wait for a new edge. Anything you directly sense which is new offers hope that there might be further new steps. Stay with that and see if more comes. KEEP A POSITIVE SET AROUND ANYTHING, SO YOU CAN ASK WHAT IS IN THE WAY: "Oh...yes...that's my old isolation feeling. Now I'm stuck." Have a mental set that of course you could, ideally, not be isolated. Instead you would be just right, whatever that might be. Then you can ask: "What keeps this isolation?" "What's in the way of me not being isolated?" "What does it need to be O.K.?" LET YOUR BODY KNOW IT CAN MOVE AND EXPRESS ITSELF: If your body doesn't know it, or is not used to it, just for a moment exhale as if you felt a big relief. Let your shoulders slump totally eased. Then, just as if you were feeling much energy for moving forward, straighten your shoulders and imagine moving strongly forward. Later, when you focus, if your body feels like moving in an expressive way of this sort, you have let it know that it would be welcome. It need not do that, just that it would be welcome if it wanted to. Most people at first try to focus with so much bodily stillness and concentration, it may be difficult to sense a bodily expressive movement if it did want to come. Of course
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a felt shift doesn't always involve bodily movement or change in posture, but it may. CHECK BY ASKING, "WHAT IF IT WERE NOT THIS WAY?": If your felt sense seems to respond to something, but you are not sure ("I had this sense [Page 46] that said "No, don't go into this problem...just No...and then I asked what this No is... and I got: You'll get hurt. Now I'm not sure is that it?" Try saying "If I could be sureof course I can't be, but if I could be sure I wouldn't get hurt......?......yes, it budges then.") Of course you would do this "If..." only to check if that's really right in a bodily way. Then you would go further steps of focusing to let it open. The "If..." is only to check the connection. ("Yes, if I say what if I wouldn't get hurt, it eases, but when I remember that I don't know that, it tightens again. Yup, that's what it is all right. I might get hurt. Now I'll go another step to sense what that hurt would be.") THERE IS NO "GETTING RID" OF ANY PART OF YOU: Anything that has some of your life energy in it needs to be heard in a friendly way. However bad you think it is, it didn't get that way for nothing. There is no lopping it off until its life energy has spoken and shifted its form. What you want to get rid of, push away, refuse to be friendly with, only remains stuck. Assume something right is in it, perhaps in a wrong form, and let it speak to you, and say its own good sense. (Even the attacking critical super-ego which one must usually push away, can turn out to have fear, crying, or certain experiences behind its attacking front. But the super-ego is a special case. Here we are speaking more of child parts of us, and ways we are and feel that we are consciously "against.") PETRIFIED REPETITIVES: "Whenever I focus I get to the same thing. Something seems like a new problem but very soon it falls into the same one all the time." Say: "O.K., part of this new problem is that same old one. What else is in the new one?" Let the new problem divide into these two parts. Notice the spot where it would slide into the old problem. NOT SO INTENSE: A felt sense is not usually anywhere near as strong as the emotional feelings we are used to. You might be missing the felt sense because it can be so slight and fleeting. (Of course, intense feelings can come from a felt sense, usually new ones, not the same old ones.) [Page 47] IF YOU ARE ACCUSTOMED TO MEDITATION, RELAXATION, HYPNOSIS: You may from habit go directly to a very relaxed level as soon as you turn inward. If that is the case, try focusing while standing, or put your arms behind your head, so as to come to a medium relaxation level, not all the way
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down. Focusing is not possible if the body "melts away." (Deep relaxation is valuable in other ways, but not for focusing.) PRACTICE PUTTING THINGS DOWN: Many people resolve to practice focusing and then don't. They think of working on heavy problems, but that is done when one needs to. What is best to practice every day and often during each day is just sensing if you feel wonderful and joyous in the middle of your body, and if not... (usually we don't) why not? Then one or two things from that day come, and each can be allowed to say what it is, and then be placed down. One's steady big problems can be just barely touched, ("Oh yes, that's there, sure..."). One or another of these may need to tell you something, or not. You ease your tension level and are ready for whatever comes next in your day. When that becomes easy to do, you'll do it between each task and the next, all day. Among other advantages, this reduces stress. Eugene T. Gendlin Note to Readers:

How Do I Refer To This Document? An example reference is at the top of this page. Please include the Internet address in the reference, even if you cite the document in a printed article, so that others can find the Gendlin Online Library. Can I Link Directly To This Document? Yes. We encourage you to link directly to it from your own online documents. We have built "hooks" into this web page to make it very easy to connect to individual pages and headings in the text. For examples, see: How to Link to The Gendlin Online Library. Biographic Note: Eugene T. Gendlin is a seminal American philosopher and psychologist. He received his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Chicago and taught there from 1963 to 1995. His philosophical work is concerned especially with the relationship between logic and implicit intricacy. Philosophy books include Experiencing and the Creation of Meaning, Language Beyond Post-Modernism: Saying and Thinking in Gendlin's Philosophy edited by David Michael Levin, (fourteen commentaries and Gendlins replies), and A Process Model. There is a world wide network of applications and practices (http://www.focusing.org) stemming from this philosophy. Gendlin has been honored three times by the American Psychological Association for his development of Experiential Psychotherapy. He was a founder and editor for many years of the Associations Clinical Division Journal, Psychotherapy: Theory, Research and Practice. His book Focusing has sold over half a million copies and has appeared in seventeen languages.

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His psychology-related books are Let Your Body Interpret Your Dreams and Focusing-Oriented Psychotherapy. If you see any faults in this document please send us an email. Add a comment to the Gendlin Online Blog for this article. See the reference for this document in the Gendlin primary bibliography. More on Focusing from the Focusing Institute website. The Gendlin Online Library is presented by the Focusing Institute, a not-for-profit organization. If you find the library useful, you can contribute to its maintenance and growth, at http://www.focusing.org/gendlin/gol_donations.asp.

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Focusing Home > Gendlin Online Library > New specifics [Part 2 of 2]

Gendlin, E.T. (1983). New specifics [Part 2 of 2]. The Focusing Folio, 2(3), 2728. From http://www.focusing.org/gendlin/docs/gol_2126.html [Page 27] NEW SPECIFICS SITTING DOWN TO FOCUS: You may find that it takes five minutes or so, just to come "down" into your body, before you can begin focusing. You may find yourself going "down" through layers: What first comes may not be quite it, what next comes is deeper but still not quite...and so on. It is good to get comfortable about taking that time to come "down." AVOIDING ONE'S INWARDNESS: Many people do not turn inward, or are afraid to focus because they expect something will overwhelm them. For this, try the new way of making a space (below). Some people do not turn inward because they always find the same problem, loss, or sadness there. What is said below may help:

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TWO KINDS OF "DOWN": Some problems make us feel "sunk down" in them. Then we certainly feel the problem but this is a different type of "down." "Sunken" is inside the problem. Focusing touches the problem as a whole, which feels different. How to move from "sunken" to focusing? It may help to make a space for a few minutes. (see below). You will be out of the "sunken" type of "down," and now you can try to sense the whole thing from here. Although we don't have words for the difference, you can go much deeper down from here, without ever feeling sunken. They are different "downs." MAKING A SPACE: You may want to try the older ways. Here is a new way: Think of a time when you really felt joyous and wonderful. (Don't say there was never such a time, even if you have to search far back.) Now make this time very vivid to yourself and feel it for a while. Visual imagery helps. Then let the whole problem be on the other side of this, so that [Page 28] the good feeling is between you and the problem. Sense that problem as a whole, but only at a very low intensity. You can then focus on that feeling-quality. You may want to practice ONLY making a good space (in this or any of the other ways) till you can do that. The problems you fear to touch can wait. SELF-BLAME: Sometimes we feel afraid of our own self-blame. We don't want false excuses, of course, but more often we add false self-accusations. When focusing in relation to self-blame it helps to wish to have truth, nothing better or worse. Instead of deciding what the truth is, you can decide that you want only truth. You may find that this wish makes a crucial bodily change. Stay with this wishing awhile. There is no rush for answers. NOT GOING YET: It is very helpful to sense a touchy problem THERE, but WITHOUT going further into it, for the time being. Eugene T. Gendlin Note to Readers:

How Do I Refer To This Document? An example reference is at the top of this page. Please include the Internet address in the reference, even if you cite the document in a printed article, so that others can find the Gendlin Online Library.
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Can I Link Directly To This Document? Yes. We encourage you to link directly to it from your own online documents. We have built "hooks" into this web page to make it very easy to connect to individual pages and headings in the text. For examples, see: How to Link to The Gendlin Online Library. Biographic Note: Eugene T. Gendlin is a seminal American philosopher and psychologist. He received his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Chicago and taught there from 1963 to 1995. His philosophical work is concerned especially with the relationship between logic and implicit intricacy. Philosophy books include Experiencing and the Creation of Meaning, Language Beyond Post-Modernism: Saying and Thinking in Gendlin's Philosophy edited by David Michael Levin, (fourteen commentaries and Gendlins replies), and A Process Model. There is a world wide network of applications and practices (http://www.focusing.org) stemming from this philosophy. Gendlin has been honored three times by the American Psychological Association for his development of Experiential Psychotherapy. He was a founder and editor for many years of the Associations Clinical Division Journal, Psychotherapy: Theory, Research and Practice. His book Focusing has sold over half a million copies and has appeared in seventeen languages. His psychology-related books are Let Your Body Interpret Your Dreams and Focusing-Oriented Psychotherapy. If you see any faults in this document please send us an email. Add a comment to the Gendlin Online Blog for this article. See the reference for this document in the Gendlin primary bibliography. More on Focusing from the Focusing Institute website. The Gendlin Online Library is presented by the Focusing Institute, a not-for-profit organization. If you find the library useful, you can contribute to its maintenance and growth, at http://www.focusing.org/gendlin/gol_donations.asp.

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Gendlin, E.T. (2000). When you feel the body from inside, there is a door. In Jeffrey K. Zeig (Ed.), The evolution of psychotherapy: A meeting of the minds. Phoenix, AZ: The Milton H. Erickson Foundation Press. From http://www.focusing.org/gendlin/docs/gol_2232.html [Page 255] When You Feel the Body From the Inside, There is a Door Eugene T. Gendlin Let me begin with philosophy, since that is the field in which I do my main work. It will lead me into my topic, which is the body. What we call science in our society is really not science but a particular kind of science It is the most successful kind in human history so far, but there are other kinds of science. By "kind" I mean the basic model, the approach that is used to explain anything, and also what is meant by "explaining." In philosophy we don't just explain things; we try to explain what "explain" can mean. If this makes you a little dizzy, it's because you're not used to philosophy. There are different kinds of "explaining." The way in which most of our science explains anything is to chop things up into little parts and to understand each part separately. Then you put the parts back together again. If you can construct the thing you're studying, if you can make it yourself out of little parts, then you can say that you have explained it. That's familiar and it's true. But every approach to explaining or knowing anything has its limitations. This one doesn't work well on living things. If you divide a human being into parts, when you put the parts back together again you don't get a human being. Despite this, the parts are being used in many powerful ways. There are parts of people which are cells, there are genes, there are all kinds of chemicals which are being used without an understanding of human beings. Scientists are taking out one gene and putting one chemical in, knowing only this small part and that one. Farmed in cages, the genetically modified fish grow faster. Some number of them have no eye on one side. No one knows why. But I am not denigrating this kind [Page 256] of science. We couldn't get through a day without this science. You wouldn't hear my voice right now. The lights wouldn't go on. Remember what happened when the Year 2000 began? We thought the computers might not work. Computers are now part of most of our machines. Without them the electric power grids wouldn't work, nor the traffic lights. The elevators would get stuck; the airplanes wouldn't fly. The whole world would have been stuck. So, certainly I'm not here to speak against this kind of science. I want to say that we need to add other kinds of science to this one. There is a second kind which you all know, the holistic kind. It is the opposite of the first. Instead of chopping everything up into parts, you study the system as a
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whole. Working from the whole, you can discover many things that the chop-up science cannot find. So, for example, various human functions were long thought to depend on certain parts of the brain. If a lesion was cut so as to disconnect a given part, sure enough the function would be gone. But then it was found that if we wait a little, the function comes back even without the part that supposedly performs it. The whole system knows how to restore a function even without the part that usually does it. The whole system does many things. It can change and develop parts. It can do new things. The holistic approach is familiar these days from our very successful alternative science called "ecology." The ecologists say, "The fish are becoming extinct. They are on their way out." The regular scientists say, "Everything is fine. Nothing is wrong. We made many tests and found no difference." Two years later the fish are gone. How could the holistic science predict it, whereas the part-science could not? Well, if you study fish by beginning with the whole, you come to know the ways in which they depend on the larger whole. For instance, you know what they eat, where they mate. If those things are close to disappearing, you can predict what isn't apparent if you study just the fish, or little parts of the fish. I want to talk about a third kind of science. The third kind studies neither little units nor the whole. It studies processes. A process is something that starts under certain conditions, happens, and then has certain results. A great deal of what is presented at this conference is about processes. If you do certain things, then a certain chain of events happens, which leads to a certain outcome. This kind of science is not precise about units, nor about the whole. It is precise about recognizing whether the given process is occurring or not. It precisely defines the procedures for getting the process to happen. Thirdly, it defines the results, the differences the process makes. We are working to bring together the many people and settings that have established knowledge of this kind about some human process. It turns out there's quite a bit. The reliable knowledge is pretty well buried and mixed with a lot of false or unproved claims. But there is certainly also a lot of wellestablished knowledge. The important thing today is to put things together. For example, take therapeutic processes. The research shows that a number of them cause statistically significant improvement. But "statistically significant" means that this is not by chance. It does not mean that the improvement is enough to be humanly significant. Give starving people a little bread and they survive longer. This can be found also for water. It's time to test the effects of a meal. Let us put together as much [Page 257] as we can. I have shown how combining methods need not take more time than one method alone does (Gendlin 1996/1999, chapter 11).
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The physical sciences are jumping wildly ahead, but there has been great progress in the human sciences as well. We are here . . . we represent a lot of progress on the human side. Human beings have developed greatly in my time. My shorthand for this is to say "When I was young I was weird. Now I'm much less weird." I happened to be an early version of what millions of people did just a little later. We've gotten so that it's not at all odd to be in touch with emotions, with feelings, with an interiority. I want to talk about the next step, which is now slowly developing. The next step has to do with the body. We already have a great new respect for the body. We pay attention to it in dieting, jogging, with bottled water, and in other ways. These ways concern the body as we know it from the outside. And in sensing our feelings and emotions, we do also feel our bodies from the inside. But we can experience the body from the inside on a much deeper level. How we live our situations is much more finely organized on the bodily level. The body carries much more detail than we can have in our minds or our feelings. Currently we are still telling each other how great it is to be in touch with emotions and feelings, but it is not really so great. If you are honest with yourself you can notice that you get stuck in emotions and feelings. Just now you are probably glad that you are not feeling certain feelings, because you don't want to be stuck in them. All day every day your body provides 99% of what you say and do. Your thinking is needed only for special things. You don't have to think about how to say hello to a person you meet. It's your body that has said "hello" to all the people you met on the way here. As you walked into this room, you waved to some and smiled at others; you ignored someone, and gave someone else a big hug. Your body knew which fit whom. You did not have to say to yourself, "Let's see. Shall I smile warmly, or rather coolly?" We think in advance only in special situations, and then it doesn't work very well when the smile doesn't come directly from our bodies. Your body has the whole of your history with each person. Your body has all of what you said and did together. You cannot possibly remember all that (except perhaps under hypnosis) but it's all in there, and it works to produce just the right smile and the right things to say and do. In the body all this history doesn't consist of separated pieces, not like separate parts, one after the other. All these factors are not next to each other. Each is altered and opened by every one of the others so that they work all together in one. Some situations don't need anything. The ones of which we say "I have a situation," those need and imply something that has to be done or said. They

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want something. They bug us. That sense or feeling or knowing or bodily bugging is a focal crossing of everything, and it also implies a next step. A great many factors cross to create a next step, a move, a smile, a turn, or something to say or do. The next step does not come just from those factors. It comes from the bodily life-process which takes them all in and then produces a step. The situation with all its novelty is embodied and taken account of. [Page 258] "Crossing" also explains some puzzling phenomena. When you're in a troubled situation and you pull the Bible or Shakespeare off the shelf, open it up anywhere and what it says there will turn out to be about your problem. That is "crossing." The complexity on the page crosses with the complexity of your body in the situation, and something focal is produced. The bodily knowing works implicitly. You don't encounter this whole complexity itself. But a certain kind of physical attention can let you encounter it. The place in the body to which I point is quite different from emotions and feelings. The body has a much wider organization, and it also moves on into a step of further living. When you attend to this level in the body, what comes there will move you on through whatever is stuck just now. When you have inhaled, your body moves on into exhaling. In the same way it also moves on from any stuck moment, even in quite complex new problems. The body provides a small step, and then another and another. These small physically-felt steps have very specific recognizable characteristics. Let me use another way to mark the entry to this bodily level. A French philosopher, Merleau-Ponty, has pointed out that we don't live just by our five senses. He says that we can sense the space behind us, although we don't see, hear, smell, taste, or touch it. Would you please verify this now, and feel the space behind you. There it is. The body brings this sense of the space behind you. So he is right, but I argue with him. I say, "That's not just space we feel behind us. It is our situation." Check this for me now. You are feeling the people sitting behind you. You can feel that if you whipped around and stared at them now, it would make you and them uncomfortable. Isn't that right? You're feeling the appropriate thing to do, which is to sit and look at me and not turn around. A situation consists of other people and what we can do or not do with them, or perhaps without them. The body feels every situation, and also what we might do in it and what would happen. The body employs this physical knowing all day quite automatically, but if you enter this bodily level directly, you can find many things and arrive at new steps that do not come automatically.

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Here is another bit of philosophy: When we think freshly from experience, we have to let the words develop new meaning as we speak. If words could only have old meanings, we would get stuck and could not say anything new. So please notice: When I say "you physically feel your situation," this is not quite the usual meaning of the word "feel." Well should I say that you "sense" it? Or should I say you "perceive" it? Or know it? Or think it, have it, live it? Shall I say that you hint it, or perhaps jump it, or leap it? None of the words work in their usual way if I use them to say this. So let them all work. I can say any of them, or I can manage without any word at all. I can say that you "....." your situations with your body. After I have used all those wrong words to say it, I don't need any word, since you know (or feel or live) what I mean. And so, as I say these things, the meaning of the word "body" also changes. Of course a body that feels situations isn't just a machine. With genes and chemicals we cannot understand the body that senses a situation. We need to add a science that can study such a body. Our institutions need to be based on a better science of people. Currently the institutions do not know about persons at all. For example, in our schools a child sits for [Page 259] twelve years, five days a week for all those hours and nobody ever asks: "Who are you?" Nor is this ever asked in most of our institutions. This is because the science on which society bases itself has no people in it. In the current science the body is split off from the person. The doctor treats the leg and cannot deal well with the fact that you're attached to it. But even just the leg is not well understood. How we live suffuses every part of the body, every organ. Every bit of the body is part of our interactional living. If you are an unusual physician and pay attention to your patient's experiences, then if you have treated any organ of the body for many years, you can tell a great deal about the person from examining that organ. That is true of every organ. We have to think differently about the body. It's not a machine. Well, it certainly is a machine in so far as one can deal with its cells, blood vessels, chemicals and genes, but it isn't only a machine. Even a tree is much more than a machine. A plant has no sight or hearing. It does not need to see the sun because it interacts with the sun. The plant is the interaction with the sun. It doesn't have the sense of touch with which to touch the ground; it eats the ground and grows from the ground. So now, if I say that a plant knows the ground, knows the light, knows the water, something odd has happened to the word "know." Words acquire new meaning as we use them. A living plant knows and is the interaction with the environment. And so is a person. There is a lot of new thinking concerning animals. They, too, are interactions, and chiefly with each other. When they move it is not like the motion of a brick that is being moved from here to there. Animal bodies move in their
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interactions, much as ours do. An animal moves in situational feedback. It doesn't just move. It jerks and something happens. Its body takes that in and includes it in generating the next bit of motion. Behavior is generated by feedback from the environment. By the way, we can use this feedback in the practice of therapy. We can say a little bit of something intuitive, and then see how the client lives in response to this. If the client's reaction carries our first bit forward, it generates a further move from us. This brings something further from the client's body which may carry us still further. But if there is a break in this feedback, we must stop. Then it's best just to listen and say back only what the client wants to convey. The body is a situational system. It is an interactional system. We can do more with somebody than we can do alone. Being with a given person is an utterly different physical living process from being alone or with a different person. That's what therapy is based on. Living things are interactions. You might be sad alone, but if somebody is there who can hear you, then you cry. Your situation is carried by your body. When the situation changes, your body changes, and vice versa. When you enter into the body-sense of the situation and respond to it directly, very finely-wrought new steps arise. You may have no idea what to do, but the bodily version of the situation will move through small steps which cannot happen otherwise. Machines always do the same thing, never suddenly something creative. But on the bodily level to which I point, new steps arise. You may have gotten yourself into a problematic situation that has never happened to anyone before in the history of the world, [Page 260] and you cannot figure out what to do. Usually you do what you can, and then it's the next day. But if you know how to let your body give you the physical sense of the whole crossed history of that situation then it will soon also generate small steps of change in the whole thing. At first this may be only a bodily sense of what you want to do. It might not yet have a shape, or the right words, but now you know what you are looking for, what it feels like, actually, physically. Then that comes as well. We need to think about living bodies in a different way, which means that we need to re-think biology. But biology is based on chemistry and physics. So we have to think also about physics in a new way. (I have found a way to change the basic terms. See A Process Model, www.focusing.org.) We have to think
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about the whole shebang in a different way. We disappear in the science of little parts and points of space-time. Of course, we are the ones who construct the science. But getting credit for the science does not make up for being invisible within it. No, this science is wonderful but we need to add other kinds of science to it My colleague Rossi uses hypnosis, to ask my body questions. Five years ago I was inclined to argue with him. He talks directly to my bodily unconscious and skips me. He goes around the person. I didn't like that. I work to let the person find the entry in the body. But it's time we put our different knowledge together. Today I say I'm in favor of doing what he does, provided we also do what I do. Then the person has the best of both, and we get it all. Rossi asks a question and then says: "Your finger will move up if this is true, and not if it isn't." It works very well. We can explain why it works, if we think about the body in my way. The body knows (feels, is .....) all of the living we are doing, have been doing, as well as how to go on. You can ask the body questions also from the inside. You bring your attention there, below your feelings and your emotions. At first there may be only a vague sentience there, nothing like a bodily sense of the situation or problem. By keeping your attention there for some seconds, you enable a bodily sense to come. My contribution has been to make small steps of instruction for this way. We call them "focusing instructions." It takes most people a few days to find exactly where in the body this process begins. So I cannot pretend to teach it actually just now. The most useful thing I will say is that you can find out all about it on the web under www.focusing.org. You know about .org? .Org indicates an organization that is not for profit. You might want to find out about how to learn focusing, see the literature on it, and my philosophy of the implicit (www.philosophyofexperiencing.org). Currently people vary greatly. Some are far from finding and entering their body-sense in this way, others quite close. There are probably 20 people here who found it just as I found it. Little children can be shown it very quickly. We have now had three yearly conferences in Europe on focusing for children. Some diagnostic groups find focusing very quickly. I don't believe that diagnostic distinctions tell us much about what to do, but it is true that so-called "borderline" people who are constantly in and out of hospitals take to focusing fairly rapidly. Another group who do are adolescents. This is worth reporting, since therapists usually find those two groups difficult to work with. [Page 261] But when they are invited to attend in the middle of their bodies, and to speak from there, they can often do it right away. On the other hand, many perfectly well-functioning people have difficulty attending inside their bodies. But once you have found it, it doesn't matter whether it took you three days or ten minutes
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to find this bodily entry. In fact, if it takes you long to find it, you may be able to teach it better because you know some of the difficulties. Please understand that I cannot teach it here. If that is understood, I can introduce it a little bit. Everybody has, rarely, an experience that we call a hunch. That is somewhat like focusing. There is some proposal, a new job, perhaps an apartment, some person to get to know, something that looks very good to your logical understanding. And yet, something uncomfortable in your body says "eeee." What do you call that sort of bodily discomfort? Is it an, emotion? Is it fear or anger or joy? Is it sad? No, it's this bodily discomfort, this ''eeee." It is very bodily and yet it has the situation in it. We call it a "hunch," and we accept the fact that we don't know what it "knows" about the situation. But we would not ignore it. Isn't that so? Well, focusing is a way to get this kind of bodily sense about any situation or any specific thing at any time you wish. You need only let your attention go to that bodily place where you would feel a hunch if there were one. Then you wait and after perhaps half a minute a distinct bodily sense comes. Here is another example: Suppose you are on a guided mountain tour and some person who is not used to hiking says, "The way the trail looks up ahead makes me uneasy. I don't know why, but I wish we would stop for a while." You would probably just comfort the person and keep going. But what if your experienced guide stops and says, "1 don't know why, but the way the trail looks up ahead makes me uneasy. Let's stop here for a while." I bet you wouldn't say "That's OK., let's keep going.'' You would know that many thousands of experiences in the mountains are playing a role in generating what the guide's body senses. Let me tell of a different kind of situation which everyone has experienced. When you tell someone about a problem you have, you say a lot that you know about it. Then you get to a certain point where you don't know what to say, and yet and yet the problem is still very much there. Now the problem is not there in words, but only in that troubled bodily sense. Some of us are so well trained socially that we can't stand to keep quiet. In that case we cannot meet such a troubled sense head-on and enter it. We might find something more to say, and then again something more. In that way we might never keep silent with the bodily sense of the unsolved problem. But we could. We could sense it directly as a bodily not-all-O.K., a bodily ..... When I teach listening in a class or a group, I talk about some problem of mine. Focusing enables one to touch very deeply into something without needing to say much of the content. I say something like "I have a situation that scares me."
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Then I sense it inside and I don't say more about the situation. I point this out to the group, so that they can use their turns in a real way without telling things that they don't wish to reveal. Instead, I speak from the intricate body-sense which lets me find how the situation gets [Page 262] to me. I help the student on my right to reflect back what I say. Then it's that student's turn to speak, and the next person listens. Each person speaks for a while and then does not know what to say next. There is a short silence, then the student looks up to me for help. Now I say, ''Well, when you are alone with your partner, I hope you will stay with this kind of spot, and pay attention to how it feels in your body. But of course, in class there isn't the peace to do it. So that's O.K., now we'll go on to the next person." I always divide my students up into pairs for a partnership. These days we teach focusing in partnerships. Whatever time is available is divided in half. Partners take turns focusing, being listened to, or using the time in any way they want. The partners meet or talk on the phone once or twice a week. This is our answer to this atomized society of ours, where we are isolated and inwardly alone. Focusing partnerships greatly improve life. Focusing is easier to do with a partner, and tends to go deeper as well. You can develop a focusing partner for yourself. We have good instructions on our web page for how to arrange such a partnership. We can also help you to find a partner who already knows focusing. I should say more about it. I don't have time to do so now. Imagine saying a few things about one of your problems. Then you might get to that characteristic silence where there is more, but you don't yet know what. But this isn't just more to say, which you can a1ways find. Rather, it is a spot where there is a bodily discomfort which "knows" more about the problem than you do. It can also generate small steps forward, quite different steps than you could ever invent. The bodily entry to the discomfort is right there. It is a door. Most people do not yet know that door. What they know are feelings and emotions, often troubling ones. But we can turn our attention to a place that is deeper than the usual bad feelings. Oddly enough, this deeper place feels better even just from getting your attention, although only vagueness may be there at first. To stop and enter your bodily sense sometimes requires a few minutes away from the situation, for example in the hall or on a quiet stairway. But once you have practiced focusing, you can often do it for a few seconds right in the situation, even while someone is talking. You can find the bodily discomfort, and it might open immediately: "Oh, yes, just this is where things are going wrong . . . " and you are ready to readjust the situation. This saves an enormous amount of time because once gone wrong, situations are hard to fix. Or, if you

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are writing something, stopping for a few minutes saves all the time of revising and rewriting 30 pages that didn't feel right all along. When you find this bodily entry, sense its physical quality. There is a tendency to go right into the content. For example, someone might tell me, "Oh yes, there it is, in my stomach, my body-feeling about this. It's about my husband and he's like this and like that and it's been bothering me for years and I feel hopeless about it.'' Then I might say "What is the physical quality of this in your body? Is it like jumpy, or is it more heavy like a weight?'' I am asking about the sheer quality of that body-sense. Usually you find that it has no regular name. That is characteristic of this "door": It is a very distinct physical quality which may not be classifiable. Most words you try out are definitely not right. If it rejects all words, you can just call it "that, there." [Page 263] I must emphasize that it is very good when no words fit. It shows that you are in touch with something, more than just words. Someone learning focusing tries out a word. Does it fit? "No." "Oh, good!" I say. "Now we know you have ahold of something." How can one know that the word doesn't fit? Only because something concrete is here, something that we aren't making up. When you do focusing you come to admire how finely and precisely the body knows the language. You find that the body rejects word after word that you try to say, how picky and demanding it is. It wants just the right word or a new phrase, and so it is also with action. You may find that the body-sense of a situation is not carried forward by any of the routines you know. You might propose perfectly good ways of acting and find that they utterly fail to budge it. With bodily attention something with a new twist must come and does come! You propose a course of action or a sentence, but then you check: ''Will that do?' Just as if the body-sense were another person, you can check with it. Sometimes a felt sense is carried forward not by words or actions, but by a certain image or a certain gesture. Once in a while a usual word fits, for example, "Yes. Scared. That's right." But most of the time it's not exactly scared and it's not exactly apprehensive; it's not exactly worried; it's not exactly angry; it's eeeee, or uhhhhh. When you first find this bodily sense, you might be inclined to say, "That's garbage. That's nothing. That's not very promising. That's just being uncomfortable or confused." It doesn't look promising. It's not nearly as exciting as all the things you can tell yourself about yourself. But try to be there for

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perhaps twenty or thirty seconds. Choose any part of your life, large or small. A bodily felt sense will come in regard to it, and then also little steps. It may take you some time to get all of 20 or 30 seconds there, because usually there are distractions, old thoughts and old emotions. One loses touch and has to come around again to the bodily entry. One is distracted again and again, and has to start all over, entering into the body and finding that place. That is how this is for all of us. But with some little time actually there you will probably find a very characteristic kind of step coming. The steps are often so specific, they don't have the usual words, more like "Oh . . ." (with a sense that the problem is really just with this part, and tucked under this). Or, "oh, it isn't really hard, it's that I assume it will be hard because . . ." A small step is something like a gift, a little physical change, not huge but slight, and yet it is a change in how the whole thing sits in you. Such a little step brings a small but distinct physical relief. In a stuck hard place there is a little loosening, a little give. It feels like when you dig a big rock out of the ground, there is the happy moment when at last it loosens a little. It feels like that. Then comes another little step, and another. After a while you also get a big step. Those are not hard to recognize. It is the small steps that you might not notice. A slight sense of physical relief marks them as different from all the old familiar stuff you think and feel. Such a step might look like information, for example, "Oh, it's really like this, and I had thought that it was this other way." Or, "Oh, another thing about it is . . ." The [Page 264] information is important. But much more important is the fact that the problem is shifting in your body. No information is final here. There will be another step and another step. Knowing that steps keep coming enables us to hang on to what comes even when it doesn't seem helpful or realistic. For example, "Oh, it seems as if what I really need is a plastic shield, so nothing could get to me." You might think that this isn't realistic or just escapism, but don't let the thinking wipe out the little step. Everyone has a negativistic super-ego circuit that could grab any shy little forward step. Don't throw that away just because it seems unreal. Let your body have the change it brings, and soon a further step will move all of it on from here. The door into the bodily living of our situations is right in the center of our very ordinary body, for example the one that is filling up your chair right now. But once you come in there and enter through this door, the whole space changes. An altogether different kind of space comes there after a while. It is an imagery space that is physically felt, but much larger than your body. Time at that bodily level is very much slower than clock time. When you think you've been waiting
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for an eternity down there, it was only thirty seconds. Thirty seconds is a very long time there. Staying with a bodily felt sense is not like pushing into emotions or feelings. In ordinary experience there are only two possibilities. Either you fall into your feeling or else you run away from it. Neither of those is very good. In focusing there is a third possibility. You stay next to whatever you find, or near it. Once you know how to stay next to something, you never again need to be afraid of anything inside you. If it is too much at the moment, you know how to step back and say: "Oh, that's too much for me right now.'' You don't run away, you're still in touch with it, but near it and not in it. You back up and take a little room to breathe. The steps come best when you are neither fallen in, nor running away. They come when you can say ''I am here, it is there.'' Focusing instructions came from my philosophical work about the relation between concepts and what people call "experience." You can never have just only experience without concepts having played some role in forming it. Our experience happens in a human world and it always has language, culture, and concepts implicit in it. With all this prejudice and old training in it, how can experience possibly give us any basis for what to say or think? Experience does contain the old entities and packages. For example, many philosophers find that what's good or right is one concern, split off from the question of what's true, which is another concern. Of course you can also find that these are two things. Or, for example, in Western culture it is customary to split a person up into cognition, emotions, and acts of will. I can distinguish those three packages in my experience if I like. I can experience what various theories tell me about motives, desires, memories, expectations, and so on. It is all very boring. But when I enter at the bodily level I actually find a spider web, a Persian rug, which is always implicit in, behind, or under these boring finished packages. There is a much finer organization there. It generates a different kind of epistemology. [Page 265] If I try to speak from there with the old words about the old packages, I can feel the intricacy shutting down. At best, they leave everything that is alive in me unchanged and untouched. Those old concepts cannot reach into there. They are helpless, like trying to fix a wristwatch with garden shears. Thinking has gotten a bad reputation among sensitive people, because this is the only kind of thinking they were taught. But a very different kind of thinking is possible. A recognizably different kind of thinking can flow out of experiential intricacy and
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carry it on further. Then the old packages break and open. There you find much that does not come from your culture, much that contradicts or differentiates the old training. It opens into many strands. When that happens, you don't find that truth is distinct from wondering what is good or bad. But this isn't because everything is one big wash, rather because at such a juncture you find that several much finer and more interesting kinds of truth-and-good are involved unavoidably. Then you can think and say what has never yet been thought and said. When one is experienced in any science and in any field, one experientially "knows" more than one can say or think. Some of these knowings are important and keep trying to be said. If I explain what I mean, then I can touch a vital spot in anyone from any field if I say: "What important thing do you know, that wants to be said but cannot (yet) be said clearly?" It is a deeply expansive experience to speak from this, even just a little and in odd sentences. As a philosopher I have been working on this kind of thinking from implicitly intricate experiencing. Coming from Plato, Aristotle, Kant, and Hegel, and especially Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, and Wittgenstein, I went on and found that one can speak from this very process of speaking from experience. There is never an equation between experience and words, but there are different kinds of speaking-from. One can specify certain marks that let people find and recognize this type of speaking-from, which I have been speaking from. This is how focusing instructions came about from the philosophy. But it is a philosopher's task to formulate precise concepts, in my case precise concepts about the reciprocal roles of concepts and bodily experiencing. There is no final system. But one can distinguish a number of different roles which the implicit experiencing can play in one's speaking and thinking. There is a characteristic way in which words work in new phrasings. I have also been able to formulate several odd-looking concepts which are not just concepts but also connections with this Persian rug of experience which concepts can never contain but can carry forward. One of those concepts is "carrying forward." Let me bring home what this concept does. For good reasons, most philosophers have given up on the kind of truth which represents or copies something out there, as if we photograph it and check our picture for accuracy. But now many of them say that if there is no copy kind of truth, there is no truth at all. This isn't so. We find much more interesting kinds of truth, if we give up on the project of copying. There can be other important relationships between what we are implicitly living through, and what we come to say and think. One such relationship occurs when people claim that what they are saying "matches" what they feel. The word "match" sounds as if words could copy what they feel, but that is impossible. [Page 266] Feeling and speaking are
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different things. However, what people misname "matching" does exist. It is a certain relationship between experience and speaking (or doing). This kind of saying touches what you experience; it moves you and doesn't leave you just as you were. But it is not really a change, either. Rather, it is continuous with what you experience, and lets that move forward. So we call this relation "carrying forward." The term is badly needed. Once people hear this term "carrying forward," they use it often because this relationship is so important to us and there has been no concept for it. "Carrying forward" is one of two useful concepts I have tried to present here. The other is "crossing." A bodily felt sense is a crossing of the relevant facets. It doesn't give them one after the other, nor even just added up, but crossed so that the body-process shapes a single next step. I am introducing a door, only introducing it. My definition of focusing: Focusing is spending time sensing something as yet undefined that comes in one's body in connection with some specific problem or aspect of one's life. I want to conclude with what unites all these things. This is how we can make concepts from experiencing anything, and especially what human beings are. The one thing I am sure of is that it is worthwhile keeping a person company. The process of keeping a person company needs to be the model for the additional science we are building. You know you are not just atoms, genes, and cells, but I argue that you are also not your feelings and emotions, also not your habits, memories, images, and self-identifications. It cannot be that what you think a human being is has nothing to do with the one that's sitting in your chair, alive and certainly being you, although my words are filling up your mind just now. You are in there, I know, struggling to lead some sort of a life with others and with yourself. And, you are up against a whole lot of difficult stuff inside. How do I know that? I am saying something more personal about you than you usually tell people, and I don't even know most of you. This bodily aliveness is also where your unique contribution to your field can come up. But how are all these many things here now? All this is here implicitly, just now unspoken, unacted, in your body. I can only promise you that that's a little door through which you can find quite a lot. References Gendlin, E. T. (1981). Focusing. New York: Bantam; www.focusing.org. Gendlin. E. T. (1991). Crossing and dipping: Some terms for approaching the interface between natural understanding and logical formation. In M. Galbraith & W. J. Rapaport (Eds.), Subjectivity and the debate over computational

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cognitive science (pp. 37-59). New York: Center for Cognitive Science. 1991. Also in Minds and Machines, V. 4. 1995. Gendlin, E. T. (1992a). Thinking beyond patterns: Body, language and situations. In B. den Ouden & M. Moen (Eds.), The presence of feeling in thought (pp. 25-151). New York: Peter Language. Gendlin. E. T. (l992b). The primacy of the body. not the primacy of perception. Man and World, 25(3-4), 34 1-353. [Page 267] Gendlin, E. T. (1996/1999). Focusing-oriented psychotherapy, chapter 11. New York: Guilford; paperback, 1999. Gendlin, E. T. (1997a). Experiencing and the creation of meaning. New York: Free Press, Macmillan. Paper Edition, Northwestern University Press. Gendlin, E. T. (1997b). A Process Model, http://www.focusing.org, and printed from Focusing Institute, in eight parts, 422 pages. Gendlin, E. T. (1997c) The responsive order: A new empiricism. Man and World, 30, 383-411. Gendlin, E. T. (1997d). What happens when Wittgenstein asks: "What happens when . . .?" Paper given at University of Potsdam seminar entitled Zur Sprache Kommen: Die Ordnungen und das Offene nach Wittgenstein, November 1996. The Philosophical Forum, 28(3), 268-281. Gendlin, E. T., & Lemke, J. (1983). A critique of relativity and localization. Mathematical Modeling, 4, pp. 61-72. A Response to Eugene Gendlin Jeffrey K. Zeig I devised the schedule for the Conference and chose to discuss Gene's work. It was something that I wanted to study. Gene has made an enduring contribution. I wanted to learn more about it so I immersed myself in the literature of Focusing. I have 43 points to make and I have divided my discussion of those points into six categories: I) about Gene; II) about our similarities; III) about our differences; IV) about what I could offer him; V) about what I can learn from him; and VI) what I like about Gene. I. About Gene

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1) Gene is for real. And, Gene is for real people. He won't have truck with collectively acceptable generalities. 2) Gene is not a "make up" person. There are no cover-ups. People are people, pimples and all. 3) Gene is for real relationships. He's for unadulterated, unimpeded relationships, relationships that are not impeded by notions or potions. He eschews principles or practices that interfere with real connection. 4) Gene is for real focus. The matter of sense for Gene is the sense of the matter. 5) Gene is a real romantic. He is an epicure of the moment of connection. 6) Gene is the real priest of the inner world. For him internal experiences are holy matters. 7) Gene is a real private investigator. I don't think of him as the Columbus of psychotherapy but perhaps he's the Colombo. 8) Gene is a real Beatle. "Let it Be" would be his motto. 9) Most of all Gene is a person who is for the body of real experiences. He will pull the words over our heads and into our homebodies. (I wish I could take credit for that line but its author is Stephen Gilligan.) II. Our Similarities 10) Gene and I are similar in that neither of us needs an explicit theory of personality to conduct psychotherapy. Both of us see explicit theory as an impediment to [Page 268] practice. 11) Perhaps Gene and I have similar mothers, which is especially ironic because my mother is in the audience at this presentation. We both work on a principle of fusion rather than boundaries. Minuchin is a therapist who works on boundaries. If you see me do therapy with hypnosis or Gene do therapy with focusing, we work on fusion. 12) Both Gene and I view therapy as an evocative art. It's an art of eliciting previously dormant patient strengths. We deal with the structures of the present to elicit strengths rather than exhuming a long-dead past. 13) Both Gene and I are phenomenologists. We extol rather than dissect precious experience. However, where he's more of a seedbed, I fashion myself as more of a gardener. Both Gene and I believe in the central power of changing phenomenology. We have some different ways of going about it, but the phenomenology of the person is what is most important. 14) We both have faith. Faith in the innate potential of people. Gene writes that every bad feeling is a potential energy towards a more right way of being if you just give it space to move towards its rightness. I like that notion very much. It is hopeful and speaks to positives and potentialities. 15) Another similarity is that neither Gene nor I have a secret tribal language. We speak in the vernacular. 16) We both believe that therapy should be an experience. I think that his are sometimes weirder than mine; one would never do in real life what he does in therapy. 17) Both Gene and I tend to be vague in our approach. But a difference is that I'm certain about my vagueness and he's vague about his certainty. 18) Both Gene and I believe in the possibility of conducting content-free work. We don't need a lengthy social history. We don't need an extensive diagnosis to work with the problem. 19) Both of us are
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process-oriented, building on existent patient processes, a method Ericksonians call "utilization." 20) Both Gene and I work on a principle of improvisation. Rather than cultivating a proper rose garden, both of us are more like explorers hacking a path through a jungle. III. The Differences 21) 1 consider myself a lumper, but compared to Gene I'm more of a shredder. He's more right hemisphere and I perceive myself as more left hemisphere. 22) He's more mosaic than linear in his thinking and I'm more linear than mosaic. 23) Another difference is that Gene is more of a midwife when it comes to conducting psychotherapy and I'm more of a tour guide. 24) Gene has a tendency to make unconscious processes conscious. He sees focusing as a conversation between the body sense and the conscious person. His position is in accord with the dictum that extensions of knowledge arise from making conscious the unconscious. But I follow Goethe who said that man cannot persist long in a conscious state. He must throw himself back to the unconscious for his roots lie there. 25) I rarely ask a patient. "How do you experience that?" I don't consider it to be a core condition of psychotherapy. 26) Another difference is that Gene paints with broad brush strokes and I tend to use very fine lines. I'm much more of a technician than he is. 27) To me, therapy takes place in life and not in the consulting room. I sincerely believe that the family is the primary context for change. 28) The last difference to mention is that I tend to make simple things very complex and he tends to make complex things very simple. [Page 269] IV. What I Can Offer Gene 29) I could offer a systemic perspective. I tend to be more of a social psychologist looking at the system of interaction, making changes in a social system or familial system with the perspective that people can change by virtue of a change in their context, not necessarily a change in their inner world. 30) Another thing that I could offer Gene is the importance of orienting to outcome. As an Ericksonian therapist, I have an outcome in mind. When I'm working, I move toward that outcome. Gene is not outcome-oriented. He's more "organic" in allowing the process to develop itself, but I think it advantageous to have an outcome in mind and proceed toward the outcome. 31) Another thing that I can offer is the importance of "orienting towards," methods that Ericksonians tab indirection. 32) Gene tends to eschew technique, but I think technique can be valuable. 33) Another thing that I can offer is the idea of utilization. Ericksonian therapy pivots on utilization. Whatever exists in the therapy or the social situation, we strive to utilize it to develop the therapy. We utilize the patient's values, the patient's social situation, the patient's style, the patient's dress, etc. 34) I can offer Gene ways of making therapy more of a powerful drama of
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change. I think he is dramatic in his therapy and I value the drama that he adds to therapy. In the Ericksonian method, I see myself as even more dramatic in my approach. 35) Experience is reciprocal to certainty. But, when Gene talks about the "felt sense" he offers it as a pathway to truth. Perhaps it can be a pathway to truth. But it is not primary in my way of thinking. 36) Another thing that I could offer Gene is a method of being more specific about concepts. If I was doing therapy with Gene, I would model it after "lazy eye" therapy. If a child has amblyopia, the physician patches the good eye to force the child to develop the inferior function. In the course of Gene's address he must have used the word "it" 100 times because he discusses concepts for which we really don't have very good terms to explain. But using "it" makes it hard sometimes to grasp the specifics. As a therapy I would offer Gene the challenge of offering a speech without ever using the word "it" just to see what would happen, to see what he could evolve in its place. V. What I Can Learn from Gene 37) One of the things that I could learn from Gene is how to focus. And I mean that in multiple senses. Gene has a marvelous focus. 38) Another thing I can learn from Gene is how to connect. His ability to contact human souls is exemplary. It is on par with Virginia Satir who was incredibly contactful. Gene can really connect, and I will work to emulate more of that. 39) I can learn from Gene how to extol the process of "being with" rather than the process of "being for." I could do a better job of letting things happen and be less of a tour guide. 40) I can learn from Gene how to be attentive to the body of experiences. It is his specialty. 41) I can learn from Gene how to live in accord with complexity. The simple labels we use for feelings are really shorthand notations; they're not the real thing. Gene reminds us that those labels are not real experiences. [Page 270] VI. What I Like About Gene 42) If I needed therapy, I would consult Gene. I know I would benefit from being in treatment with him. And, I don't say that cavalierly. 43) Another thing that I like about Gene is that he's a real person. He's not pretentious. In essence, Gene is for real. I have an additional thought about Gene's contributions. To offer it I will describe a communication model of therapy. One of my models of understanding therapy is called "elements of communication." Every communication is composed of numerous elements: some I call primary elements, and others secondary elements. There are five primary elements, the first of which is affect. For example, if I say, "It's really a beautiful day," there's
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an underlying affect. "I'm feeling good today." There's a thought. I'm communicating something about the day. There's a behavior, my overt actions as I make the statement about the day. There is a sensory experience that is perceived and/or imagined, a representation that I have in my mind of how I perceive the day. There is a biological aspect because every communication is a biological event that accesses psychology. Secondary aspects further complicate the communication. Every communication has an attitude that is an almost instantaneous thought, feeling, behavior, sensory and biological perception about the communication, which can be positive, negative, or neutral. I can say, "It's a really beautiful day", and think, "Wow! That was great to say; that was terrible to say; or that was interesting to say." Every communication has a context because it only happens in one time and one space. Every communication has a qualitative aspect of intensity and duration. Every communication is ambiguous because it cannot be fully specified. Every communication is symbolic because language is a manipulation of symbols. Every communication is relational because it happens in a relational context and it communicates a message about the quality of the relationship. Every communication is idiosyncratic because it's an idiosyncratic representation of the history of the communication. Theorists in psychotherapy have taken one of those elements and made it a fulcrum of their approach. Cognitive experts may take attitudes or belief systems as a fulcrum. The Rogerians make affect a fulcrum. Behaviorists use behavior as a fulcrum. NLP experts use sensory experience as a fulcrum. Jungians work with symbolic processes. Family therapists stress the relational aspect of communication. In this scheme of analysis, what Gene has done that is unique is that he's devised another pivot point for psychotherapy. We can attend to the felt sense as another fulcrum for helping our patients. In Answer to Jeffrey Zeig's Discussion Eugene Gendlin Thank you. I want to straighten out just a few things. It's very true that I'm vague after I'm specific. I know Freudian concepts. I wouldn't want to practice without them. I know Jungian theory. I wouldn't want to practice without that either. And, I want every other theory I can get. But once I have them, then it's time to recognize that none of them could possibly be right. After I know them precisely, then it's time to let the vague [Page 271] thing that is actually in front of me take precedence over all the clarities. The person before me isn't any theory, isn't any set of concepts, and moreover is not finished. Even the small feeling the person has just then isn't finished. If I try to ossify it, what good am I being? Without precise theories I wouldn't notice a lot that I need to notice. I can

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try out every theory I know, but the vague implicitly intricate living thing has to be asked, and has to take precedence. Similarly, I have nothing against technique. To me the word only says that we are able to be precise about what we do, and when. The more such precision we can get, the better. I only say that the person must always be more important than any technique. As soon as the ongoing relating gets murky, let go of all technique and get the relating back on track. Secondly, I don't believe in fusion. If I must choose between fusion and being a distant, frozen type of therapist, then yes, you are right about me. I'd rather have fusion. But fusion and distance are not the only choices. In fusion the other person is invisible to you. Fusion is projection, not meeting the real other person. I welcome being surprised that my projections were wrong again. It's much more exciting to recognize every few minutes what a different organism the other person is. I can never finish being corrected in what I thought I knew. It is easy to form a real relationship with a client in therapy. Therapy is so easy compared to living with somebody. You can let yourself experience your client as a totally different person. The client comes once or twice a week. Whether there is improvement or not, your life goes on. The client even pays you. After an hour the client goes home. You can let the client be real, and permit your real self to care and relate to the client. The frame of the relation is narrow; that is why it can be deeper. It is likely to be much more real than our life relationships in which we are full of projections, pain and misunderstandings. When my needs are so intense it is hard to keep remembering that the other person isn't on earth to be what I need, nor can I sense her really if I think that she is the opposite of what I need. She is a whole other life being led over there. Relating to another life is hard, but much more exciting than the illusion of fusion. It isn't quite accurate to say that I am not concerned about the outcome. Rather, I don't believe in any goal that Dr. Zeig and the client set in advance, while she's feeling terrible and he doesn't really know much about her. I think that the process of opening up from inside changes the goals and creates the possibility of goals that could not have been set. I think that goals which are set in advance tend to be blind to the human process of development, which brings new goals and new capacities for setting goals. Note to Readers:

How Do I Refer To This Document? An example reference is at the top of this page. Please include the Internet address in the reference, even if you cite the document in a printed article, so that others can find the Gendlin Online Library.
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Can I Link Directly To This Document? Yes. We encourage you to link directly to it from your own online documents. We have built "hooks" into this web page to make it very easy to connect to individual pages and headings in the text. For examples, see: How to Link to The Gendlin Online Library. Biographic Note: Eugene T. Gendlin is a seminal American philosopher and psychologist. He received his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Chicago and taught there from 1963 to 1995. His philosophical work is concerned especially with the relationship between logic and implicit intricacy. Philosophy books include Experiencing and the Creation of Meaning, Language Beyond Post-Modernism: Saying and Thinking in Gendlin's Philosophy edited by David Michael Levin, (fourteen commentaries and Gendlins replies), and A Process Model. There is a world wide network of applications and practices (http://www.focusing.org) stemming from this philosophy. Gendlin has been honored three times by the American Psychological Association for his development of Experiential Psychotherapy. He was a founder and editor for many years of the Associations Clinical Division Journal, Psychotherapy: Theory, Research and Practice. His book Focusing has sold over half a million copies and has appeared in seventeen languages. His psychology-related books are Let Your Body Interpret Your Dreams and Focusing-Oriented Psychotherapy. If you see any faults in this document please send us an email. Add a comment to the Gendlin Online Blog for this article. See the reference for this document in the Gendlin primary bibliography. More on Focusing-Oriented Psychotherapy from the Focusing Institute website. More on Philosophy of the Implicit from the Focusing Institute website.

