Focusing as an essential component of person-centered therapy

This article consists of five separate presentations which aim to demonstrate how the work of Eugene Gendlin – and ‘focusing’ in its original meaning of spending time with the ‘inwardly sensed edge’ of experiencing – once enriched understanding of how client-centered therapy worked and continues to enrich understanding of person-centered therapy today. Judy Moore explains how ‘focusing’ came to be identified during Gendlin’s collaboration with Carl Rogers at the University of Chicago in the 1950s. Campbell Purton argues that close listening at the level of sensed experiencing needs to be restored to the heart of the person-centered therapy. Anna Karali points to the therapeutic relationship as a shared creative process wherein ‘implicit felt meaning’ is revealed through interaction within an ongoing flow of ‘experiencing.’ Pavlos Zarogiannis shows how Gendlin broke down the process of symbolization that happens in successful therapy into ‘steps’ that could eventually be taught. Nikolaos Kypriotakis demonstrates how Gendlin shifted focus from a ‘relationality’ between two self-contained individuals into a broader ‘interactionality’ that encompasses the socially and culturally situated nature of the therapeutic interaction. At the heart of each presentation is an understanding of the pre-conceptual organic experiencing process that was identified by Gendlin as the ‘motor of personality change’.