“The body has its reasons that reason does not know. “

Focusing (or centering on oneself) is a bodily approach to psychotherapy created by the American Eugene Gendlin in the early 1970s. It is characterized by an attitude of attention to the “felt”, that is to say to that. happening “in oneself”: the emotions, the kinesthetic sensations as well as the visceral perceptions all at the same time. This feeling goes beyond simple physiological perception.

In English, the term focusing means “to focus on” or, as in photography, “to focus on”. It is therefore a question of accompanying the feeling in order to allow it to become more precise and to reveal relevant information.

Gendlin has indeed argued that there is a “bodily sense” (bodily felt sense), that is, the body “knows” the problems the person is facing. But the information it contains cannot be revealed entirely by the mind, and certainly not by logic.

The skills that must be developed to achieve good listening to the feeling become, over time, a fundamental attitude of respect for oneself and for “what is”. The person learns to establish an “inner relationship ». Moreover, one can train in the practice of focusing outside of a therapeutic relationship.

Body images

The work of the therapist, the accompanist or the trainer consists in bringing the subject to establish his interior relation without letting himself be bypassed by mental representations. Because, at the beginning, the bodily feeling with which one seeks to come into contact is very vague. Gradually, the feeling lets emerge personal and specific elements which are a pictorial way that the body has of manifesting its knowledge. This is called theexperiencing. And it is these elements that allow personal work to evolve.

But for meaning to emerge, you have to take the time to listen, without preconceived judgment, without any prior idea of ​​what is to come, and without expectations. We must not assume the solution, because it is then the head that decides, and the head is only a part of oneself … One must therefore leave the body (that is to say oneself in its entirety). ) choose what is best for him – which presents a considerable challenge.

Despite the eminently personal aspect of theexperiencing, we know of the stages that can be summarized as follows:

• bring his consciousness into his body;
• establish contact with what is there, inside, and describe it without passing judgment;
• accompany the part of oneself that suffers, without identifying with it or excluding it;
• listen to what she has to say;
• create a long term relationship with her.

It is said that the goal of a person in Focusing Therapy is not so much to learn something about themselves as it is to really experience themselves.

Philosophy and Psychology

A philosopher by training, Eugene Gendlin worked with Carl Rogers in the Department of Psychology at the University of Chicago. Rogers was to develop his “person-centered approach”, which would set school and deeply inspire the psychotherapeutic movement of the second half of the XNUMXth century.^e century. One of the things Gendlin wanted to do in his research was to find out what made psychotherapy work or not. Watching Rogers in action, he came to understand that the focus was not on the nature of the problem (the content), but on the customer’s experience (the process). For people who were making progress in therapy generally seemed able to develop the ability to pay attention to their body feeling and to verbalize it.

The images and words that manifested as they listened to these feelings seemed to carry new meanings, sometimes the missing piece of a personal puzzle. And it was this type of experience that allowed them to free themselves from a narrow perception of themselves or their problem.

Gendlin’s great contribution to the world of psychotherapy and personal development has been the discovery of this resource called “bodily sense” and the development of the protocol that allows him to support and make him unfold.

Gendlin also defined a measurement tool (Experiencing Scale) applicable to the subject’s ability to establish the inner relationship. In concluding a synthesis of seven studies on the effectiveness of psychotherapy (in general), a professor emeritus of humanistic psychology, Dr.^r Jules Seeman, writes: “A great capacity forexperiencing initially more likely (than chance) to facilitate rewarding therapy; and an improvement in the degree ofexperiencing during therapy is associated with positive results. “¹ In a book published in 2001 by the American Psychological Association, 39 studies are reported which have observed that the degree ofexperiencing of a person can be improved by the training or interventions of a psychotherapist².

In 1980, Eugene Gendlin set up the Focusing Institute with the aim of pooling resources related to this approach and creating an international network capable of providing training. Focusing has since been applied to other sectors as well, such as social work, education and creative. We also created a practice called the “focusing partnership” (focusing partnership) where two individuals (non-psychotherapists) meet at least one hour per week to help each other in personal exploration with the focusing tool. The Focusing Institute website allows potential partners to pair up³.

As a psychotherapeutic approach, focusing is a tool of self-knowledge that would be appropriate for resolving a number of inner conflicts. Special mention is made of the possibilities of deepening interpersonal relationships (interactive focusing), improving communication skills, reducing stress, preventing burnout and having better access to one’s creativity. Although there is very little well-controlled scientific research confirming the effectiveness of this approach, focusing would allow you to better understand yourself, alleviate suffering, engage more in life and gain greater autonomy.⁴.

Focusing sessions could help people recover from serious illness. The results of a randomized clinical trial, conducted among 12 people aged 30 to 55 years who had suffered from cancer in the previous five years, found that six weekly 90-minute focusing sessions significantly reduced symptoms of depression. and produced a positive body attitude, compared to the control group⁵. These improvements were still present six months later.

Practical details

You can take workshops to learn about focusing. You can also choose a psychologist or a psychotherapist who has been trained in this technique. The meetings then take place one-to-one with the practitioner who acts as a “guide”, but who does not give an interpretation of the feeling.

The subject seeks to make contact with his feelings and to express it. For a while, especially at first, he may have difficulty describing the pictures or sensations that form. The therapist then asks questions likely to favor more precision, always in relation to the bodily feeling: “Is this sensation heavy or light?” “, for example. Whenever the subject gets lost in mental considerations, the therapist brings him back to his body. When the image is precise enough, the therapist directs his questions so that the subject establishes an interior relationship with this image. These new relationships can lead to new discoveries about oneself and a widening of one’s field of consciousness. This is what, indirectly, can lead to therapeutic effects.

Training

The Focusing Institute manages training and certification. It offers various basic workshops as well as complete training to become a certified practitioner (Certified Focusing Trainer). See Sites of Interest.

Here are Eugene Gendlin’s two main publications on the subject:

Focusing, Bantam, United States, 1978.

Focusing-oriented psychotherapy — A Manual of the Experiencing Method, Guilford Press, United States, 1996.

As for his only book in French, Focusing – in the center of oneself originally published in 1984, it was reissued in 2006 by Éditions de l’Homme, Canada.

Lamboy Bernadette. Becoming Who I Am: Another Approach to the Person, Desclée de Brouwer, France, 2003

A presentation of the commonalities between Gendlin’s Focusing and Rogers Person-Centered Approach. Theory and clinical cases.

Weiser Cornell A. The Power of focusing — A Practical Guide to Emotional Self-Healing. New Harbinger Publishing, United States, 1996.

At the moment, it is one of the best books available to the uninformed public: a small, easy-to-access manual with many examples on how to practice focusing alone or with a partner and how to integrate it into psychotherapy.

Article by Bernadette Lamboy. Le Focusing, Published in The Journal of the French Association of Clinical Psychologists, No. 4, 1998. [Accessed January 12, 2009]. www.focusing.org/focusing-francais.html

See also the list of titles on the Focusing Institute website

www.focusing.org

Focusing Quebec Diffusion

Site of a non-profit organization that presents information of all kinds.

www.diffusion-focusing.org

The Focusing Institute

The organization set up by Eugene Gendlin serves as a global benchmark, coordinates a network of trainers and offers post-graduation training. The list of texts available on the site is impressive. Small section in French.

www.focusing.org

Focusing Quebec

Training activities, facilitators, focusing and nursing, focusing in a school context, etc.

www.focusingquebec.qc.ca/index.html

Francophone European Focusing Institute (IFEF)

An association bringing together members from Belgium, France, Switzerland and Italy.

www.focusing-europefrancophone.org