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Focusing Home > Gendlin Online Library > The small steps of the therapy process: How they come ...

Gendlin, E.T. (1990). The small steps of the therapy process: How they come and how to help them come. In G. Lietaer, J. Rombauts & R. Van Balen (Eds.),
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Client-centered and experiential psychotherapy in the nineties, pp. 205-224. Leuven: Leuven University Press. From http://www.focusing.org/gendlin/docs/gol_2110.html [Page 205] THE SMALL STEPS OF THE THERAPY PROCESS: HOW THEY COME AND HOW TO HELP THEM COME [1] Eugene T. GENDLIN University of Chicago, U.S.A THE PRIMACY OF HUMAN PRESENCE I want to start with the most important thing I have to say: The essence of working with another person is to be present as a living being. And that is lucky, because if we had to be smart, or good, or mature, or wise, then we would probably be in trouble. But, what matters is not that. What matters is to be a human being with another human being, to recognize the other person as another being in there. Even if it is a cat or a bird, if you are trying to help a wounded bird, the first thing you have to know is that there is somebody in there, and that you have to wait for that "person," that being in there, to be in contact with you. That seems to me to be the most important thing. So, when I sit down with someone, I take my troubles and feelings and I put them over here, on one side, close, because I might need them. I might want to go in there and see something. And I take all the things that I have learnt client-centered therapy, reflection, focusing, Gestalt, psychoanalytic concepts and everything else (I wish I had even more)and I put them over here, on my other side, close. Then I am just here, with my eyes, and there is this other being. If they happen to look into my eyes, they will see that I am just a shaky being. I have to tolerate that. They may not look. But if they do, they will see that. They will see the slightly shy, slightly withdrawing, insecure existence that I am, I have learnt that that is O.K. I do not need to be emotionally secure and firmly present. I just need to be present. There are no qualifications for the kind of person I must be. What is wanted for the big therapy process, the big development process is a person who will be present. And so I have gradually become convinced that even I can be that. Even though I have my doubts when I am by myself, in some objective sense I know I am a person. And then it is true that I reach in for a lot of different things. But [Page 206] when it gets murky and I am not sure I am connected to the other person, then I do not reach in for these things, then I must reflect that person's meanings and stay very close, so that the connection re-establishes. When the client is going
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around in circles and does not touch down inside, then I might offer a bit of how to do "focusing." And if I see that there is too much focusing, and a sort of "internality" without enough energy coming out, then I might do something like "Gestalt," or I might just express myself, or I might do any number of things. I may express my feeling, but I always know that it is just my feeling. I do not know yet what is coming from that person. The minute something goes wrong I go right back to trying to sense this person; to what is happening. Because this is another being, a different being. When I think back to the struggle that Carl had with non-directive reflecting, always trying to drop whatever it was he had written, to re-establish the reality of the contact, I feel I am following in his footsteps. He dropped non-directive and he made it client-centered, he dropped client-centered and made it personcentered. First he had the method of reflecting, then he said: "No that is not it, it is the attitudes ..." But we could take his three attitudes and get very technical about them. He would say: "No, no, it is person-centered." So this is my way of saying that: Do not let focusing, or reflecting, or anything else get in between. Do not use it as an in-between. Do not say: "I can stay here because I have my reflecting-method, I have my ping-pong-paddle, so you cannot get me. You say something? You get it back." There is a sense that we are armed, you see. We have methods; we know focusing; we have credentials; we have doctors. We have all this stuff and so it is easy for us to sit there with stuff in between. Do not let it be in between; put it out of the way. You can have at least as much courage as the client has. If not, I would be ashamed of myself, with all the stuff that I have, if I still cannot really look when this person can. So I want to be there in that same way. ThatI thinkis the first job we have. And on the question what we clientcentered people need to do now, on this, also, I think the first thing we need to do is to communicate that attitude. That is so necessary in a field that is becoming more and more "professional," which is to say useless and expensive. [Page 207] CLIENT-CENTERED REFLECTING AS A BASELINE FOR USING ANY OTHER METHOD The second thing we need is to communicate the "empathic response," to communicate client-centered reflecting to those who use other methods, and we need to add many other methods to our own. I have always said that clientcentered reflecting is a necessary baseline, for using other things. If you do not have that, then you cannot stay in touch with the person. If you do not constantly ask "Oh you did not like that?" or "Oh something funny happened now"; if you
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do not constantly stop and check, then using any other method is going to be bad. Certainly that includes focusing. I mean, the minute it clouds up and the person looks like: "What are you doing to me?," you have to stop whatever you are doing and you have to say: "You did not like that?" "Something went wrong?" "What just happened?" And then you must listen. Also, as soon as something works, or the moment a step comes in the client, we must stop and listen responsively, just to that. The client-centered reflecting-method is the central thing with which to use everything else. But what I want to tell that you have not heard is that we must add clientcentered listening to the other methods. It is unbelievable that after all these years, we have totally failed to communicate client-centered listening in such a way that the other practitioners could have it. How can they go so long without it? How can they be so stupid? But then, I realize, that is largely our fault. We have told them that if one does client-centered listening, then one does nothing else, so, of course, they cannot have it, because they are already doing something else and they know that that is helpful. They are not going to give that up. They cannot "unknow" what they know. It is important to communicate the client-centered reflection method as something that one can add to whatever one is doing. We can tell them that some of us do nothing else; that is how powerful this thing is. Some of us prefer to do nothing but that. Others among us combine many things. So they can add this thing to whatever they are doing. That is the way to communicate the reflection-method. And if the others try it even a few times, then they will discover what we know. [Page 208] HUMAN NATURE: IMPOSED FORM VERSUS AN ORDER OF STEPS The third job we have, is to communicate how very different our philosophical assumptions are, compared to everything else in the field. I have recently gone into this more and more. Some of the theories I thought I respected, make assumptions that I never realized they did. I see now that this has been the difficulty in communicating with a lot of people, not just my difficulty but all of our difficulty. 1. The psychoanalytic concepts assume that the body has no behavioral order at all; that it has a fixed biological machinery, but no behavioral organization. To put it in Freud's terms: The "Id" consists of unorganized drive-energies. In order for that "cauldron" (he also calls it) of drive energies to dischargethat is his term for doing somethingthe body requires the social patterns. Every human actionhe assumesis patterned by patterns which are imposed from the outside, on the body. We have been arguing with them for years about imposing things on clients, but look deeper. There is nothing but imposed organization in
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that theory! That is the only kind of order there is. The body is assumed to have no order for behavior, and no interaction from itself. As most of you know, I am also in philosophy (Gendlin, 1962/1970). In the last ten years or so, my philosophical colleagues have discovered psychotherapy; but the psychotherapy they have discovered is of course psychoanalytic psychotherapy. They love Freud because he comes from the same assumptions that they know. All orderas they think about itis imposed order. All order consists of patterns which are put on the body. The only kind of order they conceive of is some sort of forms. It used to be relational forms, now it has become social forms. That also makes cultural relativism pervasive. Sometimes it is not even mentioned because it seems so obvious. Obviously, people are different in different cultures. There is no bodily organization of behavior. There is only what the different cultures impose. There are only different forms of "human." There is no "human nature." If we do not think that, then we are not only silly, but unconscious of our own cultural programming. We are unconscious of how controlled we are. We have internalized the social patterns so deeply that we then discover them inside, and think we are free. This is a serious question. If we say that persons and bodies have an internal selforganizing, they will have pity [Page 209] for us. How can we show, how can we even know, when we are externally programmed, and when not? From Descartes to Heidegger (whom I like a lot) there are only cultural humans; there is no human. Heidegger talks with a Japanese scholar. He tells him: We cannot talk with each other. We have to be very careful because nothing we say is the same. Everything is totally different. It would be all right to say that cultures differ, but he thinks that everything is totally different because there is nothing under that: No body, and no person. Now, the only order is imposed forms. But now, my philosophical colleagues are questioning forms, which for them means that they are questioning everything. Now, they have nothing. They are all saying that there is no human subject. What they are really saying is: They do not know how to think about human subjects. But there are people who can, and that is you. I would like you to take that job on. The philosophical community has not discovered psychotherapy other than psychoanalysis yet. They have not heard from you yet. I think they should. I think you should know that right now they are in a very "open" position to hear you because they have exhausted what they have, and they cannot think about themselves and each other. It is an interesting juncture and I urge you to find some philosophers and talk to them. With Carl Rogers we have been pioneers for thirty years. Now people have caught up almost to the point where they might be able to hear us.

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2. Now I want to tell you of my philosophical model. I want to talk about a kind of order that is not "forms." There is another kind of order; persons and bodies have that other kind. It is not forms stamped on, not patterns, shapes, distinct, fixed laws. Instead, it is an "order of steps." Let me say what kind of steps I mean. There is this rhythm in client-centered therapy: First, the client says something. You say it back and get it wrong. Then they correct it. You accept the correction and they say: "Yes, that is right... but, not completely..." They give you the next tightening. You take that in, too. Then they say, "Yes," with a breath of relief. And then there is a characteristic silence there. And in that silence, the next thing comes. Usually that next thing is deeper, perhaps not every time. You reflect that, again they correct it, you include the correction, they add a specification, you include that too. Again there is a breath, a sighand that silence. [Page 210] That silence is very characteristic. When I teach listening in a round, in class, I point it out. Each student is listened to by the one on the right. Each one talks untilthat silence comes. After a very few silent moments, the student says "I am finished, go on to the next person." I tell the class: "Notice the silence that comes there. It is part of what listening is for. What you had ready to say has been heard and responded to. Now you have nothing to say, and yet you sense the problem. It is not all resolved, of course. You have an unclear sense of it right there an unclear edge. You sense it physically, without more words. Here, in class, you do not want to let the others wait, so you say "Go on to the next person." But when you are alone with your therapist-partner, then I hope you will stay in that silence, with that unclear sense, right there, until the next thing comes, from it. The word "focusing" means to spend time, attending to that inwardly sensed edge. When that happens in the silence, the next thing and the next come gradually from deeper and deeper. Some clients talk all the time, and skip that silence. Some use the silence only to think of something to say. Some feel only the same emotions, over and over. Just talking and expressing does help, and change-steps can come in conversation, and in other ways, inadvertentlybut often they do not. When the client passes by all the meaningful spots, you might slow the pace, just by reflecting more slowly, perhaps one spot several times. You might sometimes ask clients what they sense, directly, here, in the middle of the body. Also, it is not intrusive to say that we can stay with that unclear edge, there, where the whole thing feels not O.K. I often say: "It's all right to
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stay here a while, just to sense that." These are bits of focusing-instructions given during therapy interviews. In Belgium I learned that some therapists arrange to teach focusing to each other's clients, outside therapy (Leijssen, 1989). In Chicago, too, we have taught focusing to clients in week-end workshops. We found it extremely helpful to the ongoing therapy. There are many ways to teach focusing. I use every method I ever learned on a client-centered baseline. I give bits of focusing-instruction during the sessions. But I can understand that you might be opposed to doing that. On the other hand, I know that you are not against people attending to the sensed edge, where these steps arise. In that sense no one is opposed to focusing. Whether and how to teach it is an issue. We also need to train our therapists to recognize and respond to [Page 211] focusing, since it often happens naturally. Some therapists do not understand when a client refers to a felt edge. Instead of pointing the response there, these therapists miss that sensed intricacy, which cannot yet be said. They bring everything back only to round, closed, common notions and named feelings. It gets in the way (Hendricks, 1986). Now I want to turn to the philosophical question about which I am urging you to communicate with philosophers (Gendlin, 1987). They think that when a client says something pathological, seemingly irrational, or exhibits some deficit, you must impose some better pattern. The philosophers think that such steps can only be imposed on experience, by the therapist. You have all listened to such steps. What comes has a characteristic novelty and intricacy. You can tell that neither you nor the client could have invented them. The philosophers think that aside from the socially imposed rationality there is nothing else in people but irrationality. You have often noticed something else: Such steps do not follow by logic, and yet they make sensewe can follow them. They have a certain kind of order, different from logic and from irrationality, something deeper, more exact, more specific, more intricate; maybe not everytime but often. We are well acquainted with that "order of steps." I call it "carrying forward." It changes as it moves forward. "An order of steps," or you can say: "An order of carrying forward." When you look back from the fourth or the fifth or the seventeenth step, back to where that began, that seemingly silly, wrong or pathological thing or deficit, you will not remember all the turns it took. But, on a tape you can see the steps I am talking about. Those steps have a continuity, but it is not a logical continuity. It is not a continuity of form. If it were a continuity of form, it would be a logical continuity. It would remain silly or pathological or a deficit. If that thing kept its form, we would not get anywhere. Our therapy-method would not work, and I think therapy as a whole would not work.
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This content, which has an exact form that we reflect, and strain until we get it exactly, that exact form in some way is also not just that exact form, since it gives rise to these steps. That is the order I want to talk about; an order that has very exact forms and yet it is not just those exact forms. It can give rise to a progression, which, looking back, shows that it was more than just those forms, even though it seemed to take those forms. To get the steps, we have to reflect exactly; I am not [Page 212] saying those forms are not there. I am not saying those forms do not matter. I am saying: Something here which is very very exact and formed, is also not just formed but gives rise to steps. That is the kind of order and model I want to talk about. You have argued with other people. They will say that these steps come from the fact that you as the therapist are in some ways biased. They used to say that Carl Rogers smiled at certain times and that is what made the client go this way or that way. Remember that literature? That he gave unconscious reinforcement. They also say that reflecting exactly is impossible. Nobody can be neutral, as if the words we say brought some new thing to the client. But, the steps do not come from us. They surprise us all the time. We cannot derive the next step. These people only know an order of forms. So, they say: "If something new happens, you must be sneaking it in somehow, because it can only come from the outside, because there is nothing in there that could make something. And of course the only thing that you could be imposing is some kind of socialization, something that you got from the outside also." That is the only way they can think about it. And, if one thinks about it only in terms of form, then they would be right. In forms there is no human nature, only late twentieth century Dutch nature, or whatever you happen to be. Nobody can come up with a set of forms that are what human beings are. But if you look at the step-process, if you look at the carrying forward, if you are talking about an order where something more keeps happening, then I think we are all the same. And that kind of order is not so silly. And they have not thought of that. But we see that in client-centered therapy all the time. These steps come in interaction. But interaction, when they think about it, is "imposing some kind of pattern." Interaction when we think about it is "carrying forward," picking up on where the person is, making contact with where the person really is. And the very contact changes the form. Now, with focusing, you can prove the point. (I am being cute now.) When you reflect verbally in a client-centered way, they can go on forever saying: "You are bringing in something new." But we find in focusing that when somebody is sitting with you in total silence, you can focus much more deeply and much more easily than you can alone. I have conducted thousands of trials on this particular thing with one subject, namely me: I focus by myself. Then I ask the next kind person

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to keep me company while I focus on the same thing. I always get further. Almost always; if I do not have any trouble with that [Page 213] person. The interaction is a different variable than the content. The interaction continues in silence, the very silence I was talking about. The steps come in an interactional process. Now I am going to say: The steps are an interactional process. When I worked with Carl Rogers: Either he took on my theoretical things or I took on his and of course I took more of his than he took of mine, but the one wrinkle that I do not remember succeeding in selling him was my argument that the three conditions are sufficient without the proviso that the client has to perceive them. He said: Genuineness, empathy and positive regard, and that the client perceives those. I do not think that is necessary; I know that perception is not necessary, because many clients are convinced for a year or two that nobody could possibly like them or understand them, and the process works anyway and eventually changes their perception. How would they ever get around to perceiving that the therapist did actually understand? That is a change. I know, because I was that kind of client. I always knew that this nice man could not possibly understand my stuff. It took me a long time before I noticed that when I walked into the room, I was already different. The interaction affects you, long before you can think about it. At least sometimes. It is in the interaction or as an interaction, that these steps come. There is also a special case of interaction, when we respond to ourselves. That is also an interaction. You do not just find out: You are not just a kind of a light that does not change anything. When you give your awareness to something, it is carried forward. That is why it is so powerful to attend inside. It seems like you are doing nothing. Just as the presence of a human being looks like nothing. To be aware directly inside, is a carrying forward process. But the interaction with another person remains more powerful and I have always said that. The carrying forward order is not always understood. For example, now there is a new theory about "narrative;" people are said to bring meaning into their lives by construing life as a certain story. I think they are perfectly silly writing like that, as if you could put any story on any set of events in your life. I think it is true, what they are trying to say: That we look back and try to construe the life we had. But the meaning we try to give to it has to carry forward; it has to connect with our bodily experiences, so that we say: "Oh, yes (breath, physical relief), it can mean that ..." They do not have the concept of carrying forward, so they write about it as if people were their own fiction writers, as if, [Page 214] with inventiveness, you could make anything out of anything. That is not so.

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And that is true also about "cognitive restructuring." You have to ask: When does it work and when not? You try to think in a different way. We do this all the time. When we feel bad about something, we tell ourselves: "Look at it another way, then it is not so hard." But you must not forget to come here to the middle of your body, to see if it made you feel any different. If it did not, you have not "restructured" anything. Then you have to try still another way and another way. Now what is it actually that is capable of being carried forward? I started by mentioning the common assumption that the body is a fixed piece of biological machinery. The body is like your automobile, they think: Fixed and obeying certain laws. But, your mind is creative, they think. They do not explain how. Well, let me turn that upside down. How you think and formulate an event, that form is fixed. But, the body-sense of that form is capable of being carried forward. I want to change the concept of the body altogether. The body is not just a machine. The body is exactly that which is capable of these steps. The content itself, the form alone, is not going to go anywhere. It is going to have certain logical implications but it is not going to change. It is the "body sense" of the form that is capable of being carried forward. Our bodies are such that they absorb all the training, all the language, all the social forms, all the culture, everything we read and then they still imply more... Especially when you have a problem it is like that. You think all the formed facts and still it says: " AAArgghh." It is looking for a solution, or a next step that will intricately take account of all the stuff you think and still go further. It is the body sense, that can go further. From what someone says, you can go in two different ways: You can take it logically: They said this. So this follows, and this follows, and this follows. You can say: "Look, what you are saying implies this and this and this." The other way you can go, the way client-centered therapists will go, is to respond to that which gives steps. We call it "feeling" but that is not a good word. I am saying that the steps come from the "body-sense." Any event, anything anyone says, can be taken in these two ways: Only as formed, or as the body-sense of that formed. I want to argue that the body-sense has all those forms and then it is still always again there, implying more, implying further. [Page 215] Sometimes we want to respond to the logical form, the event as it happened as form. But as therapists, of course we want to respond to that which will produce the steps.

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Now I have to bring that home a little. Every sentence that we utter, prepares the listener for "something." It begins, and then, it unrolls and... Now you do not know how I am going to finish it, but you sense what comes there. The same thing is true of my talk, up to now. You have taken it in with everything you know, and have experienced and read. Now ... you are sitting there ready for ... and I hope I have that. The body-sense has all the forms in it, all your culture and life. And yet it implies further. It is not just a product of the events and the culture. You can see that in the silences, when therapy works. You can see it even more dramatically when clients say: "1 am feeling something, but there are not words for it." They are saying that there are no social forms for it. Words are social forms. We have to wait a while until the language rearranges itself to say it oddly because there are no common phrases for it. You can help this happen if it has not happened. One way you can do that is just by slowing down; by sitting and feeling the clients' feeling when they are not doing so. You can say: "Now wait a minute, I want to feel what you told me." That makes an opportunity for them to come there too. I call that the "body-sense" because to find it, I have to attend to the literal body, here, between the podium and the wall. I have to come in here, into the middle of this body; I have to let go my attention here. I cannot do it too well while I am talking, though I can do it in short pauses. That is the body I am talking about. Now once we get in there, then it is more than what we customarily call "the body." I would want to change that concept so that it would include that. Any time you talk, unless you are reading or memorized things in advance, how do you find the words? It is your body that talks. I have this prepared, but even so, I open my mouth and I hope the right words come out. It is all I can do. If they do not, I keep talking, hoping they will still come. That which talks is my body. I want the concept of "body" to get much wider than physiology. I am glad they have physiology, when I get sick. I am glad they know what they know. But the concept of body is wider than that, much wider than that. We live every situation with the body. If you try to do it by explicit instructions, you probably trip. Your body has to sense many things at the same time: The floor, the chair, the people, the situation, what happened to [Page 216] you years earlier, and what you are trying to do. You live with what I am calling "your body." The body makes and takes the next step, it wants a solution, a healing, something better, now, than it has had. There are often no words for that, because that has not happened yet. My body is capable of producing steps that have never happened in the history of the world. Isn't that glorious?! Or else you can say that I am in a worse mess than anybody knows how to help me with. COMMENTS ON TWO THERAPY SEGMENTS

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To finish, I would like to read you a couple of therapy segments. I ask you to look at the steps. These are focusing steps. That means that a silence is often felt between one step and the next. The second excerpt I will read is from a person who has done focusing for a long time. It is late in therapy. The first one is "early in therapy" and you can watch me trying to help it happen. I have written enough about how to find this body-sense, but it is hard to convey the interactional climate around it. That is one thing I would like you to watch for. And then also: Once one knows how to find this inner edge, then it turns out that there is a lot of complexity involved, there. The crudest thing we have always said is: "Do not push and do not run away." But what do you do? Well, you keep it company, especially if it is sore. You keep it company. This "it," it is a funny way of talking. Sometimes when I say these things, someone will say: "You talk funny" and I say: "Yes, I know." You keep it company; I often say: "Let's keep it company." The client and I, we are going to keep it, in there, company. As you would keep a scared child company. You would not push on it, or argue with it, or pick it up, because it is too sore, too scared or tense. You would just sit there, quietly, I really said it all in the beginning: What that edge needs to produce the steps, is only some kind of unintrusive contact or company. If you will go there with your awareness and stay there or return there, that is all it needs; it will do all the rest for you. If you do not know that awareness is a process in itself, it will seem very mysterious. It needs you there and that is all it needs. That is the sort of thing I would like to illustrate with these two segments. [Page 217] Segment 1 C: "I did not want to come today. I do not have anything more to talk about (laughs). Really, there is a level I do not want to touch. I got there once before and I got into crying and I could not get out of it; I could not stop crying. My therapist did not know what to do. She cried too. I looked up and I could see it and I thought: 'Well, she does not know what to do either'." While she is telling me that, I think: "Well, that is obviously a good therapist." I believe, if it makes me cry, let that be visible. But at that time, it was not so good. So you never know. Or you can say: It was all right, but there should have been something further; hopefully it happens here. T: "You do not want to fall in there again that way."

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C: "Right. Usually, I believe in feelings and I think: If you feel it, it gets better. But on this, I don't know." T: "So we won't say: Just feel it. You did that and it was not better. Whatever we'll do here, you would like it to be in a different way..." (I do not necessarily expect agreement on that, you see, I am doing something, I am preparing some sort of focusing.) C: "Right." (And then there is a long silence.) "I can feel it right there, just below where I am." Now that is not my jargon, O.K.? So don't blame me for that. Just think about why a person would say that. That has it all, just that one sentence: "I can feel it right there, just below where I am." T: "Let's stay here a long while, just relating to it down there, without going there." Or another way to say it: "If we do anything, let us do it very slowly." (Long silence) C: "The way the whole thing feels is that I am no good, and I am helpless to do anything about it. And I cannot hardly touch that." T: "That is hard to stand. Go slow. It is hard even just to touch that." Now I am going to stop that excerpt, there. Segment 2 Here is a different person: C: "I want to leave Chicago. The noise outside bothers me." (Therapist is silent.) C: "You do not think that is real. I can tell." [Page 218] Therapist is mobilizing to give a reflection. He says (I am saying): T: "The noise is crowding in on you, coming into your 'far-in place'." I really knew what she was saying in fact because I have seen her for a very long time.
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C: "It is like darts hitting my body. I cannot stand it." T: "It really hurts." And now there is one of these silences. I was willing to hear it, so it got heard and now there is the silence. And then she says: C: "I keep feeling a sense of 'no meaning' in my life." (More silence.) "I just want to leave everything. It is that same spot where I want to die. My wanting to live and to die are so close these days. That is why I have not been able to touch this place. It gets misty there. It is real foggy." Now I take that to be a step. First she was saying: "I am in this place where the noise hurts me" and now she is saying: "Oh that is my life and death place and when I touch it, it gets foggy." So can you derive that from the other? If I did not read it, would you have known this was coming? I do not see how you could have. I did not. T: "You can feel wanting to live and also wanting to die, both right there, in the same inside spot and then that gets foggy there." Now another one of these silences comes. Almost each time, there is this kind of step there. C: "I do not want to relate with anyone; I wish there were no people to see. They do not mean anything to me. (She has to go to work after this hour.) There is no meaning. When will my life ever have meaning? It feels like it never will and I need meaning right now." (Silence ... Therapist did not respond.) "I also feel it has to do with my relating to you. I know you are there for me, but it is like I am not allowed to want that." Now very often in that kind of situation, I will say: "Let us, you and me, be real close and connected around this place; because in it, you do not feel any connection." That has been a real valuable thing to say, very often. "Let us relate all the way around it." It is like saying: "Let us be close," but also acknowledging that right in the center somehow there is no connection, there is an isolation. But I did not do that here. Something else happened. She said: "I also feel it has to do with my relating to you. I know you are there for me, but it is like I am not allowed to want that." So I heard the "not allowed" and it sounded different to me. So I said: [Page 219] T: "Is that what you said before about your father?"
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And I want to notice this therapist's single attempt at a genuine psychoanalytic interpretation. And it turns out to be very helpful also. Notice this: Very helpful. I mean really; but of course wrong, but very helpful. "Is that what you said before about your father?" Now there is this long silence again. Then she says: C: "No I can feel that this is not with him. This is different. It is not like with my father." You see, she has tried it out: "It is not like that." And then, the therapist says: T: "It is not about him." That is the big difference. The big difference is not that we interpret it or do not interpret it. The big difference is that we stay with the person whatever comes there. And anybody working with me knows that I am trying to do that. So they do not even bother about some of the things that I say. But she does bother. She says: "It is not about him. It is not like with my father." And I say: "It is not about him." And then there is another silence. C: "I can hardly touch it. There is something and it is right here on the edge, I can hardly touch it; it is ... I cannot want my mother, I can hardly say it." And I reflect: T: "You cannot want her." (Silence.) C: "That is where I feel the noise like darts." (More silence.) C: "It is real early, real early." T: "It feels like a very early experience." (Silence.) C: "I cannot want anything." Silence. Here come the steps. Silence. C: "This needs to rest and it cannot rest. If it lets down and rests, it will die. It needs to keep its guard up." T: "There is such a big need and longing to rest and let down and ease; but somehow also this part of you cannot rest. I t feels that it will die if it stops being on guard."

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Silence. Long silence. What comes is a step. C: "Maybe it could, if I could trust something." T: "It could rest if you could trust something." C: "No, no. MAYBE it could rest if I could trust something." T: "It is important to say 'maybe': 'Maybe it could rest if I could trust something'." [Page 220] (Silence.) C: "Now, suddenly it feels like a house on stilts, that the stilts go into the earth. All of me on top where the noise is, that is the house. And it is on stilts. It got lifted off this sore place. Now this sore place is like a layer and it can breathe. Do you know those steel posts that they put into the ground to hold up a building? These stilts are like that. All the noise and coming and going is in the house and the house is on stilts, lifted off and the stilts go into the ground." T: "Those steel stilts go into the ground and you feel them lifting the whole house up off of you and underneath, that sore place can breathe." (Silence.) C: "Yes, now it is breathing." (More silence.) C: "It is bathing in warm water." And then later, she said (these are not exactly her words): C: "When I was little, I played a lot with stilts. I used to go between the powerwires on them. It was dangerous but it was play. I used to make taller and taller ones and go on them there. Stilts, I have not thought of those for years. Play and danger." And she is realizing that the themes are related. There was this life and death place here, and stilts have something to do with that and the play is some kind of freeing dimension. So she says: C: "How does this process do that? It uses all these things to ...." That is a good place to stop... QUESTIONS FROM THE AUDIENCE
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1. For what types of clients is this approach most adequate? Do you have any empirical data on outcome and, more specifically, did you compare your approach with the traditional approach of Carl Rogers? (Reinhard Tausch) First of all, I would like to be clear: My approach is anything that I can try. If therapy is happening, if the client is moving, or if they do not want me to do something, I would never do it. I do not know if I made that clear enough. I am not saying: "Do not do this," or "Do that." I am not saying that. I am not saying that at all. Apparently I have come across that way, because nowadays sometimes I get clients who say: "I am not going to be able to focus." And I say: "Well, that is fine, there are lots of ways of doing this." And they say: "But you wrote that if I do [Page 221] not focus, I won't get anywhere." I wish I had not written that, if I have written it. O.K.? I will follow the client wherever the client takes me and if that is doing something for the client, then I am content. And yes, the way I am and the way I respond and the way I talk, they will probably pick focusing up as a side-benefit. But I am not interested in approaching a person with "an approach." I bring focusing in when clients do not seem to have it, and are going around in circles. So I do not know if I am answering the question or avoiding it, but this is the approach that I would counsel. Now I would sayto answer the questionthere is a large body of clients who, if you give something like focusing half a chance, who do it immediately. That is the population for whom focusing instructions are indicated, to take the question straight now. I would define the population that the method is appropriate to this way. When you try a little bit of it and it makes a wonderful difference, that is a good thing to do then. At the other extreme there are people whom you would have to push and intrude on, and say: "Look here, stop talking all the time and do this thing that I want you to do." I do not want that. And then there are people who already have it. I am saying: "It is the people between these two extremes for whom this is indicated." But that is not a class of people by present classifications; that includes borderline and psychotic people, including people in the hospital who feel a relief that they can find themselves when they have "been gone"; you know, dissociated sort of experience. We found several times that this is a helpful thing to do with people, right across the continuum of degrees of disturbance. But some other variable is involved and I do not know what it is yet. As to the second part of your question, I do not think of focusing instructions as an approach to compare to another approach but within therapies, both clientcentered and some othersthough not enough others to brag about,but within client-centered therapy, I would say we have a string of research studies that show that the people who do this already tend to be successful. Now we do not have anything to show that the people Gendlin teaches are more successful.

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We do not have anything to show that teaching this in the context of therapy makes it more successful. That, we do not have. And I would not push it. I would teach it as something that goes along with a more normal response. Like I did here. [Page 222] 2. What is your view of the difference between client-centered and experiential psychotherapy and what is your view of the relation between them? (Barbara Brodley) I would take client-centered therapy to be the larger thing. First of all, focusing, if that is what we are talking about, focusing to me is a very tiny very important process. What I call focusing is paying attention inwardly to that unclear sense of something there. Now surely therapy and personal development are much bigger things than that. Focusing is a very deliberate way to touch something inside. I have seen that help the bigger process. The bigger process comes from behind you and takes you and expands you, and you do not know what is going to happen. Whereas focusing is this very deliberate thing where an "I" is attending to an "it." I think it is very valuable. But surely, it is not therapy. Therapy is a relationship, therapy is a process of development. These focusing steps I described come in client-centered therapy. That is where I learnt them from, that is where I saw them and if you observe your clients, you will see that they are silent before those steps typically come. Now the trouble that you are having is not about that process. It is about me teaching that process. And it is true that if the therapist teaches that process in some way, there is some problem with that. The therapists need to check their welcome. They need to watch and see whether they intrude; they need to see that the relationship always has precedence. So you do this thing inside the relationship, just like you do when you are in somebody's house. You do not things that they do not want you to do very long. 3. In what you just said, are you not assuming that the process of the steps is the essence of therapeutic change? (Barbara Brodley) No, no. That is a helpful question. I was trying to straighten that out. I assume that interaction is the broader process. And just about everything interesting is some kind of special case of interaction. And it is only as part of interaction that any of these things works well. So no. I am not assuming that an inner process can be distinguished from interaction. Precisely the opposite. The inner process will give you steps in a context of interaction. And if there is nobody there, then you better interact with it in a friendly way. Otherwise you will not get [Page 223] those steps. You need to interact with yourself, with a certain kind of
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attitude; as if your inside were a child that you were keeping company. And it is much easier if someone else will be there for you in that kind of silence. So anything interesting about focusing goes on, in the context of relating. The only difference I ever had with that part of the theory was Carl's point about perception. But it is always going to be "interaction first" if you ask me. 4. You emphasized the "body-sense." However, I experience many times with myself and with my clients that there is no body-sense at all, even when I or they have this "it" and can point to it. If this is the case, I think emphasizing the bodily aspect might be more confusing than helpful. (Rob van Woerden) I do not want to close down any other channels. I do not think anybody has the right to say: This has got to be this way, for human beings. So if you say that there is a way that they can come differently than from this bodily sense, that is fine with me. I think we need to look and compare, not just which is better, but what the difference is. I am sure that there is an entry to steps through the literal body. Once you come into this literal body here then you find a space that is much bigger than your literal body. It is quite clear that it is not exactly your literal body, but that is where the entrance is. There might be other entrances. 5. You have said that you do not agree that the client needs to perceive empathic understanding of the therapist and the other conditions. If you do not perceive the therapist's empathy and so forth, this could mean that it does not exist for the client. Now 1 make a distinction between "received empathy" and "perceived empathy." Does that make sense to you? (Godfrey Barrett-Lennard) Oh yes, we could settle on that completely. That is what it has always meant, also to Carl. It has got to have some impact on the client; and that is what I meant too: Some impact or some kind of effect. The interaction changes the person and then they become aware of it. At least some of us. But I would completely agree with you that receiving it in some way could be one of the conditions. Just perceiving sounds to me like a reflective understanding or a reflected observation that I [Page 224] would have to say: "My therapist understands me." And I would have said: "Nobody can understand me. He tries hard, that nice man." NOTE [1]. This chapter is a revised version of the author's plenary address at the Leuven Conference (September 12-16, 1988). Lieve De Wachter made a transcript of the audiotape. The author adapted this first draft and provided it with some comments and clarifications. Germain Lietaer did some further
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editiorial work and selected from the original dialogue with the audience some parts for inclusion in the text. REFERENCES Gendlin, E. T. (1962/1970). Experiencing and the creation of meaning (2nd ed.). New York: Free Press. Gendlin, E. T. (1987). A philosophical critique of the concept of "Narcissism." In D.M. Levin (Ed.), Pathologies of the modern self: Postmodern studies. New York: New York University Press. Hendricks, M.N. (1986). Experiencing level as a therapeutic variable. Personcentered Review, 1, 141-162. Leijssen, M. (1989). Teaching focusing to "unsuccessful" clients. Research project in progress, Centrum voor client-centered therapie en counseling, K.U.Leuven. Note to Readers:

How Do I Refer To This Document? An example reference is at the top of this page. Please include the Internet address in the reference, even if you cite the document in a printed article, so that others can find the Gendlin Online Library. Can I Link Directly To This Document? Yes. We encourage you to link directly to it from your own online documents. We have built "hooks" into this web page to make it very easy to connect to individual pages and headings in the text. For examples, see: How to Link to The Gendlin Online Library. Biographic Note: Eugene T. Gendlin is a seminal American philosopher and psychologist. He received his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Chicago and taught there from 1963 to 1995. His philosophical work is concerned especially with the relationship between logic and implicit intricacy. Philosophy books include Experiencing and the Creation of Meaning, Language Beyond Post-Modernism: Saying and Thinking in Gendlin's Philosophy edited by David Michael Levin, (fourteen commentaries and Gendlins replies), and A Process Model. There is a world wide network of applications and practices (http://www.focusing.org) stemming from this philosophy. Gendlin has been honored three times by the American Psychological Association for his development of Experiential Psychotherapy. He was a founder and editor for many years of the Associations Clinical Division Journal, Psychotherapy: Theory, Research and Practice. His book Focusing has
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sold over half a million copies and has appeared in seventeen languages. His psychology-related books are Let Your Body Interpret Your Dreams and Focusing-Oriented Psychotherapy. If you see any faults in this document please send us an email. Add a comment to the Gendlin Online Blog for this article. See the reference for this document in the Gendlin primary bibliography. More on Focusing from the Focusing Institute website. More on Focusing-Oriented Psychotherapy from the Focusing Institute website. The Gendlin Online Library is presented by the Focusing Institute, a not-for-profit organization. If you find the library useful, you can contribute to its maintenance and growth, at http://www.focusing.org/gendlin/gol_donations.asp.

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Focusing Home > Gendlin Online Library > Phenomenology as non-logical steps

Gendlin, E.T. (1989). Phenomenology as non-logical steps. In E.F. Kaelin & C.O. Schrag (Eds.), Analecta Husserliana: Vol. 26. American phenomenology: Origins and developments (pp. 404-410). Dordrecht, Netherlands: Kluwer. From http://www.focusing.org/gendlin/docs/gol_2165.html [Page 404] Phenomenology as Non-Logical Steps EUGENE T. GENDLIN Date of birth: December 25, 1926. Place of birth: Vienna, Austria. Date and institution of highest degree: Ph.D., University of Chicago, 1958. Academic appointments: Wisconsin Psychiatric Institute; University of Chicago. As an undergraduate I developed a method to communicate with religious people and atheists, Marxists and McCarthyites, Behaviorists and Freudians.
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My method was to accept anyone's entire systemfor the momentso as to use their terms to couch whatever point I wanted to make. I would explain that I didn't agree with all that. I was only postponing all other arguments, so that I could make one point. I found I could formulate any one point in any system. I knew that "the" point was not the same in different terms, since "it" had the different implications I postponed. The difference was clear. But what was the sameness? In what respects was "it" still "that" point, moving across the formulations? For myself, when I "had a point," I would then formulate "it" another way, and still another. "It" was not the common denominatorwhich is nearly nothing. Rather, "it" has this odd "order" of responding to different formulations differentlybut very exactingly, just so to each. And not only to different systems"the" point would respond just so to different purposes, backgrounds, even loyalties to certain groups. It seemed, if anything, more interesting that no single consistent pattern could incorporate all the "the point" could be. When I had a point. I would pause to let words come. Interrupted at that stage, I might forget what I was about to say. Then I would burrow in some murky way to get "it" back. "Oh . . . yea . . . that's what I was about to say! That had had implicit language, but was not a set of words." [Page 405] Remembering forgotten dreams was similar. How could the dream events come back from burrowing in that odd murk left from the dream? I didn't want to think only with concepts. I wanted to think with all that, so it would be open to what could come of "that." On entering the University of Chicago I signed up for the most advanced seminar. In my first class, Richard McKeon put three columns on the board. Heading the left column was dialectic. The middle column was functional patterns. On the right was the familiar reductionism to primitive units. Running down the side he had the words: "definition", "demonstration", "principles." He explained how these worked for each column.

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I was excited. Here was my method! After class I ran up and asked: "Can you translate? Can you make the same point in all three?" "No", he said. "Its always a different point." I said, "I know. In different terms it leads to different implications, so it is a different point. But what holds across?" He denied any way across. "The same word is just an utterly empty commonplace. It has meaning only in each system." I already knew his reason for saying that, and yet I knew I could move across from a point. But there was no way to think about why I could. It took me ten years to work out how to think about it. Meanwhile I recognized myself as a phenomenologist. In my other first class Jean Wahl taught the new works of Sartre and Merleau-Ponty. I read Husserl and Binswanger. The phenomenologists had the other half of my method! They knew "a point" was more than its formulation. But the phenomenologists did not solve my puzzle either. They did not even ask why they each formulated so differently. Sartre with Hegelian opposites did not find what Merleau-Ponty found with "function" and "precisioning." Husserl just divided knowing, feeling and willing from the start. They didn't wonder how conflicting approaches can all do "lifting out." They could not work with their differences, as I could. I must still tell of my third major source. Joachim Wach (who had worked under the aged Husserl) led me to Dilthey, then not translated. I knew German, since I had lived in Vienna till I was 12. Dilthey is still not appreciated today. He brought creativity into my problem. Understanding is creative. To say "the same point" a different way is creative. And, for Dilthey, experiencing is an understanding. "In [Page 406] principle, anything human is understandable", he said, because anything human is an understanding. We understand it, if we go its path, if we let it create itself in us. But then it re-makes itself out of us. That is a further creation: We understand "it" better than the understanding it was. Dilthey frees us from needing a separable object of understanding. But he wanted a Kantian list of kinds of experiential connections ("Strukturzusammenhnge"). I found that impossible. Each kind of progression (each kind of steps) can further create the others so they become its instances. But what this "instances" is the order I was after. The phenomenologists said rightly, that statements can make mere logical sense, or "lift out" more than that. But the phenomenologists differed among

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themselves like other philosophers. "The phenomenon" could seem a mere claim. I knew "it" was more, but how? The "more" does show up, if we examine the progression, how one goes on. If we can follow the next step although it does not follow logically from the last step, how does it follow? It moves from what was "more than logical"from the "lifted out". That can be seen only in progressions. Phenomenology is a certain kind of progression of thought-steps. Later, my published articles tried to strengthen and correct phenomenology by discarding "mere description", pointing instead to the progressions. "Experiential Phenomenology" in Natanson's volumes, has ten orderly "signposts" distinguishing phenomenological sequences from other sequences. Experiencing and the Creation of Meaning presents seven kinds of progressions. Each subsumes and arrays the others. I am after that order. We do not lose logical power. But there is more specificity and precision than logic permits. The difference is in how we move. From a statement logical and many kinds of non-logical moves can follow. It is not relativism: each "kind" of transition moves exactingly. There are not just ten, or just seven such "kinds". They can make further new kinds too. They are distinct in some ways, only. But even a few let us think past formal order and disorder. During these years Carl Rogers developed Client-Centered Therapy at Chicago. His therapists did not impose interpretations. I had to see thatit concerned my problem!! They trained me. Soon I wrote papers reformulating their theorynot the therapybut can one distin-[Page 407]guish? Doesn't therapy-experience come from the therapist's theory? No, not at all! It is much more intricate. Freud called it "working through". He knew that his approach influences, but does not produce the intricacy. Rogers' therapists responded to "feeling", they said. But they did not mean just emotions like anger, fear, or guilt. They responded to whole complexities: "You feel helpless when she does that." The client would sit with the fuzzy intricacy of that feel-quality, named "helpless" for the moment. The next step would arise, not from the notion of helplessness, but from that intricacy-quality. "Oh, not helpless, but I have this odd, felt conviction that my own way cannot work, um . . ." Then, a step from that. "Oh . . . it would work, but . . . uhm."
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This kind of steps could be understood as one of my transitions. At that time Rogers stated his main unsolved problem: How might new awareness be checked against "organismic experience", to verify that repression lifted? He sought correspondence-truth. I had another way. Instead of looking for an experience before symbolization, we could compare kinds of steps, different kinds of going further. The kind of steps just described could be distinguished from others. That became the Experiencing Scale, used in still developing research. In the American Psychologist, Feb. 1986, I describe it currently. Successful outcomes (variously defined) correlate with such steps. Failure comes if there are only logical, event-describing, or emotion-expressing modes. That work got some notice. In On Becoming a Person Rogers reconceptualized his theory using and citing my book. I received an award (1970) from the American Psychological Association's Psychotherapy Division. I founded the journal Psychotherapy, and edited it for 13 years. I went on to develop a teaching of such stepsnow called "focusing." I did that because therapy often fails to teach this mode. Politically, too, I favor giving "expert" knowledge away. Phenomenology precisions what is at first murky, so people can find it. This teaching is public, and is also improving professional training (in this one regard.) Focusing consists of phenomenologically laid out steps for getting (one kind of) phenomenological steps. Focusing (1981) and Let Your Body Interpret Your Dreams (1986) do that. Focusing is out in eight languages. [Page 408] For a while such "successes" made me run around a lot. I was keynote speaker at the Japanese A.P.A., spoke in many places in Europe and here, and wrote the same things over and over. But, I was quite ineffective in bringing about the change I wanted in phenomenology itself. I must explain that. Did I expect to change a whole field? In me high expectations coexist peacefully with a very low levelI am also amazed that I can do anything at all. I wouldn't give up either one. The gap lets me laugh. Why didn't phenomenologists follow me in examining the transitions? Today non-logical transitions are emphasized, but only as a glorying in disorder. Phenomenological transitions have not yet been appreciated, and must now return, under another name. Let me tell of my own story, slowly.
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I had heard that Heidegger was a Nazi, and so I did not read him until 1963. Then I saw how much I had learned from him through those who had read him. In 1964 Csikszentmihalyi brought me (from Regnery) an unusable translation of Die Frage nach dem Ding. I reworked every sentence and wrote an "Analysis." I sent the book to Heidegger. I wrote him: "In the Analysis I explained every point I did not understand at first." He answered: "You have written an illuminating afterword with great penetration. It will make my work more accessible in your country." He was always kind in these things. And/or, he saw that I grasped and showed his more-than-conceptual thinking. He did not disagree with it. I worked further, using many models at once, and developing new ones. My new "Process Model" retains logical power, and non-logical moves. I collaborated with a physicist, Jay Lemke. We applied my new work to the anomalies of particles. It became "A Critique of Relativity and Localization" in Mathematical Modeling. Many philosophers avoid physics for fear of bringing reductionism into philosophy. They avoid human experiencing, for fear of bringing psychology in. Anything "ontic" threatens to bring alien explanations to philosophy. Heidegger knew better. Everything must be brought to philosophy, to questioning how it is thought, and to let it be differently. He refused the word "feeling" (much as I had noticed that therapists respond not to what "feeling" usually means). "Befindlichkeit", "mood," "thrownness", and "dwelling" "understand further than cognition can [Page 409] reach." (B&T I-5) Bringing to thought doesn't mean placing a topic under thought, as its basis. Rather, no topic is only its categories. Anything can rethink itself as a "happening." In his terms, the kinds of "transitions" I study are different ways of "letting be", of "happening". Of course there is no final list of ways. Each opens more ways inside itself, and in the others. But even a few let us learn, be, and say, much. But Heidegger's "dwelling" and Befindlichkeit were misunderstood. People could not grasp how a whole situational complexity ("thrownness") could be implicit in a "mood", and how one thinks with that. They did not imagine that dwelling-thinking can be found and done. It became a puzzle. Heidegger was partly responsible for that. He dramatically left phenomenology, and attributed happening to "history". Thereby he dealt with the problem of
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"phenomena" inseparable from language, and history. But most people misunderstood that, as if all experience is old thought. Only new "history" will get us out of this, but "history" seems to come, not from us, but from over there. Heidegger did not mean it that way. History happens in dwelling. He constantly called on us to think-dwell. Where can dwelling go, if everything is old forms? Dwelling seems like going higher from a mountain top, if all we stand on is old forms. "Phenomena" had seemed independent. Now all experience seems wholly dependent, derivative. My reform of phenomenology was not taken up. Of course I think: That is why phenomenology is rejected today. The popular assumption of neutral, uninterpreted "phenomena" had to fail. But the style has swung to assuming that all experience derives wholy from implicit assumptions breakable only by discontinuity. Either way misses the non-logical transitions. We do not need to surrender what is already formed. When we precisely understand its formed intricacy, that is just when we exceed its forms. When we don't understand a book, we can only quote it. To understand it is to dwell-think in its forms, and that is more precise than the forms. The order-for-further-moves is more complex and intricate than any consistency-principles, whether logical, empirical, psychological, or historical. Empirical findings, therapy, and history have more order than formed forms. There are many kinds of demandingly precise feedback. Experiencing has often been called richer and wiser than fixed [Page 410] forms. Unfortunately, it was also called disorderboth only meant it is not the logical order. The literature confounds greater order with less. Foucault is excellently the self-imposed Nietzsche, but for Foucault our dionysian experience is only inchoate resistance, disorder. Derrida's moves are not arbitrary. But he ends each move in an unmoving contradiction, both metaphysical and displaced. That can be a step toward studying the order of non-arbitrary non-logical moves. In Foucault and Derrida the denied order still governs: they say its overthrow must be disorder. So, the old order is still the only one.

