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1978-present: Publication of Gendlin's Focusing Book and future history
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1978-present: Publication of Gendlin's Focusing Book and future history
The hardback edition of Gendlin's Focusing (NY: Everest House, 1978) and the paperback edition (Bantam, 1981) included a description of Changes and the Listening Manual for the exchange of Listening/Focusing turns. The beginnings of the Focusing book and that Listening Manual can be found in this The Changes Book, with Gendlin and Mary Hendricks as partners, struggling to find their first words for the nuances of the Listening and Focusing practices we were exploring.
Many people who have been central to The Focusing Institute for the last 30 years began their involvement as members of the first Changes: Jim Iberg, Doralee Grindler-Katonah, Elfie Hinterkopf, myself - Kathy McGuire, Ann Weiser Cornell, Dave Young, Mary HendricksGendlin, Gendlin himself, etc.
The beginnings of Focusing-Oriented Therapy (FOT) also developed as all of us clinical psychology students honed our therapeutic skills in our peer-counseling relationships with each other, as well as in our formal training. See:
McGuire, K. " Psychotherapy Training Through Peer Counseling", 1985, http: //www. cefocusing. com/pdf/2F2dPsychotherapyTrainingThroughPeerCounseli ng2. pdf );
McGuire, K., The Experiential Dimension in Therapy, 1984, available to download at www. focusingtherapy. org;
Gendlin, E. T., Focusing-Oriented Therapy: A Manual of the Experiential Method, Guilford Press, 1996.
In the 1990s, Mako Hikasa in Japan started a network of Changes groups as an offshoot of Listening/Focusing classes, and kept them connected through a newsletter and regional gatherings. Nicoletta Corsetti in Italy also made the Changes format central to her approach. Robert Lee, in founding his own approach to teaching Focusing, kept the peer counseling group model as central. Suzanne Noel includes group work in her approach using Focusing and Listening in addiction treatment.
However, the emphasis within The Focusing Institute became more narrowly defined in terms of Focusing as a self-help skill which a person could do alone. Ann Weiser Cornell's Inner Relationship model had the goal of people being able to do Focusing on their own. Gendlin worked on his philosophy as expressed in The Process Model and The Philosophy of The Implicit. With the help of Nada Lou and others, he developed Thinking At The Edge (TAE). TAE is the process of Focusing as applied to creating one's own theory or ideas. As with Focusing, Gendlin got help by doing phenomenological research, demonstrating Focusing oriented theory building, watching others do it, and analyzing the step-wise process people were using.
The emphasis on peer counseling, and Listening/Focusing communities, and interpersonal conflict and collaborative decision-making, went to the back burner.
Starting your own Changes Listening/Focusing Support Group
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I will say that the original Changes in Chicago, the basis of this book, was unusual in the sense that there were probably up to 20 of us graduate students with the time and energy to be there as teams and phone volunteers, etc. In the many future Changes groups that I have started, we have not offered an open invitation to the community, not having the resources or the energy or the desire to take care of what we came to call “heavy people”.
This does not mean that any one of us could not become a “heavy person” at a certain point in our life, and we often did have maybe one or two people who came to us as friends of friends and needed a lot of support.
But I want people to know that they can start a Changes group that is much more closed and selfselected. When moving to a new city, for instance, I often network with the local nonprofit organizations of helpers and find my personal Listening/Focusing community among those people who already have a personal growth and therapeutic orientation. And many Changes groups have formed as a self-help continuation of 10-week training courses in Listening and Focusing, or a gathering together of Listening and Focusing trainers in a particular geographic area.
As Suzanne Noel has recently counted up from the Changes page at the Institute website, www. focusing. org under Felt Community, there are over 40 Changes groups listed throughout the world. I hope that, by publishing this early manuscript, The Changes Book, which is full of the enthusiasm and passion of us early pioneers, to inspire others to start their own Listening/Focusing support groups. I would like to see a return to an emphasis upon this more interpersonal aspect of Focusing, including the wonderful use of Listening and Focusing for personal growth and support, and for a new model of group decision-making and conflict resolution.
In 2016, the political situation in the US, especially the hate and prejudice-filled election campaign, and the refugee crisis in Europe, also bringing an increase in hate and prejudice, has led to a renewed interest in the need for empathic understanding. The pendulum seems to be swinging back in the direction of an understanding that empathic Listening, setting aside one's own judgments and prejudices and stereotypes, and coming to understand people who are different through empathy, is a skill and an attitude needed in our present world situation.
Edwin Rutsch of The Center for Building A Culture of Empathy and Compassion, www. cultureofempathy. com, and the new International Empathy Trainers Association, IETA, www. empathytrainers. com, are bringing together people throughout the world whose interest is in spreading empathy.
Greg Madison, and others from the social activist subgroup formed at the International Focusing Conference in Cambridge, England, 2016, have launched The World Day of Listening (you can join the Facebook group at https: //www. facebook. com/groups/WorldListening/). It is because of this rebirth of interest in Empathic Listening that I have decided to make The Changes Book, with all of its exact instructions and its enthusiasm, available.
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