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Now we need to remember that "dionysian" experience makes more order, when it functions with the formed kind. It is not the mere absence of formed order. Nor is it just a product of implicitly imposed formed order. From the body-wisdom side of Nietzsche, through Schleiermacher and Dilthey, through Merleau-Ponty and Heidegger, runs the intermittent recognition that this greater order can think and study itself. Such thinking is not only a fuzzy felt sense. Moves of precise understandings exceed cuts and forms. The word says this kind of precision. The order-formoves is more than a set of kinds. But let it say a few sets of such kinds. Note to Readers:

How Do I Refer To This Document? An example reference is at the top of this page. Please include the Internet address in the reference, even if you cite the document in a printed article, so that others can find the Gendlin Online Library. Can I Link Directly To This Document? Yes. We encourage you to link directly to it from your own online documents. We have built "hooks" into this web page to make it very easy to connect to individual pages and headings in the text. For examples, see: How to Link to The Gendlin Online Library. Biographic Note: Eugene T. Gendlin is a seminal American philosopher and psychologist. He received his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Chicago and taught there from 1963 to 1995. His philosophical work is concerned especially with the relationship between logic and implicit intricacy. Philosophy books include Experiencing and the Creation of Meaning, Language Beyond Post-Modernism: Saying and Thinking in Gendlin's Philosophy edited by David Michael Levin, (fourteen commentaries and Gendlins replies), and A Process Model. There is a world wide network of applications and practices (http://www.focusing.org) stemming from this philosophy. Gendlin has been honored three times by the American Psychological Association for his development of Experiential Psychotherapy. He was a founder and editor for many years of the Associations Clinical Division Journal, Psychotherapy: Theory, Research and Practice. His book Focusing has sold over half a million copies and has appeared in seventeen languages. His psychology-related books are Let Your Body Interpret Your Dreams and Focusing-Oriented Psychotherapy. If you see any faults in this document please send us an email. Add a comment to the Gendlin Online Blog for this article. See the reference for this document in the Gendlin primary bibliography.
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Focusing Home > Gendlin Online Library > Eugene Gendlin

Korbei, Lore. (2007). Eugene Gendlin. (Elisabeth Zinchitz, Trans.). Unpublished manuscript. (Original work published 1994) From http://www.focusing.org/gendlin/docs/gol_2181.html Eugene Gendlin Written by Lore Korbei Translated by Elisabeth Zinschitz That evening when the Nazis invaded the country my father was at a conference. At home he told us afterwards: "On the way to the conference there were redwhite-red flags everywhere, and all the windows were full with people who leaned out and who yelled: 'Rot-wei-rot bis in den Tod!' [1]. When I left the conference, there were flags with swastikas, and from all the windows people yelled: 'Heil Hitler!' Were they the same people?" Surely not. There were two kinds of people. There were also many who did not want Hitler. In the first days one already heard many terrible things, about people who broke into Jewish people's houses and threw everything out of the window. One was beaten outside in the streets; also at school this was possible. But I also saw many who did want to have anything to do with it. After a few days my father sent my mother and me to my grandparents who were living in the fifth district. There was a small Czech flag at the door. My grandfather was born in Prague. When the monarchy fell apart, in 1918, he was informed that he was a Czech citizen. This made him angry, and so he had never changed it. Now it saved us. My grandmother kept one room always locked up. One could only look into it through the glass window pane in the door. It was called the "salon" and it was furnished with antique furniture. Only when special guests came, like Mrs Zweig, it was opened. Stefan Zweig's mother was a friend of my grandparents. Now the drawing room served as our bedroom. Everything was different.

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Finally, on the third day my father joined us. His shop had been confiscated immediately. Everything he had built up was lost. For a moment I saw him cry, something which had been unthinkable. He also had heard that the police was looking for him. Therefore he had not come home during those three days. He then took me with him on a long walk and explained a lot to me. In his field he had been the only Jewish person, and they had immediately used the opportunity to steal his shop. They also wanted to lock him up. "Many are locked up, only because they are Jewish," he explained to me. It was important to him that I would understand that clearly. He did not want me to think that my father was a criminal. (I would not ever have thought that any way.) He also said that I should be careful when being outside, for example not stay in the neighbourhood of any of those large pictures of Hitler. I understood all that very well, and we then went home where he was arrested immediately. My mother and I had to bring toothpaste and underwear to the prison. He was gone forever, for about three months. Others were arrested as well. I heard some guests of my grandparents say that those who were put in prison had to have committed some crime for sure. Then I understood why my father had explained this so carefully to me. Those adults were stupid, and I was better informed. The truth became apparent soon, when almost all Jewish men were locked up. Also at other times I knew more than the adults. They said they could not understand all that was going on, they simply did not get it. People were used to proper, rational order; now they were disoriented. They expressed that they were very confused: How could everything be like this? It seemed quite simple to me. Some very bad people had come to power. Once, some men told my grandparents, my mother and I to join a large group of Jewish people in the street. A lot of people were yelling: "Up on the street lights." Then we had to march through the streets for a while in rank and file. But in the end they let us go. At last my father came home again. It was summer already. We were able to live at home again. They let him go after he had signed a paper saying that he wanted to emigrate and after he had promised not to come back. It was strange because all we wanted was to get out and stay away. At that time there were many different regulations; every office was allowed to invent new ones. Since then, I have never heard of such a contract anymore, but it terrified us when a few months later they wanted to send us back from Holland to Austria. Now difficulties came as they blocked the emigration license. There were twenty or thirty documents which one needed to obtain in different offices. There, a lot of people stood in long queue around the building and also along the road for days and nights. Sometimes my father gave me the brief-case to hold in

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order to make it look inconspicuous and nobody would take it away. I learned to follow my father everywhere and not to ask or to say anything until we were alone again. To obtain the license to emigrate turned out to be the most difficult part, and it took us months. Autumn came. Now we could finally turn to the question where we wanted to go. My aunt in Argentina and my uncle in the United States were going to organise visas for us, but that could still take a while. My father wanted to leave immediately. In those weeks we heard of different possibilities how to leave Nazi Germany. Some flew through the Czech Republic, simply with an old passport which did not say that the holder was Jewish. At that time the border guards did not know anything about a new passport for Jewish people. But now that was not possible anymore. With a certificate of baptism it was possible to get through to Yugoslavia. That one could buy also without having himself baptised, but the date needed to be from before 1920. My father said: "We'll probably not be very lucky there." It was also possible to go to Lithuania, if someone in London paid 50 pounds. But we knew nobody there. My father said: "I already was in the East, let us go west." Another possibility was to travel to Italy in a sleeper. One paid someone a certain amount of money, and then one passed the border without being noticed or woken. My father thought that was not safe enough. Because of his contract he would be put in prison immediately, in case we were sent back. Our first effort had to be successful immediately. It was also possible to fly to Switzerland, if one paid someone in Vienna for that. That also did not seem safe enough to my father. Also in Strasbourg there seemed to be someone who brought you across the Rhine into France. My father thought: "What if he leaves us in the middle of the river?" Another option was in Germany: In Cologne someone was selling an address in Belgium. My father chose this option. In Vienna we bought "the address" in Cologne. In Cologne one had to pay even more in order to be led through the woods into Belgium. Now we had finally found a way. We only took a very small suitcase. Some jewels were sewn into my green jacket. The taxi was waiting downstairs in front of the house. My mother and I got in. I wrote the first page in my diary. My father went to look just one more time to see whether there was any mail. He came back with a blue envelope which contained the blue affidavit of our relatives in the United States! (An affidavit is of course no visa. It is only a document which says that the process for our visa has officially been initiated. Some months later we were arrested in Holland, and the affidavit was the reason why they did not send us back to Germany.) Now we went to Cologne by train. In Regensburg my father got out to buy me some lemonade. There was no one else in our compartment, just me and my

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mother. Two men in grey suits came in. They showed their documents, said "Gestapo" and asked: "Where is Doctor Gendelin?" We said we did not know. The train started to move and the two men got out. Soon my father came back from the carriages at the back where he had entered the train again. He had not seen them; he did not know anything about them. My dear parents, who always wanted to give me everything! The lemonade had saved us. We still were afraid, but we did not hear anymore from the Gestapo. In Cologne my father took me with him to "the address." It was in the Jewish quarterpoor, grey streets. It gave us an uncanny feeling that Jewish people simply continued to live here, as if nothing had happened. The Germans were not as wild as the Austrians. Already since 1933 the Jewish people had been staying voluntarily. In Vienna, on the other hand, there was danger for life immediately, and all Jewish people wanted to leave Vienna on the spot. We found the right house and an apartment on the upper floor. There, my father went into a room with a man, and I waited maybe for a quarter of an hour. When my father came out, he was pale and said: "Let's go." Outside he explained that he could not trust this man. My father said that his feeling had said "no" to him. My father had already said this many times: "I follow my feeling." But this time I did not understand that he trusted his feelings. We were in a strange city and without any way out. We had put all our hopes on "the address," and now this hope was destroyed, only because of what he had "felt." I was surprised then and also asked often myself later what kind of feeling it is which tells you something. Sometimes I tried to find such a feeling within myself, but I could not. But that I started to look for it had its effect in the end. Forty years later when I was asked how I could discover focusing, I remembered these circumstances. My father took me to my mother in the hotel and left us again. From the window one saw the wall of the cathedral of Cologne very close by. In the evening he came back and he had brought something with him: a new "address." Next day, it was a Saturday, we traveled to Borken, a village at the Dutch border. To Holland? The only country which had been unattainable from Vienna. A house in Borken. Again my father and another man talking. This time my father seemed OK after this conversation. We all went into the temple to pray Maerev! It was Sabbath and the day before Rosh-ha-shana. And again there were Jewish people who did not even try to get out of the country: unbelievable, frightening. On the next day I secretly described in detail the breakfast we received in the little pension in Borken. My father went back to Cologne to get something. I did not know what this was about. When he came back, he had three train tickets to Amsterdam, Brussels and Paris. Only train tickets? I knew exactly that there were no countries which would allow us in only with a train ticket. We left

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Borken in a little train with hard, yellow wooden seats. Only a few people were on that train. It stopped at the border, we got out. Another Jewish family traveled with us, also only with tickets. My father insisted that we be first to go to the checkpoint. In the small building a uniformed man was standing at a long table. One had to go past him between the table and a handrail. We showed him our tickets. He looked at them, nodded and gave them back to us. We passed him and left the small building. My knees were shaking, but I was able to walk. Further back was another train, or maybe it was the same. We got in and it started moving. That was all? Had we come through? Could I write into my diary that we had succeeded? I still was not sure. Later my father told me: "The man with the address knew that Sunday morning the border guard always went to church. The officer who replaced him did not know much. The Saturday before he had let people through who only had train tickets." The train was almost empty. It bumped in the direction of the village Winterswijk. There we got on a proper train. That one is full. We are in Holland, no doubt. I am hearing a language which I do not understand. At the window in the compartment there is a fat man sitting and he surely is Dutch. My father sits down opposite to him, my mother next to him, then me. Can I now write into my diary that we are free? Not yet. My parents are very silent, they make no signs. They have not even looked at me, so I am not sure. The train is moving, and the fat Dutchman takes a big cigar out of a box and offers my father one. Of course I know that my father smokes cigarettes and only smokes cigars on his birthday. But my father accepts the cigar, makes a hole in it in order to smoke it. At that point I get my diary out of my bad and write: "We succeeded!" Later we had to change trains and wait for the train to Amsterdam. I asked my father why we still could not be relieved. He said that we were still to close to the border and that at any time someone could stop and arrest us and take us back in a car. I did not believe him, but it stayed in my memory. The small Jewish Hotel Eden in Amsterdam was alongside a canal. There was no street at the front side, only water. The room had a small balcony from which one could look over the canal. The white birds who were flying there were free, just like we were. Since then, these seagulls always have been symbols of freedom for me. I still see them at the coast of Lake Michigan where I live. It was Erev Rosh-ha-shana. We asked for a temple and went there. It was a beautiful, big temple, but inside it was very dark. It was hard to see anything, and the prayers were alien to us. Now I know that it was the famous Portuguese synagogue and the prayers were Sephardic. There were men with hats like Napoleon's were standing there with burning torches which, however, were not

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very bright. After half an hour we left the temple and asked whether there was another synagogue. Yes, people told us, a small one. It was a bit far to go. It was full of people, but we found a place to sit at the back. It was bright, and the prayers were like at home. So we were happy. After a while people started whispering, and some looked at us. Was it maybe because we had just come in? People came towards us and we were led to the front, to the very first row where they made space for us. [1] Translation: "Red-white-red until death!" This document is an informal translation from the Austrian, by Elisabeth Zinschitz, of the following: Korbei, L. (1994). Eugen(e) Gend(e)lin. In O. Frischenschlager (Hg.), Wien, wo sonst! Die Entstehung der Psychoanalyse und ihrer Schulen, pp. 174-181. Wien/Kln/Weimar: Bhlau. Note to Readers:

How Do I Refer To This Document? An example reference is at the top of this page. Please include the Internet address in the reference, even if you cite the document in a printed article, so that others can find the Gendlin Online Library. Can I Link Directly To This Document? Yes. We encourage you to link directly to it from your own online documents. We have built "hooks" into this web page to make it very easy to connect to individual pages and headings in the text. For examples, see: How to Link to The Gendlin Online Library. Biographic Note: Eugene T. Gendlin is a seminal American philosopher and psychologist. He received his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Chicago and taught there from 1963 to 1995. His philosophical work is concerned especially with the relationship between logic and implicit intricacy. Philosophy books include Experiencing and the Creation of Meaning, Language Beyond Post-Modernism: Saying and Thinking in Gendlin's Philosophy edited by David Michael Levin, (fourteen commentaries and Gendlins replies), and A Process Model. There is a world wide network of applications and practices (http://www.focusing.org) stemming from this philosophy. Gendlin has been honored three times by the American Psychological Association for his development of Experiential Psychotherapy. He was a founder and editor for many years of the Associations Clinical Division Journal, Psychotherapy: Theory, Research and Practice. His book Focusing has sold over half a million copies and has appeared in seventeen languages. His psychology-related books are Let Your Body Interpret Your Dreams and Focusing-Oriented Psychotherapy. If you see any faults in this document please send us an email.
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Focusing Home > Gendlin Online Library > Introduction to 'Thinking at the Edge'

Gendlin, E.T. (2004). Introduction to 'Thinking at the Edge'. The Folio, 19 (1), 1-8. From http://www.focusing.org/gendlin/docs/gol_2160.html [Page 1] Introduction to "Thinking At the Edge" By Eugene T. Gendlin, Ph.D. University of Chicago "THINKING AT THE EDGE" (in German: "WO NOCH WORTE FEHLEN") is a systematic way to articulate in new terms something which needs to be said but is at first only an inchoate "bodily sense." We now teach this in a bi-yearly four day course and are ready to distribute the steps in print and in a video production. TAE stems from my course called "Theory Construction" which I taught for many years at the University of Chicago. Students came to it from many fields. The course consisted half of philosophy and logic, half of the difficult task of getting students to attend to what they implicitly knew but could not say and never considered trying to say. It took weeks to explain that the usual criteria were reversed in my course. Whereas everywhere else in the University only what was clear counted at all, here we cared only about what was as yet unclear. If it was clear I said "We don't need you for this; we have it in the library already." Our students were not used to the process we call "FOCUSING," spending time with an observation or impression which is directly and
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physically sensed, but unclear. All educated people "know" such things in their field of study. Sometimes such a thing can feel deeply important, but typically people assume that it "makes no sense" and cannot be said or thought into. "Oh," one student exclaimed when he grasped what I was looking for, "you mean something about which we have to do hemming and hawing." Yes, that was just what I meant. Another asked: "Do you mean that crawly thing?" How it is possible that something new and valuable can be implicit in a felt sense? Of course I know that it is a very questionable project to think from what is unclear and only a bodily sense. A rational person, and especially a philosopher, will immediately wonder: Why should such a sense be more than mere confusion? And if there were something valuable in it (say an organismic experiencing of something important in one's field) how would speech come from it? And if it sometimes can, how would one know whether what is said comes from it, rather than from reading something into it? Should one just believe whatever one said from such an unclarity, or would some statements be preferable to others? These questions do not have single answers. They require entering a whole field of considerations. They require certain philosophical strategies about which I have written at length. Since summaries of this kind of philosophical work are not possible, I can only refer to the works that lie behind what I will say here. An internally intricate sense leads to a series of statements with certain recognizable characteristics. Statements that speak-from the felt sense can be recognized by the fact that they have an effect on the felt sense. It moves, opens, and develops. The relation between sensing and statements is not identity, representation, or description. An implicitly intricate bodily sense is never the same thing as a statement. There are many possible relationships between the body and statements and we have developed some precise ways to employ these relationships. [Page 2] Every topic and situation is more intricate than the existing concepts. Every living organism is a bodily interaction with an intricate situation and with the universe. When a human being who is experienced in some field senses something, there is always something. It could turn out to be quite different than it seemed at first, but it cannot be nothing.
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Here I would like to give an example: Suppose you are about to fly to another city in a small plane, and your experienced pilot says "I can't explain it. The weather people say all clear, but the look of it gives me some odd sense of doubt..." In such a case you would not tell the pilot to ignore this sense just because it is not clear. I have stacked this example. Of course an experienced pilot's unclarity has already taken account of all the clear knowledge that the profession uses, so that what is unclear is something more. We need not be certain that this "sense" is in fact due to the weather; it is enough that it may be. You decide to stay safely at home. But if the weather does become dangerous, then it is important to all of us to find out what it was that the pilot sensed, which escaped the weather people. The federal aviation people and the whole society would want that pilot to articulate just what was in the look of the weather which the unclear sense picked up. Adding this to the knowledge of the Weather Service would make us all safer when we are in the air. And so it is also with any person who is experienced in any field. But such a sense will seem to be beyond words. We are all imbued with the classical Western unit model. We can hardly think in any other way. What we call "thinking" seems to require unitized things which are assumed to be either cleanly identical or cleanly separate, which can be next to each other but cannot interpenetrate, let alone have some more complex pattern. If, for example, there are two things which also seem to be one in some intricate way, rather than try to lay out this intricate pattern in detail, thinking tends to stop right there. We consider the sense of such a thing as if it were a private trouble. It seems that something must be wrong with us because "it doesn't make sense." And yet we keep on having this stubborn sense which does not fit in with what is already articulated in our field. It probably stems from a genuine observation which does not fit the unit model. How it is possible for the same old words in the dictionary to say something The unit model is regularly the reason why some new insights cannot be said. But to reject the unit model in general is not possible, because it inheres in our language, our machines and in all our detailed concepts. We fall back into it the moment we want to speak further. The new insight cannot be said in terms of the old concepts and phrases. In class I used Heidegger, McKeon and my own philosophy, three critiques of the unit model, but as it turns out, the capacity for breaking out of the unit model cannot be imparted in this way. Critique does not prevent us from falling into the old model. Some say that it will take 300 years for the assumptions that inhere in our language to change. To a philosopher it seems unlikely that people can think beyond the pervasive assumptions. Therefore TAE can seem improbable.

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On the other hand, Wittgenstein showed that the capacity of language far exceeds the conceptual patterns that inhere in it. He demonstrated convincingly that what words can say is quite beyond the control of any concept, pre-existing rule, or theory of language. He could give some twenty or more examples of new meanings that one word could acquire through different uses. [1] Building on this, we have developed in TAE a new use of language that can be shown to most anyone who senses something that cannot yet be said. This new way of speaking is the key to this seemingly impossible venture. In my philosophy I have developed a new use of bodily-sourced language with which we can speak directly from the body about many things especially about the body and language. [Page 3] Language is deeply rooted in the human body in a way that is not commonly understood. Language does not consist just of the words. The situations in which we find ourselves, the body, and the language form a single system together. Language is implicit in the human process of living. The words we need to say arrive directly from the body. I have a bodily sense of what I am about to say. If I lose hold of that, I can't say it. If I have the sense of what I want to say, then all I do is open my mouth and rely on the words that will come. Language is deeply rooted in the way we physically exist in our interactive situations. The common situations in a culture each have their appropriate phrases, a cluster of possible sayings that one might need. The words mean the effect they have when they are used in a situation. Our language and the common situations constitute a single system together. However, this bodily link between words and situations applies no less when the situation is uncommon and what needs to be said has no established words and phrases. All living bodies create and imply their own next steps. That is what living is, the creating of next steps. The body knows to exhale after inhaling, and to search for food when hungry. And, in a new situation new next steps come from the body. Even an ant on a fuzzy rug crawls in an odd way in which it has never crawled before. When we sense something that doesn't fit the common repertory and nevertheless wants to be said, the body is implying new actions and new phrases. TAE empowers people to think and speak. We find that when people forgo the usual big vague words and common phrases, then from their bodily sense quite fresh colorful new phrases come. These phrases form in such a way that they say what is new from the bodily sense.
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There is no way to say "all" of it, no sentence that will be simply equal, no sentence which will simply "represent" what is sensed. But what can happen is better than a perfect copy. One strand emerges from the bodily sense, and then another and another. What needs to be said expands! What we say doesn't represent the bodily sense. Rather it carries the body forward. First it must be recognized that no established word or phrase will ever be able to say what needs to be said. The person can be freed from trying to "translate" the felt sense into regular sayings. Yet what a person wanted a word to mean can be expressed but only in one or more whole sentences that use words in a fresh and creative way. In certain kinds of sentences a word can go beyond its usual meaning, so that it speaks from the felt sense. When one has tried several words and found that each of them fails to say what needs to be said, fresh sentences can say what one wished the word to mean. Now it turns out that each of the rejected words gives rise to very different fresh sentences. Each pulls out something different from the felt sense. In this way, with some further developments, what was one single fuzzy sense can engender six or seven terms. These terms bring their own interrelations, usually a quite new patterning. This constitutes a whole new territory where previously there was only a single implicit meaning. One can move in the field created by these terms. Now one can enter further into the experiential sense of each strand and generate even more precise terms. People find that never again are they just unable to speak from this felt sense. Up to this point TAE enables fresh language to emerge. The last five steps concern logic, a very different power. But there is also an inherent connection between a felt sense and how we make logic. (See A Process Model, VIIA, VIIBa and VIII.) The new terms and their patterning can be given logical relations, in a series of theoretical propositions. Now it becomes possible to substitute logically linked terms for each other. Thereby [Page 4] many new sentences (some surprising and powerful) can be derived. Expanding this can constitute a theory, a logically interlocked cluster of terms. At every point in the process we can see that explicating a felt sense is not at all arbitrary. Although it involves creating new terms rather than merely copying or representing what is already given, its implicit meanings are very precise. The various relations between sensing and speaking have not been well studied until now, because only representation was looked for. By using these very relations between sensing and speaking in order to study them, I have initiated this field of study and developed it in some depth. Here I only want to say that once one experiences this "speaking-from," the way it carries the body forward becomes utterly recognizable. Then, although one might be able to say many things and
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make many new distinctions, one prefers being stuck and silent until phrases come that do carry the felt sense forward. TAE was envisioned and created by Mary Hendricks. The idea of making it into an available practice seemed impossible to me. TAE requires a familiarity with Focusing. The participants in our first TAE were experienced Focusing people. This took care of the most difficult part of my university course. Nevertheless I expected it to fail, and I certainly experienced that it did fail. Some people did not even get as far as using logic, and most created no theory. Yet there was great satisfaction and even excitement. A great thing seemed to have happened, so I was grateful that I was saved any embarrassment. For some reason they did not feel cheated. Later I understood. During the ensuring year many people wrote to us. They reported that they found themselves able to speak from what they could not say before, and that they were now talking about it all the time. And some of them also explained another excitement. Some individuals had discovered that they could think! What "thinking" had previously meant to many of them involved putting oneself aside and rearranging remembered concepts. For some the fact that they could create and derive ideas was the fulfillment of a need which they had despaired of long ago. Now after five American and four German TAE meetings I am very aware of the deep political significance of all this. People, especially intellectuals, believe that they cannot think! They are trained to say what fits into a pre-existing public discourse. They remain numb about what could arise from themselves in response to the literature and the world. People live through a great deal which cannot be said. They are forced to remain inarticulate about it because it cannot be said in the common phrases. People are silenced! TAE can empower them to speak from what they are living through. People can be empowered to think and speak. We have come to recognize that, along with Focusing, TAE is a practice for people generally. They do not all need to build a theory with formal logically linked terms. Thinking and articulating is a socially vital practice. In ancient times philosophy always included practices, and now philosophy does so again. One need not necessarily grasp all of the philosophy from which the practices have come. I have accepted the fact that without the philosophical work no description of TAE (as in this Folio) can be adequate. I need to make clear that with TAE we are not saying that thinking or any other serious human activity can be reduced to standard steps of a fixed method. When people said they discovered that they could think, they certainly did not
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mean these little steps which I myself couldn't remember exactly, at first. The steps help break what I might call the "public language barrier" so that the source of one's own thinking is found and spoken from. After that nobody needs steps. Precise steps are always for precise teaching so a new way can be shown and found. Then it soon becomes utterly various. [Page 5] Steps 4 and 5 of TAE reveal a more-than-logical creativity inherent in the nature of language, which has remained largely unrecognized until now. Language is not the deadly trap it is often said to be. Language is often blamed when something exciting becomes limited and lifeless. Philosophers of many sorts hold that anything will fall into old categories by being said. This might be true when one uses only common phrases, but in the case of fresh phrasing it is quite false. New phrasing is possible because language is always implicit in human experiencing and deeply inherent in what experiencing is. Far from reducing and limiting what one implicitly lives and wants to say, a fresh statement is physically a further development of what one senses and means to say. Then, to write down and read back what is said can engender still further living. What one physically senses in one's situation is not some fixed, already determined entity, but a further implying that expands and develops in response to what is said. Rather than "falling into" the constraints of the said, we find that the effects of the said can open ways of living and saying still further. [2] Many current philosophers deny that the individual can think anything that does not come from the culture, from the group, from interaction. This view is an over-reaction to a previous philosophy which treated the individual as the universal source. But both views are simplifications. Culture and individuality constitute an intricate cluster. Each exceeds the other in certain respects. We have a language brain and we live in interactional situations. But language is not an imposition upon a blank. Even plants are quite complex, and animals live complex lives with each other without language. When the living body becomes able to carry itself forward by symbolizing itself, it acts and speaks from a vast intricacy. Of course we get the language from culture and interaction. But we have seen that language is not just a store of fixed common meanings. Humans don't happen without culture and language, but with and after language the body's next steps are always freshly here again, and always implicitly more intricate than the common routines. You can instantly check this by becoming aware of your bodily aliveness, freshly there and implicitly much more intricate than the words you are reading. From the start I had the students in my class meet in listening partnerships during the week. They divided two hours, taking turns purely listening. "Just
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listen. Only say when you don't follow" I instructed them. "If your partner is working on a paper, don't tell about how you would write the paper...." They always laughed because they knew the problem. Nobody is ever willing to keep us company where we are stuck with our unfinished paper, so that we can think our way through. But in a Focusing partnership we do just that. We attend entirely just to one person at a time. This mutually sustaining pattern was always a main reason why students praised the course. TAE has a social purpose. We build our inter-human world further. It is not true that merely developing as individuals will somehow change the patterns in which we must live. We need to build new social patterns and new patterns of thought and science. This will be a mutual product no single person can create. On the other hand, if we work jointly too soon, we lose what can only come through the individual in a focusing type of process. Nobody else lives the world from your angle. No other organism can sense exactly "the more" that you sense. In TAE for the first three days, one is constantly warned to "protect" one's as yet inchoate sense. We interrupt anyone who says "mine is like yours," or "yours made me think of..." or any sentence that begins with "We..." We may have uttered the very same sentence, but the intricacy that is implicit for you turns out to be utterly different from mine. These two intricacies are much more significant than what would come from this spot, if we articulate it together. There is an interplay which happens too soon and stops the articulation of what is so fuzzy and hard to enter. Because we are inherently interactional creatures, our implicit intricacy opens more deeply when we are speaking to another person who actually wants to hear us. But if that person adds anything in, our contact with the inward sense is almost always lost [Page 6] or narrowed. In TAE we provide the needed interaction without any imposition, by taking turns in what we call a "Focusing partnership." In half the time I respond only to you. I follow you silently with my bodily understanding, and I tell you when I cannot follow. I speak from this understanding now and then but only to check if I follow. In TAE I write down all your exact words as they emerge (because otherwise they might be gone a moment later) and I read anything back to you when you want it. Then in the other half of the time you do only this for me. Once the individual's sense of something has become articulated and differentiated enough, then what happens is something we call "crossing." Other people's insights enrich ours by becoming implicit in our own terms. If one first develops and keeps one's own terms, one can then cross them with others. Keeping one's own terms means keeping their intricate precision. Crossing enriches their implicit intricacy and power. At that point collaborative interaction can create a new social product right here in the room. This is of course the intent of the current emphasis on "dialogue" and Shotter's (2003) important work on "joint action" since we humans live fundamentally in an
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inter-human interactional space. [3] But we need the individual's unique implicit store of worldinteraction and this requires articulating the individual's bodily felt sense first. When many TAE theories cross, they need not constitute one consistent logical system. There is a different way in which they go together. They cross. Crossing makes the other theory implicit in the felt sense under one's own logically connected terms. Then we find that we can say more from our own felt sense, using the other theory and its connected terms. Implicit intricacy connects all the TAE theories in advance. Each theory opens an intricate location in the public world and in philosophy and science. It enables the implicit intricacy to be entered at that location. A TAE theory relates to many other locations not only through its felt sense but also through logical connections to other things. Logic and space-time science exist only within experiential explication. Pure logical inference is retained in TAE, but we also find a certain "odd logic" in articulating a felt sense. We find, for example, that a small detail which would usually be subsumed under wider categories, can instead overarch them and build its more intricate patterning into them. Another example of the odd logic: We find that when more requirements are imposed, degrees of freedom are not lessened; more requirements open more possibilities. There is an odd logic of experiential explication. [4] Next we must consider regular logic. In order to understand our reductive sciences within a wider experiential science we must first appreciate the power of the unit logic. I need to laud what I call "graph paper," the units that logic requires. The little logical units are familiar to everyone from mathematics (1+1=2+170=172). The units of which numbers are composed are external to each other, next to or after each other. With Newton they became characteristic of space and time and therefore of anything that exists in space and time. If you imagine everything external gone, there still seems to be a space and time which is empty but still quantitative in this unit measured way. The reality which Science represents is constructed in this space and time. Science turns what it studies into nice clean logical units that can be used with mathematics. By calling this space and time "graph paper" I want to bring home that physics, chemistry, organic chemistry, biology, microbiology every scientific specialty is an elaborate construction of little units on this kind of screen, such as molecules, cells, genes, neurons. The unit model is not the only possible model for science. Of course nature doesn't really come in little units, but we can project it onto such a screen of units. We also enlarge it very greatly so that the units capture what cannot normally be seen. Then we can institute very specific operations with these units. We can test the [Page 7] results of these operations, and eventually create things that have never existed before. Among other things we also map ourselves onto these screens of units
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when we study ourselves. No, of course we are not these screens. It is a bad mistake to think that we consist just of these little units on all the screens. We are the ones who live and look at screens that we make. When I was young we were all supposed to be chemical. Then biochemistry and microbiology expanded vastly. Then, later, we were supposed to be neurology. Obviously there are many sciences; what they say changes every few years, and new kinds of screens are constantly being added. We are not little units on a screen, not the sum of all the current and future screens. But let us not pretend that we could do without the wonderful things that have been constructed from such units, for example, medicine, electric lights, and even this computer on which I am typing. Once we make a screen of units, logical reasoning and inference are very powerful and can lead us to places nothing else can find. On the other hand, logic is not what creates the units. Only we create the units, and we keep on creating them. The solution of long standing problems usually requires creating new units. Even Euclid proves a theorem about triangles only by extending one of the lines, or by dropping a new line from the apex to the base in other words, only by creating some new unit. When one is using a well-defined concept, if one enters the felt sense at that juncture one can find exactly how that concept is working at that juncture, its precise effect in that context. This will be much a much more precise pattern than the definition one had for that concept. A felt sense is a source of much greater precision and can enable one to generate new units. The "Complexity" theorists who make analog computer models still assume that the starting set of units must last through to the end. So their results are disappointing. Logical analysis is being widely rejected even in Analytic Philosophy today, but giving up on logical analysis is a great mistake. It is true that logic depends on premises it cannot examine. Logic is helpless to determine its own starting position. But TAE shows that new logical inferences can be instituted at significant junctures with new units that are first arrived at by Focusing and TAE. The possibilities are greatly enhanced, when we can give logical analysis an articulated way to determine new starting locations and to generate new units there. From new experiences and new phrases that come, we can fashion new units for logical inferences. In this way we can build something in the world with articulated strands and terms. Then it is a new logic with new units. Then logical inference applies again, and leads again to new places, new insights and new questions at which one cannot arrive in any other way.

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What comes from a bodily felt sense is often of an odd sort that doesn't lend itself to the little boxes of graph paper. And, this "illogical" character is often the most important aspect of what we need to say. We can develop logically connected terms nevertheless. With TAE we have a way to let the "illogical crux" redefine all the terms, so that logical inference then lends them its power without losing an intricate new pattern or violating the life that the theory articulates. When terms articulate a felt sense and also acquire logical connections, this duality enables us to move in two ways from any statement: Once we have logically linked terms, logic generates powerful inferences far beyond what can be found directly from experiencing. On the other side, by pursuing the experiential implications we can arrive where logic would never lead. We need both. For example my A Process Model (Gendlin, 1997) employs both. In Focusing, new and realistic steps arise from the body, but this seems illogical. Focusing is possible, since we do it. But to conceive of a world in which Focusing is possible leads to a cluster of logically interlocking terms in [Page 8] which the living body is an interactive process with its environment and situation. This is the case for plants. Animals require understanding how "behavior" is a special case of such interaction, and human language again a special case of behavior. In this way I have developed a conceptual model for physics and biology, which can connect to the usual concepts and data (as we must be able to do), but with conceptual patterns which are modeled on and continuous with living and symbolizing. This kind of concept can connect with the usual units, but also embodies what cannot be reduced. This model can let one reconfigure any concept. With such concepts one can think about all physical bodies in such a way that some can be living, and about all living bodies in a way that some can be human bodies. [5] I can only indicate the philosophy behind the above. This philosophy is original with me, but of course I could not have arrived at it if I didn't know the history of philosophy and Dilthey, Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Wittgenstein, Whitehead, McKeon, and many others. My new way was to put the ancient concepts, strategies, and issues into a direct relation with implicitly intricate experiencing. I found that each philosophical approach can open avenues in the implicit experiencing, instead of canceling the others out. Every major philosophy changes the meaning of the basic terms such as what "basic" means, what "is" or "exists" means, as well as "true," "understand,"
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"explain," and all other such words. Each philosophy gets its changed meanings by entering into that bigger realm at the edge of thinking which is more organized than any system of concepts. But then the philosophy tells a story, its own story in its own terms about how it got its terms. It gives us only a conceptualized report about its entry and return. It doesn't enable us to do this. My philosophy lets us enter and return. It studies and uses what happens to language, and also (differently) what happens to logical terms when we enter and return. There are ancient sophisticated conceptual strategies to think about how human beings live in reality in such a way that we can know something. It is after knowing many of these strategies and their pitfalls, that I say: we don't just have interactions; we are interaction with the environment, other people, the world, the universe, and that we can sense ourselves as such. What we sense from there is never nothing. [6] The Gendlin works cited below are available at www.focusing.org and at www.philosophyofexperiencing.org [1] Gendlin, E.T. What happens when Wittgenstein asks "What happens when...?" The Philosophical Forum Volume XXVIII. No. 3, Winter-Spring 1997. See also Gendlin, E.T. Thinking beyond patterns: body, language and situations. In B. den Ouden & M. Moen (Eds.), The presence of feeling in thought, Chapter A-1, section 6. New York : Peter Lang, 1991. [2] See my reply to Nicholson in Gendlin, E.T. How philosophy cannot appeal to experience, and how it can. In D. M. Levin (Ed.), Language Beyond Postmodernism: Thinking and Speaking in Gendlin's Philosophy. Evanston : Northwestern University Press, 1997. [3] Shotter, J. (in press) "Real presences:" meaning as living movement in a participatory world. Theory & Psychology, vol. 13. (no pages nos. yet), 2003. [4] Gendlin, E.T. Experiencing and the creation of meaning, IVB. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. paperback 1997 [5] Gendlin, E.T. A Process Model, 1997. (http://www.focusing.org see Philosophy, and printed version from The Focusing Institute) [6] Gendlin, E.T. Crossing and dipping : some terms for approaching the interface between natural understanding and logical formation. In M. Galbraith & W.J. Rapaport (Eds.), Subjectivity and the debate over computational cognitive science, pp. 37-59. Buffalo : State University of New York, 1991.

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Eugene T. Gendlin Note to Readers:

How Do I Refer To This Document? An example reference is at the top of this page. Please include the Internet address in the reference, even if you cite the document in a printed article, so that others can find the Gendlin Online Library. Can I Link Directly To This Document? Yes. We encourage you to link directly to it from your own online documents. We have built "hooks" into this web page to make it very easy to connect to individual pages and headings in the text. For examples, see: How to Link to The Gendlin Online Library. Biographic Note: Eugene T. Gendlin is a seminal American philosopher and psychologist. He received his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Chicago and taught there from 1963 to 1995. His philosophical work is concerned especially with the relationship between logic and implicit intricacy. Philosophy books include Experiencing and the Creation of Meaning, Language Beyond Post-Modernism: Saying and Thinking in Gendlin's Philosophy edited by David Michael Levin, (fourteen commentaries and Gendlins replies), and A Process Model. There is a world wide network of applications and practices (http://www.focusing.org) stemming from this philosophy. Gendlin has been honored three times by the American Psychological Association for his development of Experiential Psychotherapy. He was a founder and editor for many years of the Associations Clinical Division Journal, Psychotherapy: Theory, Research and Practice. His book Focusing has sold over half a million copies and has appeared in seventeen languages. His psychology-related books are Let Your Body Interpret Your Dreams and Focusing-Oriented Psychotherapy. If you see any faults in this document please send us an email. Add a comment to the Gendlin Online Blog for this article. See the reference for this document in the Gendlin primary bibliography. More on Philosophy of the Implicit from the Focusing Institute website. More on Creative Process from the Focusing Institute website. More on A Better World from the Focusing Institute website.

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Focusing Home > Gendlin Online Library > Psychotherapy research: Toward a bodily human nature

Gendlin, E.T. (1989). Psychotherapy research: Toward a bodily human nature. Discours Social/Social Discourse, 2(1-2). From http://www.focusing.org/gendlin/docs/gol_2071.html [Page 201] Psychotherapy Research: Toward A Bodily Human Nature Eugene T. Gendlin, University of Chicago The philosophical project: This paper sketches a way to change certain assumptions. Current thought assumes that the human subject and the body exist only as imprinted by externally imposed forms. All natural order is assumed to be a system of imposed forms. Experience is only derivative. An impossible, therefore tragic, so-called "individual" remains, but only as primitive, and autistic. Thinkers search for the human subject in the infantile, the grotesque, the unreal, at best in art which is supposed to be unreal. But, let me remind you that in the now rejected concept, the human subject was not at all the subject we each are. What we each are was lost earlier, when Descartes replaced it by the pure, reflexive self-consciousness of the mathematical thinker. The now rejected subject was Descartes' and Kant'sthe source of innate ideas and mathematical grids. Kant recognized the situation with his Copernican Revolution. Why do science and mathematics necessarily fit experience? Because, he said, all order that experience could possibly have derives from them. Actual human experience is entirely derivative. The forms were said to come from "the subject"but it was a purely formal subject, a formal unity. On the other hand, the empirical subjects you and meare determined by, and derivative from these logic-forms which "we" impose on us. There has been no change in this assumption that experience is derived from imposed forms. But the loss of the human subject did become more apparent, when it was replaced in its formal role as a source of imposed order. Later

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philosophies saw that source in society, history, or politics. But humans remained derivatives from an imposed order. Currently, both rational and social forms have lost their prestige. Concepts and distinctions are seen to contradict themselves. [1] Social forms are seen as shifting political controls. [2] Self-contradictory and discontinuous, imposed forms are still assumed to be the only order of human beings and bodies always already imposed before we experience. So, for example, Freud [3] held that the infant's body provides only chaotic drives without discharge channels. Only imposed patterns allow these energies to interact. To organize discharge [Page 202] is to impose order, which means to repress. The ego is that part of the id which acquires social patterns. The assumption that order and interaction must be imposed on chaos is starkly built into all of Freud's theoretical concepts. But, wasn't it Freud who decoded the language of the unconscious, the overdetermined intricacy of dreams? Isn't he the one who discovered beneath the social simplifications that great complexity he called "the pathology of everyday 1ife?" Yet, in his basic theory, that is all treated as unorganized. This is customary in the Western tradition. What is not logic is treated as no order at all, or as primitive. So also did Nietzsche defend and laud the "wisdom of the body," and then also call it a primordial chaos on which order had to be forced, from outside. His self-creation has nothing of feedback. For him there is no way the body can talk back to that self which is an imposed work of art, an imposition of form. This tradition goes back to Vico, who lovingly treats metaphor, and also depreciates it as not being rational. If we see this tradition clearly, we will not assume that what is not imposed can only be primitive, or no order at all. Two great lacks can be seen here, and they will organize what I have to say: Body and subject are assumed incapable of meaningful feedback. They are assumed to be autistic, lacking in interaction. The body is assumed to lack all organization and order. Therefore it cannot offer feedback. It cannot meaningfully modify what society requires. Certainly it cannot come up with something better than what is imposed on it. It cannot modify what society requires. It is not even possible that something imposed might not fit it, since it has no order at all. It has nothing with which to limit its oppression. If the body has no order, then interaction can only be imposition. So, it is said that if there were a subject, it must be autistic. Interaction is taken to be the
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opposite of subjects. Therefore, since humans are inherently interactional, there seems to be no subject. We see this also in psychoanalysis, where theory makes it seem that only the therapist can determine what the patient should become. The patient is only a result of bad imprinting. Improvement can only be a more effective socialization, and only by a one-way imposition of order and control. But, of course, in practice the patient's more complex feedback is vivid, essential, and not imposed, but quite new, in each case. I reject the theoretical assumption of imposed order, both in therapy and in philosophy, in favour of a more complex relation and source of novelty I call "carrying forward." A difficulty immediately arises: We can not speak outside our language, our history, society, economic class, and our conceptual forms. These are always already implicit in all our situations. But, if this is admitted, then isn't what we think and do derivative, always already? That all is implicit; yes. But, what we think and live is not just derived. If it were, these factors would function like logical forms, so that only what is consistent, could follow. But, how culture, politics, and language function is quite unlike logical necessity. How they function implicitly has not [Page 203] been thought through at all. They have simply been allowed to retain their Kantian function of constructing experience. No, these forms are indeed implicit in a greater order, other than forms. A second difficulty: lf body and subject have another order, can it be separated out? No, it cannot. There is no way to separate the forms away. How, then, can we hope to find that greater order? I will show that the order of subject and body becomes noticeable, because their feedback to imposed forms is novel, more intricate, and more realistic, than the imposed forms. poetry According to Freudian metapsychology, poetry consists of primitive pre-ego material, on which artistic form is imposed. But poetry is not just imposed form. What the poet says is not always primitive and unreal. It can be more realistic, more true of the world, than the common sayings. Consider the silence of a poet with an unfinished poem:

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The already written lines want something more, but what? The poet may be only stuck and confused, trying this line and that; many lines come. Some seem good. The poet listens carefully into each, rejects it, and reads the written lines again and again. Soon, or all along, the poet hears (senses, knows, reads .....) what these already written lines need, want, demand, imply ...... Now the poet's hand rotates in the air. The gesture says that. The lines that offer themselves try to say, but do not saythat. This blank seems to lack words, but no. The blank is very verbal: It knows the language well enough to understandand rejectall the lines that come. The blank is not a bit pre-verbal; it knows what must be said, and it knows that the lines which came don't say that. The blank is vague, but it is also more precise than what was ever said before in the history of the world. But in another way, of course the blank is saidby the lines leading up to it. The poet can have (get, hear, feel, keep .....) this blank only by re-reading and listening into the written linesover and over. Their saying has a role in bringing what is not yet said. What is this .....? Surely the language. But also the poet's felt body-sense. And also the situation, writing poetry, and interacting in the world. So also, with us here: You follow my odd language about that blank. You know that body-sense. It is also our interaction just now, our situation here. The old distinctions do not hold, between language, body, self, and situations with others. But after distinctions there is not just limbo, not disorder. Rather, what comes can demand and give rise to something quite new, more realistic, and more intricately ordered than the existing forms. Let us thinkmore intricatelyjust how a ..... is body, and feeling, an situation, and language: [Page 204] The ..... is not a poet's special capacity. Most any situation can demand sayings and actions that I cannot form. The ..... can make me reject what comes to me to say and do. This blank, this "sense" is not just subjectiveit is my interaction with others, my situation which demands an action new to me. The ..... is not pre-verbal; it knows why what I would say won't do. I am not apart from my situations, but neither are they separable from me. My situation is how I came to it, what it does to me. If I could now do what others could, I would have done it already; this situation would not have come about except for me. So let us not say that there are no subjects, just because they are always in situations.
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The ..... is never just the formed words or actions. It can always demand and give rise to more than has ever formed before. It is a pre-separated multiplicity that is endlessly further specifiablebut always just so, in a demandingly exact way. Notice how the body-feeling is also the language and the situation: What is happening now, as you sit thereusing your time in this way, having decided not to do those other things, having decided to let me in? Here is also the past history of this decision, your intellectual-practical situation, what might come of it, the writing you might do, how you might use this, whom you will talk with about it, the patience, expectancy, disdain or excitement you have for it, so fara cluster called your "attitude" as if that were one thingand also your readiness for your next situation after this, which is coming up, and building in you all this while, and also the spot in which you are sitting, the living you have done here before, and who else is here, or not here, and so on ..... As I say each of these things, they may seem separable, but only some of them were separate before. Each seems to be one item, but each is again such a preseparated multiplicity, able to be further specified (made, found, differentiated, synthesized, lifted out, constellated .....). That pre-separated multiplicity functions in the coming of your thoughts and actions. You act and think with it. It functions in a highly orderly way. In most situations you would be lost without it. The forms that come are never the only order. Seeing how it functions, there is either no distinctions between situation and subject, or a whole fan of them: It is also a situation for the other people in it, whereas I exist not just as something for them. It is partly an externality they see, whereas they cannot see my multiplicity. The situation has possibilities I will miss, but I can come up with new ways of acting that didn't seem to be in the situation. It will have consequences in a set of situations I can't foresee, but I differ from it because I also live in unrelated other situations. The situation lets me carry forward only part of my multiplicity, but also, I feel only part of the situation. It contains one cluster of implicit culture and history, whereas I act from another such cluster. And so on! Notice that none of these are arbitrary or lacking in truth. To say more about any of them, would require entering into that ..... with its demanding intricacy. [Page 205] We need not be stopped when the old distinctions break down. Rather, we think this demanding intricacy as a multiplicity capable of many precise fans, when we open the old self/other distinction.
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Here I emphasize a certain kind of orderly functioning, different from how formed forms work. I do not say it is the body, or the subject, or language, or the situation, which has this sort of functioning. Rather, let us study this mode itself. We know a good deal about that mode of functioning, from another field: Psychotherapy Therapy, poetry, and action each bring quite different changes. Even a tiny step of therapy can change the whole way a situation exists. It can shift the whole mood. If a poet experienced a bit of therapy-change, that might dissolve what the poem has been coming from. The poem could not be finished. Steps of therapy differ from steps of poetry. Here is a short segment, (written from memory after the hour.) Notice the role of the stuck and silent ....., the way it can reject what would be easy to say, and how it gives rise to novel steps: I want to leave Chicago. The noise outside bothers me. T is silent. You don't think that's real. I can tell. T: The noise is crowding in on you, coming into your far-in place. It's like darts hitting my body. I can't stand it. T: It really hurts! (silence) ..... I keep feeling a sense of no meaning in my life. [Page 206] (silence) ..... I just want to leave everything. It's that same spot where I want to die. My wanting to live and to die are so close, these days. That's why I haven't been able to touch this place. It gets misty there, still. It's real foggy. T: You can feel wanting to live and, also, wanting to die, both right there, in the same inside spot, and that spot gets foggy, too. (silence) ..... I don't want to relate with anyone. I wish there were no people to see. They don't mean anything to me. There is no meaning. When will my life ever have meaning? It feels like it never will. And I need meaning, right now.

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(silence) ..... I also feel hesitant about relating to you. I know you're there for me, but it's like I'm not allowed to want that. T: Is that, what you said before, about your father? (silence) ..... No, uh. But I am glad you said that about my father, because, uh, I can feel that this is not with him. This is different. It's not like with my father. T: It is not about him. (silence) ..... Uh, I can hardly touch it. It'sI can't want ..... my mother. I, I can hardly say it. T: You can't wanther. (silence) ..... That is where I feel the noises like darts. (silence) ..... It's real early, real early. T: It feels like a very, very early experience. [Page 207] (silence) ..... I can't wantanything. (silence) ..... This needs to rest, and it can't. If it lets down and rests it will die. It needs to keep up its guard. T: There is such a big need and longing, to rest, to let down, to ease, but somehow also, this part of you can't rest. It feels that it will die if it stops being on guard. (silence) ..... What comes is: maybe it couldif I could trust something. T: It could rest, if you could trust something. No, no: Maybe it could rest, if I could trust something. T: It's important to say "maybe." Maybe it could rest, if you could trust something. (silence) ..... Now, suddenly, it feels like a house on stilts that go into the earth. All of me on top, where the noise is, that's a house and its on stilts. It got lifted off of this sore place. Now the sore place is like a layer, and it can breathe. Do you know those steel posts they put into the ground, to hold up a building?
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These stilts are like that. (T: Umhm) All the noise and coming and going is in the house, and the house is on stilts, lifted off, and the stilts go into the ground. T: Those steel stilts go into the ground. You feel them lifting the whole house up, off of you. And underneath, that sore place can breathe. (silence) ..... Yea, (breath), now it's breathing. (silence) ..... It's bathing in warm water. Later, she said: "When I was little I played a lot with stilts. I used to go between the power wires on them. It was dangerous, but it was play! I used to make taller and taller ones, and go on them there. Stilts! I haven't thought of those for years. Play, and danger. How does this process do that? It uses all these things to make something that wasn't there before." [Page 208] Note that the new intricacy comes from the silence, the ..... which precedes each step. Such steps are not imposed by the therapist, nor do they already exist in the patient. They are not the common social forms. Steps of this sort occur in psychotherapy of any type, if feedback from the patient's bodily sense is looked for, and received. Such steps have theoretical implications. I can only say a little of that, here. [4] The steps can include much from the past. Here, the problem with mother, and the play with stilts in the danger zone are from the past. But the past doesn't merely repeat; it functions in new steps, in a new, more intricate way of physical, bodily being. Such steps can not be designed deliberately. They are not imposed on someone, or on oneself. In retrospect we can say, yes, this is just what was needed: the body produced the mothering which was lacking. It came in the interaction with the therapist. But it had to be made physically, from inside, by the body. Nothing can be just imposed by the therapist. He did not even get his one interpretation right. Though wrong, it helped: A new step came as feedback to it. But, most steps came as her body's responses to her own statements. The therapist could not invent and impose this intricate arrangement of stilts that were physically felt as supporting her, lifting the pressure off, so that something underneath could breathe.

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The steps are interactions of present with past, patient with therapist, and language with the patient's body. Carrying forward is interaction; the steps are not already there in either person. One must wait for them to come. What is there, before steps come? This order exceeds the static "is". Rather, it isfor steps. The human subject and body do not consist of forms, or formed contents, neither original nor imposed. Always already formed, the order of subject and body is-for steps of carrying forward. Such steps don't follow logically, but they are not at all arbitrary ruptures. You followed them. What kind of "following" is that? What arises in a next step is not predictable from the previous. On the contrary, if we go back to a previous step, to find how we could go from it to the next, we see that each step changed how we had understood the previous one, so that the next could follow. The next event retroactively reveals what the previous step really was. Evidently, what was does not alone determine what it was. I call it "carrying forward." The previous step functions in producing the next, but not by deriving it, not by imposing its form on what follows. "Carrying forward" alters LaPlace's series. He thought there was only one possible series, so that everything could be predicted, if one moment was known. But, we find that a step can change the forward-implied series. More can happen, than follows from formed forms alone. You can see this order also in science. Last year's assertions are discarded, as hosts of new specifics arise. New formulations are then read back, from which the new findings are supposed to derive. But this shows an order that is not the formulations, old or new. The order is how forms function in that which breaks the forms by responding with more. [Page 209] That forms change in functioning has been noticed before, by Plato and Hegel for instance. But what brings novelty is missed. The credit is always again given to the forms. The novelty is said to come from forms, from their contradictions. Today's Post-structuralists do that still: All order is still only forms, their selfnegation, their ruptures. Since the subject has no original forms, there seems to be no subject. But, we are an order-for bodily carrying forwarda very demanding order that can get us stuck, can reject what fails to carry forward, and can bring new intricacy that could not follow from the forms. Therapy research

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What makes such steps observable is their sequencehow each follows from the previous. On tape recordings and transcripts, these sequences can be reliably distinguished from inferential sequences, event-reporting, emotional catharsis, and other common kinds of steps in therapy. In a number of research studies it has now been found that a high incidence of such steps is correlated with success in psychotherapy [5]. Politics: freeing vs. more control This kind of process also has a freeing effect, compared with mere repetition, or imposition. Of course, we cannot say that any particular steps are freeing in all respects. Indeed, there is no such finite multiplicity as "all respects." While such a step frees us in some respects, perhaps it reinstances old oppression in some other respects. Whether something new is freeing, or more control is never a simple question. For example, when are women's rights freeing, and when do they create pressure on women to work and leave their children? One cannot decide it from the content alone, staying home or working outside. The difference between freeing and forcing depends also on the kind of process the individual goes through. Distinguishing between kinds of process offers new possibilities for thinking about what is freeing. The patient I quoted, felt quite oppressed by her work day. It will be recalled that she expressed a deep wish not to have to deal with all those demands. She wished "that there were no people to see." Can the steps I described be freeing in relation to such external demands? Let me illustrate this with a bit from her next session: ..(silence) ..... I feel good,. Real peaceful. I sense it healing, down there. I can barely touch it but it's there. [Page 210] T: You can sense it, down there, and it's still healing. (silence) ..... I have to talk to the boss this afternoon. She phoned. I can tell from her voice that it's heavy and she'll try to lay that on me. So that's disturbing the peace now. T: Having to look forward to that gets in the way. (silence) ..... That healing place needs protecting, but I only know how to put a wall up, and close off. I don't want to do that anymore.

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T: Lets just stay here a while. You feel that you don't want the old way of protecting the inside, by walling yourself off. But a better way hasn't come yet. (silence) ..... Being mad at her doesn't feel right. I don't know how to be. There is no way to protect myself. (silence) ..... There isn't a new way. T: Nothing new comes there. (silence) ..... Oh, there are the stilts again, lifting up my house. I guess she can talk to my house. (silence) ..... Oh, the stilts go higher! Then she can't lay her trip on me. For her I can crank them up as high as I need! (laughs) This certainly shows some freeing in relation to the external demands. [Page 211] Conclusion I argue that a study of process-steps can let us decisively reject the Western philosophical assumption that all order is externally imposed. The body and the subject do have their own order, but it is an order greater than forms or formed content. It is an order-for carrying forward. Once thought of in this way, it becomes very noticeable in many settings. The new concepts with which to think this do also instance this order. That may seem troubling: Will the observable marks with which we study such steps be carried into new specificity by each new study? They have indeed been getting more and more specific. Will the theoretical concepts keep changing too? But that is already how concepts function, even in science. A new type of concept can begin to be, and be about, their functioning-in (with, from .....) [6]. Two such concepts are "carrying forward" and "pre-separated multiplicity." You think them in this for-carrying-forward way: Many kinds of carrying forward can be found, and kept as new distinctions and typologies. But, You think "carrying forward" as a variety that can keep surprising you. It is not a separable pattern, the same across poetry, therapy, and ordinary situations. It is not even the same in the coming of two poetic lines. Carrying forward is a preseparated multiplicity.

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Order is not just imposed patterns, as was assumed in early science. Experience is not merely derivative. Subjects and situations have an order greater than the existing commonalities, and can give rise to more realistic, more intricate, and freeing novelty. REFERENCES [1] Derrida, J. Dissemination U. of Chicago Press, 1981. [2] Foucault, M., "Nietzsche, Genealogy, History". In: Language, CounterMemory, Practice, selected essays. Bouchard, D.F, ed., Cornell U. Press, Ithaca 1977. Interview in: Dreyfus and Rabinow, Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics, 1984. [3] Freud, S., Outline of Psychoanalysis, Norton, N.Y., 1949, pps. 108. 189. The Problem of Anxiety. Norton, N.Y, 1936, p. 24. Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego. Liveright, N.Y., 1949, p.2. [4] Gendlin, E.T. Let Your Body Interpret Your Dreams. Theory Section. Chiron, Wilmette, IL 1986. [Page 212] "A Theory of Personality Change" in Hart, J., and Tomlinson, T., Eds., New Directions in Client-Centered Therapy. Houghton-Mifflin, Boston, 1970. "The Client's Client: The Edge of Awareness. In: Shlien, J.M, and Levant, R., Eds.Client-Centered Therapy and the Person- Centered Approach. N.Y.: Praeger, 1984. "The Politics of Giving Therapy Away". In Larson, D., Ed., Brooks/Cole, Monterey: 1984. [5] Klein, M.H., Mathieu-Coughlan, P., and Kiesler, D.J., "The Experiencing Scales." In: W.P. Pinsof & Greenberg, L.S. The Psychotherapeutic Process: A Research Handbook. Guilford, N.Y., 1985. Bordin, E.S., "Of human Bonds that bind or free." Presidential Address, Society for Psychotherapy Research, Pacific Grove, Ca, 1980. Gendlin, E.T. "What Comes After Traditional Psychotherapy REsearch?" American Psychologist, Vol. 41, No.2, February 1986, pps. 131-136.
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[6] Gendlin, E.T., Experiencing and the Creation of Meaning. Free Press Macmillan, 1962, 1970. "Experiential Phenomenology". In: Natanson, M., Ed., Phenomenology and the Social Sciences. Northwestern U. Press, Evanston 1973. "Two Phenomenologists Do Not Disagree." In Bruzina, F. and Wilshire, B., Eds., Phenomenology,Dialogues and Bridges. State U. of N.Y. Albany 1982. Process Ethics and the Political Question. Analecta Husserliana, Vol. XX, Reidel, Dordrecht, 1986. Note to Readers:

How Do I Refer To This Document? An example reference is at the top of this page. Please include the Internet address in the reference, even if you cite the document in a printed article, so that others can find the Gendlin Online Library. Can I Link Directly To This Document? Yes. We encourage you to link directly to it from your own online documents. We have built "hooks" into this web page to make it very easy to connect to individual pages and headings in the text. For examples, see: How to Link to The Gendlin Online Library. Biographic Note: Eugene T. Gendlin is a seminal American philosopher and psychologist. He received his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Chicago and taught there from 1963 to 1995. His philosophical work is concerned especially with the relationship between logic and implicit intricacy. Philosophy books include Experiencing and the Creation of Meaning, Language Beyond Post-Modernism: Saying and Thinking in Gendlin's Philosophy edited by David Michael Levin, (fourteen commentaries and Gendlins replies), and A Process Model. There is a world wide network of applications and practices (http://www.focusing.org) stemming from this philosophy. Gendlin has been honored three times by the American Psychological Association for his development of Experiential Psychotherapy. He was a founder and editor for many years of the Associations Clinical Division Journal, Psychotherapy: Theory, Research and Practice. His book Focusing has sold over half a million copies and has appeared in seventeen languages. His psychology-related books are Let Your Body Interpret Your Dreams and Focusing-Oriented Psychotherapy. If you see any faults in this document please send us an email. Add a comment to the Gendlin Online Blog for this article. See the reference for this document in the Gendlin primary bibliography.
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Gendlin, E.T. (1993). Three assertions about the body.The Folio, 12(1), 21-33. From http://www.focusing.org/gendlin/docs/gol_2064.html [Page 21] Three Assertions About the Body by Eugene T. Gendlin, Ph.D., University of Chicago Introduction How is Focusing theoretically possible? In this paper I will discuss how we can think about the living body in such a way that Focusing becomes understandable. I will discuss the body in relation to certain experiences that are more common than a felt sense. A felt sense comes. It isn't just there waiting. We have to let it form and come. That takes at least a few moments, sometimes longer. So we understand that a felt sense is a certain development, a certain bit of further life-process. What does it stem from? How can we think about ordinary events and experience in such a way that we could understand what a felt sense is and how it forms? A felt sense is distinctly something there, something with a life of its own, that we attend to directly. If we attend to our bodies, in the middle of the body it comes, and then it is in an odd sort of space of its own. It brings its own space. In that space the felt sense is a direct object, that, there. Let me discuss some experiences that are like a felt sense except that they have not yet formed into such a distinct, direct object. Most people don't know to turn
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their attention to their bodies so that these experiences could form and come as a felt sense. Or, sometimes they do become a distinct felt sense, but not because the person deliberately lets it come. Such experiences are, therefore, spread out along a continuum from being hardly noticed all the way to coming as a felt sense. That kind of experience is known by everyone in a way, yet hardly anyone knows it, as one simply knows other things. Everyone has at times had it, and yetisn't this odd?hardly anyone talks about it. Our language has no name for it. I often use this example because everyone recognizes it: Waking in the morning, sometimes you know you had a dream, although you don't remember the dream. You know because the dream has left a certain odd feeling, a unique quality. If you try to verbalize it, you might say: "It feels ....., well ....., not exactly scary, not happy either, not guilty, not sad ....., uhm ....." It is a nameless feeling that belongs just to that dream. If you tap and touch and taste that nameless feeling, the whole dream may suddenly pop out of it. All those many events of the dream were somehow compressed into that small, nameless feeling. (See Let Your Body Interpret Your Dreams.) Intuition Another example is what we call a "hunch." A situation may look fine on the surface, yet it happens that it doesn't feel fine to you. You try to verbalize what's wrong, but all you can say is "It's ....., uhm, ....." The objective facts would lead you to go along with [Page 22] the situation. The uneasy feeling says "don't." Most people know not to ignore a hunch like that. At least look into the situation further. A hunch may also come as a positive feeling in the face of seemingly unpromising facts. In business the capacity for hunches is known as the "entrepreneurial instinct." It lets one get into a good situation, or out of a bad one, long before everyone else does. Sometimes this kind of experience is called "intuition." The word names a way in which important things come to some people, although they cannot say how. Many people just accept the fact that this sort of experience can be true and valid, although they have no way to think about how and why. We won't leave it at that. A hunch is only one small example of the kind of experience I mean. But let us examine a hunch more closely. If it says "don't," just what is it that says "don't"? It is not the words, but that uneasy, queasy, unaccountable discomfort, a bodily
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sense. Instead of feeling good about the good things that are visible, you feel physically uncomfortable about the situation. Is It Really the Body? I know that some people will say they get a hunch in their heads, not in their bodies. Some people also say that their feelings are all around them, rather than in their bodies. To think further about how Focusing is possible, we have to think differently about the living body. So it is important to notice that when we talk about Focusing we use the word "body" in a certain way: We use it to talk about how we feel our bodies from inside. #1. The Situational Body We all know that our bodies can be comfortable or uncomfortable about a situation. But how is that actually possible? The body knows the situation! Usually we don't phrase it that way. We say that we know the situation and that our bodies only react to what we know. If we think it's a good situation, the body is supposed to feel comfortable. If we think that the situation is dangerous, the body is supposed to react with anger or fear. And of course our bodies do react to what we think, but not only to that. Our bodies feel a situation directly. For example, you see someone you know on the street but you don't remember who it is. This is totally different than seeing a stranger. This person gives you a very familiar feeling. You cannot place the person, but your body knows who it is. What is more, your body knows how you feel about the person. Although you don't remember who it is, your felt sense of that person has a very distinct quality. If you had to describe your felt sense of the person whom you cannot place, you might say, for example: "It is a sense of something messy, sort of unclean. I feel a little apprehensive, as if I'd rather not have much to do with that person, but there is also mixed in with it some odd curiosity that doesn't feel too sound, and uhm ......" If you went on further into it, you could find more and more, both about the person and about yourself. But the whole felt sense cannot be put into words. However well you express it, there is always more left in it than you said. Even to say some of it, you have to make up new [Page 23] phrases because it does not fit into the usual phrases and categories. It is uniquely your sense of just that person. Any other person would give you a different body-sense. Let us say you suddenly remember who the person is. Now you might be surprised. You might say, "I didn't know that I feel this way about that person!"
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But how can we understand all this? Does your body have its own opinion of the people you know? And if it has, why does it keep its opinions to itself instead of telling them to you right along? The second question is easier to answer than the first. We do not usually have such a distinct bodily sense about people and events. It comes more easily when our usual words and thoughts are temporarily missing, when we are at a loss for words, or, as in my example, when we have forgotten something. It is harder to explain how the body can know situations at all, and how it can sometimes know them better and more intricately than (as we say) "we" do. But here is what we can already establish just from the example of a hunch: We have situational bodies. That the body senses situations is my first main point here. The kind of experience I mean is sometimes attributed to "the unconscious," although such a body-sense is, of course, conscious. We are aware of sensing it when it is there, yet it is true that much of the knowledge that can emerge from it was unconscious before. There is no such directly felt body-sense in the unconscious. When we invite it to come, we can feel it freshly forming. It is not already there, underneath. At most one could say that it forms itself from "the unconscious." But calling it "unconscious" does not explain this kind of experience. It is only a mysterious name, just as "hunch," "intuition," and "instinct" are mysterious names for it. We cannot explain this with the usual type of theory. To explain it, we must first change what "explain" means. We cannot only substitute concepts for it. Along with concepts, this kind of experience must itself play a role in a new kind of explaining, a way of thinking which uses this kind of experience. Characteristics of this Kind of Experience: What can we say about this kind of experience just from these two examples?

The experience is felt rather than spoken or visual. It is not words or images, but a bodily sense. It does not fit the common names or categories of feelings. It is a unique sense of this person or this situation.

We must also notice one more characteristic of this kind of experience:

Although such a body-sense comes as one feeling, we can sense that it contains an intricacy. Let me explain that.
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Your body-sense of the person you know contains all your past history with that person and what you hope for with that person. It also contains what that person rouses in you and some of your own unresolved troubles. In there as well is the exact way in which you [Page 24] do and don't like the person, and much more. Let me roll all that together and call it "an intricacy." You might be able to think three or four of those things, but most of them remain implicit. Such a bodysense contains an implicit intricacy. An implicit intricacy does not yet have separated strands or parts. Yet, later when those appear separately we say they were already there in the single sense we had at first. We don't usually think of physical feelings as containing a whole complex mesh. Physical sensations are supposed to be simple. A pain or a sensation is just what it is. It is opaque. We don't expect a hidden complexity, for example, in the stabbing pain of a twisted ankle or in the sensation of red. A complex situation might have led to the twisted ankle, but we don't expect to find the intricacy of the situation inside the pain. What distinguishes the kind of physical sense I am discussing is that it does contain an implicit intricacy, "all that" about that person. You can sense that it is implicitly complex, even if you don't find any of it out, even if you don't succeed in opening it and entering. I speak of "opening and entering." This kind of bodily experience is a door. If we open it and if we enter, we can go many steps into it. Everything Is Really Like That Every person and also every situation can give you a felt sense, for example, your job, or some task you have to do, or some specific little part of the task. Each time the felt sense will be an implicit complexity, not opaque like red. An artist or a person sensitive to color might object to my calling the color red "opaque." "Doesn't each shade of red bring us a certain implicit complexity, a feeling-tone that contains many aspects of life, and could be described further and further?" I agree, but all that is not in the color. Rather, it is our felt sense of the color. A color can easily bring us a felt sense, but so can some oddly shaped tree, an old desk, or a new deskreally anything! One can have a felt senseof anythinglarge or small. Nothing is so simple and obvious that the felt sense it can give us would be simple and obvious. Everything and anything is lived by our bodies in an intricate way that we could open and enter.

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If we take the world not as consisting of opaque things that exist as separate from us, but as they are in the situations in which we live with our bodies, everything changes. Things and circumstances are no longer obvious and largely unchangeable. Now each opens into an implicit intricacy which we can enter. #2 We Have Plant Bodies How can the body know our situations and know them more intricately than we do? And how can it project new ways of action and thought? To answer this properly will take a while. I will have to tell about complicated philosophical arguments and about psychotherapy research. Here I will sketch it briefly. In physiology and current philosophy the body ismistakenlyassumed to have information about the world only through the five senses. It cannot contain information [Page 25] that it has not seen, heard, smelled, tasted or touched. Some philosophers did say that our minds have "innate ideas," but that was always questionable. The most common ancient and modern assumption has been that we cannot know anything that doesn't come through our senses. How mind and body relate has always been a problem. But the body, at any rate, isn't supposed to have information other than through the five senses. But what about all these instances of a bodily knowing of situations? They are all odd and unexplained if one holds to the usual assumption that we can know only through the five senses. How is it that we have situational bodies? How can we think about this bodily knowing? A plant does not have our five senses. It does not see, hear, or smell. And yet, obviously the plant contains the information involved in its living. It lives from itself; it organizes the next steps of its own body-process, and enacts them if the environment cooperates to supply what it needs. So the plant has the information about its living in and with the soil, the air, the water, and the light. It has the information, or we could say it is the information, since the plant-body is made of soil, water, air, and light. It makes itself out of those and so, of course, it contains (it is) information about those. But it is not about soil and water just lying out there by themselves. Rather, it is much more complex information about the plant's living with those, making itself out of them. We notice that the plant doesn't need the five senses to be this kind of information. Animal bodies also contain (are) this kind of information. They also make themselves out of the stuff they eat and the oxygen they breathe. This bodily information is elaborated by what they get from the five senses. The five senses are not bits out of which the world is put together. Rather, what comes through the five senses comes into the plant-body and elaborates and modifies that complex information. Animals live more complex lives than plants. Their bodies
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have (are) at least as much information as plants have. They organize and enact their complex living from their bodies. The five senses do not constitute the animal's world. They only elaborate the already intricate information of bodylife, which the plant is. Language and culture greatly elaborate the life-process and the information of our plant bodies. My second main point is: We can think of our linguistic and situational knowledge not as separate and floating, but as elaborations of our already intricate plant-bodies. In this way we can think how the living body knows (feels, lives, is .....) its situation from inside. But what is a situation? A situation is never just something external. For example, let's say it is an external fact that the door is locked. But that is not a situation. A situation is never just the external facts existing out there alone. The situation is that I am coming home and find I've lost the key. Or the situation is that I'm crouching behind that locked door, hoping it will hold while three guys are trying to break it down. Or perhaps I am locked in and trying to get out. A situation always involves some living thing that is in the process of organizing its further living. [Page 26] In a rough way we can say that the body knows the situations because it is our living in them. From the body come our next moves, not just inhaling and eating, but also our interaction with others and what we are about to say to them. How was all this ignored for so long? It was ignored because none of it fits into a world constructed entirely of space, time, and the five senses. The world so constructed has long been considered fundamental to science. Although there has been much philosophical critique of it, we are only now developing a viable alternative. How This Kind of Experience Functions in Psychotherapy I began working on this experience in philosophy, but I will first tell you how it occurs in psychotherapy because there it is most easily observed. In psychotherapy, at the start and throughout, when people talk about a problem they say what they can about it. Then they come to a stop. What can be said has been said, but the problem is not solved. One knows that there is much more to say, but one doesn't know what that is. It is ......

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Silences make some people uncomfortable; they feel a need to keep talking so they find other things to say. But if they can stand the silence, they may keep their attention on the ....., on that edge where there is more, but no more can be said. In a series of research studies of tape-recorded therapy sessions, we found that psychotherapy is successful when people work with this special kind of experience. It is now one of the most solidly corroborated findings in psychotherapy research. Let me tell you what you hear on such a tape recording: You hear the person saying something, then pausing. After a silence, the person says: "No, what I said wasn't right; that's not quite it; it's ..... hmm ....." and again a pause. After a while the person might say something like, "It's right there, but I don't know what it is." Then, after another silence, suddenly: "Oh, yes, one thing about it is ....." And after a few sentences, then again, "Let's see, is that right?" Another silence, then perhaps a big breath and "Yes, that's right, that much is right." This silent checking is possible because something is there to check against. It is something felt, but not yet known. It is sensed as meaningful, but not immediately recognizable. It is the...... We now call it a "felt sense." You can hear the person having a conversation with the ...... Although what it is is not known, the person is sure that what was first said is "not it." Sometimes a whole series of quite probable statements are proposed, and yet none of them "is it." How does one know that those are not right? It is because the unspoken ..... doesn't budge in response to any of those good statements. At last something comes up from this sense, some bit, some hint, some small part, some thought. That bit might not sound very special. In itself it might be less interesting than what one had proposed. But when the person says, "Let me see, is that right?" there is a directly felt effect. That thought is special because along with it the felt sense moves, stirs, or releases a little. So that little bit is special. It is precious. Its coming is a step on the way to more. There will be many such steps. [Page 27] So far I have made it sound as if the person only tries out things or listens to what comes from the ...... The person's side of the conversation involves more than that.

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The process moves by steps. What comes in one step does not usually solve anything, but it does change the felt sense somewhat. From that changed sense another step can come. At first, when one attends at such an edge, it seems that nothing much can happen there at all. It seems unpromising, just a stuck place. But when a felt sense comes, a sense of the whole problem, "all that," one feels better, even before any steps come from it. Most steps are also quite smalla slight new energy, a bit of give where all was stiff before, some breath, a little stirring of life along with something that we now can say. Such small steps might not seem like much of an advance. If one is not familiar with these little steps, one might easily ignore them. But once used to this process, one values and pursues anything that brings a slight shift in the felt sense. Soon there is another step, and another. Eventually a big step comes, a big shift in how one's whole body feels the problem. Then one's understanding of the problem also shifts. Now the whole scene one was discussing changes. Very different things now seem relevant. But one big step is also not enough to solve a problem. That may take many steps. Months later one realizes that one doesn't have that problem anymore and that one hasn't had it for some time. In my book, Focusing, I show how one can learn how to let a felt sense come, and how to attend to it so that steps come. We also teach it at The Focusing Institute in Chicago. Sometimes it is the past that emerges from a felt sense. But people would not change in therapy if all they did was dig up the past. More importantly, a lot that is quite new can also come at that edge from a felt sense. And even the past is much more intricate, more finely wrought than we had thought, when it emerges from a felt sense. We were not aware of these complex connections, these unique intricacies, when we just remembered these events, nor when we lived them originally. We say that what we now find was there all along. Actually, that isn't so, as I will explain. The coming of a felt sense and the ensuing steps are continuous withbut more thansimply what was. One changes in therapy; one does not only come to know the past more fully. New ways of being are generatedobviously those don't follow logically from how one has been. Nor can one simply impose new ways on oneself from the top down. There is, indeed, a role for designing ourselves newly, but that alone does not usually change us much. We must let our wished-for design relate to the felt sense of how we are. Then new and much more intricate little steps of change arise which lead us not quite to what we designed, but rather to something much better and more finely wrought.

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Whether past or present, my point here is that what emerges is very often more intricate than the common phrases can say. In therapy one must twist language, one must poetize in order to say some of it. That brings me to my next example: [Page 28] The ..... in Poetry A poet is in the midst of writing a poem. Six or seven lines have been written and they seem quite good. Now what? The poet may be just confused and stuck, or there may be a very definite felt sense of what the poem needs further to say. As the poet reads and re-reads the lines up to where they stop, something further comes. There where the lines stop, the poem continues, but not in words. The lines stop, but the poem ..... Many phrases suggest themselves but they do not say that. Some of those are good enough to consider. The poet listens to those suggested lines. Coming after the written part, what might those new lines say here, in this spot, this ..... where the unfinished poem continues? Most of those lines are rejected. Sometimes such a line tempts the poet: "Use the line, it's goodno one will know that it doesn't say what wants to come here." The poet tries to push the good line onto the ...... But no. The ..... will not have that line. It continues to do its own implicit saying and it keeps itself separate, from that good line. It insists on remaining unsaid by that line. There it is, just as demandingly implying as before, untouched by the good new line. Or worse, the ..... is insulted by the line; it wilts, shrinks, and is about to disappear, threatening to leave the poet stranded. Quickly: Get that false line out of the way! Write it in the margin; save it for another day and another poem, perhaps. But quick, reread the written lines again and ah, yesthere it is again: the ..... the felt sense of how the poem goes on where it stops. The ..... demands, it urges, it hungers, it insists upon, it knows, foreshadows, implies, wants ..... something so exact it is almost as if it were already said, and yetno words. The poet's hand is gesturing, rotating in the air. That ..... is so demanding, so specific, more precise than all the common phrases. The ..... is not pre-verbal. It understands the language, as we see from the fact that it responds to the suggested lines and knows that they won't do. The ..... is not really without words, rather it is full of implicit words and also implicit situations. A lot of history and culture is implicit, too. But this, which wants to be said, has not been said before. The ..... is full of words that are struggling to
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rearrange themselves into new phrases. The new phrases do not yet exist. And they may never comethe poem might be left unfinished. How can such a ..... imply what does not exist and has never existed? Yet, it implies just what it implies and won't take anything less. What the ..... implies is more precise, more specific, more intricate than the common phrases. What the poem is about is thus revealed as having more complexity than our language has yet ever said. The poem implies something that is more intricate, more exactly featured than anything already known. At last, a certain phrasing comes. This time the ..... no longer hangs there, still implying something separate from that line. Nor does it wilt, shrink or vanish. It flows into this new line. The line takes it along, carries it. But the line also says more than the ..... had implied. The poet says that this line now is what the ..... was, but that isn't quite accurate. [Page 29] The line lets the poet discover more than was there before. The line reveals, opens, expands, develops the ...... The line carries the ..... further. It carries the ..... forward. More lines may now come smoothly for a while until there is again a stop. Again re-reading, a new ..... comes, many lines are rejected, and with luck a line does carry forward. There has not been a way to name this relation, a continuity which makes more. Now we call it "carrying forward." Notice that carrying forward is definitely distinguishable from all those other times when the ..... wouldn't budge. What that carries forward is noticeably different from all those suggestions that leave the ..... still hanging there, as before. We also notice that the body knows the languagesince it recognizes when phrases do not say what is implied. And we see again that the body knows the situation, the aspect of life the poet is trying to phrase. Else it could not know so exactingly that the suggested lines fall short. The poet's "....." acts just as if the lines had been forgotten and were being remembered, only of course that isn't so! They are new. We see again that the body can imply something new. I already pointed this out in mentioning psychotherapy. Many theories hold that we can only find in experience what was first put into it from outside. Not so! Our bodies are more intricate than whatever we have experienced, whatever we were taught and the situations in which we lived. All that comes into our more intricate bodies is not just recorded there; it is lived further!

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Past experiences become part of one's further living. And the coming of a felt sense is also a further living. Something new and more intricate than we have known can come from it. Again: Everything is Like That Every good poem brings us something that has never been said before, usually something more intricate than what is usually said. But a poem can be about anything, any aspect of life. We see that anything is really more than it usually seems to be. Anything is also an intricacy we can enter. We can know anything much further if we think from the ..... it can give us. THE ..... IN THINKING: Such a ..... also happens at the edges whenever we think freshly about anything. Our further steps of thought are implied and led to by the felt sense of the edge of thinking, the ...... We think this and that and that other, but then we reach an edge where we sense more, but we cannot yet think that. But we know not to back away from that edge. We could pass by that edge and move on in familiar and true ways, but no, we stick at that edge; we prefer to stay stuck. We even glory in that edgewe have a lead! Something new will come there! [Page 30] #3 The Body Implies Its Right Next Step In his autobiography, Einstein says that for fifteen years while working on the problem that led to the theory of relativity he was guided by "a feeling" of what the answer had to be. Certainly by "feeling" he didn't mean an emotional reaction; he had a ..... that implied a further step that was hard to form. The body can imply something new, after it has absorbed language and humanly sophisticated knowledge. Einstein's body learned a lot of math and physics. But the new step came not just from the math and physics. No new theory followed from those. That is why it was a problem. After absorbing all that, his body had gone on to imply a right next step. I have already said that sensations and learnings come into a living body that is already quite elaborate. When we think, we work with more than just what came in from outside. That is how Einstein could get more than followed from math and physics alone.

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Now we see that the body implies not just more, but a right next step. This kind of "right" does relate to the ethical kind, but in a complicated way. The body can also become addicted which uses but subverts its right next-step implying. There is also a direct sense of error, of unsoundness. There are many other complications which are very much worth studying because knowing those lets us more effectively use the body's right next-step implying. Right now I want only to understand this next-step implying as such. To grasp what "right" means here, we have to look at more obvious cases. Every living body implies the next steps of its life-process. The plant implies that the sun will come out, and it implies its photosynthesis with the sun. Ethologists found that complex behaviors such as mating dances, nest building, and food search are inherited. The living body implies each next step of complex life processes. In a cat the plant body has taken on a whole set of additional complexities. Now when it is starved, its body implies sitting in front of a hole in the ground. It implies something that will come out of the hole, and it implies a complex series of jumps. The cat's body can also imply innovative next steps when its usual next step cannot happen because of circumstances new to cats. Its body can learn and total up new circumstances, and it can imply opening the window to get out of the house. Sometimes it can actually open the window, too. Our own plant bodies have also taken on language, mathematics and physics. Now they can imply a right next step in situations that include those. When life is stoppedwhen we sense a problemour bodies imply a next move (whether or not we can shape it and enact it.) In driving a car or flying a plane, once the body has absorbed the details it can imply a right next step that is new and more intricate than what it learned. Of course we miss a lot. Without all that math and physics, Einstein's body would not have implied a next step that worked; however, after having the knowledge, he felt the next step. His body implied the next step. This implying guided him in devising new specifics, new differentiations to enact the next step. [Page 31] The body totals up the circumstances it has and then implies the next step, whether it is relativity or inhaling. This has not been well understood. The living body always implies its right next step.

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Bodily Coming We cannot simply will an orgasm, or sleep, or tears. To bring tears we can review some sad event. Perhaps then the tears come. Perhaps not. We can invite sleep; we can lie down and try to stop thinking. We are used to the fact that it must come. Similarly with anger or tenderness, we can try to fake them, but to have them they must come. So also with words. When all runs smoothly, we launch into speaking and the right words just come out. But if they don't, what can we do? We wait until they come. New thoughts are also like that. We take credit for them afterwards, but we don't really make those. We dispose ourselves, we go over old ideas like the poet rereads the already written lines. We attend there, where the old ideas stop, hoping for a ....., an implying of more than we have yet thought. If it doesn't come, we cannot manufacture it. Its coming is bodily, like my other examples here. The ..... in our Confusing Situations Creativity has become essential in our lives. It is no longer a special skill for special professions. Nowadays we could not get through the day if we went only by the rules, roles, and routines we were taught. Not that we can do without those old routines, but we have to modify and elaborate them. Many of our situations are now more complex and sometimes unique. Every day at work and also with people close to us, there are situations in which we cannot just go ahead and do one of the ordinary things we know. We have to devise some new way through. The society has become more complex than the routines and concepts that it teaches. Most commentators on the current society do not see the increased complexity. They see only the breakdown of the old patterns and the pitfalls and losses that this now involves. These critics think that without the social patterns there is only disorder in people. Therefore our current difficulties in living are just what they would expect. Socially defined work-identities no longer sustain people. Marriages are no longer sacred. Relationships between people do not last. People do not know

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what to do in many situations and in life. The old patterns supplied all that, and the critics think that only externally imposed patterns can ever supply it. The breakdown of the old patterns is actually caused by a new development which has only begun. It is not just a loss and a breakdown. It is also an opening to a further development. I will show how the current stage came about and how it is now entering upon a further stage. The further stage may bring new pitfalls, but it does move past the current ones. It opens a whole new mode of living. [Page 32] The kind of experience to which I have been pointing has a central role to play in moving to the further stage. It is true that the break-down of solid social routines can leave us in a void. When the old, official meanings of our social connections lose their power, we may find nothing to replace them for a while. We may fall into mere indulgence because the old disciplined ways of living now seem pointless. When the "higher" motivations fail us, we tend to fall into the lower ones. Or we lack genuine motivation altogether. Then we have less to go on than the old guides provided. But consider. Isn't it true that we are at least sometimes right not to enact one of the old routines? Granted, sometimes we reject the old codes because it is easier. We measure up to less, attempt to measure up to less. But sometimes we cannot do what we were taught because we sense more in a situation than the old routines can meet. In a difficult situation, if we cannot act in some easy and usual way, and if a new way does not quickly come to us, what do we have and feel? Confusion, frustration, perhaps. We may just be stuck. But what is it that tells us that the ordinary actions and phrases won't do or are not what is needed? If we ask ourselves that question, and if we pay direct attention to what it is that stops us, we may find that we have a ....., a sense of what is needed, what would work, if only we could devise it. When we don't know what to do, we sense more than we can say. Once we pay direct attention to what we do sense, it is like a hunch: the ..... knows more than we can say or do. Like Einstein, we have a "feeling," an unclear sense for the solution we are looking for. Our sense of it is sufficient to make us reject all the available ways, although the new move that would carry this more into action does not yet exist.

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From the ..... we may or may not be able to devise the action-step we need. It may not come for a long timeor ever. But we are more likely to find such a new way if we first have a bodily felt sense of what is needed, and if we attend to it. It implies and pre-figures new ways that have not yet formed. For example, when I have to deal with something as a father, I may recall what my own father would have done in that kind of situation. Of course I want to be different from him in some ways, but I can't just do what he did that I liked either. It won't work. The kids these days are different than we were; is that it? But I like the way my kids are. I have myself encouraged them to be different than I was. The problem is that there is more in the situation that must be dealt with than I can think clearly about. If I pay attention to what stops me, I can sense this more. What would I say if I were to speak from my .....? If someone would listen, I might talk for hours. I might say what I can say about it. I might say that I know the usual advice I would get. I might talk about what my kids are like. I might recite what I've already tried and just what happened. But after I said all that I can say, I would still have the quandary. After saying all those things, there would still be "....." the sense of more than I can say, the sense of what would be right to do if I could shape it. The "....." is my sense of the more that a course of action needs to carry forward. [Page 33] New Concepts and a New Kind of Concept Elsewhere (A Process Model, available from The Focusing Institute) I have built a new theoretical model of the body, its vegetative life-process, behavior, and the role it plays in language and culture. The model has dual powers: It has the power of logic, of precise interrelated concepts, but it also has a new power. The concepts are not only ordinary logical ones. They are also a new kind. They are concepts that bring the experience I have been describing along with them. The concepts stem from and retain in them that kind of experience. One can move from these concepts in two ways: One can move from them in a logical way, but one can also and differently move from the bodily-sensed ..... which they bring. Eugene T. Gendlin Note to Readers:

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How Do I Refer To This Document? An example reference is at the top of this page. Please include the Internet address in the reference, even if you cite the document in a printed article, so that others can find the Gendlin Online Library. Can I Link Directly To This Document? Yes. We encourage you to link directly to it from your own online documents. We have built "hooks" into this web page to make it very easy to connect to individual pages and headings in the text. For examples, see: How to Link to The Gendlin Online Library. Biographic Note: Eugene T. Gendlin is a seminal American philosopher and psychologist. He received his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Chicago and taught there from 1963 to 1995. His philosophical work is concerned especially with the relationship between logic and implicit intricacy. Philosophy books include Experiencing and the Creation of Meaning, Language Beyond Post-Modernism: Saying and Thinking in Gendlin's Philosophy edited by David Michael Levin, (fourteen commentaries and Gendlins replies), and A Process Model. There is a world wide network of applications and practices (http://www.focusing.org) stemming from this philosophy. Gendlin has been honored three times by the American Psychological Association for his development of Experiential Psychotherapy. He was a founder and editor for many years of the Associations Clinical Division Journal, Psychotherapy: Theory, Research and Practice. His book Focusing has sold over half a million copies and has appeared in seventeen languages. His psychology-related books are Let Your Body Interpret Your Dreams and Focusing-Oriented Psychotherapy. If you see any faults in this document please send us an email. Add a comment to the Gendlin Online Blog for this article. See the reference for this document in the Gendlin primary bibliography. More on Creative Process from the Focusing Institute website. More on Focusing-Oriented Psychotherapy from the Focusing Institute website. More on Philosophy of the Implicit from the Focusing Institute website.

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Gendlin, E.T. (1998). Making concepts from experience. Talk at the 1996 International Focusing Conference (2-6 May), Gloucester, MA. Unpublished transcript (33 pp.). From http://www.focusing.org/gendlin/docs/gol_2154.html Making Concepts From Experience Eugene T. Gendlin, Ph.D. Talk at the 1996 International Focusing Conference Gloucester, MA Gendlin talks informally about how thinking and bodily experiencing can inform each other, then takes questions from the audience. I want to tell you about philosophy. It is the other half of my life, actually the main half. Let me tell you my aim here. I've worked on this for many years, so I know it will only half succeed. I want to build you a cara philosophical car. What I mean is that we can drive a car even if we don't know anything about how a car runs, or about automotive engineering. To know auto mechanics is a whole profession. Well, so is philosophy. To know philosophy takes many years. During the first couple of years, philosophy graduate students run around with a terrible feeling that they don't know what philosophy is. Graduate students. Of course what philosophy is, is controversial. There's six different or any number of different interpretations of what philosophy is, but they don't understand any or them. And it takes about a year or two to get on to it. Then it takes quite a while to get some facility with the different kinds of concepts and strategies. And that's obviously not something that someone who is not a philosopher can undertake. If you can undertake it, I'm all for it, okay? I'm not saying that really knowing philosophy is not necessary because it's necessary in a whole lot of ways. But what I want to do is to build you a carsomething you can drive, even though you don't understand the machinery. I'm going to start by doing this impossible thing of telling you of what philosophy is. You have to understand that's only one version and it's short. I would have a lot to say. But the one thing that's clear is this: Last week I was visiting somewhere and there was a lovely psychologist who came to see me because he's been working on focusing and mathematical models. When we came to talk about it, he told me: "The only thing I don't like about what you're writing is that you say it's the body. Well, the body is the thing that pumps the heart, pumps the blood. Focusing obviously has to go on in the brain." Now, if all if I needed was to show him focusing, which is not what we were doing, it
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wouldn't be hard at all. I did do that at first. I said to him, "Do you ever feel something HERE (stomach and chest)". He thought about it for a while; then he said "No question about it, when my eight months old daughter develops a new thing she can do, I feel it HERE." So we were fine about focusing. But in terms of theory and thinking I had this job now, to get him to distinguish his conceptual thinking about the brainI don't care if you agree if it's in the brain. You might as well say it's this new communication, or it's electrical, or you could say it's the reticular system, or chemical messages or whatever it isI needed him to distinguish between his conceptual understanding, which if showing him focusing were all we cared about, we might not take seriously. But the theoretical understanding is very important. It's just that you don't need it for focusing. This man had a concept about the body which wouldn't let him THINK from the body he is in. But he didn't think of what he said as a concept. What I'm working on now is the distinction. The first thing I want to communicate is that there is a difference between the conceptual understanding and WHATEVER YOU'VE GOT THERE, that whichonce I abstract the conceptual understanding I don't even know how to talk about, right? Whatever the hell it is that you've got there when you're not paying attention just to the conceptual understanding, that's what I mean. You could call it "the felt sense" or whatever. Okay? Up to there, you're with me. Okay, now, philosophy is concentrated on the conceptual understanding. This is going to be my fast way of saying what philosophy is, so let me say, oversimplifying: There is an old discipline which takes a long time to learn, just to look at the different KINDS OF CONCEPTUAL MACHINERY that there arethe different TYPES OF CONCEPTS. Now when I say "KIND" of concept or "TYPE" of concept, I'm doing that my friend, Fred Zimring used to call "eyebrowing." He would say "You know your words don't make sense, but your eye brows go up like this. You're trying to say it with your eyebrows." So do you understand? "Kinds" of concepts? There's a whole field about that. Now let's explain what that means. 1. I have to give you an example. If you understand even one example, you've got it, as far as driving around is concerned. You've got it. If you know a little bit of Freud, then you know that Freud does things by a very familiar method that most of us in science use, namely to chop things up into little units. Freud divides the person into sections. There's the ego and the id and the superego. And then in the superego, there is the ego ideal. Freud will say when you have a dream, that each day residue leads to a different association that has a different problem. To him a dream brings this mosaic. It doesn't make one picture. This little piece goes there, that little piece goes there, and that other thing means something else. At the bottom of the whole thing are little infantile drives. Freud says the body has a bundle of "UNORGANIZED" biological drives. He reduces
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the person and the living body to a number of drives that are not related to each other and not related to the world outside the body. The living body has to LEARN how those can be satisfied in the environment, and how to put them together into a person. An "ego" has to develop connections to the world and to organize and control these separate senseless drives. Then the ego has to manage between three forces, the super-ego, the drives, and the world. Now compare that with Jung, for whom everything is one big whole. What he calls "archetypes" or original types are forms of this huge cosmic whole. And then you yourself are some kind of whole with these different archetypal patterns, and because all things are always related within a whole and they all always work together. What Jung calls the "the ego" rotates around "the self," so that both are one whole together. Jung says that the ego goes around the self, and the self is part of the universe. Everything Jung says is in terms of wholes, and opposites that get resolved into wholes. To him a dream is one integrated drama and it brings one holistic message. I am contrasting these two very ancient styles of thinking. You can compare Plato and the Atomists in Greek times and you get the same different strategies. Now I want to have taken you a step. Do you see that I'm not talking about bodies or about people or about anything now? When I compare Freud and Jung, I'm no longer talking about what a person is or about psychology or the ego, or dreams. I'm not talking about anythingexcept THE TYPE OF CONCEPT. I'm saying, see there you have chopped up entities and over here everything is in a whole. Do you see what I mean? Okay, another quick example of the holistic model is the modern ecology movement which you all know. They've made use of this wholeness type thinking by saying that everything is part of one big Whole, so that if you change for instance some little thing about these fish, you really mess up the whole system, right? We all know that there is some power in that way of thinking. But there is also of course power in the more common way of chopping things into units, and combining them in a mathematical way of thinking, right? And please see that I'm not talking about fish and I'm not talking about mathematics. I'm talking about two kinds of concepts? Are they clear? Well, there are more kinds. And I'll sketch another real fast. But if you hang on to those two, you've got it, in terms of my first thing I want to give you if you don't have it already. When you think, make that distinction. Notice that the KINDS OF CONCEPTS are not the same question as whatever you're thinking ABOUT. This frees up what you're thinking about from certain ancient issues which never go awaywhether you should use square graph paper or the kind of graph paper

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that has circles. You know what I mean? That's not about people and it's not about anything else either. It's about conceptual strategies. A third kind of approach is, for example, family therapy. They are neither like Freud nor Jung. They talk about a holistic system but it's only the family. And the system is defined by the family-interaction. They don't want to know about politics, ecology and all those things. Family life makes one system, and within that, yeah. The individual who comes to therapy is called "the person in whom the family trouble manifests," as they say. You see? It's the system of interactions that needs the help. Each of the people might be lovely and sane outside the system, but within the family interaction each is disturbed. In this approach an interaction process makes a whole not THE whole, and not chopped-up entities. This is the interactional modeleverything is understood as process, not things, not atoms, not units, not entities. Those can be derived from interaction process. First there is interaction. There would also be more strategies to tell about, and they can be differently compared. So first notice the kind of model, the kind of concept being used. Now, with different models, what is it that keeps me from ending up saying that everything is arbitrary and you can say whatever you please? This question is really a problem for every approach, as soon as one knows that there are many approaches and many conflicting conclusions. It seems to mean that everything is just up for grabs. This brings me to my second point. 2. What I call the experiential method consists in letting the statements that we read or make, (I'll come back to "make"), LETTING STATEMENTS MEAN THE EXPERIENTIAL VERSION OF whatever they're about. It means we can think our next step from the experiential version, rather than only going with the type of concept. (Of course, we can always go on from the concept with logic as well.) If we think from what we have there experientially, then even if the concepts become various and arbitrary, we think from something that isn't arbitrary, and doesn't depend on whatever theory or concept you use. Concepts contradict each other, but experiences do not. You can have all the experiences which these contradictory concepts can locate for you. Now, if you understood my first point, the three models and how concepts can be distinguished fromnow I'm calling it the "experiential version"then we're no longer arguing whether there are these drives and an ego that must control, or a family system, or the cosmic archetypes and the self. We recognize that the conflicts are largely between the concepts being used. Instead, we understand that they're all about people, right? They all get at something we might want to find. Then if we think from what each of those lets us find, we need not be stuck within any one cognitive approach.
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This experiential way of thinking is something new. Until now the variety of approaches always made for relativism and arbitrariness, or simply a preference for one approach. That's because the choice seemed to be between conflicting concepts. Philosophers didn't know where to go to get beyond the variety. But this is not simple. As I said earlier, if you abstract the kinds of concept from something you're thinking, what do you have left? Well, all of it! But what do you call that? What are you going to call it? The minute you call it something, you're in one of these or another. This has to be recognized. When I call it "experiential," another philosopher will think of certain definitions of that word, in one of the well known approaches or another. Worsethe other philosopher will think that we don't know that THAT, which we feel or have directly always has implicit concepts in it. That's so even if we only feel something and have never explicated it ourselves. But I emphasize that the implicit concepts never encompass and determine this, which is always wider than the implicit concepts. Should I call you an "ego, id, and super-ego," or should I say you are the "individuals in whom your family system manifests itself?" Or should I say you are part of the whole cosmos? Or what should I say? Or if I say it's "experiential," and someone wants to know what this is, what shall I say? The EXPERIENTIAL METHOD consists in taking any statement and letting it mean THAT. So at first it seems that it means hash, or 'ugh,' or something like that. But we're accustomed to that from focusing, so with this audience I don't have much trouble with this part. After a minute, THAT opens into further steps, little steps you cannot get from the concept. In this way we don't get relativism, just many viewpoints and arbitrariness. Relativism comes only if there is nothing but various cognitive approaches. We can let any statement mean the felt sense that it brings us, and THINK FURTHER FROM THAT. 3. Now a third point. If you do that in thinking as you know from focusing, then when you use somebody's theory, you will find that WHAT YOU'RE REFERRING TO TURNS OUT TO BE MUCH MORE INTRICATE than the theory. Lets take for example Freud's castration complex. All difficulties according to orthodox psychoanalysis are of oedipal difficulties. Women Freud didn't understand too well. Now, what I'm saying is if you let Freud's concept mean not only what Freud meant it to mean, if you let Freud's concepts mean whatever you get experientially and also what other people that you listen to get experientially, then you will find that what you've got is more intricate and more interesting. Not only is it valid because you're living it, so it's already here, but it's also more intricate than the old concept, more exact, so that you have to make up new ones. We can take any concept to mean WHAT SOME PERSON CAN LOCATE. If you say to yourself, suppose I have castration anxiety. Where
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would I find it? You will very quickly find it. Then you can have a big hang-up and say what am I, a focusing woman, doing with Freud's male castration complex? Don't fall for that, because you can use the concept as a location pointer. Anyone can find it. Any concept is a bad map for where you're really living. So you say what's a good map? There aren't any because the territory is not just one flat territory; it lends itself to many maps and responds to them, but always with AN INTRICACY THAT EXCEEDS MAPS. When you have a map, you look and "it says there should be a house here." Then you look on the ground and you find six shacks instead of one house. So you say, "ah, I see." Then keep the six shacks. Don't trade them in for a merely conceptual house. That's the big point we will keep with us the rest of my talk. The specific things that you find, they're much more intricate, not only more intricate than Freud's concept, they're MORE INTRICATE THAN OUR PUBLIC LANGUAGE HAS AS YET. We keep those intricacies and we think from them. In focusing and therapy you are used to this, but when you THINK in the way I'm proposing, it may leave you feeling lonely and somewhat autistic, like you're thinking in a swampy soggy place all by yourself. You've got these different strands or strings of something and you don't know what to call them. They don't seem to have any public language, and if you are experientializing some author like Freud, you say, "Did he mean this strand here, or that one?" Well he didn't. He meant an entity, not these intricate strings. When you look down there, you don't find his entity. What you find is this spider web of stuff, as you always do in focusing. So you have to say that's at least one version, my version. The next people you listen to have other spider webs. You let yours and theirs stand. Now the big point again: From the intricacy you can think in further ways that cannot follow from the concept. It is not the case that these strands all fit under the concept. A concept locates some experience which can then lead us further to more strands, and when we think from those we may deny, redo or modify the very concept that led us there. We would continue to value such a concept since it provides the entry to all this. And of course, at times we also want to think from the concept. But thinking from experiential intricacy is very different than from the concept. You have to be strong here. You have to stand the fact that this seemingly soggy autistic web is just your particularity for the moment. Also, the strands will not come nice and cleanly separate. That which you find may seem unreal, but it is more real and more valuable than the concepts. We already have those in the library. They have been written and commented about for almost a hundred years. You can move them around some more if you want to, if you really have to, if you have to do a paper for a course for instance. But that's not valuable.
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What would be valuable is if you could bring to the public language some of what you actually find when you let concepts locate something on the ground, inside, in yourself, in your life or in the other person's life. You have to be strong because the first impression of that is usually not very promising. It's like focusing but there we are used to swampy things. In thinking you might feel "why would I ever want to tell anybody about this?" Or "how would I even tell myself about this?" What I've said so far is new for thinking. When it's applied in focusing, you are totally accustomed to it. Whatever you find at first, you say, oh yeah, I'm glad I got it now, but I know it can go further, with unpredictable steps. You hold on to it even if you don't yet quite know what it is. In thinking, that's also a first step. So let us suppose I am thinking. I am building a theory. Somewhere along the line I use Freud's concept of the Oedipus complex. I experientialize it. I might find that I sometimes feel small; maybe scared to go and get what I want. These are strands of this spider web, there is always a lot more if we go into any bit of it. Say I'm afraid of action, afraid of sticking my neck out. Right? According to the theory, that's all because I have a wish for my mother and the fear of my father's threat is still there. This is in the way of sexual freedom, and also all kinds of action. Of course you can now think further from Freud's concept and get the regular stuff, and you might want that for some purpose. About sticking your neck out, of course, your head is a substitute for your penis and you're afraid to stick it out. But that's not new. I have to go on in, further, back into the experience, and there I will find leads to further thinking that are not already in the library. I might find I'm afraid to take actions, not only because of what Freud said, that my father will punish me, but since this has made me not very good at action, I now have a record of bad actions. So, that's circular. I'm not good at it cause I'm scared, and by now I'm scared cause I'm not good at it and it fails. That's already a second circle. Now I might have a sense that there is something new here. Second circles are interesting! Why? There is what's like what he said, but also something I don't yet have words for. You won't easily find that second circle thing in the library, even though it is only one step in. I don't promise that it's all new. But we often find second-circle patterns, and on many issues, not just on this one. I know something about second circlesI'm not sure what it is yet. I have often found that one must let a felt sense come for the whole of the second circle, so one doesn't get stuck going round on it. This now is a good example of a lead for thinking and theory. Here is a new question, something about this relation between one felt sense, one circle, and the many factors on the circle. All this is no longer just under the concept. Already now this little pattern turns out to have a wider extent. My third point is: Stand what you actually find which is ALWAYS AN INTRICACY, a spider web, and then think from that. It is always a specificity,
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an intricacy, a spider web which does not all fit under the concept. Now I want to emphasize thinking from the intricacy for another reason. If you don't think from that, then you will fall into the old conceptsthe old approaches. Without more philosophy, only the intricacy will save you. You now have a little bit of philosophy, so when you think something, you can look at it and say: "Oh yes, this is that strategy of wholesoh yes, this is the strategy of atoms." But you would need to be much more familiar with these strategies from many written works, so that you could move across from one to another easily. Without this you will just fall into the most common assumptions that exist in the language today, and you won't know it, and you won't do anything interesting. But on the level of the spider web, thinking from the strands, that level of specificity is something that the old concepts just cannot grab. So then you're out of them. You can let both Freud's and Jung's theory play on your spider web, and see what it might bring out from the web. But the old concepts cannot entrap you if you hold on to your specifics, what you actually find . . . (Audience member: The spider web is this thing that we call experience?) Yeah, yes. The spider web is experience. The spider web is the felt sense. The spider web is when you let anybody's concepts guide you to your own version of it, then I CLAIM THAT YOU DON'T FIND THE CONCEPT, YOU FIND THE SPIDER WEB. I don't believe that anything that has ever been named in psychology is true. Because I have never been able to find it as such. It's always much more intricate and different. What I call "experience" is what we find. I find a tapestry. I get a Persian rug. I get a spider web. Do you see what I mean? Which you're familiar with from focusing. But when you think, do that too. Don't do what we were taught in school, that the only way to think is to leave yourself behind and leave everything you know behind, and operate just these terms that they give you. That's not thinking. That's repeating. Now when you come to speak or think from this spider web, you pick out one live strand. It should seem to you at that point that there are no words that fit what you want to say. Typically there are at first no words that fit. Something seems significant, but what do I call it? Many words are offered to me. This applies in any field. You might be thinking about physics and you might be thinking that there's something funny about this here. And all you really can say is that there's something funny about this here. Nobody else thinks there's something funny about this here and you don't know how to say it. At first there may be no words. But the fact that no words fit is not so obvious to people who are not experienced with thinking. I've got to get you to the point where you would realize that the words don't fit. I got to convince you that there is no such thing
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as love, there is no such thing as authenticity, there is no such things as meditation, there is no such thing as focusing, there is no such thing as hypnosis. When you're thinking, you recognize that focusing is all the many different things that people do, when they so-called "focus." So we recognize that focusing is some kind of label we put here so we can be together. And then there's the six steps, well they sort of help you, like a rope through the jungle. In the everglades they have a rope that you hold on to, as you walk on a little walkway made out of wooden planks, a little way into the jungle. So the six steps are like that. Well everything else is also like that. Whatever word is used, whatever it is isn't that. So you don't want to use the usual wordsany word. If you stay strong, you can sense that none of those words do the job of saying your thing. As soon as you settle for one of those words, you've lost your thing. Don't let any words take your thing away from you. Forget it. You're back in the library. Don't call it anyone of those things. Call it "that gizmo" or "that damn thing" or "whatever the hell it is" or "what Joe meant," or something like that. Give it some kind of name and don't call it one of those things, okay? Okay. Now when we're at the point where there are no words, then comes a stage where you can use ordinary language to make new sentences to describe it. Once you've left those terms behind. Your thing won't be "affect" and it won't be "feeling" either, or "emotion" or "desire" or "mind" or "idea." It won't be the technical term and it also won't be one ordinary word, either. If you will describe it not by one word, if you're willing to make phrases, to give yourself room to write a whole sentence or two, then you can. There's a whole philosophical background here, that shows that words do not have fixed meaning. Words work poetically. They work metaphorically. They can always say something new again. Don't lose your thing. Make new phrases to speak from it. (Audience member: [inaudible].) Well yes, in focusing "a handle" is typically one word or two words, I know what you mean. You might get a handle-word first, and that can help, especially if it is a weird, crazy, and hyphenated. That helps hold it for you. A handle has that inner connected power to hold the thing. But of course what the word means in the world will not be this odd, new, special, intricate thing you've got a hold of. Then when you write a couple of sentences, its important to be strong again, and make your sentences odd, so they don't make sense except to say your thing.
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You can do this if you own the piece of paper on which you're writing. Those are private sentences. I teach students, I'm a professor at the University of Chicago, right? I teach students to own this piece of paper. Write something like "fuck" on top of it. Then you know this piece of paper is not what you're going to show people. If you want to show something you'll copy it. This one here is your piece of paper. If you write new phrases free-style, you will find that the language has all these infinite poetic possibilities. Where words like "love" or "authenticity" can't do it, an oddly twisted phrase will let the old words change. First there's no words, second you write free-style, and you discover you can use all the words. You can even go back and use the technical words provided you stick them in sentences that twist them up good enough so that they can't mean what they usually mean. Instead, you are strong and you are making them mean what YOU mean. Then you keep fiddling and adjusting them until you like them. Even if I were to use an old word, call it "love," I've got to know that it's love sub-g, this specific I've got here. I'm just using that name like I would call it George, only I'm calling it "love." I can't allow the word to put its meaning on my thing because then I lose my thing. I have to hold on to my thing, and the word means my thing. Then I may find a phrase after a while, it could be wild, and mean only what I mean. I was trying to think of a sentence that would have love in it and yet you would all understand that it doesn't mean what you mean by love. What it means you may not know but at least you know you don't know what it means. And that's the kind of sentence that I ask students to write. I say: "Write a sentence that either they don't understand what it means whatsoever or they get your point." And the same thing that applies to the words applies also to the logic. Now I have to talk a little bit about logic. I have to say that logic is made for already cut units. Logic and mathematics are basically the same thing. They can be converted into each other. You know mathematics and what I need you to know about logic is obvious in mathematics. You know that if you start with 57 you mustn't end up with more units than 57. I mean you can end up with 50 plus 7 or you end up with 100 minus 43 or any version, but you mustn't drop out any of the units and you mustn't add any. When you do your checkbook it's like that, you know. All right. I shouldn't tell you about my checkbook. Now mathematics only works because they make us assume that units existslittle entitieslittle boxeslittle one and ones, you know, and the unit are all alike. Then it works. And logic works and is extremely powerful. The reason we have microphones and airplanes and much else is because of logic, so don't put it down please. If you put logic down, you just get helpless while logic marches on and builds more and more things in the world. So you can say bad things about logic, but

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that's is not very effective. Logic is a graph paper system but it is enormously powerful because it really leads you somewhere. When you say to somebody, "three across and three down," they find the exact point, when we play battleships. And first three down and then three across gets to the very same place! Logic works very powerfully but it works only within the already cut units. The units are cut in a certain way and then logic picks up. But as soon as you add one more unit to it, the whole thing is disorganized. If you say 57 plus 3 is 60, but if I get 57 plus 3 is 1000 because one of the 3s is my uncle? Then you laugh. You say that's not mathematics, you see. But the point is that if I'm inviting 57 people and I add three more and one of them is my uncle, it does shoot the whole logic, if you know my uncle. So the point I'm making is on the one hand logic is very powerful but only after the units are cut, and if you keep them fixed that way. When you get to your spider web you will notice that the units are not already cut. One of the wonderful and troubling facts about experience is that it does not come in convenient mathematical units. That's not how it comes. So you can take this moment and you can see, is this ONE unit moment? Am I having THREE feelings just now? You might feel that your chair's uncomfortable and you wish you understood what I'm was saying and some other thing, so it's three. Well you could get 50 things out of it if you had time, if I let you think for a minute, just out of one moment. You know? Then you can say well a lifetime is short. Talk of life as one unit. Experience does not come in units. Somebody wanted to say something and I wouldn't let them. Yes? (Audience member: Is that the reason that when somebody asks you to explain something, and you give the definition, you cannot explain it?) Absolutely. Absolutely. The only way, explain tends to mean that. But now I'm not sure that I know completely what kind "you can't explain" you mean. So say one more thing so that I don't get hung up. (Audience member: But then the definition you give this clear-cut concept in a kind of logic, and you get stuck because you are not able to explain it.) Thank you, now I see. Yes, yes, yes, yes, stuck in the logic. You've all had the experience that you sort of half know or ninety percent know something or really know something and you can't explain it, right? And now I'm saying, he's saying, that's why. The reason you couldn't is because you tried to explain it in the units and concepts that we have in the public language. And those are only good to explain whatever they were made to explain and maybe a little more, but they will not explain your spider web.

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You know this from your particular individual focusing. But we're now talking about thinking which means really, MAKING CONCEPTS FOR OTHER PEOPLE FOR THIS SOCIETY. In focusing and therapy, we make up a new vocabulary between us, and the minute you walk out, that's gone. Only if you come back next week, ah yes, it's here again. But if we want to explain, if we want to say something to our colleagues who are not focusing people or to the society, then we have to build new concepts, and that's what I'm now talking about. Best begin where you already have a felt sense of something specific, some strand or cluster of stuff you would LIKE TO THINK from, but cannot yet do clearly. This needs to be in a territory where you have experience and know something, physics, psychologyany field. If you have no such felt sense, you can get one by entering into the intricacy from any sentence in your field, that seems important to you. Experientialize it. The main words in the sentence refer to something that's much more intricate, and the sentence takes off from only one aspect of this. If you've worked a lot in the territory around that sentence, for example in a laboratory, you get many strands behind the main word. Pick one or a cluster of those and if that sentence seemed important to you, you will now soon have a felt sensesomething you know here that you can't yet articulate. If you can, try to speak-from the felt sense in ordinary language, but make sure you ALLOW THE MAIN WORDS TO CHANGE SO THEY WORK TO SAY WHAT YOU WANT THEM TO MEAN AND SAY. You can put adjectives in front of the old words or use them in odd new phrases, until they do that. Not for one moment do they get to mean what they usually mean. If they cannot speakfrom your felt sense, throw them out. That's where you have to be strong again, because if you write a sentence, and you want it to mean what you want it to mean, and then you read it and it means something else, you change it. It's not allowed to mean something else. As soon as it does you've lost your thing. Very much as you would do in focusing. Okay. Now, how much time have I used up? I forgot when I started. 4:30? So that's not too bad. Now if we're really going to make concepts, I would like to take only those of you with me on this next trip who want to make concepts. Those are to communicate to the society. I'll be back soon so as not to bore the others. If you want to build concepts, logic comes back. You want them in a certain way. My fastest example is the Declaration of Independence. It has this sentence near the beginning. It says, "We take it to be self-evidenta self-evident truth B
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that all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with unalienable rights among which is life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." And it goes on actually, but I've got to stop there. If you look at all those all words, you will discovery that they are all locked into each other, because a right is a thing that grows out of the nature of the thing that has that right. And unalienable means that you can't sell it or sign it away, you see? (Audience member: It says inalienable.) No it says unalienable, but you're quite right. I mean, English today would say inalienable but. . . (Audience member: No it says its. Among which its.) Oh I don't know. I don't think so. I think that correction I accept because you're right anyway, but it does say unalienable because I spent time with that. But what it means is that it isn't like a piece of property that you can sell. There have in history been times when property, certain kinds, was unalienable, which meant this piece of land stays in your family and you can't sell it, and everybody in your family has to die out before it moves, that means its unalienable. But if you think about unalienable and right, you will see that rights are INHERENTLY unalienable, and unalienable is the same notion. Then you look at among which are life, without which there isn't a creature here at all, right? And liberty, which, okay, we can come back to because I don't even have time to really analyze it, but the pursuit of happiness clearly now is like that again. Because what is happiness? Well see, if Jefferson had written in what happiness is, we would have lost it. Happiness is whatever THAT kind of creature will pursue that was created with the unalienable right to pursue. And what does pursue mean? Well pursue means whatever it takes to get the happiness that is whatever creatures pursue who have the right to pursue things like that, you see? And what about the creator? What was Jefferson's theory of God? Well, the creator is whatever this kind of creature comes from. See? And so then you look at "we take these truth" and you say, what's a truth? Who's he to decide what a truth is? No, no. He said the truths are self-evident. Because if they're not selfevident, then it's up to so and so who says that they're true. And there's always somebody else who says they're not. But they have to be self-evident. Do you follow me? So that's logic. That makes this what I call a "theory." And the reason he could do that is because there was 200 years of philosophy behind him, John Locke and Hobbes. And they were all arguing, and all that stuff was familiar to him, and so he could write a sentence like that very easily. And he knew that all these terms lock into each other, and if you understand one of them you can get all the others out of any one of them. Right? And it goes on, even to his conclusion
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which he wanted to derive that way. So the sentence doesn't stop with happiness. It says, and governments are instituted to make those rights work, and if government, all in one sentence, and if governments don't facilitate these rights then it is the right and duty of people to change the government anddon't put a periodto set up new governments on this basis. Then you finally get a period. Now, in contrast to that, think about what happened a few years later in France when there was the great French revolution, 1789. Around about 1790 I think the French government, the Assembly, the famous Assembly that changed everything, the metric system and the months and everything else, made a Declaration of Human Rights in which it said, the Government of France hereby announces that from now on all citizens shall be accorded the following rights, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and they put them all down on a list. Do you see the difference? You get it? (Audience member: [inaudible].) Exactly. One of them is that the Government gives you these rights; tomorrow they can take them away again because where did you get them? From the government. Right? Okay, that's the political difference. But the logical, philosophical difference is that the French rights are merely listed, just one thing after another. People get to do this and this and that and that and that. A theory is not just one thing after another. In a theory they are locked into each other, so all of them are built into each. Do you see what I mean? A theory is like Jeffersonnot like the French one. In a theory, if you understand one concept, you are led to the whole thing. You can get it from any one of them. This doesn't mean you have to build it like that. Just that you would know about it. Now the next thing I want to say fits here. I've already said that logic only works when the units are already cut. When you think something new, it seems illogical. That doesn't mean that logic won't work there. Before Locke that people would have a right to revolution seemed illogical. Or contradictory. Government is rightful power to keep us from killing each other. A right to revolution is just not amenable to logic. What is new and valuable about your thing will be just that part which seems illogical. Deliberately look for a part like that. And then again you have to be strong. You have to know that if you force any existing logic on it, forget it. You've done the old thing again. You have to allow it to develop its own odd illogical sentences, and then you can develop its own units and its own logic, or, if you're not making theory, you simply need to avoid killing what you've got, because it doesn't fit any logic. That's all, but its a lot. Now I want to illustrate those things real fast if I can. If you allow the illogical frame to stand, if you don't lose it, if you play with it, you will see that is has its
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own patterning, its own way that it is. Then as soon you keep that and you make one concept for it, say its terribly specific, from then on, that particular unlogical pattern will climb into every next concept and every next thought. It will change what all the words mean, one after another. For the reason that I'm calling Jefferson for fast. Now if I can show you that then I will have done very well. (Audience member: Only if all those subsequent concepts are built the same way.) Well let's put it so that it's neither what I said nor what you said. If you want it to it can. (Audience member: Okay.) Right? Because he's right. You don't have to build everything the same way at all. But it's exciting to see that you could. (Audience member: If you want the interlocking. . .) Well, okay. If you're building a theory you want the interlocking, but you don't necessarily want it the first way that you can have it. So, he's quite right. I'm overstating it. This little illogic that you would begin with the first five minutes doesn't necessarily have to end up climbing into everything you're ever going to say. All I meant is that if it's the crux of your thing, and if you want a theory, then it can. It can climb into any next concept, and it will illuminate something. Then if you don't want it, and that's all right. I want to illustrate that by taking one of mine that by now is very familiar to me. I want to take what I call carrying forward. That's what I finally ended up calling it. What it comes from is thinking about the body and how the body knows the next step. If I tell most anyone "The body knows the next step," I get a funny look. I've got me a sentence that doesn't make much sense, because most people's conception of the body is such that this is not just wrong but senseless. And "the body knows" is using the word "knows" in an odd way, and the word "next" becomes mysterious here, and what are "steps" anyhow? So to say the body knows the next step is something you can say in focusing jargon, but it doesn't communicate to the society, right? Yet the sentence does help me hold on to what this. So, back to my story before, by "body" we don't mean what my psychologist thought. We don't mean the machine that pumps the heart, right? I mean we know it does that also, but we mean the body that we speak from. You know, the body that we're sitting there as. Or, I make a sentence like "I mean the body that you're sitting there as." Well look at that for an English sentence. No editor will accept it. I do have a lot of
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trouble with editors. But you see that's inherent. Editors want only what can be said in good English. And you can't say anything NEW in good English, because good English comes from the last things that were being said. So don't be afraid of editors, especially not the ones in your head, you see what I mean? Yes, being careful with real editors, fine. So at first, with something new, make odd sentences that make no logical sense. To do that, I have to realize that I don't mean by body whatever has already been explained. I mean by body the body that I'm sitting here as. That's the one that knows the next step, right? And I mean by "THE next step" not all the hundreds of steps that I can think of, but precisely the one that I can't think of yet. So I would add another sentence, the body knows the next step that I haven't got yet, or that doesn't exist yet. Fine! Now we have the body knowing a step that doesn't exist. You see that logic mustn't come in until much later. Look at "knows." This isn't like knowing. This is like, what? And then it seems I can't find it. If I want a regular right word, there are no words. I wrote down some of them to illustrate that. If I say the body implies, "implies" usually means that what is implied is already there, just hidden, not visible yet. So when I say "implies" to ordinary people, they assume that it's all finished, it just hasn't been unpacked. Imply is like two and two implies four. I could say the body "indicates" the next step but that doesn't do anything for me. I could say it "makes" the next step but that's not right because the next step has to fit the world. I could say the body "finds" the next step. That sounds again like the next step is already there. It "feels" the next step? Well, no, because at first I'm just stuck. And it goes like that. There are no words for it. Give up. Okay. But my trouble is that I have a language which says either the next step is already there, or else it isn't there at all. Either there is no nature, culture and science just "construct" it, or we innocently assume it's all there. The whole sophisticated philosophical world these days is stuck between these two. There are the empiricists who think they find nature, and opposed to them are the constructionists who think science and culture invent nature. And it's so obvious that it's neither one of those. You look at any experiment in science, and it's obviously not that you sit there and make it up. And it's obviously not that it's already there because it depends on your experience and your experiment and your machinery and hypotheses. So you're tempted to say you want something between, but no, no, it's not between. Between would be half arbitrary invention and half already there? Between just avoids the new thing. So you go back to the
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spider web and you say what have I got here? And then you see: "OhI have this lovely pattern here. It's just a little more complicated than what we have in the library." The felt sense FORMS FROM what's there, it wasn't just there, waiting. Then when I focus on the felt sense and the step comes, where was this step? Well it's clear it wasn't there before. But it's also clear that I mean something when I say, this is what that "was trying to be," or what "was implied," or indicated. I might think I should be able to tell myself in old words what I mean, but NO. Well, what do I mean? It takes me a while to figure that out, that I mean THIS, just the way it is here, this funny pattern, not the old stuff. The step is not there already, but it isn't all new and made up, either. I mean there's some relationship here between this new thing that came, I feel the relationship, the connection, the continuity between this new thing that came and what I had there before. Before I was annoyed, bored, and frustrated, and where I turned to let a felt sense come, a slight not intense felt sense, out pours that I'm angry. And I'm VERY angry, nothing light about it. So was this intense anger in my boredom? Well, that's not right. And yet I say, sloppily, that my boredom WAS really that I'm angry. It wasn't. And yet what I have now is not invented or made up. I probably spent some time making up all kinds of things that didn't do anything. How do I know bored "was really" angry? Because just now the boredom flowed, melted into, (see I'm making illogical poetry sentences again). It flowed, it melted into this angry. Whereas all the other things I said to myself whenever I checked it was still hanging there the same as before. So this pattern is a little more intricate than was already there or wasn't there. It's not that it was AND wasn't there, it's not a paradox (you could write one on the way to working it out), and it's not half-way between. IT'S THIS MORE COMPLICATED PATTERN HERE. What came is not what was there, but it does have a relationship to what was there. And other proposals fail to have that relationship, just this step does. And there is a little more to this pattern. What felt stuck flows into that next step, whereas the other things let the stuck thing hang there. Now this turns out to be an enormously helpful concept that I made up, I think thirty years ago. And the world hasn't yet caught up with me on something that now seems so simple. But it's a little more intricate than what the public system has. Not was there, not wasn't there. At first it seemed illogical. "Carrying forward" also has this cuteness that whereas the usual linear time has only one past tense, this pattern has two different past tenses. There is what actually was which is the boredom, and there is what looking back from now I say "it was," which is the anger. There are two different senses of "was." Does

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that have to be so bad? It's only a little more complicated than one sense of "was." Now that I've worked out what I mean, I can go back to those words and use any of them. I can pick "imply," and I build into it this, and I say that's what implying is. Now implying means a la Jefferson. It's how the body implies the next step. That's what implying is. But now I can also make logical sensenew logical senseabout implying, and I can go from there. I can say that the life of a living body is that kind of implying. A body implies what it is about to become, if it can. Living things organize what needs to happen. Then if it doesn't, then it does something else. Then it either finds a new way, or the implying continues. Let say it implies feeding. Then, if food doesn't come, the stomach swells up. Eventually it might find a new way to feed, or it dies. It doesn't imply what's already there, only covered up. Stomach swelling isn't already there. Feeding isn't already there. (Audience member: Retroactively.) Yes, exactly. "Retroactive time" I sometimes call it, but I was sort of putting some sparkling confusion into the system. But yes, retroactively. So it has two pasts. The literal past and the retroactive past. Or you can the linear time past and the retroactive time past. Now have let this help me define what a living body is. A body is the sort of thing that knows its next step. Now I can say it implies its next step. And if you don't like implies, I can use another word, which will pull out a further strand of this. Carrying forward means what was implied is no longer implied. You can distinguish feeding from starvation that way. You can distinguish what carries life forward from what gets it stuck. So already it has a lot of power. But I'm rashly simplifying. Belly swelling up is already an intervening development that makes feeding difficult. It's another kind of step, not what was implied which was feeding, but also not just neutral. It gets in the way from then on. We all know such developments from experience. So there is always further intricacy if we look further. The theory wouldn't stay simple. Now HOW does the body imply a next step? Does it know, does it have a picture of a next step, or a memory of a next step, or a perception, or an emotion of the next step? None of those, right? With a felt sense, sure. But before we had that term it didn't make sense. Because none of the old terms make sense. So I have to let it be the odd physical thing that a felt sense is. I can't substitute perception or any of the other old notions. And then, also, I'm building a theory. So I say the body implies the next step WITH ITSELF, with something BODILY. I want to do a Jefferson. I want to
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say, well, that's what bodies are. What is bodily is INHERENTLY this kind of implying of next steps. So it does its implying with a bodily somethingand this contains everything the body has experienced in all its situations up to then. And we call this a bodily felt sense. And this also tells what 'situations' are they aren't just what's around in space, nor inside us subjectively. Lets say my keys are in your pocket. That's not a situation. It's that I left them lying around and you took them and I think you might go into my apartment with them and take something, or a very different situation lets say I gave them to you to keep because I was drunk. Obviously a situation is how the body has lived and implies further living. Rather than telling you a new story about God and a new story about rights and a new story about inalienable and a new story about pursuit of happiness and about governments, I keep building my central story into each next term. Coming off of focusing, I realize, yeah but we constantly get new steps, don't we, in focusing. We were taught that plants and animals and bodies are machines that always do the same thing. But according to my theory bodies are not like that, right? That's another thing this will do for you. When you have something that doesn't fit what you've been taught, you are led go look. Then you find a whole file full of anomalies that you know about on something like this. Even single-celled organisms, I know, do all kinds of new things all the time. Some amoebae in a little beaker with a chemical that doesn't normally happen in the life of amoebae, and they develops a specific reaction to strengthen their cell walls to keep that chemical out. So living bodies do imply next steps that are new and helpful. "Adaptive" it's called, because in Latin it sounds as if we understood it. You will find if you develop something new from here it often starts to solve anomalies. This is because anomalies are precisely what didn't fit the old theories. But don't get to be too proud about this because you'll develop your own anomalies that don't fit your theory. No theory is ever going to not have anomalies. Living bodies are capable of quite new next steps when the circumstances around them change. This is because a next step is not a separate perception not a separate knowledgenot a separate object. For instance, hunger is the body itself doing the hungering. It's not a perception of hunger. It's like a plant. A plant doesn't have a separate picture of water. It needs water we say, looking at it. But it doesn't have a picture of water, which enables it to say I need that. It's just drying up there, right? And then as soon as you add water to it, it says, ahhh. The plant "knows" the water. But now I'm changing the word "knows" to mean that kind of knowing. You see what I mean? It knows the water with its livingness and it knows the light and it knows the air. It knows them by how it lives, right? Through its life process which is its photosynthesis. It's a making of itself. But it doesn't make itself out of nothing. It makes itself, if the light is
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there, then it makes. Now that's the kind of knowing and that's the kind of body that I have in my philosophy. It's a being kind of knowing. It doesn't require perception and pictures and representations. I can do a lot with that because that explains much better why focusing is deep when there's another person there for instance. That is like the what the plant can do when the light is there. It explains much of how we know situations, why the body's so smart after living in complicated situations. What it implies, you see my shorthand for this is to say, sure we're human beings and sure we're animals but we're also plants. Of course elaborated by human living and animal perception, but it is really our plant body that does focusing, and has a being-knowing of situations with other people, and comes up with new steps. That's the body I'm talking about. The body that IS the light and IS the water, and IS the interaction with the other person. It's from that one that we know all this stuff. It's that kind of knowing that we do. Do you see what I mean? To think of the body this way frees me from a whole lot of the old concepts. Now I got to stop here because I want to hear from your experience. (Audience member: I want to hear the theory that you're still working though. I don't want. . . let it go. . .) Maybe later, maybe later, because that wasn't really theory. That's just a spider web. I was going to use it . . . last night (Audience members and Gendlin: [talking all at once].) (Audience member: I was wondering if you've looked at Bohm's concepts of implicit and explicit meaning and thought about it in relation to what you're talking about?) It certainly sounds right, explicit and implicit meaning, but whose concept? (Audience member: Bohm's. . .) Oh sure, sure. (Audience member: Because it sounds like implicit meaning, what he calls implicit meaning is what like we know what should be.) David Bohm was this lovely man who in a sense did this, and first let me tell this story. He was presenting one time with Krishnamurti, and I had the privilege to be invited there. I think by you, maybe or maybe not or by David Chambers. David Chambers. I got all upset because he said the implicit was like a spot of ink that a machine spreads into an endless stripe finally invisible, and
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then when you roll the machine backwards, you get back to the same spot. For me that doesn't break out of the old "was there/was not there" concept, right? And I got all upset about it and argued about it, and then finally, Arthur at lunch said to me, look this whole thing that he's presentingthis whole thing is a meditation, too. So then I dropped it and I realized it was silly to burden David Bohm. (Audience member: I'm glad you straightened that out. For twenty years I thought you were upset about Krishnamurti.) Oh no. No, no, not at all. (Audience member: That the David Bohm was the meditation.) No, no, but this Nobel prize winning physicist, David Bohm, had given up working on physics after having gone far enough, and was devoting his life to trying to tell people, devoting his life and his prestige, because that meant he could invite people who would otherwise not come, to hear that sort of thing. No seriously, he was quite conscious of this. And I talked to some of the physicists who came, and they said, you know it's David Bohm. How could I not come, he invited me. What is this all about? He was able to communicate to a lot of people, you know, and it was clear to me what he was doing. It wasn't until lunch time, but it's been clear to me ever since. I was on a panel with him somewhere else, and after the discussion people wanted so much to talk to him. All the questions were directed to him. It was very nice. (Audience member: [inaudible].) Yes. I was hoping that you would give me things to use as examples. So this can be one. You're in the orthodox model, when you assume that the reason we can communicate is that we already share what we're communicating. But you see, with a little philosophy, you can notice that, oh yeah, that's the atomic model. It says there are exactly one trillion unit meanings in the world and we can communicate only if we share some already. Which you've all heard. That's what we were taught. It's totally absurd. We would only communicate what the other person already knows? We could never show someone anything new. Communication would be totally useless, right? All you could ever say is 56 plus 1 instead of 57. Big deal. It'd be like the people in jail with the joke numbers, you know? One of them says 13 and the all laugh. If you don't already know what I mean, you can never know it. Okay, now Marcus took that old assumption and he put the felt sense under it. Right away he could say, so it's not hopeless when we don't quite have the same

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thing because you could be doing something a little new and I could be doing something a little new, right? (Member audience: dialogue. . . [inaudible]. . .) You're trapped in that machinery that I was trying to point to. You see, he says it's got to be because of all those shared meanings. That's why we can communicate because we all know trees and water. . . (Audience member:. . . [inaudible].) We operate those meanings he says. Now I'm not denying that we all know trees and water and sky and so on. But you see I want to break him out of there. And now let's see if I can do it. See, as a philosopher, the way I would do it isn't going to work. But I'll show you. I would say, this is that model where you have these meanings and you have to account for everything by rearranging the same units. You never get anything new with that model. Right? Way back to the Greeks it's like that. You can't get anything new because everything has to come from these shared meanings. But think from one momentary example of actually communicating. Take this moment or any moment. You don't have to tell us what it is. Just pick a moment and don't say it, when communication happened. Doesn't have to be big and dramatic or any kind of communication. (Audience member:. . . [inaudible].) Yeah. And then take a look at that and decide that communication is that. It might be other things too but it's at least that. (Audience member. . . [inaudible].) So now we're talking about connectedness. And he's done that. He's taking what he actually found for communication. Now do the next thing for me and don't let it be connectedness as one thing, but look at what that's actually like there, that you call "connectedness" and you'll find the spider web there. (Audience member:. . . [inaudible].) Okay, well those three, that does lovely for me. Okay, so let's take those three now. Acknowledged, empathy. He feels acknowledged. He feels some empathy for the other person, and he feels or he sees there is something we are facing, that, whatever that is we're talking about together. (Audience member: Well more like we're standing together. . .)
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Standing together, yeah. Standing together with that. Now I think right there that that's a more intricate more sophisticated and better model for communication than the one that everybody is using. Because you've got the two people, you've got one acknowledged and the other empathized with. That means more than just the message, right? And there's we are standing together in relation to whatever that outside thing is. And we've got the people in it now instead of just these message-unit meanings with no people. I would right away take that little three-way model home. Now I'm saying you have to be strong because you're not going to believe that what he and I could make up in three minutes with all these people here waiting, could really be serious, that it could be better than what we have in the library, but it is. And if you got no further than that, you'd be doing something. (Audience member: So Gene can you say how you're looking at it is a kind of phenomenological method, how it is not. . . [inaudible. . .] This is now another one. She wants to know in terms of phenomenological method and Ducane method, okay, at Ducane University, they have a certain method, you don't need to know what it is, and phenomenological method is sort of broad, you meant it that way, a broad word that includes many people, where is your phenomenological method? So your question is perfectly sensible. Does everybody follow? She's saying on this map in this society there are these people from Ducane which we both know, and then there's this big phenomenological movement that in some sense, that we of course belong to. Weren't you in that? Yeah. And so now tell me. Okay? (Audience member: What I want is what I will say to these people. . . [inaudible]. All right, now I can't really answer anybody's question until I can feel where they're coming from. I feel I'm answering somebody that I made up who isn't here. Meanwhile this person is waiting and you know, sort of listening to what we're saying, which doesn't have anything to do with what they were asking. But why would you waste your lifeblood answering questions before you can sense where that person is coming from with that question? I was going to say "phenomenological" is just like love and authenticity and other words. One word doesn't mean there is one thing there. But I forgot to find out what she was after. Then she said, don't waste your time telling me about phenomenological method, here's exactly what I mean. It's what can I say to those people?
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(Audience member: [inaudible].) You did that for me. With one close friend I had to spend three hours trying to get him to this stage. He said all of these orthodox Jewish things and I just knew he wasn't orthodox right now. Why are you being orthodox? What is it for you? What does it mean for you? Finally he said, I'm trying to communicate to that community and I won't be taken seriously unless I'm orthodox. So I said, thank God, thank you. Now I don't have to argue about that. I can share with you about how one needs to be taken seriously by people. And you did that for me. Lets see if I can answer your question. What can you say to those people? (Audience member: Just tell me in one sentence how we understand why focusing is easier with a partner. Could you explain that?) Yes. And I know that wasn't clear. I was conscious even in my room preparing this that I would say a number of things like that. I was depending on questions to let me make them clear. If the focusing process were intrapsychic, it would the same if you weren't there. Then I can't explain why it's so much deeper when you are there. It seems like a mystery because as a focusing accompanier, you're just there. You give your little bitsy helps or instructions or maybe you're totally silent, and yet the person goes more deeply than they would do alone. And then they thank you a lot. That's so funny so great at the same time, you know? When I'm the person thanking I know how ridiculous it seems because I remember being the other person. Why are you thanking me? But if instead I think of myself as like a plant, that my actual body-tissue is an INTERACTION with my environment including you, with animal and human stuff too, of course, but a plant process. Then your presence makes my tissue-process different, just as if I were a plant making myself out of the light and the water and you. So of course I'm different when you're there, than when I'm alone and there is no water. And I can feel that difference in my body the moment I first sit down with you. A difference there is, always. But with some people my body constricts. It wouldn't be too smart to focus with them. I would have to take private emergency measures and say to myself, "let me see if I can find myself." Or when something is off in the relationship, that comes first. Because focusing is not like having a content and then you talk to yourself about it. It's this tissue process. So I couldn't focusing right now, with you, because I still have this little worry I need to talk to you about, to make it all right, from last night. But when that's OK, then with you my body will feel like it expands there, and whatever my focusing is, it's going to have more water, if you get my analogy real fast. The tissues are going to expand. So anybody who says focusing is intrapsychic, in contrast to client-centered therapy which they say is relationship-therapy, doesn't understand either one of them. Please tell them so if you meet them.
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Because they've made that contrast now and talked about it that way for thirty years. Theoretically, can you think of living bodies like that? A body lives its relationships, it IS interaction. There is only one ongoing interaction, not one body here and an environment there, and merely perceptions going back and forth, you know. A body is not connected to its environment only through the five senses, as if a body were behind the wall in the dark and there were these five holes. The body inhales the environment and it walks on the environment and it sweats out into the environment and it does that with other people in situations. It IS the environment. The body starts out as one cell in a womb, and then it makes itself plant, animal, and inter-human. I'm still doing that, now. And when I've got Agnes to do that with, something better happens than when I'm alone. I can immediately go deeper. I AM more. And in my experience I can touch and find and delineate that much more. I'm showing the usefulness of just one theoretical concept about the body. Did I make sense? That's great. I didn't think I could. (Audience member: [inaudible].) No, I didn't say that to Agnes. I said that there are people who if they are my focusing companion, I have to make myself a private space while they're there. Then it's not even as good as if I were alone. (Audience member: So we really don't want to say that focusing is, I see this a lot, is always better with a partner. When we have our workshops you may want to bring somebody with you but whenever we need partners, that's generally, you just can't say that every time.) Well I do say it all the time, but it should be specified. I do sometimes say with a partner provided the partner can give you their attention and knows how to keep quiet. Because really a stranger can do this for us very deeply and sometimes much better than the close person whom you like, but whom you know so well that the minute you're with them, your body sort of changes in that relationship. A stranger can do it very well. But it has to be a stranger who's willing to give you their attention and not think about something else. They have to be there. And they have to be willing to keep quiet and not interrupt you. And then you will find that the very presence of another being has the most effect. (Audience member: I still can't agree with that though because I've had the experience that the other person has been very much giving me the attention, being quiet, and yet, I knew I could not go to [inaudible]. There was something in the air. . . [inaudible].)

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And it was with a person you didn't know? (Audience member: Right.) Okay, then that's something added to what I am saying. And I rather we see that of course it could be true, the vibes of the person or you could pick up a lot about person . . . (Audience member: [inaudible]. . . inside yourself. . . [inaudible].) Yeah, I could do that too but that's already different. It's already like this. It's not that. So I know you're right. (Audience member: So maybe it would be all right to stay with a person who would be able to whom we feel can feel like this. . .) Well that makes it so pretty that then the shy lovely people who you would want as partners are going to say they're not up to it. Then only the people will volunteer who aren't ready for it because they don't know they're putting out yucky vibes. So I would rather say the way it was before with an exception added that she's saying that it has to be somebody that you don't feel uncomfortable with or something like that. And put it on you. Then it would be right. (Audience member: [inaudible].) Exactly what I mean. I think an interaction between two people is not my perception of you and it's not your perception of me. You know, it's on a subtler, more physical level. And then it has all those other things added on to it, sure. (Audience member: [inaudible].) That's right. But this is an appropriate example again of what I mean. You have to not only say "I don't mean cellular," because then you'll be stuck. There will be nothing that you can do. (Audience member: [inaudible].) You did. But let me use it though because it helps me make my point. Not only do you mean that you don't mean cellular in the usual sense, you know, you mean something like that. Every word that's going to go in there will give you the same problem. You don't mean physical, you don't mean physiological, you don't mean . . ., they're all going to be like that. But be strong though and turn it the other way. And say now we know, we are, I am at least, asserting something about cellular process that physiology has as yet no room for. Because it's
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indeed cellular process but cellular process is not just what "cellular" has meant until now. So we make a sentence: "The cellular carries human environment as well as animal environment in the actual cells." Now our concept of the cellular process has changed. And what "physiological" means has changed. It works only when you make sentences to put YOUR meaning into all the old concepts, and that's what I was saying before. (Audience member: The most interesting thing to me is that you keep coming back to these words, be strong, and I just wish you would expand that.) Okay, there were a number of places where that came in. The first place you know from focusing. It's very much the same thing. It's like when something suggests itself in your head that makes perfectly good sense and is rational and well-intentioned, but it doesn't connect with the felt sense, you put it aside. And you put it aside quickly because it's hard to hold on to a felt sense, right? So you say, quick, quick, that's not it. If you have to stop and explain at great length why it's not it, even though it's perfectly sensible and such a good idea, and it would be right under some circumstances because on and on, you lose your felt sense. So you don't do that. You put it aside quickly. And that quickness is just as vital for thinking from a felt sense. That's just the first kind of being strong. The second being strong is if you do use words, whatever they are, insist that the words mean THAT, whatever it is you're tracking and trying to think. Again, we can get this from focusing. You use words and sentences like a handle. Except you can't always get a handle for an intellectual thing, so you can insist that the words should work to mean THAT. For instance, if you call that the "cellular level," THAT'S now what the word "cellular" means. So the word "cellular" has changed. Isn't it interesting! Did you know that? Biology just changed. It expanded. It still has everything it ever had but now it also carries human and animal meanings on a cellular level. It does that. The cellular process does do that. So be strong means make your meaning go into the words that you're using. We only have the English language, all the old words, but if you make a sentence in which they mean what you mean, if you defend your meaning, you will find that it's fascinating. Once you succeed to make a word or two work this way, all the next ones you think of acquire THAT, which you are thinking and tracking. Each next thing that comes by you can say, for example, art. Oh, now we can talk about art like that. It's a creativity on the cellular level, but once created, art is real and about the world, because on the cellular level the body is an interaction with the world. Oh, and now "religion" means THAT. It's concepts are doubtful like all concepts, but on the cellular level the body is an interaction with the whole universe. Oh now "language" is like this. The words come in us from the body as an interaction in the situation. The cellular level produces phrases that are the
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next step of what we want to say, or how we want to change the situation so we can live further. Oh now "communication" is like this. The other person can create a new meaning in us because we ARE interaction. Oh now "friendship" means that. Oh now "authenticity" means that. Your one new thing can and will inform every next topic that comes by and every next word that comes by, if you want. The other place to be strong is to believe, or to act as if you believe that thinking from a little bit of EXPERIENCED INTRICACY is worth something to the societythat it's new, that it's not in the library. I don't know how to mediate this for you fast enough. You don't need to believe it, because in any creative process we pass through big doubts. We cannot be sure that something new is really promising. It may seem like garbage. So "belief" isn't the right word here, unless you let me use it for this "act-like you believe" in the value of your new thing. It's ironic. Just write it down is all you have to do, just don't throw it away or let it get lost. If you are in the business of writing things, you can know in general that something new and seemingly autistic is more worth writing than some rearrangement of the old stuff that we already have. But there you have to be strong because it doesn't feel like that at first. It feels like something Mark and I made up on the spur of the moment here. How can that be better than so-called "communication theory." But you don't have to trust it like a faith either. Just go to the library and see if they have something better than what we said here. And they won't. (Audience member: Or it feels impossible because sometimes there seem to be no words as you started out.) Well that's how it starts. But I'm saying you WANT just that thing that has no official words yet. Very soon you'll have words. You'll say oh that's how it goes. Oh I see there's two people, and one has empathy and one has acknowledgment and then they both stand with a something. And that's already much better. And also, the felt sense of THAT is behind us and we can elaborate further from there. All right? When you have articulated this thing after a while, when you see that it applies all over the place and you also go to the library and see it isn't there, then you gradually think gee, I have got an article here or something. But it doesn't start like that. It starts with this shaky feel that this is something I made up out of my own goo, how can that have some significance? And this is also my own story. For years I felt "Everybody ELSE thinks there is a real thing called focusing, but to me I made it up. How can it be real?"

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(Audience member: It could if it can be communicated in writing.) It can be communicated but is it real? Can that be real? Something I made up? Of course I didn't make it up. I found it there in my experiencing. What a human organism finds, what a body-environment interaction finds cannot be totally unreal. It's always something in the world that we ALL live in. (Audience member: inaudible) Yes, yes, that's a nice way to say it. (Audience member: So you have to be strong with a person who says it's all electromagnetic and is famous, and you don't.) My slogan is: If people cannot understand you, that doesn't absolutely prove that you have something new and valuable to say. I mean that the converse is true: If you have something new they will not understand you at first. The clear things that are already well established are good things. Things we wouldn't want to lose. I mean, I'm not saying you should be so strong that you should eliminate all electromagnetic theory and all you've ever read, just for this. But that's all safe in the library, you see. No, we're not burning the library. So given we're not, and these established things are out in the bright clear daylight, and your thing is still down here in the inarticulate shadow where nobody can see it but you, then it's certainly worth an hour of quiet time or something. And so. . . (Audience member: . . . been in the library all day and then I come back and I can't find my things.) Can't find those things. Yes, you want to be protective of those things. If they disappear, they may never show up again. You have to write them down quick, when they're there, and keep them safe. Write them down just far enough so you can get them back from your notes. Then it's safe to do the stuff in the library all day. (Audience member: I don't know if you feel comfortable speaking to us but could you say something, is that because some of the words for spirituality, like about God. . .) Same thing. (Audience member: . . . and holy spirit and stuff. Those are like established concepts., right . .) Yes, yes.

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(Audience member: . . . and somehow, and that's like contents. And when we use those, it's very easy to clobber other people.) Sure. (Audience member: And that's because it makes their experience smaller or something. . .?) No, I think, well, of course, this whole issue that you're raising is very large. But the thing I can right away say is that those kind of words function the way these others do that I said. I said there's no such thing as love or authenticity or wellness or self or ego, as if there one set thing to go with each one word. For instance, I say "super ego" all the time, and people say, you mean the critic? I say yes. Whatever they call it, I mean THAT thing to which I refer in my experience, which attacks you and gives negative messages. I don't mean everything Freud says, as if THE super ego could only be one thing. So I would say you don't mean "spirituality," because spirituality, there's no such thing. It's all an intricacy, a Persian rug, so I'd ask you what you have there that you're using this word for. But maybe its a special word that has a political significance. In that sense let's keep it, okay? It gets us free of organized orthodox religion. In that sense let's keep "spirituality" sort of like our flag, you know? If you put a big tag on it, to me that's a political question by which I mean it's about which community it goes to. Like when I called it "focusing," they said you can't do that. The bookstores will put it under photography. So "spirituality" will let them it on the right shelf in the bookstore. But I agree with you that some people hit other people with these fancy words. Many people went through all kinds of oppression with those words and they puke. Then we cannot understand each other. All the other words, I don't think we should use without tieing them to something that we have there, which they can mean. Because they all have this entity quality and then people go looking for it and they can't find that stuff. Also to everybody, please don't do that to focusing. Don't make the word "focusing" mean some big mystifying thing that includes all the beautiful things that you find through focusing. Because then people won't be able to find focusing. It can be learned by anyone, something like ice skating. Focusing is just that uncomfortable bodily sense that's complex and you don't know what it is yet. That's all it is. It's spending time with that body-sense. As soon as somebody does that, they've got focusing. That's focusing. And everything else is on the other side of that little door. Describe that in words and phrases that mean whatever you have there. Otherwise they won't be able to find whatever
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you mean, either. People can find whatever you mean, if you describe it from the bottom up, the way you have whatever you have there. If you're getting a little shy and insecure, that's the right place. You'll be saying to yourself, am I supposed to be the one to define what some big word, for example "grace" means? Well you can say you know one kind of grace, or you don't have to use a big word. You can just say what you have there. This is how this and this happens. And that much you know because it happens to you. So you know it's possible. Whatever any person experiences is possible in our universe. You don't have to put these big tags on it. I would say don't transmit the old stuff because the old stuff is safe. It used to be that there was one great library and when it burned down we lost a lot of stuff. But this will never happen again. It's on microfilm and CD everywhere. So if you have any inkling of any kind of bit of spirituality that's actually there, if you would speak from this you would be saying things that other people can find and resonate to. They won't find exactly the same thing, they'll do the Mark theory, you know? They will hear you and then as a result of hearing you, their tissue process will change a little and they'll find something that wasn't there before. And you'll carry them forward and they'll carry you forward. I think it is impossible for a human being to articulate something from there and not have it be meaningful to many other people. It immediately creates something in other people. See, I get to say that now because I've said all this stuff before, but the word "create" is wrong of course. It carries them forward, it doesn't get made from units that are already there. (Audience member: [inaudible. . .] shared in order to change the other person somehow or just the communication with your own essence.) No, I'm talking about thinking which is inherently a social process. (Audience member: Because I'm also wondering well where does the other person end and where do I begin if me is also the atmosphere and the air and. . .) Well, I see, because I said you are the atmosphere and the air. This is a certain kind of concept that I'm using. This question is good, see if I can grab this, it's just right. We can get stuck on my concepts just like on other ones. If you get stuck on concepts as concepts, that's where I want you to have my philosophical automobile that I was building. You could say, oh yeah, that's right. Gendlin's got that KIND OF CONCEPT here where everything is part of one interaction. And that's lovely, but whatever kind of concept it is, we can ask: What is the experience that that locates? You probably did that, did you?and found the experience it locates is that you're not just alone with your self but somehow with other people, and this brings up this question, where is the boundary line for something like the self?
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(Audience member: Are we talking about that which is just meant to be shared or does my having communicated with myself also affect everyone else? And that being shared, I experience that. . . [inaudible]. . . we're talking about what is shared.) No, if there is such a thing as what is shared separate from what you've experienced, then its the old model where we get stuck. In my new model there is first one interaction, then the two people go away separately and have separate ideas. Those come in interaction and are inherently interactional, whether you share them or not. We've developed a kind of therapy that lets the individual attend, be in, live from the felt sense, which is always at an individual center. The individual can come up with new and unheard-of meanings from living, but those new ones, they're inherently interactional too. The human individual is inherently interactional. That doesn't mean the content of what we live is produced by others; it means that life-events are inherently with, at, from, to and about others and ourselves. It means that if you are sad, then with a certain rare kind of other person you cry. Therapy works in the context of a new interaction in which the individual's body-life can be carried forward, so that the individuals can continue stopped interactionsstopped body-process, and thereby change in just that way in which the organism directs from inside. But you've carried what I said earlier further in another way, and a whole step further I think. You're saying when I have something just between me and myself, (however that forms), then . . . is that what you're saying? Say it your way, it's not exactly. (Audience member: Well there's a couple of things that I wanted to say if I'm also saying this but it seems so much to me to be about fumbling in the dark with a language problem that's being here and we're trying to talk to each other and at the moment at which I finally can communicate and my [inaudible] word language to its richness, then I get the aha, that knowing, that big capital K knowing.) Right. (Audience member: Now I have changed and I sit in the presence of you, and now do I have to share that. . .?) And what's the have-to? Where's the question coming from? I don't grasp why you say do you have to share. . . (Audience member: Well you were talking about, and now, you know, sitting in the presence of someone else, and that is changing. . .

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Yes, yes, I see. I said that there is only one interaction, so you have to change if the interaction is new to you. In fact, you've already changed if you are in this changed interaction. Is that "the have-to?" Yes, if you get up the nerve to articulate something from what you are actually living through, it will change anyone that has the patience to come to understand it, which means anyone that lets you create/find this in their experience. It can't help but be significant to other people. There will be other people who don't want to grasp it, but there are going to be people to whom it is necessarily significant. This is because anything you lived is a human possibility. There is no way that it won't create something in other people. But is that what you meant? (Audience member: And I guess what I'm just saying is that it was just a process that I have experienced also changes you. I have an experienced moment. . . [inaudible. . .].) So you KNOW it does, right? Absolutely, of course, of course. But you know it does and you're only politely putting it to the speaker as a question. You already have the answer since you know. That's what I mean by be strong. That's fine, be polite, but you know it does, so THIS is there for you, this little cluster here that you are SPEAKING-FROM. If I get it, you're saying that when you eventually get the capacity to speak from it, this changes you. Now, if that's right, and if you enter in there, you'll find a whole spider web. Then see what you would further want to pull out from this. If I imagine myself entering at that spot, and thinking further, I would define myself as the sort of thing, in other words what a person is, is the sort of thing that would be changed by that kind of a conversation. It has to be so. I mean maybe a person is a million different things also, but one thing is that what it is to be a person is to be something that is changed by such a process, right? And that already opens a whole field of okay now, what am I going to think about next. . .? (Audience member: Now when I get pictures of you and I haven't shared that something now is either different [inaudible. . .].) Of course, of course. Absolutely. (Audience member: Is it a great deal more complex than just saying, I mean it can certainly be part of the talk but "the word isn't the thing," something. . . [inaudible. . .].

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That's certainly one of the things I said. (Audience member: But it's great. It's a lot, there's a lot. . .) Well where it's more is if the word isn't the thing, go to the thing. Of course the thing is not the thing but the experience of the thing. And then if you go to the experience you find that it isn't already cut up into nice convenient things. And so then you have this spidery thing and you have to be strong enough to hang onto it and not stick something else on there, right? And then you find if you do. .. (Audience member: [inaudible].) If you use ordinary language, you can actually eventually speak for it and it has this possibility of an eventually being spoken from. Eventually has a kind of time in it, perhaps. I don't know what all you will find in it. There is a whole spider web. But one thing you find is that that's a kind of process that will change the person, right? And inside without any (inaudible). . . (Audience member: What you are saying just reminds me of when I'm presenting to physicians and such, and I often say if the medicine doesn't work, throw away the medicine, not the patient. And what you're saying is IF THE CONCEPT OR THE THEORY DOESN'T WORK, THROW AWAY THE CONCEPT AND THE THEORY, NOT THE FOCUSING.) That's right. That's right. And I'm also saying, I'm also saying throw away the concept, not WHAT THE CONCEPT WAS TRYING TO FIND. Because here is what I was calling the philosophical car I am building you.

1. If you know just that smidgen of philosophy, to recognize that any concept is first of all a certain KIND OF CONCEPT, kind of model: The chop things up kind, the hoslitic kind, and the interactional one I tried to show when I said that we're plants and the plant is the water and the light. The last is the functional-interactional KIND I was advertising. 2. And then, secondly, I tried to show that you can pull ANY word or concept off from what you have there, that you are thinking into. If you have something there, and are not asking that just academically, if you've run into something really, drop the word or concept and see where you have to be right, where you do have something, how that is. You can't do that in general but you can do it when something arises from you, or for you as a person that's trying to make sense somewhere. Then it works. You find you have not only the old concept that goes with the word which you've pulled off, but you also have THAT, whatever it is. And DO

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YOUR THINKING AND SPEAKING FROM THAT. Then you're free of the old, poor clunk-concepts. 3. THAT IS ALWAYS AN INTRICACY. And you can go in there, and pull out at least one central strand that you're tracking. Whether you are building a theory or not. Once you get your own strand, you can use any words, even that first one. Now you can make it say how your thing goes.

You were going to say something. (Audience member: I was just going to say that I'm very much what it is way. . . [inaudible]. . . there's a book, "Faces in the Cloud," about different people in psychology, and tracing the theory of how these people experience their lives, and then they came up with this theory. This is sort of the other way around. Making up a theory, then we think it's objective. Well we think that it's secondary process rather primary process. We start with our own theory though that way so that hundreds of years from now somebody isn't going to have to say well Gene Gendlin had this idea because really he was experiencing this, this, and this.) In my experience you can lead life abominably and still have valid spider webs that are very specific where you can go. The kind of surmise those authors draw, they're really crude with that thing. They should be saying that what Gendlin said came from this intricate specific pattern, where you LATER find that you want to say that this now IS what your earlier experience WAS, and yet it is different from what you really had earlier, and still have there in your memory, but not just something else, rather something that "carries forward" what you had. That sort of thing is valid independently of the kind of thing these writers look at. They try to explain composers by what they went through in their life. That doesn't work at all. Composers go to a funny place where their musical infinity opens. They can be lovely or mean people, normal or weird, and yet in there, that opens. The kind of thinking I'm talking about is like that. And when you like to think, you can think further under any circumstances pretty much. Everything else may be going to hell, and you can still sit there and say "Now how does this wrinkle go . .?" All right. Yes, you were going to say something. (Audience member: [inaudible].) Yeah, similar to what Kathy was saying. How do you answer those people? Let's have a special. . . (Audience member: [inaudible]. . . willing to step out those two concepts and try to find a way to get into each other.)
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Well, don't say that, because you're making us the adults and them the children and that's a good way to not communicate from then on. I know that you wouldn't say it to them. I know, but even so, let's say that these clothes don't fit those clothes. And then we're all right. You see what I mean? It's like trying to put, I don't know what. . . (Audience member: Be strong Thomas.) (Audience members: [Many people talking at once].) (Audience member: I. . .not a question of strength. It is a question of. . . introspection. . . what they're trying to say is true. And those people from the experimental psychology who only believe what they can see by statistics. So now, how to get some kind of communication?) That's right. The first thing we want to do is we want to, if you want to get communication is, we want to go looking for what their concepts mean experientially. How can anybody be like that to say that only the results of experiments are to be trusted? That whole kind of language, that's the first job we would have. Everybody has got something. People wouldn't be saying something for no reason. They could be saying it for some reason we can't find, like maybe they're answering some other people and we don't know whom. But it makes a great deal of sense to say lets devise an experiment, for instance about false memories which is what you were just mentioning, right? You can EXPERIENCE that this is your client's thing and not a false memory. (Audience member: [inaudible] I don't believe it will work but all the clinicians. . . statistics, and I think they will not succeed.) No. No, but this is because you need better concepts. And that's where I'm coming in with this thing. What we need to do there is not play defending the people who have the abuse memories against the people who believe in false memories. The concepts are poor. That won't work. It's never going to work. Calm down and ask yourself, WHAT IS YOUR EXPERIENCE THAT CONVINCES YOU? I mean do you just believe all your clients because that's your religion? No. You've got something there. What is it? How come you are so sure the memories of this person in front of you are not false? You worked with her probably or him, and know something that you haven't articulated yet. That's valuable. How can you be so sure? You just love your clients? Is that all it is? No. You have something intricate there, right? And then. . . (Audience member: test. . . [inaudible]. . . stuck in the repression paradigm, and that one won't handle the job. .)

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No, no. None of the old concepts handle really anything. That's why things are so poor. We need to communicate to the society what therapy is. They think it's whatever a therapist imposes on a patient. (Audience member: But also assuming that the people who are in the false memory thing, they also have their concepts name something that is also real.) Certainly. Some so-called "therapies" push things on people. (Audience member: So that you want to give them the time to . . . [everyone talking at once . . . inaudible . . .].) Exactly. What are they locating here? But it doesn't mean that "false memories" exist. Or that true memories exist. Because if you look at memory you'll see it's much more complicated than that. So why is it that Tom believes his client? Well I know why I believe my client. Because I have seen it all emerge bit by bit from this person, and in a certain way. If I had had another therapist sitting there insinuating to my client "Wasn't it true that such and so happened to you," and then my client agreed, I wouldn't believe a thing after that. I would say honestly, I don't know. I don't know if they should be called "false memories," if there is such a thing. I don't know if you can make kids believe these things. I don't know that. I haven't tried that out. I'm an experimental psychologist when it comes to that. Because I don't have any inner knowledge of that. But if you take a person who never thought of that stuff and then it emerges and emerges and emerges, at least I can contribute a simple distinction from client-centered therapy, which is there is a difference between letting a process emerge from the person where you never put any false content in there ever, and a different situation where so-called therapists have a method of suggesting this kind of stuff. And then these "therapists" trust their own judgment, whether what they get is real or not. So, a researcher should at least begin with that. See but there I'm contributing an obvious distinction which would immediately make research possible, where right now research is not possible. There is no standard, therefore there are no statistics. I would like to see some research, comparing kids who have these memories and nobody worked on them and told them about such things, comparing those with kids who were told this stuff by somebody. It's a totally different kind of process. I want to see what the differences are in terms of the situation that existed and so forth. I wouldn't like to do this to kids for the sake of the experiment, I don't think you could. I wouldn't want to. But if this is already going on, this is different. We need to study it. But imagine! In forty years we have communicated so poorly, so few of us made concepts for the society, that most people still don't know about this simple difference, letting things emerge from the person vs. pushing stuff and laying trips on people! Hadn't we better make concepts so we can communicate to society, not just to one person with a private vocabulary the two of us form?
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This simple distinction would let the difference come up fast. If we spend a week working on this thing in this fashion instead of one minute, we could design some research. Rather than fight people who believe in research because we believe in this. Do you see what I mean? But I'm just using what you gave me to help with that. But it's not that false memories exist or not, because there are people there and you're supposed to sympathize with them. It's more like where are they coming from? What is their experience that makes them passionate about this, and then you can hear. Perhaps they saw this stuff pushed on kids. I read about a woman who went for nine years to a "therapist" who was telling her all that time that she was abused. So, finally she found it. Well maybe she really found it and the therapist was right. But I don't have the same confidence in that, as I do if it emerged from inside. It's an utterly different process and every bit of content feels and smells and sounds different, intricate, like nothing one can make up. But the distinction does not appear in public. It isn't there now. It's not part of the public controversy. Isn't that amazing? People think of therapists this other way. So . . . (Audience member: . . . the whole idea of memory really has to be brought down. If the concept of memory doesn't work for some reason. . .) That's right. Memory isn't just a piece of clunk that's there or not there. It has to be brought to exactly, so that's a lovely. I think it's time to stop. I'm ahead and I want to quit. To improve legibility the punctuation and orthography of the text were revised in April, 2007. Eugene T. Gendlin Note to Readers:

How Do I Refer To This Document? An example reference is at the top of this page. Please include the Internet address in the reference, even if you cite the document in a printed article, so that others can find the Gendlin Online Library. Can I Link Directly To This Document? Yes. We encourage you to link directly to it from your own online documents. We have built "hooks" into this web page to make it very easy to connect to individual pages and headings in the text. For examples, see: How to Link to The Gendlin Online Library. Biographic Note: Eugene T. Gendlin is a seminal American philosopher and psychologist. He received his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Chicago and taught there from 1963 to 1995. His philosophical work is concerned especially with the relationship between
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logic and implicit intricacy. Philosophy books include Experiencing and the Creation of Meaning, Language Beyond Post-Modernism: Saying and Thinking in Gendlin's Philosophy edited by David Michael Levin, (fourteen commentaries and Gendlins replies), and A Process Model. There is a world wide network of applications and practices (http://www.focusing.org) stemming from this philosophy. Gendlin has been honored three times by the American Psychological Association for his development of Experiential Psychotherapy. He was a founder and editor for many years of the Associations Clinical Division Journal, Psychotherapy: Theory, Research and Practice. His book Focusing has sold over half a million copies and has appeared in seventeen languages. His psychology-related books are Let Your Body Interpret Your Dreams and Focusing-Oriented Psychotherapy. If you see any faults in this document please send us an email. Add a comment to the Gendlin Online Blog for this article. See the reference for this document in the Gendlin primary bibliography. More on Focusing from the Focusing Institute website. More on Philosophy of the Implicit from the Focusing Institute website.

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Focusing Home > Gendlin Online Library > The difference between focusing and self-hypnosis

Gendlin, E.T. (1979). The difference between focusing and self-hypnosis. Unpublished manuscript (18 pp.). From http://www.focusing.org/gendlin/docs/gol_2033.html [Page 1] The Difference Between Focusing and Self-Hypnosis by Eugene T. Gendlin, Ph.D., University of Chicago Very different processes are valuable in human life, therefore defining differences does not at all mean denigrating one in order to recommend the others. It seems quite clear that no one modality of attending to, or working with
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oneself is enough. In recent years more and more people are becoming able to be quite specific about inward activities. A vast terrain, once esoteric has opened up to people generally. Specific differences can also illuminate that terrain. Focusing is the process of attending to the bodily sensed "edge" of a problem, situation, or concern. People and their living are not made up of discrete defined units. There is always more to us, more is always involved in any bit of living, than we can clearly say or think. There is more than those few, rather familiar inward "contents" on which we can clearly reflect. There is also always a directly sensed complexity which is not at all clear. People could not change, problems could not be solved, if one works only with what is already clear. Any problem can be shown to be irresolvable, any difficult situation can be shown to be impossible, if one is closed to the implicit complexity, if one wants only to work with the already cutand defined pieces. But it is difficult, and unfamiliar to pay direct attention to what is as yet only sensed, only a bodily unease. One's attention must descend into the body. It requires some degree of relaxation, and quietude. On the GSR something like the same increased skin resistance is found, as with hypnosis. There needs to be a cessation of thinking at least for some [Page 2] brief periods. Then, after some time (half a minute or a minute) during which a person's attention is with the sensed complexity, there is what we term a "felt shift." A directly sensed bodily easing, relief, release, is unmistakably experienced, and thereafter the problem is also different. This felt shift involves a further relaxation. The similarities with self-hypnosis are therefore considerable. Some research comparing focusing and hypnosis (Platt, 1971) also found some relationships, as well as differences . In specifying the differences we can hope to understand both focusing and selfhypnosis more exactly, or at least we can hope to formulate some new questions. In focusing one speaks to one's inwardness, but then one waits for the bodily response to that. One expects that response to be different than what one said. For example: "I think it's fine to go ahead and reach out to someone, to begin a relationship with a stranger." In saying this, in focusing, one would wait, and expect to sense one's whole problem with this. Having said that it's fine, the sense of "not fine" will come, in a wholistic way. I will explain this more exactly later. In hypnosis, by contrast, one also speaks to one's inwardness, but one expects one's "suggestion" to be taken on by the body, and obeyed. In self-hypnosis one stills the body first, one narrows the sense of the whole situation so that the suggestions can enter. Such suggestions by-pass the usual wholistic sense of the context and all its difficulties.
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Of course one may do hypnosis just for the relaxation, and a broadly helpful effect is claimed just from that, and is quite probably true. Also, to be able to relax deeply in certain tension-arousing situations can be helpful. But there is a marked contrast between self-hypnosis and focusing. In hypnosis, either everything is dropped so that there is no focus on a [Page 3] specific concern, or the direction in working on a given concern is all from the conscious to the body, whereas in focusing the direction goes both ways. One might focus on a broad life problem, perhaps "My whole experience with human relationships," or it might be very specific, "That funny way Jim said 'I'll see ya,' what was odd about that?" Either way there will be a great complexity sensed all in one whole, involving much past experience, many other people, what one was trying to do just then, or trying to avoid, what led up to that moment, and so on. Focusing stems from psychotherapy researcha series of studies found that clients can be predicted to fail even from a few tape-recorded segments early in the case, if the EXP level is low. The EXP Scale measures the extent to which the person on the tape exhibits direct sensing of an as yet unclear complexity.One can observe this, for instance, when someone says something, then falls silent, then says: "No, that isn't what I said. I can't say it yet, but it isn't what I said." Metaphoric ways of speaking also refer to "that odd sense it gives me, when . . ." and there are other observable marks. The challenge of the research finding was to teach failure-predicted clients to engage in this crucially lacking process. Everyone can say much about any problem. Also, given certain states of relaxation, much content comes. But focusing specifically requires the bodily sensed complexity, in a wholistic way. When one attends in a certain way, one can sense this, and it often has meanings quite other than those one has been telling oneself. [Page 4] A second difference: focusing requires attending at a level "lower" than the ordinary, but not as "low" as hypnosis. Focusing might be said to be at the entry level to hypnosis, if such a way of speaking can be used. Let me explain this more exactly: In hypnosis, it is well known that goingin and out is very unpleasant, almost torture. It is all right to go into hypnosis and soon back out again and perhaps in again, but going back and forth very often in a short time is painful. In focusing, on the other hand, one is not as deep, in fact not "deep" to any degree. Rather, one stands, fully in ordinary consciousness, just at the doorway to altered states. One lets the sense of the whole concern come and this letting-come is a relaxation of ego control. But the next moment one is fully
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present, in an ordinary and active way, to receive whatever came. There is not an oscillation between a deep place and a return to another, more ordinary place, ratherone stands in one and the same "place," alternately letting, and being active . Now I know that this description as I have given it, and what I will further say, raises a number of questions about how hypnosis should be conceived. I am glad to raise these questions. I don't wish to make any assumptions or conclusions about hypnosis. Therefore, if my description shows me to be thinking about hypnosis in some way that is controversial, let the question be raised and not necessarily answered in this paper. Focusing does not work when relaxation is at all deep. For example, when one has difficulty falling asleep, and one wishes to focus on what is keeping one tense, one must sit up in bed. Focusing can not be done while lying in that state which I describe as: "Every part of you is asleep. . .except you. You are wide awake inside." In that state, although one feels wide awake, there is a greatdegree of relaxation. Similarly, when during focusing something like sleep comes, one has to set the sleep [Page 5] aside. Also, sometimes during focusing, there is a wish to slide, a suction toward being totally passive. This needs to be noted, accepted, one must actively be friendly to this wish, one must say: "Oh, yes, there is that suction to just slumping." But one must not slump. Else focusing stops. I will show more exactly why that is. Meditation, also, despite being a fully alert state, involves something like the kind of relaxation I am describing: one cannot usually focus within meditation, one must move one's shoulders a little, open one's eyes, wait till the sparkles wear off. Then one can focus on whatever it is that has been disturbing the meditation. (Of course, the word "meditation" is often used so that it could include what I here called coming out of meditation.) The second difference I wish to discuss is thus, that focusing is at the entry point to, but not in to, altered states, of which hypnosis is one. So far it might seem that all is quite clear. Focusing is on a bodily way of living a particular concern, and it is on the entry level, not deeper. Now I wish to use these differences to lead to rather central questions about the nature of hypnosis and about focusing. What is this "active receiving" which focusing needs, and why does it need that? Why does hypnosis make this active receiving impossible? And is there only one continuum of "lower" or "deeper"?

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Let me first explain this active aspect of focusing. As an example, let me discuss just the first (preparatory) movement of focusing, something that is often but not always done before one focuses on a specific concern. The first movement of focusing is called "making a space." Rather than working on the problem that bothers most, and rather than working on anything [Page 6] at all, one senses in the body whether or not one is feeling all fine about life. Everything is going well. Now, it just about never happens that one finds this true. Nearly always there are a few things the body is carrying, a few "cramps" that come, at such a question, and essentially say, "No. Not fine. This way." Once one knows focusing, it becomes remarkable that we go about, all day, carrying stress and tension with us, the body retaining some life problems and some trivial things too, hour after hour, routinely. Having asked "Do I feel all fine about my life," the first unease has come. "Oh yes, that." Making space consists in putting what has come down, in a friendly way. "Oh, yes. That's there. That is a problem. Can't fix it all at once. Might work on that later." One makes a space, quite near oneself but at some distance, where that whole thing can wait. Usually one gets a breath, some relief. This might be as one is putting the whole thing down, or at the next moment. At the next moment one asks: "How would I feel if this weren't a problem, or except for this, aside from this, how would I feel?" One must wait, of course. It takes a few seconds, then there is a change in the body , a breath, a movement of new energy. Feeling much better, one again askingly says, "I feel all fine about life, except for that. . .?" and another thing comes. Perhaps it is small, some silly thing one had said earlier in the day. "OK, that still bothers me. Right. Yes. Uhmhm." Again one makes a space for it to be in, maybe later one will come back to see what still bothers. "Except for that, am I fine?" Sometimes there is also a background feeling, some way one constantly feels, always gray, always trying hard, always running scared. If that is taken out too, and placed as a "something," and again the shift in the [Page 7] body is experienced, there is usuallyat the end of this seriesa very large fresh wide open space, that has spiritual overtones. Throughout this first movement of focusing one does not work on anything. Sometimes what comes does give one a step or two, but that is accidental. One is only "making space." Thus the first difference we cited, between focusing and hypnosis, doesn't seem to apply. This first movement is not about one problem or concern. Especially the wide space reached at the end is not about anything.

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Yet it is different from self-hypnosis. Let me be very specific about these differences: First we notice that attention is focused in the body , in the middle of the body, and about life or how things are going. (It isn't merely body attention, not just some fluid feeling here or there that isn't related to anything.) In hypnosis, on the other hand, one loses one's sense of the body. For example, if one cannot get completely comfortable in the chair, soon one no longer feels the discomfort, as the warmth of hypnosis spreads and anesthetizes. Similarly, if one comes into hypnosis tense from the day's events, these are not taken out of the body. Instead, one loses track of the way the body is cramped by them. It is my contention that the body nevertheless retains the "cramp" of each such problem, despite my losing consciousness of it (or never even getting a consciousness of it). I don't mean that exactly the same "felt sense of the problem" is in the body, as forms during focusing. No, that wholistic body sense forms during focusing, it isn't just there, waiting. But the bodily condition from which it forms, that is there. It is perfectly possible to "relax" in one respect, and yet retain the cramp in the body in some other respects. But this distinction, if correct, is of great interest to us in thinking about this whole terrain! [Page 8] Just as a person might be very relaxed, and nevertheless too tense to fall asleep, so also one can be in meditation or in hypnosis, not be thinking about the problem at all, and yet it might color the experience and be part of the bodily process. In fact, during altered states an endless string of representations, instances, even amplifications of something unresolved can continue to come, whereas a few minutes of focusing could release the body from carrying that. The bodily attention is therefore basic, at least until there is a release, a change in the body in relation to that concern. Only then is there notjust a non-thinking about it, but also a concretely bodily released kind of relaxation. I do not know if this is so with every problem or concern that the body carries. Perhaps some are released in hypnosis, others not. There may even be times when one fails to focus successfully for some reason or other, and self-hypnosis or some similar process does release the body's tension. I am sure only that there are times when the color and quality of a relaxed content-less state is burdened and affected by what the body still carries, despite a deep state of altered consciousness and relaxation.

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We must therefore begin to make distinctions even though they are new and cannot as yet be quite clear or correct. There is not just one "up- down" continuum. This was already shown for meditation by those studies that found meditation masters able to be fully alert despite deep meditation, while novices were certainly also deep along some continuum, yet not alert on another continuum. And there may be more than two continua here. We already know that sleep and hypnosis differ. One can be very deep in hypnosis and it is nothing like sleep. In some very important respect one is fully alert in hypnosis, but in another respect one is not. [Page 9] Let me leave this question of different continua open. I want to continue my discussion by taking up the question of active and passive. One can be fully alert, but passive. Let me say exactly what I mean. When passive, more content can emerge. One can find imagery, feelings, memories, odd states coming . (My word "coming" always indicates that something comes of its own accord, uncontrolled, not deliberate.) But although more comes, one can do less about it. That is what I mean by "passive." Much "goes by." In contrast, notice the "active" procedure of making a space, asking deliberately within the body, how would it feel, if. . ., deliberately waiting. . . My point is that only in response to these deliberate moves does the felt shift in focusing come although of course it does come of its own accord. One must let it come, but the setting into which it comes is quite deliberate. Similarly, when something has come, what do I mean by saying that "passive" means one cannot do anything about it? What is there to do about something that has come? There is a quite deliberate receiving, a stance one takes toward what comes, much as when someone came to one's door. "Come in," one would say, "have a seat. Wait here. I'll be right back." Actively one would direct the visitor to a chair, place the visitor there, indicate that the visit is welcome, assert oneself as separate from the visitor, go back into the house to finish what one was doing, and return again. So also, when focusing on a problem. The second movement of focusing is to let a felt sense of the whole problem form. Again, this isn't just there, it requires the active asking and the making of a setting. "Do I feel all right about this whole thing?" (Of course one doesn't. One knows that. It's a problem. But trying it out, within the body, in this way, soon brings.) Something that comes in the body is the answer. It is a [Page 10] wholistic sense. The whole thing is "not all right" in just this uniquely sensed way. It forms in the body as a new whole.

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This wholistic felt sense doesn't form, if one is lying wide awake but nearly asleep in other aspects. One can ask, but nothing happens. There is nothing in the body that comes, and then shifts. When the felt sense has formed, the next move is to "get a handle on it," that is to say an image or a word, or a phrase. And when one has that, the next move is to "resonate" this "handle." Here again the active character of focusing is very marked: Of course one remembers one's word or phrase or image, which one has gotten just a moment ago. But it is something else to "resonate" it. This involves saying the words, or placing the image as it were once more freshly before oneself (or, one might say, placing it before one's body), and attending in the body, awaiting what signal, what response, what shift will come there, in the body. Usually, if the "handle" fits, there is again a bodily response, a slight or major easing, a stirring, something shifting. And this is what one cannot do in the more passive condition of self-hypnosis, so far as I know it. It is quite important not to be confused about mere words and names. If someone wishes to use the word "hypnosis" in a broader way, then I have no objection at all. Perhaps any "descent" in this general way is hypnosis. Perhaps there are then different kinds of hypnosis. Similarly, I am aware that the word "meditation" is often used for anything whatever, that one does, while "sitting" with a meditative intent. Especially with meditation, it helps to use the word that way, so as not to get involved in worrisome issues as to whether one is "really" now meditating or not. Used broadly, focusing can certainly be a kind of meditation. But the distinctions we need in order to understand this whole terrain better, must be clarified anyway. [Page 11] Finally, the last movement of focusing is to "ask." Using the "handle" to bring the bodily sensed whole back again, one asks it what it is. Of course it must first return, or one cannot ask it . To get that return is again an active move. "Can I still feel it, if I say . . . (whatever the handle was) . . .?" Then one must wait, till, "Oh, yes, there it is again. Now what is that?" Of course I cannot here present all the specifics of focusing. There are many other moves one can make here, if this general asking fails to produce a shift. We have worked out just what to do for certain difficulties (a number of which occur pretty regularly for different people). There are many specifics covered in my new book (Gendlin, 1978). But my point here is, that the asking move is again active in this specific way I am defining here. Even the awaiting of the shift, the sensing and waiting to see if there is one, is an active, deliberate, controlled move. But then, of course, the "answer" is not in words (or, at first it isn't in words). Rather, it is a shift that comes , a change in the felt sense itself.
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Currently it is fashionable to extol the right brain, to denigrate thinking, to believe in letting, in passivity, in the self that is wider than the ego. And, indeed, as I said at the outset, change is not possible only with what is deliberate and under the control of the ego. Indeed, one must let. But this alone is an oversimplification. Focusing is not a process of the right brain, butif you likea conversation between the right and left brain in which each must relate to the other. Focusing is not an absence of thinking, but a responsive thinking, in which what comes bodily is each time received, and responded to. [Page 12] Indeed, what comes must be let come, it cannot be manufactured, manipulated, controlled. But a flow of events going by is not focusing. The other side is equally needed, from the start, in a focusing process. The fascination with altered states should not deter us from understanding the central entry level. I do not claim for focusing that it is ultimate, it is not. I care very much for the spiritual dimensions that open from the wide space that focusing leads to. But that entry level is a crucial central location in this terrain. It seems to me that the sense of "active" which I have defined in terms of focusing moves, is obviated as one enters further or deeper into altered states. I am not certain of this in every way. I am judging from too few cases, and from ordinary people. The relation to bodily awareness has to be studied; how does hypnosis relate to it? Breathing deeply can involve bodily awareness, certainly. In focusing it is what comes in the body in regard to a certain problem, concern, or topic. It might not be a problem. It can be '"what I would like to write," if I am about to write a story. It might be simply what bothers me just now, without any preparatory first movement. But I believe that just turning away from it all, not thinking about it, and letting one's mind float, is fundamentally different from the released open space focusing can open. EEG correlates of the felt shift in focusing (in one published study [Don, N.S., 1977] that needs replication) were those known to accompany deep imagery (theta) but with a beta pattern indicative of the fact that there was not imagery. Theta is one end of the alpha scale, but differs from the usual alpha very importantly. Theta goes with imagery emerging from deep "unconscious" layers, whereas alpha in its usual range is [Page 13] associated with merely floating, thinking of nothing in particular. Thus the EEG bears out that difference. Would

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it bear out a difference between self-hypnosis and focusing? I think the beta part of the pattern would. Some years ago, in a theoretical piece on Personality Change (Gendlin, 1964), I wrote that ordinary recognition and reaction depends on our having a fully ongoing experiencing process that gives an "apperceptive mass." That oldfashioned term was meant to name the stock of past experience from out of which we recognize anything that comes along. This "stock" doesn't consist of separate file folders, of course, not of separate units, but of past experience functioning fluidly , seamlessly, to give us an appropriate sense of the present . YesI intend this sentence. One ongoing experience is both past experiencing functioning now, and it also is our experience of the present. (Otherwise the present would be obstructed by images and memories of the past. One would miss what is going on now.) As experiencing is narrowed, as interaction is narrowed, this apperceptive mass is narrowed as well. In dreams, in hypnosis, one does not always have the full context, the fully ongoing apperceptive mass. Therefore words are often taken literally during hypnosis, while taken normally otherwise; for example, tell people in hypnosis to "raise your hand," and they will lift their hand from the wrist. Normally, of course, it means lifting up one's arm. In dreams quite often words are used literally. Self-hypnosis rarely descends to levels where this becomes dramatic, but even a little stilling of ongoing interaction is enough to prevent the whole felt sense forming. That whole sense requires for its formation the fully ongoing experiencing process. How is it possible, that in focusing there is this fully ongoing [Page 14] interactional living, even though focusing too requires quiet, and pulling out of ordinary interaction? There is a different kind of process here, fully ongoing "interaction" in a new sense. Focusing stems from psychotherapy and was long used just for personal problems. More recently it has been used in creative writing (to focus on the sense of how one wishes to come across, before beginning to write), before meditation, before job interviews, in healing, and in many other settings. Children in school can be helped with their most difficult subject, by focusing on their sense of difficulty. ("I have no trouble at all with this subject . . . right? . . . Ah, there's that queasy feeling . . .") Focusing can be very deep (Mayer, 1976; Olsen, 1976) and can bring up contents very like those found in hypnosis, autogenic imagery, and other states. More usually, it involves imagery but of a more immediate kind. Either way the whole person's reception, recognition, and stance in relation to what comes, is

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always vital and immediate. In hypnosis that aspect, called "integrating," has to be done later. But might we turn our examination of this relation around? Is there perhaps some hypnosis involved in focusing, even if focusing is a more specific and elaborate process? All this "coming" during focusing, is it not a result of the suggested expectation that something will come? Do the body-signals and the felt sense come because one expects it to? Once learned, is it not through selfhypnosis? Platt (1971) found that anything but a slight bit of relaxation obstructs focusing. I have tried to show why. How much relaxation is 'slight"? I would say one criterion is whether it is an effort to come out or up again, to the level of ordinary responding which one needs to receive and place what has come. If that is difficult, there is too much relaxation of the sort that obstructs focusing. It could very well be that this is only one kind, and that there cannot be "too much" of some other [Page 15] kind of depth along these continua. (I think there are several, as I have explained.) Muramoto (1971) had focusing instructions read to subjects while under hypnosis. He found focusing instructions "made hypnosis more productive and refreshing" in comparison to a control group that received only hypnosis. He used the Osgood and a tree drawing before and after. In his study, therefore, some effect of focusing was possible during hypnosis, or more exactly, the focusing instructions had a measurable effect on the pre and post tests. Weiss-King (1979) found meditation significantly helpful to the learning of focusing. These two studies throw doubt on my contention that one cannot focus once one has gone into relaxation further than the entry level. But Platt found the effect I am thinking of, since in her study only very slight hypnosis was helpful. Muramoto does not have evidence that focusing occurred during hypnosis, only that there was some effect of the focusing instructions. And, certainly, in order to learn meditation one must learn a "coming down" which is part of focusing. Many meditators have an initial difficulty with focusing: at first they go "straight down all the way," as soon as they begin. I sometimes advise them to stand leaning against the wall, to help them remain at (what I term) the entry level, rather than going on down. There is another metaphor I use for this entry level: It is like opening a trap door and then sitting on the edge with one's feet dangling down. Anything can come up from beneath, but one is staying on the ordinary level, to receive it and place it.

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But if there are several continua of "down," can we begin to [Page 16] distinguish them? The first distinction might be that between the masters and the novices in the famous study I already cited. One learns to remain ordinary and active on one of these continua, while going down on the other. My trap-door image makes that distinction in a way, since being open is all the way down in one sense, and staying on the entry level in another sense. How the body is sensed is another difference. On one continuum, if one opens all the way down, one senses the body more finely and more meaningfully. On the other, "going down" means becoming impervious to the body. And just this is one of the major differences between focusing and hypnosis as usually done. Finally, let us look at the difference in terms of the question of defenses. In hypnosis the defenses are circumvented by narrowing the ongoing process and thereby stilling the interpretive apperceptive mass. Content comes, but one does not fully appreciate its meaning. (That has to be done later, after hypnosis.) Suggestions are effective because the usual interpretive apparatus is by-passed. In focusing the defenses are obviated by the creation of a space in which one can "stand next to"not the problem as usually felt, but something new: the newly formed felt sense of the whole, a bodily sense, a palpable unease. Then, when recognizable content comes from it, one fully recognizes that content, one has remained active and able to do so. Also, one again "places" what comes in a space, as if to let it wait. ("That's more than I can handle all at once . . .") Being "next to" what comes enables one to live differently in relation to a problem even before the defenses have changed. Therefore one can engage in focusing at [Page 17] a time when one could not yet "deal with" the problem in any other good way. I hope this discussion can help us map this whole terrain with more distinctions. At any rate I feel sure that the level on which focusing occurs, the entry point to altered statesbut not yet into them, is a crucial central spot in that terrain. Onehas control of the door, one can let it be open, a new space can be created in which the bodily sense of a whole concern can come, and can shift. And there is an opening to a very large space as well. BIBLIOGRAPHY Don, N.S. (1977). Transformation of conscious experience and its EEG correlates. Journal of Altered States of Consciousness, 3(2), 147-168. Gendlin, E.T. (1978). Focusing. New York: Everest House.

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Gendlin, E. T. (1964). A theory of personality change. In P. Korchel & D. Byrne (Eds.), Personality change. New York: Wiley. Mayer, M.H. (1976). A holistic perspective on meaning and identity: Astrological metaphor as a language of personality in psychotherapy. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Humanistic Psychology Institute. Muramoto, S. (1971). Saimin kenkyuu. (Japanese Journal of Hypnosis). Olsen, L.E. (1975). The use of visual images and experiential focusing in psychotherapy. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Chicago. Platt, A.B. (1971). The utilization of hypnosis to facilitate focusing ability. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Chicago. Weiss-King, J. (1978). The effects of meditation on experiential focusing. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Northwestern University. Eugene T. Gendlin Note to Readers:

How Do I Refer To This Document? An example reference is at the top of this page. Please include the Internet address in the reference, even if you cite the document in a printed article, so that others can find the Gendlin Online Library. Can I Link Directly To This Document? Yes. We encourage you to link directly to it from your own online documents. We have built "hooks" into this web page to make it very easy to connect to individual pages and headings in the text. For examples, see: How to Link to The Gendlin Online Library. Biographic Note: Eugene T. Gendlin is a seminal American philosopher and psychologist. He received his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Chicago and taught there from 1963 to 1995. His philosophical work is concerned especially with the relationship between logic and implicit intricacy. Philosophy books include Experiencing and the Creation of Meaning, Language Beyond Post-Modernism: Saying and Thinking in Gendlin's Philosophy edited by David Michael Levin, (fourteen commentaries and Gendlins replies), and A Process Model. There is a world wide network of applications and practices (http://www.focusing.org) stemming from this philosophy. Gendlin has been honored three times by the American Psychological Association for his development of Experiential Psychotherapy. He was a founder and editor for many years of the Associations Clinical Division Journal,
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Psychotherapy: Theory, Research and Practice. His book Focusing has sold over half a million copies and has appeared in seventeen languages. His psychology-related books are Let Your Body Interpret Your Dreams and Focusing-Oriented Psychotherapy. If you see any faults in this document please send us an email. Add a comment to the Gendlin Online Blog for this article. See the reference for this document in the Gendlin primary bibliography. More on Focusing-Oriented Psychotherapy from the Focusing Institute website. More on Focusing from the Focusing Institute website. The Gendlin Online Library is presented by the Focusing Institute, a not-for-profit organization. If you find the library useful, you can contribute to its maintenance and growth, at http://www.focusing.org/gendlin/gol_donations.asp.

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Focusing Home > Gendlin Online Library > The small steps of the therapy process: How they come ...

Gendlin, E.T. (1990). The small steps of the therapy process: How they come and how to help them come. In G. Lietaer, J. Rombauts & R. Van Balen (Eds.), Client-centered and experiential psychotherapy in the nineties, pp. 205-224. Leuven: Leuven University Press. From http://www.focusing.org/gendlin/docs/gol_2110.html [Page 205] THE SMALL STEPS OF THE THERAPY PROCESS: HOW THEY COME AND HOW TO HELP THEM COME [1] Eugene T. GENDLIN University of Chicago, U.S.A THE PRIMACY OF HUMAN PRESENCE I want to start with the most important thing I have to say: The essence of working with another person is to be present as a living being. And that is lucky,
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because if we had to be smart, or good, or mature, or wise, then we would probably be in trouble. But, what matters is not that. What matters is to be a human being with another human being, to recognize the other person as another being in there. Even if it is a cat or a bird, if you are trying to help a wounded bird, the first thing you have to know is that there is somebody in there, and that you have to wait for that "person," that being in there, to be in contact with you. That seems to me to be the most important thing. So, when I sit down with someone, I take my troubles and feelings and I put them over here, on one side, close, because I might need them. I might want to go in there and see something. And I take all the things that I have learnt client-centered therapy, reflection, focusing, Gestalt, psychoanalytic concepts and everything else (I wish I had even more)and I put them over here, on my other side, close. Then I am just here, with my eyes, and there is this other being. If they happen to look into my eyes, they will see that I am just a shaky being. I have to tolerate that. They may not look. But if they do, they will see that. They will see the slightly shy, slightly withdrawing, insecure existence that I am, I have learnt that that is O.K. I do not need to be emotionally secure and firmly present. I just need to be present. There are no qualifications for the kind of person I must be. What is wanted for the big therapy process, the big development process is a person who will be present. And so I have gradually become convinced that even I can be that. Even though I have my doubts when I am by myself, in some objective sense I know I am a person. And then it is true that I reach in for a lot of different things. But [Page 206] when it gets murky and I am not sure I am connected to the other person, then I do not reach in for these things, then I must reflect that person's meanings and stay very close, so that the connection re-establishes. When the client is going around in circles and does not touch down inside, then I might offer a bit of how to do "focusing." And if I see that there is too much focusing, and a sort of "internality" without enough energy coming out, then I might do something like "Gestalt," or I might just express myself, or I might do any number of things. I may express my feeling, but I always know that it is just my feeling. I do not know yet what is coming from that person. The minute something goes wrong I go right back to trying to sense this person; to what is happening. Because this is another being, a different being. When I think back to the struggle that Carl had with non-directive reflecting, always trying to drop whatever it was he had written, to re-establish the reality of the contact, I feel I am following in his footsteps. He dropped non-directive and he made it client-centered, he dropped client-centered and made it personcentered. First he had the method of reflecting, then he said: "No that is not it, it

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is the attitudes ..." But we could take his three attitudes and get very technical about them. He would say: "No, no, it is person-centered." So this is my way of saying that: Do not let focusing, or reflecting, or anything else get in between. Do not use it as an in-between. Do not say: "I can stay here because I have my reflecting-method, I have my ping-pong-paddle, so you cannot get me. You say something? You get it back." There is a sense that we are armed, you see. We have methods; we know focusing; we have credentials; we have doctors. We have all this stuff and so it is easy for us to sit there with stuff in between. Do not let it be in between; put it out of the way. You can have at least as much courage as the client has. If not, I would be ashamed of myself, with all the stuff that I have, if I still cannot really look when this person can. So I want to be there in that same way. ThatI thinkis the first job we have. And on the question what we clientcentered people need to do now, on this, also, I think the first thing we need to do is to communicate that attitude. That is so necessary in a field that is becoming more and more "professional," which is to say useless and expensive. [Page 207] CLIENT-CENTERED REFLECTING AS A BASELINE FOR USING ANY OTHER METHOD The second thing we need is to communicate the "empathic response," to communicate client-centered reflecting to those who use other methods, and we need to add many other methods to our own. I have always said that clientcentered reflecting is a necessary baseline, for using other things. If you do not have that, then you cannot stay in touch with the person. If you do not constantly ask "Oh you did not like that?" or "Oh something funny happened now"; if you do not constantly stop and check, then using any other method is going to be bad. Certainly that includes focusing. I mean, the minute it clouds up and the person looks like: "What are you doing to me?," you have to stop whatever you are doing and you have to say: "You did not like that?" "Something went wrong?" "What just happened?" And then you must listen. Also, as soon as something works, or the moment a step comes in the client, we must stop and listen responsively, just to that. The client-centered reflecting-method is the central thing with which to use everything else. But what I want to tell that you have not heard is that we must add clientcentered listening to the other methods. It is unbelievable that after all these years, we have totally failed to communicate client-centered listening in such a way that the other practitioners could have it. How can they go so long without it? How can they be so stupid? But then, I realize, that is largely our fault. We
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have told them that if one does client-centered listening, then one does nothing else, so, of course, they cannot have it, because they are already doing something else and they know that that is helpful. They are not going to give that up. They cannot "unknow" what they know. It is important to communicate the client-centered reflection method as something that one can add to whatever one is doing. We can tell them that some of us do nothing else; that is how powerful this thing is. Some of us prefer to do nothing but that. Others among us combine many things. So they can add this thing to whatever they are doing. That is the way to communicate the reflection-method. And if the others try it even a few times, then they will discover what we know. [Page 208] HUMAN NATURE: IMPOSED FORM VERSUS AN ORDER OF STEPS The third job we have, is to communicate how very different our philosophical assumptions are, compared to everything else in the field. I have recently gone into this more and more. Some of the theories I thought I respected, make assumptions that I never realized they did. I see now that this has been the difficulty in communicating with a lot of people, not just my difficulty but all of our difficulty. 1. The psychoanalytic concepts assume that the body has no behavioral order at all; that it has a fixed biological machinery, but no behavioral organization. To put it in Freud's terms: The "Id" consists of unorganized drive-energies. In order for that "cauldron" (he also calls it) of drive energies to dischargethat is his term for doing somethingthe body requires the social patterns. Every human actionhe assumesis patterned by patterns which are imposed from the outside, on the body. We have been arguing with them for years about imposing things on clients, but look deeper. There is nothing but imposed organization in that theory! That is the only kind of order there is. The body is assumed to have no order for behavior, and no interaction from itself. As most of you know, I am also in philosophy (Gendlin, 1962/1970). In the last ten years or so, my philosophical colleagues have discovered psychotherapy; but the psychotherapy they have discovered is of course psychoanalytic psychotherapy. They love Freud because he comes from the same assumptions that they know. All orderas they think about itis imposed order. All order consists of patterns which are put on the body. The only kind of order they conceive of is some sort of forms. It used to be relational forms, now it has become social forms. That also makes cultural relativism pervasive. Sometimes it is not even mentioned because it seems so obvious. Obviously, people are different in different cultures. There is no bodily organization of behavior. There is only what the different cultures impose. There are only different forms of
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"human." There is no "human nature." If we do not think that, then we are not only silly, but unconscious of our own cultural programming. We are unconscious of how controlled we are. We have internalized the social patterns so deeply that we then discover them inside, and think we are free. This is a serious question. If we say that persons and bodies have an internal selforganizing, they will have pity [Page 209] for us. How can we show, how can we even know, when we are externally programmed, and when not? From Descartes to Heidegger (whom I like a lot) there are only cultural humans; there is no human. Heidegger talks with a Japanese scholar. He tells him: We cannot talk with each other. We have to be very careful because nothing we say is the same. Everything is totally different. It would be all right to say that cultures differ, but he thinks that everything is totally different because there is nothing under that: No body, and no person. Now, the only order is imposed forms. But now, my philosophical colleagues are questioning forms, which for them means that they are questioning everything. Now, they have nothing. They are all saying that there is no human subject. What they are really saying is: They do not know how to think about human subjects. But there are people who can, and that is you. I would like you to take that job on. The philosophical community has not discovered psychotherapy other than psychoanalysis yet. They have not heard from you yet. I think they should. I think you should know that right now they are in a very "open" position to hear you because they have exhausted what they have, and they cannot think about themselves and each other. It is an interesting juncture and I urge you to find some philosophers and talk to them. With Carl Rogers we have been pioneers for thirty years. Now people have caught up almost to the point where they might be able to hear us. 2. Now I want to tell you of my philosophical model. I want to talk about a kind of order that is not "forms." There is another kind of order; persons and bodies have that other kind. It is not forms stamped on, not patterns, shapes, distinct, fixed laws. Instead, it is an "order of steps." Let me say what kind of steps I mean. There is this rhythm in client-centered therapy: First, the client says something. You say it back and get it wrong. Then they correct it. You accept the correction and they say: "Yes, that is right... but, not completely..." They give you the next tightening. You take that in, too. Then they say, "Yes," with a breath of relief. And then there is a characteristic silence there. And in that silence, the next thing comes. Usually that next thing is deeper, perhaps not every time. You reflect that, again they correct it, you include the correction, they add a

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specification, you include that too. Again there is a breath, a sighand that silence. [Page 210] That silence is very characteristic. When I teach listening in a round, in class, I point it out. Each student is listened to by the one on the right. Each one talks untilthat silence comes. After a very few silent moments, the student says "I am finished, go on to the next person." I tell the class: "Notice the silence that comes there. It is part of what listening is for. What you had ready to say has been heard and responded to. Now you have nothing to say, and yet you sense the problem. It is not all resolved, of course. You have an unclear sense of it right there an unclear edge. You sense it physically, without more words. Here, in class, you do not want to let the others wait, so you say "Go on to the next person." But when you are alone with your therapist-partner, then I hope you will stay in that silence, with that unclear sense, right there, until the next thing comes, from it. The word "focusing" means to spend time, attending to that inwardly sensed edge. When that happens in the silence, the next thing and the next come gradually from deeper and deeper. Some clients talk all the time, and skip that silence. Some use the silence only to think of something to say. Some feel only the same emotions, over and over. Just talking and expressing does help, and change-steps can come in conversation, and in other ways, inadvertentlybut often they do not. When the client passes by all the meaningful spots, you might slow the pace, just by reflecting more slowly, perhaps one spot several times. You might sometimes ask clients what they sense, directly, here, in the middle of the body. Also, it is not intrusive to say that we can stay with that unclear edge, there, where the whole thing feels not O.K. I often say: "It's all right to stay here a while, just to sense that." These are bits of focusing-instructions given during therapy interviews. In Belgium I learned that some therapists arrange to teach focusing to each other's clients, outside therapy (Leijssen, 1989). In Chicago, too, we have taught focusing to clients in week-end workshops. We found it extremely helpful to the ongoing therapy. There are many ways to teach focusing. I use every method I ever learned on a client-centered baseline. I give bits of focusing-instruction during the sessions. But I can understand that you might be opposed to doing that. On the other hand, I know that you are not against people attending to the sensed edge, where these steps arise. In that sense no one is opposed to focusing. Whether and how to teach it is an issue.

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We also need to train our therapists to recognize and respond to [Page 211] focusing, since it often happens naturally. Some therapists do not understand when a client refers to a felt edge. Instead of pointing the response there, these therapists miss that sensed intricacy, which cannot yet be said. They bring everything back only to round, closed, common notions and named feelings. It gets in the way (Hendricks, 1986). Now I want to turn to the philosophical question about which I am urging you to communicate with philosophers (Gendlin, 1987). They think that when a client says something pathological, seemingly irrational, or exhibits some deficit, you must impose some better pattern. The philosophers think that such steps can only be imposed on experience, by the therapist. You have all listened to such steps. What comes has a characteristic novelty and intricacy. You can tell that neither you nor the client could have invented them. The philosophers think that aside from the socially imposed rationality there is nothing else in people but irrationality. You have often noticed something else: Such steps do not follow by logic, and yet they make sensewe can follow them. They have a certain kind of order, different from logic and from irrationality, something deeper, more exact, more specific, more intricate; maybe not everytime but often. We are well acquainted with that "order of steps." I call it "carrying forward." It changes as it moves forward. "An order of steps," or you can say: "An order of carrying forward." When you look back from the fourth or the fifth or the seventeenth step, back to where that began, that seemingly silly, wrong or pathological thing or deficit, you will not remember all the turns it took. But, on a tape you can see the steps I am talking about. Those steps have a continuity, but it is not a logical continuity. It is not a continuity of form. If it were a continuity of form, it would be a logical continuity. It would remain silly or pathological or a deficit. If that thing kept its form, we would not get anywhere. Our therapy-method would not work, and I think therapy as a whole would not work. This content, which has an exact form that we reflect, and strain until we get it exactly, that exact form in some way is also not just that exact form, since it gives rise to these steps. That is the order I want to talk about; an order that has very exact forms and yet it is not just those exact forms. It can give rise to a progression, which, looking back, shows that it was more than just those forms, even though it seemed to take those forms. To get the steps, we have to reflect exactly; I am not [Page 212] saying those forms are not there. I am not saying those forms do not matter. I am saying: Something here which is very very exact and formed, is also not just formed but gives rise to steps. That is the kind of order and model I want to talk about.

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You have argued with other people. They will say that these steps come from the fact that you as the therapist are in some ways biased. They used to say that Carl Rogers smiled at certain times and that is what made the client go this way or that way. Remember that literature? That he gave unconscious reinforcement. They also say that reflecting exactly is impossible. Nobody can be neutral, as if the words we say brought some new thing to the client. But, the steps do not come from us. They surprise us all the time. We cannot derive the next step. These people only know an order of forms. So, they say: "If something new happens, you must be sneaking it in somehow, because it can only come from the outside, because there is nothing in there that could make something. And of course the only thing that you could be imposing is some kind of socialization, something that you got from the outside also." That is the only way they can think about it. And, if one thinks about it only in terms of form, then they would be right. In forms there is no human nature, only late twentieth century Dutch nature, or whatever you happen to be. Nobody can come up with a set of forms that are what human beings are. But if you look at the step-process, if you look at the carrying forward, if you are talking about an order where something more keeps happening, then I think we are all the same. And that kind of order is not so silly. And they have not thought of that. But we see that in client-centered therapy all the time. These steps come in interaction. But interaction, when they think about it, is "imposing some kind of pattern." Interaction when we think about it is "carrying forward," picking up on where the person is, making contact with where the person really is. And the very contact changes the form. Now, with focusing, you can prove the point. (I am being cute now.) When you reflect verbally in a client-centered way, they can go on forever saying: "You are bringing in something new." But we find in focusing that when somebody is sitting with you in total silence, you can focus much more deeply and much more easily than you can alone. I have conducted thousands of trials on this particular thing with one subject, namely me: I focus by myself. Then I ask the next kind person to keep me company while I focus on the same thing. I always get further. Almost always; if I do not have any trouble with that [Page 213] person. The interaction is a different variable than the content. The interaction continues in silence, the very silence I was talking about. The steps come in an interactional process. Now I am going to say: The steps are an interactional process. When I worked with Carl Rogers: Either he took on my theoretical things or I took on his and of course I took more of his than he took of mine, but the one wrinkle that I do not remember succeeding in selling him was my argument that the three conditions are sufficient without the proviso that the client has to
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perceive them. He said: Genuineness, empathy and positive regard, and that the client perceives those. I do not think that is necessary; I know that perception is not necessary, because many clients are convinced for a year or two that nobody could possibly like them or understand them, and the process works anyway and eventually changes their perception. How would they ever get around to perceiving that the therapist did actually understand? That is a change. I know, because I was that kind of client. I always knew that this nice man could not possibly understand my stuff. It took me a long time before I noticed that when I walked into the room, I was already different. The interaction affects you, long before you can think about it. At least sometimes. It is in the interaction or as an interaction, that these steps come. There is also a special case of interaction, when we respond to ourselves. That is also an interaction. You do not just find out: You are not just a kind of a light that does not change anything. When you give your awareness to something, it is carried forward. That is why it is so powerful to attend inside. It seems like you are doing nothing. Just as the presence of a human being looks like nothing. To be aware directly inside, is a carrying forward process. But the interaction with another person remains more powerful and I have always said that. The carrying forward order is not always understood. For example, now there is a new theory about "narrative;" people are said to bring meaning into their lives by construing life as a certain story. I think they are perfectly silly writing like that, as if you could put any story on any set of events in your life. I think it is true, what they are trying to say: That we look back and try to construe the life we had. But the meaning we try to give to it has to carry forward; it has to connect with our bodily experiences, so that we say: "Oh, yes (breath, physical relief), it can mean that ..." They do not have the concept of carrying forward, so they write about it as if people were their own fiction writers, as if, [Page 214] with inventiveness, you could make anything out of anything. That is not so. And that is true also about "cognitive restructuring." You have to ask: When does it work and when not? You try to think in a different way. We do this all the time. When we feel bad about something, we tell ourselves: "Look at it another way, then it is not so hard." But you must not forget to come here to the middle of your body, to see if it made you feel any different. If it did not, you have not "restructured" anything. Then you have to try still another way and another way. Now what is it actually that is capable of being carried forward? I started by mentioning the common assumption that the body is a fixed piece of biological machinery. The body is like your automobile, they think: Fixed and obeying certain laws.

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But, your mind is creative, they think. They do not explain how. Well, let me turn that upside down. How you think and formulate an event, that form is fixed. But, the body-sense of that form is capable of being carried forward. I want to change the concept of the body altogether. The body is not just a machine. The body is exactly that which is capable of these steps. The content itself, the form alone, is not going to go anywhere. It is going to have certain logical implications but it is not going to change. It is the "body sense" of the form that is capable of being carried forward. Our bodies are such that they absorb all the training, all the language, all the social forms, all the culture, everything we read and then they still imply more... Especially when you have a problem it is like that. You think all the formed facts and still it says: " AAArgghh." It is looking for a solution, or a next step that will intricately take account of all the stuff you think and still go further. It is the body sense, that can go further. From what someone says, you can go in two different ways: You can take it logically: They said this. So this follows, and this follows, and this follows. You can say: "Look, what you are saying implies this and this and this." The other way you can go, the way client-centered therapists will go, is to respond to that which gives steps. We call it "feeling" but that is not a good word. I am saying that the steps come from the "body-sense." Any event, anything anyone says, can be taken in these two ways: Only as formed, or as the body-sense of that formed. I want to argue that the body-sense has all those forms and then it is still always again there, implying more, implying further. [Page 215] Sometimes we want to respond to the logical form, the event as it happened as form. But as therapists, of course we want to respond to that which will produce the steps. Now I have to bring that home a little. Every sentence that we utter, prepares the listener for "something." It begins, and then, it unrolls and... Now you do not know how I am going to finish it, but you sense what comes there. The same thing is true of my talk, up to now. You have taken it in with everything you know, and have experienced and read. Now ... you are sitting there ready for ... and I hope I have that. The body-sense has all the forms in it, all your culture and life. And yet it implies further. It is not just a product of the events and the culture. You can see that in the silences, when therapy works. You can see it even more dramatically when clients say: "1 am feeling something, but there are not words for it." They are saying that there are no social forms for it. Words are social forms. We have to wait a while until the language rearranges itself to say it oddly because there are no common phrases for it. You can help this happen if it has not happened.
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One way you can do that is just by slowing down; by sitting and feeling the clients' feeling when they are not doing so. You can say: "Now wait a minute, I want to feel what you told me." That makes an opportunity for them to come there too. I call that the "body-sense" because to find it, I have to attend to the literal body, here, between the podium and the wall. I have to come in here, into the middle of this body; I have to let go my attention here. I cannot do it too well while I am talking, though I can do it in short pauses. That is the body I am talking about. Now once we get in there, then it is more than what we customarily call "the body." I would want to change that concept so that it would include that. Any time you talk, unless you are reading or memorized things in advance, how do you find the words? It is your body that talks. I have this prepared, but even so, I open my mouth and I hope the right words come out. It is all I can do. If they do not, I keep talking, hoping they will still come. That which talks is my body. I want the concept of "body" to get much wider than physiology. I am glad they have physiology, when I get sick. I am glad they know what they know. But the concept of body is wider than that, much wider than that. We live every situation with the body. If you try to do it by explicit instructions, you probably trip. Your body has to sense many things at the same time: The floor, the chair, the people, the situation, what happened to [Page 216] you years earlier, and what you are trying to do. You live with what I am calling "your body." The body makes and takes the next step, it wants a solution, a healing, something better, now, than it has had. There are often no words for that, because that has not happened yet. My body is capable of producing steps that have never happened in the history of the world. Isn't that glorious?! Or else you can say that I am in a worse mess than anybody knows how to help me with. COMMENTS ON TWO THERAPY SEGMENTS To finish, I would like to read you a couple of therapy segments. I ask you to look at the steps. These are focusing steps. That means that a silence is often felt between one step and the next. The second excerpt I will read is from a person who has done focusing for a long time. It is late in therapy. The first one is "early in therapy" and you can watch me trying to help it happen. I have written enough about how to find this body-sense, but it is hard to convey the interactional climate around it. That is one thing I would like you to watch for. And then also: Once one knows how to find this inner edge, then it turns out that there is a lot of complexity involved, there. The crudest thing we have always said is: "Do not push and do not run away." But what do you do? Well, you keep it company, especially if it is sore. You keep it company. This "it," it is a funny way of talking. Sometimes when I say these things, someone will say:

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"You talk funny" and I say: "Yes, I know." You keep it company; I often say: "Let's keep it company." The client and I, we are going to keep it, in there, company. As you would keep a scared child company. You would not push on it, or argue with it, or pick it up, because it is too sore, too scared or tense. You would just sit there, quietly, I really said it all in the beginning: What that edge needs to produce the steps, is only some kind of unintrusive contact or company. If you will go there with your awareness and stay there or return there, that is all it needs; it will do all the rest for you. If you do not know that awareness is a process in itself, it will seem very mysterious. It needs you there and that is all it needs. That is the sort of thing I would like to illustrate with these two segments. [Page 217] Segment 1 C: "I did not want to come today. I do not have anything more to talk about (laughs). Really, there is a level I do not want to touch. I got there once before and I got into crying and I could not get out of it; I could not stop crying. My therapist did not know what to do. She cried too. I looked up and I could see it and I thought: 'Well, she does not know what to do either'." While she is telling me that, I think: "Well, that is obviously a good therapist." I believe, if it makes me cry, let that be visible. But at that time, it was not so good. So you never know. Or you can say: It was all right, but there should have been something further; hopefully it happens here. T: "You do not want to fall in there again that way." C: "Right. Usually, I believe in feelings and I think: If you feel it, it gets better. But on this, I don't know." T: "So we won't say: Just feel it. You did that and it was not better. Whatever we'll do here, you would like it to be in a different way..." (I do not necessarily expect agreement on that, you see, I am doing something, I am preparing some sort of focusing.) C: "Right." (And then there is a long silence.) "I can feel it right there, just below where I am."

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Now that is not my jargon, O.K.? So don't blame me for that. Just think about why a person would say that. That has it all, just that one sentence: "I can feel it right there, just below where I am." T: "Let's stay here a long while, just relating to it down there, without going there." Or another way to say it: "If we do anything, let us do it very slowly." (Long silence) C: "The way the whole thing feels is that I am no good, and I am helpless to do anything about it. And I cannot hardly touch that." T: "That is hard to stand. Go slow. It is hard even just to touch that." Now I am going to stop that excerpt, there. Segment 2 Here is a different person: C: "I want to leave Chicago. The noise outside bothers me." (Therapist is silent.) C: "You do not think that is real. I can tell." [Page 218] Therapist is mobilizing to give a reflection. He says (I am saying): T: "The noise is crowding in on you, coming into your 'far-in place'." I really knew what she was saying in fact because I have seen her for a very long time. C: "It is like darts hitting my body. I cannot stand it." T: "It really hurts." And now there is one of these silences. I was willing to hear it, so it got heard and now there is the silence. And then she says: C: "I keep feeling a sense of 'no meaning' in my life." (More silence.) "I just want to leave everything. It is that same spot where I want to die. My wanting to live and to die are so close these days. That is why I have not been able to touch this place. It gets misty there. It is real foggy."
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Now I take that to be a step. First she was saying: "I am in this place where the noise hurts me" and now she is saying: "Oh that is my life and death place and when I touch it, it gets foggy." So can you derive that from the other? If I did not read it, would you have known this was coming? I do not see how you could have. I did not. T: "You can feel wanting to live and also wanting to die, both right there, in the same inside spot and then that gets foggy there." Now another one of these silences comes. Almost each time, there is this kind of step there. C: "I do not want to relate with anyone; I wish there were no people to see. They do not mean anything to me. (She has to go to work after this hour.) There is no meaning. When will my life ever have meaning? It feels like it never will and I need meaning right now." (Silence ... Therapist did not respond.) "I also feel it has to do with my relating to you. I know you are there for me, but it is like I am not allowed to want that." Now very often in that kind of situation, I will say: "Let us, you and me, be real close and connected around this place; because in it, you do not feel any connection." That has been a real valuable thing to say, very often. "Let us relate all the way around it." It is like saying: "Let us be close," but also acknowledging that right in the center somehow there is no connection, there is an isolation. But I did not do that here. Something else happened. She said: "I also feel it has to do with my relating to you. I know you are there for me, but it is like I am not allowed to want that." So I heard the "not allowed" and it sounded different to me. So I said: [Page 219] T: "Is that what you said before about your father?" And I want to notice this therapist's single attempt at a genuine psychoanalytic interpretation. And it turns out to be very helpful also. Notice this: Very helpful. I mean really; but of course wrong, but very helpful. "Is that what you said before about your father?" Now there is this long silence again. Then she says: C: "No I can feel that this is not with him. This is different. It is not like with my father." You see, she has tried it out: "It is not like that." And then, the therapist says: T: "It is not about him."
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That is the big difference. The big difference is not that we interpret it or do not interpret it. The big difference is that we stay with the person whatever comes there. And anybody working with me knows that I am trying to do that. So they do not even bother about some of the things that I say. But she does bother. She says: "It is not about him. It is not like with my father." And I say: "It is not about him." And then there is another silence. C: "I can hardly touch it. There is something and it is right here on the edge, I can hardly touch it; it is ... I cannot want my mother, I can hardly say it." And I reflect: T: "You cannot want her." (Silence.) C: "That is where I feel the noise like darts." (More silence.) C: "It is real early, real early." T: "It feels like a very early experience." (Silence.) C: "I cannot want anything." Silence. Here come the steps. Silence. C: "This needs to rest and it cannot rest. If it lets down and rests, it will die. It needs to keep its guard up." T: "There is such a big need and longing to rest and let down and ease; but somehow also this part of you cannot rest. I t feels that it will die if it stops being on guard." Silence. Long silence. What comes is a step. C: "Maybe it could, if I could trust something." T: "It could rest if you could trust something." C: "No, no. MAYBE it could rest if I could trust something." T: "It is important to say 'maybe': 'Maybe it could rest if I could trust something'." [Page 220]
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(Silence.) C: "Now, suddenly it feels like a house on stilts, that the stilts go into the earth. All of me on top where the noise is, that is the house. And it is on stilts. It got lifted off this sore place. Now this sore place is like a layer and it can breathe. Do you know those steel posts that they put into the ground to hold up a building? These stilts are like that. All the noise and coming and going is in the house and the house is on stilts, lifted off and the stilts go into the ground." T: "Those steel stilts go into the ground and you feel them lifting the whole house up off of you and underneath, that sore place can breathe." (Silence.) C: "Yes, now it is breathing." (More silence.) C: "It is bathing in warm water." And then later, she said (these are not exactly her words): C: "When I was little, I played a lot with stilts. I used to go between the powerwires on them. It was dangerous but it was play. I used to make taller and taller ones and go on them there. Stilts, I have not thought of those for years. Play and danger." And she is realizing that the themes are related. There was this life and death place here, and stilts have something to do with that and the play is some kind of freeing dimension. So she says: C: "How does this process do that? It uses all these things to ...." That is a good place to stop... QUESTIONS FROM THE AUDIENCE 1. For what types of clients is this approach most adequate? Do you have any empirical data on outcome and, more specifically, did you compare your approach with the traditional approach of Carl Rogers? (Reinhard Tausch) First of all, I would like to be clear: My approach is anything that I can try. If therapy is happening, if the client is moving, or if they do not want me to do something, I would never do it. I do not know if I made that clear enough. I am not saying: "Do not do this," or "Do that." I am not saying that. I am not saying that at all. Apparently I have come across that way, because nowadays sometimes I get clients who say: "I am not going to be able to focus." And I say: "Well, that is fine, there are lots of ways of doing this." And they say: "But you

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wrote that if I do [Page 221] not focus, I won't get anywhere." I wish I had not written that, if I have written it. O.K.? I will follow the client wherever the client takes me and if that is doing something for the client, then I am content. And yes, the way I am and the way I respond and the way I talk, they will probably pick focusing up as a side-benefit. But I am not interested in approaching a person with "an approach." I bring focusing in when clients do not seem to have it, and are going around in circles. So I do not know if I am answering the question or avoiding it, but this is the approach that I would counsel. Now I would sayto answer the questionthere is a large body of clients who, if you give something like focusing half a chance, who do it immediately. That is the population for whom focusing instructions are indicated, to take the question straight now. I would define the population that the method is appropriate to this way. When you try a little bit of it and it makes a wonderful difference, that is a good thing to do then. At the other extreme there are people whom you would have to push and intrude on, and say: "Look here, stop talking all the time and do this thing that I want you to do." I do not want that. And then there are people who already have it. I am saying: "It is the people between these two extremes for whom this is indicated." But that is not a class of people by present classifications; that includes borderline and psychotic people, including people in the hospital who feel a relief that they can find themselves when they have "been gone"; you know, dissociated sort of experience. We found several times that this is a helpful thing to do with people, right across the continuum of degrees of disturbance. But some other variable is involved and I do not know what it is yet. As to the second part of your question, I do not think of focusing instructions as an approach to compare to another approach but within therapies, both clientcentered and some othersthough not enough others to brag about,but within client-centered therapy, I would say we have a string of research studies that show that the people who do this already tend to be successful. Now we do not have anything to show that the people Gendlin teaches are more successful. We do not have anything to show that teaching this in the context of therapy makes it more successful. That, we do not have. And I would not push it. I would teach it as something that goes along with a more normal response. Like I did here. [Page 222] 2. What is your view of the difference between client-centered and experiential psychotherapy and what is your view of the relation between them? (Barbara Brodley)

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I would take client-centered therapy to be the larger thing. First of all, focusing, if that is what we are talking about, focusing to me is a very tiny very important process. What I call focusing is paying attention inwardly to that unclear sense of something there. Now surely therapy and personal development are much bigger things than that. Focusing is a very deliberate way to touch something inside. I have seen that help the bigger process. The bigger process comes from behind you and takes you and expands you, and you do not know what is going to happen. Whereas focusing is this very deliberate thing where an "I" is attending to an "it." I think it is very valuable. But surely, it is not therapy. Therapy is a relationship, therapy is a process of development. These focusing steps I described come in client-centered therapy. That is where I learnt them from, that is where I saw them and if you observe your clients, you will see that they are silent before those steps typically come. Now the trouble that you are having is not about that process. It is about me teaching that process. And it is true that if the therapist teaches that process in some way, there is some problem with that. The therapists need to check their welcome. They need to watch and see whether they intrude; they need to see that the relationship always has precedence. So you do this thing inside the relationship, just like you do when you are in somebody's house. You do not things that they do not want you to do very long. 3. In what you just said, are you not assuming that the process of the steps is the essence of therapeutic change? (Barbara Brodley) No, no. That is a helpful question. I was trying to straighten that out. I assume that interaction is the broader process. And just about everything interesting is some kind of special case of interaction. And it is only as part of interaction that any of these things works well. So no. I am not assuming that an inner process can be distinguished from interaction. Precisely the opposite. The inner process will give you steps in a context of interaction. And if there is nobody there, then you better interact with it in a friendly way. Otherwise you will not get [Page 223] those steps. You need to interact with yourself, with a certain kind of attitude; as if your inside were a child that you were keeping company. And it is much easier if someone else will be there for you in that kind of silence. So anything interesting about focusing goes on, in the context of relating. The only difference I ever had with that part of the theory was Carl's point about perception. But it is always going to be "interaction first" if you ask me. 4. You emphasized the "body-sense." However, I experience many times with myself and with my clients that there is no body-sense at all, even when I or they have this "it" and can point to it. If this is the case, I think emphasizing the bodily aspect might be more confusing than helpful. (Rob van Woerden)

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I do not want to close down any other channels. I do not think anybody has the right to say: This has got to be this way, for human beings. So if you say that there is a way that they can come differently than from this bodily sense, that is fine with me. I think we need to look and compare, not just which is better, but what the difference is. I am sure that there is an entry to steps through the literal body. Once you come into this literal body here then you find a space that is much bigger than your literal body. It is quite clear that it is not exactly your literal body, but that is where the entrance is. There might be other entrances. 5. You have said that you do not agree that the client needs to perceive empathic understanding of the therapist and the other conditions. If you do not perceive the therapist's empathy and so forth, this could mean that it does not exist for the client. Now 1 make a distinction between "received empathy" and "perceived empathy." Does that make sense to you? (Godfrey Barrett-Lennard) Oh yes, we could settle on that completely. That is what it has always meant, also to Carl. It has got to have some impact on the client; and that is what I meant too: Some impact or some kind of effect. The interaction changes the person and then they become aware of it. At least some of us. But I would completely agree with you that receiving it in some way could be one of the conditions. Just perceiving sounds to me like a reflective understanding or a reflected observation that I [Page 224] would have to say: "My therapist understands me." And I would have said: "Nobody can understand me. He tries hard, that nice man." NOTE [1]. This chapter is a revised version of the author's plenary address at the Leuven Conference (September 12-16, 1988). Lieve De Wachter made a transcript of the audiotape. The author adapted this first draft and provided it with some comments and clarifications. Germain Lietaer did some further editiorial work and selected from the original dialogue with the audience some parts for inclusion in the text. REFERENCES Gendlin, E. T. (1962/1970). Experiencing and the creation of meaning (2nd ed.). New York: Free Press. Gendlin, E. T. (1987). A philosophical critique of the concept of "Narcissism." In D.M. Levin (Ed.), Pathologies of the modern self: Postmodern studies. New York: New York University Press.
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Hendricks, M.N. (1986). Experiencing level as a therapeutic variable. Personcentered Review, 1, 141-162. Leijssen, M. (1989). Teaching focusing to "unsuccessful" clients. Research project in progress, Centrum voor client-centered therapie en counseling, K.U.Leuven. Note to Readers:

How Do I Refer To This Document? An example reference is at the top of this page. Please include the Internet address in the reference, even if you cite the document in a printed article, so that others can find the Gendlin Online Library. Can I Link Directly To This Document? Yes. We encourage you to link directly to it from your own online documents. We have built "hooks" into this web page to make it very easy to connect to individual pages and headings in the text. For examples, see: How to Link to The Gendlin Online Library. Biographic Note: Eugene T. Gendlin is a seminal American philosopher and psychologist. He received his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Chicago and taught there from 1963 to 1995. His philosophical work is concerned especially with the relationship between logic and implicit intricacy. Philosophy books include Experiencing and the Creation of Meaning, Language Beyond Post-Modernism: Saying and Thinking in Gendlin's Philosophy edited by David Michael Levin, (fourteen commentaries and Gendlins replies), and A Process Model. There is a world wide network of applications and practices (http://www.focusing.org) stemming from this philosophy. Gendlin has been honored three times by the American Psychological Association for his development of Experiential Psychotherapy. He was a founder and editor for many years of the Associations Clinical Division Journal, Psychotherapy: Theory, Research and Practice. His book Focusing has sold over half a million copies and has appeared in seventeen languages. His psychology-related books are Let Your Body Interpret Your Dreams and Focusing-Oriented Psychotherapy. If you see any faults in this document please send us an email. Add a comment to the Gendlin Online Blog for this article. See the reference for this document in the Gendlin primary bibliography. More on Focusing from the Focusing Institute website. More on Focusing-Oriented Psychotherapy from the Focusing Institute website.

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The Gendlin Online Library is presented by the Focusing Institute, a not-for-profit organization. If you find the library useful, you can contribute to its maintenance and growth, at http://www.focusing.org/gendlin/gol_donations.asp.

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Focusing Home > Gendlin Online Library > Focusing and the development of creativity

Gendlin, E.T. (1981). Focusing and the development of creativity. The Focusing Folio, 1(1), 13-16. From http://www.focusing.org/gendlin/docs/gol_2062.html [Page 13] FOCUSING AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF CREATIVITY by Eugene T. Gendlin, Ph.D., University of Chicago It has long been known that creativity depends on the willingness to let go of the usual, trite ways of seeing anything, the willingness to "tolerate ambiguity" it is often called. But such a view of creativity is only negative. It tells what not to do. Don't hold on tightly to the usual ways. Don't be so uncomfortable with having no clear way. Very well. But now, if I don't do that, what do I then do, instead? "Ambiguity" is a negative term. It means "not clear." If I do not think in the usual way, then at first I don't have anything clear. For most people this means having nothing at all. With focusing one discovers that one can turn one's attention in a specific way, almost to a specific placeso that one then has a great deal, and something quite concrete. But this is a way of inward attending that most people don't know. To describe it has required some new words which cannot first be defined because they refer to this unfamiliar way of attending. In focusing one attends to a felt sense. This term does not mean what "feeling" usually means, not emotions, not personal reactions of anger or joy, or whatever. A felt sense is the global bodily way one experiences something. For example,
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take some situation that is a problem for you. You can think of several ways of handling it but also some reactions against each. You could say a great deal about the situation, and you are likely to go round and round these facts, thinking about the situation. Instead of that, focusing would be as follows: You would put your attention in your body, in the chest-stomach region, the center of your body. You would see how you feel there, perhaps (let us say) quite at ease. No stomach ache, not hungry, just a friendly sense of no discomfort. Now you would keep your attention there, and think of the situation. You might say to yourself, (trying it out) "I feel totally all right about this situation." Then you would wait a few moments. You would find a very distinct sense of discomfort entering. This is your sense of the unresolved situation as a whole. Of course, if you had guessed, you would have known in advance that, in fact, you do not feel totally all right about the situation. Of course, not. It isn't solved. You did not need to perform the focusing procedure to find out that you don't feel all right about it. You knew that. But the focusing procedure (the little bit of it given above) has put you into direct contact with the way your body has the situation. In our research we have discovered that from this bodily felt sense you can move to further steps of new thought, which are not possible in any other way. You could not, from what you merely think, and already know about the situation, go to these new steps. [Page 14] Any situation, any problem or task or decision anything, has a great many facets. It is not merely what we say of it. In the example you could say various ways of handling the situation, with their pros and cons. You could describe the situation and its background, what led up to it. You could say some of your aims with it. You could write a fairly long analysis. There would be much more than you can think at once. Even so you would omit thousands and thousands of facets of the situation which you have never separated and named, and never will. The felt sense includes all of these together. The discomfort newly forms in your body when you think of the situation while still attending inside your body. There are specific steps for letting it form. If, for example, you have been feeling nervous or afraid or in some other specific way about the situation, there is a way to get beyond these specific feelings, so that the felt sense can form. The felt sense is wholistic, it is the body' s sense of the whole situation, not just one or another aspect of it. When the felt sense forms, you might call it "discomfort" or "queasy" or "unresolved" or some other quality word but very soon you will see that it is vastly more than that. It is a sense of the whole complexity of the situation.
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There is a second discovery: The felt sense wants to move. It has a directionality. With certain specific steps we can teach, one finds the felt sense moving a step. This is experienced as a distinct inward stirring. An exaggeration of it would be to say that it feels like a stomach cramp releasing and easing. But it can be a very slight stirring and you learn with practice to detect it quite unmistakably even if it is slight. And, along with such a physical release something opens and you get a step concerning the problem. But such a first step might not solve the problem. It might not even be an idea. It might be only some seemingly small facet, or some way you perceive the problem, about which you didn't know. Focusing consists of a series of such steps. Quite soon the whole problem looks different and the ideas you can then have about it are also very new. There are exact instructions for how to tap a felt sense so that it is most likely to move to its next step. The exact instructions have been published (Focusing, E.T. Gendlin, Ph.D., Everest House, 1978, Bantam 1981). Through constant teaching and many applications our ways of specifying these instructions and developing specific ways of overcoming difficulties are constantly improving. Here I am concerned only to introduce the procedure in a general way. Although it has six specific "movements" and many more exact instructions, the basic ideas are just two: the felt sense which is the bodily having of a whole situation; the felt shift which is the stirring, the opening up, the movement to its next step by the felt sense itself . What is surprising about the felt shift is that there is indeed a next step that the body provides. Considering the vast gamut of information, of facets of the situation and all that goes with it, one might have thought that a felt sense would produce vast amounts of this information. It can. But what is much more useful, a felt sense is a kind of totaling-up [Page 15] that comes to a particular result, a specific next step. If that next step is received, absorbed, so that the difference it makes is fully experienced (this takes a minute or so), then the felt sense of the whole situation is again different and a further step can arrive. Suppose you have to break in a new assistant. You would have to lay out the situation in words, in order for the assistant to help with it. You would have to explain and delineate, go through many of the facts you know about the situation. You would also have to tell the background. You would have to bring up how this kind of situation is usually handled. You would have to give the objectives, and why they are desirable. You would have to mention what typically goes wrong and what is done about that, and so on! Your own body knows all that, and it is with you when you work on the problem. You don't

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have to go over all that with yourself, in words. The way the body has any situation includes everything that is relevant to it. Unfortunately, when most people think about a problem they don't employ this great bodily resource. They think one thing, or two, and then later another thing or two. The mind can only deal with one or two facets at a time. So one goes round and round, from one set of thoughts to another, and one never has the good of the whole of what one's body knows. But this bodily knowing is not just right there, waiting. It must first form. A t first you may feel only impatience, or worry about the situation. It is true that if the felt sense of the whole forms, its first quality may also be "worry" or "impatience. " Yet there is a clear difference. Your worry is only "what will happen if I don 't get this handled?" The felt sense even if it too might be called worry" will be your sense of the whole problem, not just of what will happen if you don't handle it. When the felt sense opens in a felt shift, you will find that what you called "worry" this time has to do with exactly what's needed in the situation itself, orwith some facet of the situation that needs to be taken account of. The felt sense also feels different than our usual feelings. It is expansive. Just to sense it, one often gets a breath. Yes that is how the whole thing feels, all right. . . The felt sense is therefore very different from personal reactions. It is of and about this task, this situation, this problem. For example, suppose you and I are competing. Which of us first gets a good answer wins. Suppose I tell you my thinking so far then you might sense how I am coming close to a solution, even if you don't want me to. You have a felt sense of the problem and you can sense a stirring in response to my idea, even though personally you wish my idea were a dud. But of course, you can sense such a directionality only rarely, in the usual ways we work and think. Creative people have probably always used this method. What is really new in it is the specificity with which we can describe the steps and teach them. [Page 16] Looking back to the usual way of describing creativity, we can see that what might always have been meant by "ambiguity" is the felt sense. Only no one laid out the steps for getting one, and then for tapping it.

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A felt sense is ambiguous in one respect: One doesn't know what it is, what is in it. Of course one knows a great deal about the problem or situation, but the felt sense itself is a vague whole. A felt sense is very concrete and unmistakably there, and its quality is always just exactly what it is the quality of just this particular situation as lived in the body. One can give it a round name at first but the details that emerge from it are all about this situation, this unique problem, this task. Until now we haven't been told where to go with our attention, and exactly what to do, in order to be creative. And those who have attempted to describe what they do have not done it very specifically. But creativity would be very mystifying indeed, if it were merely the hitting, from nowhere, of new ideas. Where can they come from? Where do thoughts arise? If you pay attention to any thought whatever, you will find that you have some words and images, and also a sense of their meaning to you just now. You will find that this meaning is much more than what the words alone say. The whole context and background is also there, in your sense of what you said. Only from this richer underlying complexity which you do have can relevant new ideas arise. But there is a bodily way, through quite specific steps, by which you can let this form, as a whole, quite concretely, so that you can attend to it and work with it, rather than leaving it fleeting and silent as most people do. This is what focusing is all about. Eugene T. Gendlin Note to Readers:

How Do I Refer To This Document? An example reference is at the top of this page. Please include the Internet address in the reference, even if you cite the document in a printed article, so that others can find the Gendlin Online Library. Can I Link Directly To This Document? Yes. We encourage you to link directly to it from your own online documents. We have built "hooks" into this web page to make it very easy to connect to individual pages and headings in the text. For examples, see: How to Link to The Gendlin Online Library. Biographic Note: Eugene T. Gendlin is a seminal American philosopher and psychologist. He received his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Chicago and taught there from 1963 to 1995. His philosophical work is concerned especially with the relationship between logic and implicit intricacy. Philosophy books include Experiencing and the Creation of Meaning, Language Beyond Post-Modernism: Saying and Thinking in Gendlin's Philosophy edited by David Michael Levin,
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(fourteen commentaries and Gendlins replies), and A Process Model. There is a world wide network of applications and practices (http://www.focusing.org) stemming from this philosophy. Gendlin has been honored three times by the American Psychological Association for his development of Experiential Psychotherapy. He was a founder and editor for many years of the Associations Clinical Division Journal, Psychotherapy: Theory, Research and Practice. His book Focusing has sold over half a million copies and has appeared in seventeen languages. His psychology-related books are Let Your Body Interpret Your Dreams and Focusing-Oriented Psychotherapy. If you see any faults in this document please send us an email. Add a comment to the Gendlin Online Blog for this article. See the reference for this document in the Gendlin primary bibliography. More on Creative Process from the Focusing Institute website. More on Focusing from the Focusing Institute website. The Gendlin Online Library is presented by the Focusing Institute, a not-for-profit organization. If you find the library useful, you can contribute to its maintenance and growth, at http://www.focusing.org/gendlin/gol_donations.asp.

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Focusing Home > Gendlin Online Library > The obedience pattern

Gendlin, E.T. (1984). The obedience pattern. Studies in Formative Spirituality, 5(2), 189-202. From http://www.focusing.org/gendlin/docs/gol_2057.html [Page 189] THE OBEDIENCE PATTERN by Eugene T. Gendlin, University of Chicago Preamble At the start, I have to tell the reader that I have not experienced a spiritual guide relationship with one other person. For better or worse, I have been taught, initiated and guided always by many people. Also, in my thirty years as a
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teacher and a therapist I have never, in my field, assumed a role that would be comparable to such a relation. You are not me. You may have this experience I lack. In this or other ways what I write from my experience is bound to fall short of yours. In beginning this way I am not just opening what I will say to your critical judgment. I am pointing to your inside, which necessarily includes more than I can know. Notice, one can point at what one doesn't know in another person. And that, in you, which is always more than I can know, needs to be involved here. That needs to check what I say. That, in you, is also not fixed, not a question only of what experiences you have had. The inwardly arising steps that come there can exceed whatever you and I know, or have experienced so far. So I am not appealing only to your critical thinking or your feelings. Rather, inside you there is that, to which you also must point, because it is always more than you can fully know. It comes in little steps of inward opening and change. One may miss these little steps. They may be very small, and that "place" in us feels murky. We can easily fail to honor it above our sophisticated thoughts and our more definite feelings. In this article I am going to say that our obedience must be to that, and even so, not passively, to whatever comes, but only in a certain rather rebellious dialogue and over a series of steps, and then not always. [Page 190] Obedience to Other People Meister Eckhart writes: True and perfect obedience is a virtue above all virtues. No great work can be accomplished without it . . .When I give my will up to the care of my prelate, and have no will of my own, God must will for me . . . (Eckhart, Talks of Instruction I. Of True Obedience, p. 1. Notice: he does not say that the prelate's guidance would be right for him. On the contrary he pretty much assumes that it is going to be wrong. Not the content of the guidance, but the letting loose of self-will is valued here. Not what the prelate says, rather something utterly different does the guiding. We give up our

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will to do it ourselves, not to some other person who knows better, but to the spiritual source. Eckhart does not assume that his prelate knows what is best for him. Nor does this obedience belong to an early stage of development when one is an apprentice to a master. "No great work can be accomplished without it." Obviously this obedience is to an inner openness. We must be very exact, inwardly, about how to find this openness. It is easily confused with other processes. I know something about the beginnings of finding this openness, and that is what this article is about. Before I specify what I know about this inner openness and the steps that come there, I would like to discuss what I view as mistaken modes of obedience, first the obedience of one human to another: Social forms of obedience often become mixed up with spiritual help and guidance. Such mixtures can be very wrong and confusing. But let us think about social obedience itself for a moment. Obedience to another human being is basic to the social organization we have always had. But we need another kind! In revolutions idealistic people have often subordinated their wills to leaders who promised to bring about a society in which people would no longer have to subordinate their wills to others, but the stated ideals did not determine the outcome. What did? Always the movement's own hierarchical mode of organization. This mode soon makes leaders of those who operate it with the most skill and the fewest cares for anything else. We don't have an answer to this problem yet, but the hopeful direction is to concern ourselves with how humans could organize with, (rather than by suppressing), the inwardly arising development of more than just a few individuals. (See Gendlin, E. T., The Politics of Giving Therapy Away, in Larson, D. G., ed. [Page 191] Teaching Psychological Skills: Models For Giving Psychology Away. Monterey: Brooks/Cole, 1984). In psychology the results of obedience to others have been equally negative. Guidance, interpretation and authority were vested in the psychoanalyst who tells the patients about themselves. In this way the therapist's knowledge defeats itself. Research shows that psychotherapy can be an irreplaceably valuable change-process, but more than half the cases fail because that process does not happen. I think it is because taking another's guidance is just the opposite of listening for one's inner steps.

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We do need company, help and instruction. We need a way that another's knowledge can be helpful to us. It can be, if we make our inwardly arising process steps the criterion of what is right or wrong, just then. In therapy, one person cannot guide another. It succeeds only if both people know that the criterion of therapy at every juncture is the "patient's" inwardly arising steps. It is odd that we would willingly surrender that process for any purpose, but especially when the purpose is that very process! And yet, in psychotherapeutic and spiritual matters we are most prone to do so. Since we seek a change in ourselves, of course we must mistrust our own judgment. But to go by another person's judgment gives up on just that inward development which is the purpose of the activity. In spiritual concerns, par excellence, this contradiction must be seen. We do need others to relate to, and we need them to help us, but help with what? With an inwardly arising process. How can we be helped, if we try to give that up at the start? Of course, we cannot ultimately give that up. But the forms of obedience do make postponements, blockages, confusions, and for a long time they can make us deaf to that source of inner development. Obeying the Inner Authoritarian But inside us, something like the same problem exists as well. There too, a voice claims our obedience, supposedly because it knows everything better. Freud called this the "super-ego" (in German the "over-I"). By various names every student of human nature has also found this inner agent. This is the voice that attacks us, tells us that what we feel is probably wrong, anything we try will probably fail. It tells us something along the lines of: "You're made out of bad stuff." It attacks most of us pretty constantly and assumes a tone we would not tolerate from another person. It [Page 192] only seems to say: straighten up and fly right. Actually, it attacks us. If we have a difficulty, this attack makes us less able to do well. We become cramped, constricted, dull-thudded and millstoned. I say about this part of me: "Anyone who talks to me in this tone is not trying to help me." The super-ego has been confused with conscience. Actually super-ego and conscience are very different. The super-ego is not the "still small voice," but the loudest voice inside. Many people find the super-ego attacking them for not being rich and successful, for not winning more. But even when the words of these inward attacks are the same as what would come from my moral sense, note the difference! When I have hurt someone my conscience lets me care and I feel a reaching out to that person. When my super-ego attacks me about it, I

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become concerned mostly about myself and how bad I am. I feel constricted and cannot act from my care. The super-ego inhibits genuinely felt care, and it is also not our rational judgment of fairness. In superego attacks we usually apply irrational demands to ourselves which we would not think of applying to others. The super-ego absorbs some features of our actual parents, but most of it is not derived from them. It is a primitive pattern of human beings, and it channels energy in a negative, hostile and destructive way. Freud thought that God is nothing but this superego, projected onto the cosmos. He was only partly right. People who have a sense for the spiritual do indeed project their super-ego onto it. But as this changes in therapy, the spiritual sense of these people does not dissolve. On the contrary, the spiritual dimension develops more and more, as its difference from the super-ego becomes clear. The narrow, punitive, attacking quality is recognized as a hostile and stupid voice, utterly different from the vast spiritual sense. I quote Eckhart speaking of self-inflicted "chastisements": . . . any practice that limits your freedom to wait upon God in this present moment and to follow him into the light, by which he may show you what to do and not to do how to be as new and free with each moment . . . any such commitment or premeditated practice that limits your freedom . . . In it, your soul will bring forth no fruit other than the discipline . . . for no one can be fruitful until he is done with his own work (Sermon 23). Our self-inflicted super-ego regimes are not the spiritual source to which to listen. To locate that inward listening we need first to sense the difference between attacks that constrict us, and that much softer, different inward opening of growth steps. [Page 193] Obeying Our Own Designs Maintaining myself against the super-ego requires a lot of strength. "I" must grow stronger. Also, to listen inwardly to a quieter place, I must become able to tolerate silence and murkiness for some moments now and then. Intent listening is active and requires a strong ego. On the other hand, to listen I must stop talking all the time and let the reigns loose, give up directing everything. How can we be exact here? In what respects must the ego give up, and in what respects must it become even stronger? First, let me say the one side: I must
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make room for a different source. "I" cannot be the sole director of my own development. "No one can be fruitful until he is done with his own work" refers not only to the super-ego but also to this "I." The changes we design for ourselves express how and what we are now, of course. Our own plans usually call for changes that make us more of the same. If we have valued and developed competencies, we tend to resolve to develop more competencies. If we have cared about others, we resolve to care more perfectly next year. The approach people design for their own change usually re-instances how they are now. Therefore "I" must give up directing my developmental steps. But now I come to respects in which "I" has to grow stronger in the development process. Its development is essential. Inner Limpness Having spoken against obedience to others, to the super-ego, and to our own designs, I must now also speak against a fourth mode of obedience: inner limpness. Setting one's self-prescriptive will aside might be called "detachment." But this word can be misleading today. Long ago, more traditional people felt more solidly rooted in everyday reality than we do. They had "strong egos," and were pretty sure of being right about what they said, did, or felt. They lived committedly in ordinary reality. The traditional teachings had to shake this up in them before they could find the beginnings of a spiritual opening. Therefore the literature takes for granted that you have a strong ego, so that words like detachment, passivity, surrender, obedience would be quite safe. Today, at least for many people of the sort I know, everyday reality already feels insufficient. Our egos are not so solid. The awareness that we might be wrong about anything is not hard to come by. It may be [Page 194] constant. Everyday reality often burdens us. We might feel better away from it, alone, in the country, somewhere open. We often fail to find something to want in the everyday world. For some of us it is therefore much too easy to be "detached." We may easily put down that ego which identifies with the everyday. I might say (partly rightly) that we are at a further stage than such solid, traditional people. Not, perhaps, a high spiritual stage, but in need of fewer preliminaries. Or, I could also put it another way. Those traditional people were able to do their ordinary living. We may not yet have achieved this. When we do, it will also have a somewhat different character. I know from my own experience that spirituality requires a strong ego, not just the same but not totally different from that old everyday ego. Many people today need a lifetime to develop it. Ego and spirituality must therefore develop together.
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Giving up, giving in to fear, avoiding challenges, these are forms of attachment. Detachment opens to more perception, interaction, and presence beyond constriction. You sense the world as if you had just washed your windows. The lack of a strong ego is not the detachment of which the literature speaks. We do begin closer to it, but we must not misuse this lack in ourselves. We can be "detached" by letting the body's life energy remain backed-in, and blocked. What was a good first prescription for traditional people is not a good first one for us. They had already developed the inner forward-moving energy. Coming after that, detachment could open them. If that grounded body energy flow is not already moving forward, detachment can close us. A woman who had just gotten married was considering giving up her school. I knew that entering school had been a hard and good step for her. She has a great love and excitement about it. Continuing had felt right up to now. She told me the realistic difficulties, among them her husband's work and needs. Then she said, "And I feel all right about stopping . . . I tell myself that all that stuff about school and becoming a professional person is not spiritual anyway." In this example, can you feel that spirituality is probably being misused? It is a great truth that the spiritual doesn't need professional degrees or self-image concerns. Almost any human anxiety eases when it is [Page 195] held next to one's sense of spirituality. But this great fact is not used rightly to get us out of living and developing. Indeed, just touching the spiritual reduces the size and threat of any problem, but then we still need to work it through. Touching the spiritual puts problems in a right context, reduces them to size, and gives more energy, and a better quality of energy, with which to work, but then we must still work on them. We can never be certain about another person, but she sounded like she was away from the situational difficulties, from working out a solution with her husband, and from manifesting her life-energy forward. Instead, she seemed to be silencing a sense of wrong by using the relief one feels, when one touches the spiritual side. This cannot be decided about another person, nor can it be figured out conceptually. But in your own body you can sense and recognize the quality of energy that some decision or prospect makes in your body. In what I will now say, please see if you can get a sense of this difference: If some instance of giving up is too easy, it feels like turning over in bed. Or you might sense something closing, inside, where you might have challenged something. Such a move lets you off coping with fear. You feel the resignation of the backed up life force in you. If so, it is probably not the kind of detachment the literature means.
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If giving up school felt like that in her body, I think it wouldn't be right, at least not without some more change-steps. Giving up school might be right if it made an energy like climbing out of a narrow box, or like fresh air after a stuffy room, if it brought the bodily feeling of a vast space. Can you sense the quality of bodily energy I mean? But what if (in our example) this good quality of energy comes temporarily whenever she recalls her spiritual side, but not from the prospect of quitting school? What if this closes and backs the energy so that the spiritual must again release it? Then it seems clear that quitting school is not a good step, just now. School may or may not be important, but the kind of inner process and development is certainly important. The kind of process cuts across all the different contents, even though just now it seems to be about this or that. Many of us need more development of the strength to stand up to the world, to be fully there with others, to stay with an issue till we devise a [Page 196] way that is both fair to others and lets us manifest our life-energy forward. Perhaps you don't lack this; sense how it is for you. Ego-developing is part of spiritual development today. In one respect just touching the spiritual dimension brings a perfection that is always already total. Yet we are also in need of development. We are always both. In Chicago we now have specific steps for going back and forth between that big, totally open "space" and the energy-constricting personal problems and limitations. (Amodeo, J. "The Complementary Effects of Meditation and Focusing," Focusing Folio, Vol. 1, No. 2, 1981. Gendlin, E. T., Grindler, D., McGuire, M., "Clearing a Space," Focusing Folio, Vol. 2, No. 1, 1982, reprinted as part of Imagery, Body and Space in Focusing in Sheikh, A.A., ed. Imagination and Healing, New York: Baywood, 1984.) Inward listening is a dialogue in which "I" and "what comes" both participate and change. That is not just an encountering of Big Things while remaining small and undeveloped oneself. Inward listening lets go of self-engineering, but not of forward-moving bodily life-energy and active development. It is a dialogue with a sensed "edge" that comes physically in us, which we cannot direct or construct. In that dialogue I do not become less than in my usual ways of living. I become more than I was. I will now be specific about that "edge," and one mode of that dialogue. The Edge of Awareness

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We value this edge because it is a porous borderzone through which new steps come that we could not have made. In this metaphor the word "edge" works oddly. This "edge" is the center of the body. It is also the center of speech and action. What you really meant by what you said or, the motivation you really felt is that unclear but alive bodily sense. That edge or border which we do sense has to be distinguished from the other side which is vastly more, and which we do not sense as such. What comes in one moment in such a sense is not the other side! It is only a little bit from the other side, and already mixed with how we are and have been. So we cannot simply obey one such step, sense or edge, either. After a while more steps come, and may change what seems right. In little steps of [Page 197] change the edge or border zone itself changes. So border too, works oddly here. No one metaphor stays put, either. When I spoke of detachment I asked you to sense the difference between a giving up like turning over in bed, and a giving up like leaving a stuffy room for the fresh air. That was an example of sensing an edge. Without deliberate bodily sensing, you might not find such bodily qualities coming in you with some course of action. Yet, if you put your attention in the murky center of your body, a physically experienced sense of that sort is likely to come there after a minute or so. It might not be one of the two I described. When that opens, it would let you know a lot. That would be one little step. Each such step changes this edge. So one cannot draw conclusions from any one step. Rather one can trust the steps to keep coming till the resolution is clear. But in these steps both what comes and I have a role to play. For example, suppose I decided to refrain from some act that seems wrong, but refraining feels like a backing up of life, like resignation. Suppose the idea of going ahead frees my energy. Which shall I do? Neither! I must seek a new way that will feel right in both regards, and I don't have such a way yet. I can neither simply override my bodily sense, nor can I simply give in to it. Further changesteps can not come if I give up, nor will they come if I insist on rejecting and closing off where and how my life-energy now is. The development process has many more steps, and if I keep both sides in play, I and that sense will both change. I can get strong enough to let in what I consider wrong without giving in to it. I settle neither for the energy in its present form, nor for the loss of that energy. I can let my attention down into my physical body so that I can listen to that sense of backed-up energy, and also to that sense of freed energy. There the further steps of development can come. Our major energies are often caught in our trivial, personal places, and cannot be ignored there.

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What is it, exactly, which feels right in this wrong thing? I always think I know the answer, already. This old information may be right as far as it goes, but it has to be set aside. Something else comes if I ask the life-forward body-sense directly, and wait as I sense it a while. And , what feels so defeating in that sense of backed-up energy? Again I think I know. It seems obvious. But something else will come when I let the sense of backed-up energy open and speak in me. [Page 198] As either or both of these open, something comes from the body energy itself. Such a step seems to be only finding out something, but no! Along with such steps comes a physical change. The backed-up energy moves again. Something that has long been still, now stirs. There is a little bit of oozing, seething, a physical sense of change. Something comes alive, even in a tiny step of this sort. Such steps are not mere information. The steps I mean involve a physical, global shift in how I am, a little bit of energy change. It is not the sort of "step" I mean, if information comes without that physical release, fresh air, and physically freed energy, as well as a bit of change in how I view the situation. The process is a dialogue between the deliberate "I" and that bodily sensed murky zone. Both change. As my bodily sense opens and releases, I also find out what felt so defeating about my choice. But this kind of "finding out" is already a physical shift, which lets more steps come later. Through these the situation also becomes differentiated and alternatives appear which did not exist before. Sometimes the step that comes can seem quite wrong. If it comes with this energy release one must receive it welcomingly, and await further steps. For example, suppose I have been responsibly taking care of someone. Now, from my body-sense I find: "Oh . . . only getting clear away, taking no more care of this person, would feel freeing." I may know that I will not just run out on the person, but I must listen and receive this step, so other steps can follow. It may seem selfish and heading in a wrong direction, but I let myself sense that. Getting away completely, being all free, no more responsibility, that's what my body wants at this step. I need to let the bodily rightness of this step fully be. Only after that, a minute later, can I ask it further: "Why does it need to be completely away?" As usual I think I know of course. But I let that old information go by. I wait for an answer from the body-sense. The next little step might be, for instance: " . . . oh . . . that's right . . . I haven't been able to say 'no' to this person on anything. Oh, . . . (a breath comes all on its own here) . . . that's why it felt like I must get
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completely away. (Whew . . .) . . . sure . . . if I could say 'no' some of the time, I'd be all right. But I know I can't, I haven't been able to." You see how at one step it seemed I needed to run out on the person, and at the very next step something quite different seems needed. Yet [Page 199] I couldn't have gotten to the second step without letting the first one physically come through. That is why I must receive and physically entertain each step, but with the knowing that I will hold out for further steps, till the problem resolves. Now, I can ask: "If I practice at saying 'no' some of the time . . . if I made that a new practice for me . . . not just for this situation, but for my growth . . . would that feel like a right move? Or would my body-sense still say I need to get completely away?" I sense the middle of my body again. ". . . hmm . . . something's wrong . . . (and after a while:) . . . oh, yes . . . there's an unsureness in there, would I really practice? Sure . . . that's what the trouble is . . . whew!" That lets me ask: "Suppose I could be sure I really would . . . ?" Perhaps now, at this fourth step, I might feel a major shift, the tension draining out. Yes, if I could be sure I really would tackle my no-saying weakness, yes, my energy comes even more than if I think of running out! Or, I might sense something else still involved, that hasn't opened yet, and needs more steps. Most human problems don't solve in just a few steps, or in one day. People think development steps must be threatening. On the contrary, they feel positive, the energy is life-forward. If something seems too touchy or scary to work on, don't push in. But don't just back away, either. There is a third alternative: Focus gently on the sense of "too scary" or "not ready to go on," and keep staying with that, returning to that, until going further feels open. In that place where these little steps come, there is also an openness to the other side, to what we do not even dimly sense. I do not say that all growth moves are steps of this kind. For example one bit of forced exploratory new action may also change a whole scene. There may be times when one would not stay in a situation endlessly, holding out for one more step. There may be a time for willful cutting, or for just obeying the body. We cannot obey even this process all the time, or make it our only means. In relation to one's development, I have opposed obeying others, one's superego, one's own designs, remaining limp and avoidant inside, and I even argued against always obeying that process of steps I described. Now what about obedience as a basic set? As a concept, obedience is neither to be adopted or rejected. No single pattern can always be right or always wrong. Everything I have said throughout can also be right and [Page 200] wrong. It
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depends on what is already old and familiar for an individual, and what would be a further step. Every pattern also has its pitfalls as well as its powers. Obedience has these too. There is an inner asking, waiting, and obeying that can powerfully open a new way, the possibility of which one could not have conceived. In a further step, how is "further" determined? The steps usually change what I thought was my direction, and then later on, they change the direction some more. The coming of such steps is helped, if one can get a sense of rightness, of total soundness, without any content. It helps to ask (and not answer) such questions as: "What would be right?" "What would be a good step?" or "What does it need, to feel better?" But in such questions "right," "good," "better," are emptied of content. They are not conceptions of a norm or a direction. Instead, they involve an open sense of total soundness as a backdrop, on which to sense the problem as it now stands. Now the whole thing is this way what would be a step toward a right solution? In a dialectical way this can be thought about this way: Instead of wanting what I can now think, I can want what I would want, if I knew everything. Of course that is what I want and I can want that now. Along with that wanting comes a bodily quality of being whole, unconflicted, all in one piece, free to be, want, and choose, all in one. We cannot usually live physically this way because we and our situations are too complex, and imperfect. Living this bodily quality for some moments helps specific steps to come. But it would be something else if I live these same notions as a giving up and pushing back of my wanting, in favor of some other will that I only think of, but do not now physically feel. Concepts and patterns are much thinner and poorer than living experience. Therefore a person-using-a-concept is much more than just that concept. We cannot know from the concept alone how it is being used. The concepts do not make up or determine the living, though they play a role. The living process does as much or more to determine how the concept works just now. For example, from the concept "obedience" alone we cannot know if it is used to set up a static barrier between a person and the wider dimensions, or if it is used to make that distinction porous and moving. The obedience pattern can split me away from that which is more than me, as if there were two people, two things, two nouns. Obedience can [Page 201] be the opposite of my power, choice, and freedom. In the obedience pattern I can stay small and fixed. My development often seems a most unpromising project. It can seem better to stay in an obedient pose, than to change so that I could become trustworthy myself in certain regards. I might find it easier just to do service and not to develop myself, (which, of course, limits my service to some

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present level as well). It can seem easier to set myself only to obey and leave all strength and value on the other side. Or, "obedience" might be exactly this porous movement of the distinction between self and more. After some steps of development, what had seemed other is now also part of me, and what seemed to be just my doing can become sensed as more, coming through me. These are not conceptual differences in thinking, but different ways of bodily sentient living and experiencing. Our development comes in many ways. I know that the process I describe is an important way. These steps of development arise from sensing the quality which comes in the middle of the body in relation to a problem as a whole. At first it is always murky, fuzzy, almost nothing. It may be difficult at first to let that sense of the whole problem come. The words that flow through our minds distract us from focusing in the body. Also, the recognizable, familiar feelings get in the way. They are usually more intense than this subtle global quality. In psychotherapy research we found that those who later report large and good changes are also those who sense the unclear edge during their therapy hours. The tape-recordings show that. (Gendlin, E. T. et. al., "Focusing Ability" in Shlien, J. ed. Research in Psychotherapy III, Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association, 1967.) In the last decade, beginning from that research, we have developed finely specific bits of instruction which, with practice, enable anyone to find this bodily sensed edge, and the little steps that come from that. (Gendlin, E.T. Focusing, New York: Bantam Books, 1981.) We tell people these specifics in the form of "split-level" instructions: We say: please try to follow these exactly. But we also say: if following any of these bits of instruction feels like you are doing yourself some violence inside, if it feels wrong as you do it, stop but don't run away. Just back up slightly and sense the wholistic, bodily quality of what the trouble is. In this way you will find this inwardly opening process sometimes through our instructions, and sometimes by sensing where they don't fit. In [Page 202] principle the literature agrees that one must follow one's "inner guru," that "the still small voice" can overrule every authority. "But in practice . . . " One can make that process sound far from an ordinary person's stage of development, something ideal. That process of which I speak is close and available to anyone. It does require some practice, and some preliminaries. One must learn to put attention in the body, to sense the middle of the body from inside. That is strange to many people, though familiar to others. One must learn to let words go by until they subside so that one can sense "that whole thing" physically. The coming of such
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a physical edge-sense differs from the usual feelings, and is unfamiliar to most people. In the first moments it seems a most unpromising spot. One must learn to wait, there, with that, and return to that repeatedly while it remains murky and closed for a time. That sense and these steps can be small, subtle, hard to detect. Soon big steps come from these. The process is not known to most people at this time. But it is within close reach of anyone. It is not to be kicked upstairs as too mysterious to have. Note to Readers:

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Document #2057 version 070411 build 071008

Hi guys, Here I go again with my "New Age for Left Brainers serie" and this one is about trying to explain the famous Matrix's 2 point technique. Today is a very exciting day for me because I get to write the long post that I wanted to wrote almost 2 years ago. For those who don't know this yet, I went to a Level 3 Matrix seminar back in october 2008. I brought with me my brother and a friend and we had a lot of fun during those 5 days. The people were interesting to talk with, the weather was beautiful at the Omega Institute during that period of fall. I have done a few weeks before a 2pt where I felt a little wobble just before the person I did it to fell down so I knew that there was something real to it so I signed up on this forum and then went to the Level 3 seminar a few weeks later. During the seminar, I noticed that not only my 2pt weren't getting stronger but for many people like my brother, they couldn't feel a thing while both giving and receiving the 2pt. It even went back down in strength when I came back from the seminar so my goal was to figure out this 2pt since on the ME board, the majoroty of people here are right brainers and just hate to use their left side of the brain and deal with their analytical mind. Some told me that I was too much in my head and not in my heart but when I asked them if they could replicate what Richard does with scoliosis and tumors, most of them said no, so I have put my "Mr. Fixing" hat and started digging head first into this crazy ME adventure of explaining using my "very limited" left brain how this 2 pt technique works even though the creator of ME himself said that he doesn't have a clue how it works.

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So let's get to it. First, let's talk about the "steps" (yes I know this word give right brainers ulcers but what can I do ) of the 2pt that Richard talks about in seminars and books. 1- Placing Intent 2- Drop to the heart (drop pebble) 3- Letting Go So let's take them 1 by 1 and take a closer look at each one... 1- PLACING INTENT Basically, my research points me to make this claim... "...it's not the "INTENT" that you think consciously but the "BELIEF" that you believe SUBconsciously that makes the 2pt work. Like Richard says in the Matrix Experience Kit... "...it's your unconscious belief that will guide your experience" http://www.merlinworld.com/RichardBartlett-Beliefs.mp3 So what is a belief? A belief is nothing more than a thought or an intent that you believe as true that's being repeated many times to finally be stored as a belief in your Subconscious Mind. 90% of all the actions you took today were based on these beliefs and 90% of those beliefs have been implanted in your Subconscious Mind between the age of 0-4 mostly by your parents, friends, teachers. etc... Those beliefs are stored in your SM (which seems to be located in the heart) just like little programs inside a computer. Each one of those beliefs have a specific frequency or vibration to it and your SM-Heart is sending this vibration to the universe attracting according to the law of attraction what comes in resonance with it and collapse the Quantum Physics' wave function. We'll get to this later. The most important part to remember is that it's NOT the thought of healing (or transforming) a person that will cause the change but the belief you have
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as to how deep the healing will be. Here's what Joseph Murphy said in his classic book "The Power of The Subconscious Mind". "...Whatever the conscious, reasoning mind of man believes; the subconscious mind will accept and act upon" As you might have guessed, the key word here is "believes". Basically, what he meant was that only the thoughts that we believe AS TRUE will enter the SM and be attracted by it and the thoughts that we don't believe in will be rejected or filtered out at the junction between the Conscious Mind and the Subconscious Mind. I now call this filter "The Doorman".

It is also because of this Doorman that most ME newbies can't fix heavy cases like tumors, scoliosis, etc...It's not because ME doesn't work, it's because WE DON'T BELIEVE we can do it so the thought gets rejected by The Doorman and because those thoughts are not perceived as true or possible for you, they are not sent to the Subconcious Mind-Heart and no healing vibration is sent to the Universe and the patient won't receive any healing energy or receive a very small amount. I use my NAPs (Night Audio Program) system to implant directly into my SM any new belief I want to or use it also to remove limiting beliefs. I have discussed enough about my technique so just PM me if you want more details. You can use other techniques like hypnosis or EFT to create new beliefs or you can do like Richard said which is to start small with things that are not important and build your ME 2pt belief so that it gets stronger and
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stronger over time but YOU WILL NEED to have a belief in your SM-Heart that's for sure. I said it many times and say it again today, the 2pt is the car and the belief is the fuel, your car will go as far as the amount of fuel you feed it. Low belief = Low results. Strong belief = strong result. Ok so this covers the PLACING INTENT part, let's take a look at the DROP TO THE HEART part. 2- DROP TO THE HEART (DROP PEBBLE) So what does that mean when Richard says you need to drop to your heart and then drop the pebble. Was it putting your focus on you chest? Think happy thoughts and think of a pebble that you drop in a pond? For years I couldn't figure out this part UNTIL a great guy named Gregg Braden came along. Listen to this video first and then continue the reading...

Ok so now Gregg is saying that it's the vibration in our hearts (aka Subconscious Mind) that we send to the universe that acts like the pebble and the vibration sent is matched by the atoms around us and THIS is what collapse the wave function or if you prefer takes the cloud form of the atoms with unlimited possibilities and condenses them all into their particle form creating the reality visible to our eyes. Now you might be asking now what the heck our heart is sending to collapse the wave function? And the answer is in another aucio clip by Gregg. Here it is: http://www.merlinworld.com/Braden-Beliefs1.mp3 The very first few words explain it all. "BELIEFS, expressed in the heart..." Are you starting like me to see the big picture now? You start with an intent (thought) but before it "drops to the heart" it must first meet The Doorman (which is your critical mind) and it looks at that thought to see if you BELIEVE in it. If you don't (because it sounds too good to be true like fixing a scoliosis for many here) then the intent/thought is
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rejected and does NOT drop to the heart so no new vibration is sent and no new wave is collapsed and no new reality (where the patient is fixed) will appear in front of your eyes. On the other hand, if you believe that your intent is possible, then The Doorman moves aside and let the intent in. It becomes a belief and is dropped at the heart level which then sends the vibration of the intent to the universe around you using the electromagnetic field of the heart called the Toroidal Field as shown below.

This intent's vibration or frequency is matched with the atoms around it (Law of Attraction) which will then collapse the waves form of the atoms into visible particles. 3- LETTING GO/GOD As for the "LETTING GO/GOD" part... this one is easy. All you have to do is DON'T send to your heart another thought/belief while you are doing the 2pt like (oh my, it's been 15 seconds and I don't see anything, I guess it's not working) because this "not working" belief is what your heart will send to the Universe and you will attract just that: A 2 pt that doesn't work. In fact Richard said many times that we should NOT look for the problem state but rather noticed what's different. This creates 2 things. 1- It avoid sending to our heart a negative belief that will attract a failed 2pt 2- When we find something that HAS CHANGED, it reinforces the new belief that our 2pt technique is working and like he said in in audio clip
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above, you start with something that's not important and build on that belief so that later on, tumors or more important things can be fixed with your 2pt. It can also be explained as The Law of Detachment as explained by Deepak Chopra here.

This explanation may not be totally accurate but it's where my research is taking me and according to Richard and Gregg's mp3 and video along with others I didn't post, they seem to confirm what i'm talking about here. When I look back, EVERYTHING makes perfect sense now. It would explain many phrases or quotes like... - "...You create the reality that you believe in" - "...Do you believe it in your heart?" - The Hooponopono story where you heal inside and it gets reflected outside. If my research is correct, this brings me back to my 1991 discovery by reading the book "Think & Grow Rich" where he said the quote I use in my signature these days... "...Whatever The Mind Can Conceive And Believe, It Can Achieve. -Napoleon Hill" So how can you implant a belief in your Heart-SM where ALL your 2 pt works and fix not only a scoliosis but can change EVERYTHING you do a 2pt on like changing your eye/hair and car color (even if those are not important but you get the idea). This is why I always said that Richard was wrong when he said that this technique is "Reproducible". It is reproducible ONLY if you have the same belief as he has which of course not everybody here has therefore explaining why the 2pt varies sooooooo much from ME practitioner to another. I've been focusing in the past 20 years on changing beliefs in my SM and even though I have done a great job so far, i'm not even close to where I want to be.
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Because it's NOT ONLY about adding a new belief inside our SM to make great 2pts, it's about UNLEARNING many of those limiting beliefs we have in our SM. http://www.merlinworld.com/Tony-Beliefs.mp3 Listen to Tony Robbins talk about an interview he did with Dr. Bernie Siegel where he says that multiple personality disorder patients can not only in a flash fix their allergies and diabetes health issue like many ME practitioners can do but ALSO change physical parts like eye color from brown to blue INSTANTLY. This is where we enter the DEEP DEEP DEEP level of beliefs and I don't think a ME practitioner here not even Richard can do a 2pt on someone and change their eye color with a 2pt EVEN if the atoms of a scoliosis and the atoms of our eyes are the same. There are some beliefs that CANNOT be easily changes and therefore there are results with the 2pt that CANNOT be easily achieved. You see, when I say to "experts in hypnosis" can you change the color of a patient's eyes because after all the atoms of a spinal cord are the same as the ones inside the eyes? Most will run to cover and use excuses like "yeah but but but... I don't care about this, this is superficial stuff." and my reply is "Yeah I know, just bring them back to their original color afterwords". And still they run away because THEY KNOW and I KNOW that those are not just simple beliefs like removing spider phobias but deep deep beliefs at the core of our being like gravity is that you CANNOT change in an 5 minute hypnosis session or a simple 2 pt. To arrive at the level of beliefs that those schizo patients are where they instantly change eye color in front of their doctors, you need to remove the "eye color codeline" hardcoded waaaaaaaay deep in your SM core that says you have brown eyes. You have to unlearn that you have brown eyes to make your eyes change. I know what i'm talking about. On my forum these change of beliefs are possible but they take MONTHS and we deal DIRECTLY in Theta with the SM. So to fix scoliosis tumors or anything you want to fix, just look at your results and they will tell you how strong your beliefs are and how important the inner work you need to do to add/modify/remove your beliefs to master this 2pt art of transformation.

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So there you have folks, hope you liked it. If you are a left brainer, I suggest you bookmark this page instead of trying to explain the 2 pt to a client. If an image is worth 1,000 words, a link is worth at least 10,000. Cheers,

Close this window Bending the Rules of the Universe An Exclusive Interview with Richard Bartlett Richard Bartletts Matrix Energetics workshops have become tremendously popularnot just because the experience is a cross between a healing seminar and a rock concert, but because what he teaches changes peoples lives in ways they never thought possible. What started for Richard Bartlett as a series of treatments in his chiropractic practice has evolved into a technology of consciousness for opening the doors of possibility. Here he talks to us about Matrix Energetics and what makes it so unique.

Sounds True: You call Matrix Energetics a technology of consciousness. What does that mean? Richard Bartlett: One of the challenges in teaching Matrix Energetics is you dont want to over-define it. You dont want to pigeonhole it as a technique or a method of problem-solving, because that imposes limitations. Matrix Energetics is about expanding our perceptual model. Each person has a set point, like a thermostat, for what theyre willing to believe, what theyre willing to experience in the next moment, and what they can actually sense in the world. With Matrix Energetics, you acknowledge that every model has limitations. Then you realize that you dont have to play by those limitationsand the key word is play. Once you do that, you embrace the idea that change can be instantaneous, and you dont have to worry about how that change going to show up. All this is to invite the power of grace. Grace is that limitless potential for something to happen, literally, miracles to happen. The miracles happen in between the spaces of conscious awareness.

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Sounds True: What do you mean by the spaces between? Richard Bartlett: Our left-brain consciousness puts things together like frames in a movie, processing snapshots of experience in a way that appears to be one continuous activity. It works at a speed of maybe one to twelve experiences per second. The brain takes each snapshot, then filters it through our conceptual model, and strings it together into something that gives an illusion of continuous activity. Once you realize that, you can say, In the space between my perceptions, anything can happen. If thats just a statement in your head it wont do much, but if you drop downas we say in Matrix Energeticsinto your heart, thats the place where intent can work. It can happen in an instant. And if you transcend the limitations of your conceptual model just one time, that can be enough to change everything in your life.

Sounds True: When you talk about the place where intent can work, do you mean focused intention, as its usually talked about? Richard Bartlett: Not really. When people do practices based on the power of intention, they tend to get stuck in the conscious mind. The trouble with focused intent is its still based upon what we think can happen. Youre supposed to visualize what you want to happen, which is about imposing an outcome on the universe. Thats a left-brain, rational method and it usually doesnt work.

Sounds True: So would you say the rational mind is an obstacle in Matrix Energetics? Richard Bartlett: I dont see it that way. Look, I have two medical degrees Im a huge believer in rationality! The rational mind is your friend. All you need to do is go beyond the idea that you can define reality with just your rational, conscious mind. Because its much too limited. For that we need the limitless processing power of the right brain, or the unconscious. Theres something Sri Aurobindo, the great Indian saint, said: There are no physical laws in the universe. Theyre more like suggestions. What he means is that theyre hypnotic suggestions that our unconscious mind believes. Matrix
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Energetics helps you let go of the rigidity of those rules to be more flexible, and yet still retain those rules as appropriate for your reality. One of the obstacles people hit working with Matrix Energetics is just the idea that something could be so graceful, so easy, and so without judgment. We dont believe things can be that simple. One tactic you use to get past this block is to overload the left brain with information. You feed the left brain all of this scientific data it can handle. Its all true material, and the left brain thinks it understands it, but nobody really does. Not even the physicists. So as your left brain tries to chew on that, it gets out of the way of your right brain. And it helps if you do it in a playful way.

Sounds True: Could you give me an example? Richard Bartlett: Sure. Lets look at this idea. Quantum physics is getting to the point where theyre saying consciousness must be added to any working model of reality. Everything has a quantum field, or what Rupert Sheldrake called a morphic field or identity. Its almost like a blueprint. These morphic fields are like floating clouds of energy, of thought forms, that just wait for someone to have a thought, a feeling, or an intent. Our thoughts polarize the quantum field like a magnet, with the larger field actually diffusing into your own the smaller field. So heres where you start to play with that concept. Think of it like the scene in Ghostbusters, when Dan Akroyd chooses the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man. He thought it was a pretty benign choice, but then it turns into this great monstrosity. Our thoughts are like that. Theyre like these sticky, Stay-Puft Marshmallow Men attempting to destroy the city, and what we have to do is develop different kinds of cities, different kinds of powers, where we learn to trust the innate divinity within us. You have to realize the universe is completely unreal, just like the yogis talked about. You cant just hold that as a thought. You have to become self-realized in that knowledge, and that doesnt require effort. That requires letting go, because the more you try to grasp something like that, the more tangled up youre going to be in your own thoughts. The more you practice in a playful manner, a way that really gets you out of the left-brain trap, the more you create this awareness and this morphic field of instantaneous transformation. You dont have to believe it. You just start out by playing with it, and then, at some point, you realize its playing with you.

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Sounds True: You talk a lot about not the role of silliness and play. Are they useful in and of themselves? Richard Bartlett: Its interesting about play. You can redefine play to mean anything. If you are driving down the road, and you are fully engaged and enjoying your car, that can be engaged in play. Even if youre stuck in traffic, you can choose to be stressed out, or you can choose to be happy. Its that attitude. Its not play if youre saying, Well, Im going to play for five minutes because its good for my blood pressure. Im sorry. Youre not playing; youre doing therapy. Play is when you completely forget yourself, forget time, forget space, forget that youre even human, and youre just occupied with a moment, and you could call it bliss. The ancient yogis appeared to be very serious, but they had this kind of twinkle to their eyes, and they had this little smile, kind of like, I know a joke, which is the universe isnt real, and its just playing with us, and Im playing back!

Sounds True: There are lots of other healing techniques out there, and you say you dont want Matrix Energetics limited to that. Whats the difference between a technique and what youre calling a technology of consciousness? Richard Bartlett: A technique is developed to meet the needs of a certain problem. But Einstein said that problems cant be solved at the same level of consciousness that created them. That means you have to transcend your existing conceptual model to really get to the creative potential, or what has been called the quantum potential, the hidden awareness in the universe. The way you do this is you let go, you stop seeing yourself as separate, and you play like you mean it. You play like a child, where youre practically hallucinating. One of the things that I insist upon in Matrix Energetics is that it has observable, reproducible phenomenon that can be easily learned and then duplicated by anyone, because if its only I that could do it, then maybe youd have to say, Oh, Im some fantastic healer. Im not the best model for a healer. I do everything wrong. I eat bacon for breakfast, I drink coffee, I dont smoke because I just cant stand it, but I mean I probably would if it were just because its a vice. I have every vice imaginable, and I can even develop some devices to improve my vices. Its not about any of that, because if it were, then it would be so limited, no one would be able to approach it, because theyd have to either be holy, or meditating for 20 years, or mastering qi or prana or all of these things.
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You can learn that stuff. I even have techniques in Matrix Energetics, like twopointing and using the 21 Fundamental Frequencies. You can learn techniques or practices exactly right and get them down pat, but unless you get into the playful state that lets you set aside the conceptual limits of time and space, your techniques wont do much. Theyll never transcend what you think is possible.

Sounds True: One last question. Why do people fall down on stage during your seminars when you use the two-point method on them? Richard Bartlett: The falling down thing is just one aspect of a larger phenomenon we see a lot when people first experience Matrix Energetics. I think it happens because of the sudden understanding that were just composed of light, just photons and patterns of information. When we interact with each other on that basis, I think we change the actual spin or velocity of the photons. At that moment the left brain can no longer track reality as being real, the right brain takes over. You expand out. The conscious mind cannot keep up, and people tend to react by falling down. Or they go into bliss, or unconsciousness, or silliness, or laughter, or see colors, or hallucinate a frog on the floor next to them, or any number of things. They can experience joy. They can cry. They can literally experience transcendence. I had a banker who I two-pointed. When I touched him, nothing appeared to happen. Someone asked me out in the audience, Well, why didnt he fall down? I said, I dont know! Lets ask him! And I said, What happened? It didnt look like much happened when I touched you. And he looked at me, he was still having trouble talking, and he said, When you touched me, my whole body disappeared, I experienced the void, I was out in outer space in a transcendent phenomena that I still cannot describe. I said, Okay, thanks for sharing that! Ive seen astonishing things happen to people when they make room for miracles to show up. Ive seen spontaneous healingslike broken feet getting healed in an instant. These things break our conceptual guidelines, but you realize theyre perfectly natural and normal when you see laws of the universe are more like suggestions. If we expect miracles, we are more likely to experience them, but that doesnt mean your life should be predicated on the need for a miracle. When you need a
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miracle, or you need to be healed, or you need something to happen, your own expectations of what will happen if it doesnt are in the way. When you let go of the need for something to happen or not happen, thats where grace resides. And anythings possible there.

Reprinted with permission from Sounds True, www.soundstrue.com Close this window

Close this window What the Bleep is Matrix Energetics? by Jennifer Buergermeister Newtonian Physics, out...Quantum Physics, in! With mainstream movies like The Matrix, The Butterfly Effect and What the Bleep Do We Know popping up in theatres - no kidding! How can we escape the latest shift in thinking about discoveries in energy, reality, the body and our own existence? After traveling across the United States to meet Dr. Richard Bartlett and Dr. Mark Dunn, "two wild and crazy guys" (I mean that in the best sense), in Seattle, I have to ask myself what in the bleep is going with what they call "Matrix Energetics: A total system of transformation based in the laws of subtle energy physics, consciousness and focused intent". "...And everyone can do it." With the greatest compassion and love for their work, Dr. Bartlett and Dr.Dunn captivated the room with their insights on transformation through movement, light touch, intent and the power of the imagination. They aretwo truly loving spirits, destined to help others realize their own healing and transformational potential. "Matrix Energetics is a previously undiscovered, intent driven, universal, expression of energy which is harmonious with the concepts and laws of quantum physics," said Dr. Bartlett. "All physical structure has an energetic template upon which it is based and is an interface between physical reality and the quantum energetic hologram." The "matrix" of the body is comprised of endless pathways at the cellular level. Communication becomes interrupted and impaired when the body experiences trauma, disease, injury or disorder. Matrix Energetics reestablishes a balanced state in the body's flow of communication.
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But I tell you... after spending a weekend with these two spiritual doctors, scientists, and energy transformers, I soon began to also understand that laughter and play are two key elements in quantum healing, and in instant transformation of the body's matrix. If everything is energy, and if our bodies contain and consist of energy frequencies, then why can't we change our frequencies instantly into a healthy, balanced state and become illness-free simply through intent, playful imagination and "feeling, with focus"? Dr. Bartlett and Dr. Dunn have joined an ever growing league of doctors such as Deepak Chopra, Dr. Eric Pearl and Dr. Bernie Siegel, who agree that both energy and emotions play a fundamental role in miraculous healings. If I had any ailments before this seminar, they've surely been laughed right out of my system! I guess sometimes we just need a good "laughsitive" for "jestive relief." It's "FUNdamental" in our "dysFUNsional" society." (Swami Beyondananda, in "Duck Soup for the Soul") Get out of the way and allow yourself to play ~ Dr. Bartlett. In Seattle, people were transforming physically in front of my eyes! Drs. Bartlett and Dunn say it's simply playing a game with the universe, using light touch and the power of intent as starting points in getting the body to shift. As a "facilitator of change", you are free to make up the rules as you go along. They showed it's sometimes as simple as locating hard spots in the body and then imagining them linked, and balanced. For instance, one "game" for the spine involves imagining railroad workers putting in a new backbone "railway." "Imagination is more important than Knowledge." ~ Albert Einstein And anyone can do it? Is your head spinning yet? Here's my first experience with Matrix Energetics: When I returned from Seattle, I visited a Starbucks next to The Good Space Pilates and Yoga Studio, off Woodway. A "baristas" who took my order was complaining of an old back injury from two years ago. She was in pain, so I asked her to try and remember three years ago when her back felt normal. She laughed at the possibility but, with seriousness, I asked her again to access the memory how her back felt before the accident. By her eye patterns I could tell she was experiencing kinesthetics (an NLP term used to identify and access mental states and feelings), and that cued me to anchor or tap her head to awaken the neurological system of that memory. I then tapped her chest so she'd neurologically store the feeling, while remembering her back's healthy state. She was very receptive to the "facilitation." Moments later, the woman stated that her arm was tingling, and within two minutes her back pain was gone! She began swaying her hips back and forth in a dance, screaming out joyously to the patrons and the universe that her pain had
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disappeared. I was just as surprised. As she was accessing her memory of a healthy back, I was imagining her body expanding out like a hologram, simultaneously holding the intent that it would reorganize itself into its previous healthy state. We played a game with the holographic universe and it worked! I saw her again several weeks later and there was still no trace of the pain. At a subatomic level, we're no different than a mountain, a chair or a river. We are a system of dancing particles, each with our own "matter casserole" recipe. There are group similarities, but no two the exactly same. Every life form has a genetically coded map that it follows, and in it is the blueprint for balance and harmony in the organism's frequencies. Einstein said, "Everything is emptiness and form is condensed emptiness." If you were to look through a subatomic lens, the world would look like particles floating in empty space - a timeless reality. To change our emotions and unhealthy physical states we need to alter our perceptions. For change and transformation to occur we have to blow-out the boundaries of anything negatively stored in the body. Be in the NOW! There's no place like the present moment. We have to think BIG and understand that there's so much more going on in the universe than meets the eye; that reality isn't 2- or even 3-dimensional. And according to quantum physics, time itself is an illusion. Time is illusory because past and future are connected to the present as possibilities. Our reality (i.e. the universe) is a hologram; and at any instant, consciousness is the totality of the coherent signaling within the living matrix including wave fronts reflected from specific information-containing structures maintained by our choices on a moment-to-moment basis - shaping our experiences of the world. We each have valuable roles in the big picture...the matrix. Everything is connected to everything else holographically somehow. Consider that in the making of a holographic image - say, of an apple - no matter how many times we cut out pieces, it always projects the entire apple. The entire tree is in the seed. So... does that mean our bodies are a part of something else "out there" that's "the whole"? How in the bleep does that happen? And who, or what, is the "projector" of this reality? Neurophysiologist Karl Pribram said, "The human nervous system is a hologram of the universe. At any moment when you think about it, no matter what you think you are, you are always more than that." All this information about quantum physics and The Matrix left me with one question: If the universe and our bodies are holographic, then what, exactly, are we a hologram of? Is this where science and religion finally meet? I'll leave that for you to decide.
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Jennifer Buergermeister is a public speaker and author on various esoteric subjects. She can be reached at www.inner-realms.com Close this window

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