Download Author: Gendlin, Eugene T.

4 eBooks available.

The Newer Therapies

In addition to psychoanalysis and behavior therapy, a third type of psychotherapy has developed: “humanistic”, “existential”, or “experiential” therapies. Many therapists hyphenate more than one orientation, calling themselves “client-centered-existential for instance. (66 pp.)

Therapeutic Procedures with Schizophrenic Patients

The various procedures I have described in this chapter are primarily used when the patient does not interact with me, is not (over a long period) saying, expressing or acting-out anything meaningful. When, through any of these channels, he is communicating meaningfully, then my response is the one long associated with client-centered therapy—the effort accurately to sense the client’s felt meaning at that moment and to communicate to him my understanding of that meaning as clearly as possible. (69 pp.)

Experiential Focusing and Psychotherapy

Experiential Focusing is a method of attending inwardly to let a “felt sense” form. This is a holistic sense of a problem or unresolved situation. It forms if one attends to how the body feels from inside. At first there may be a blank or some vague tension of ease, but in less than a minute one can feel a whole sense of the problem forming there. This felt sense is not just physical as with muscle sensations, not just psychological, nor just cognitive. It is bodily, affectively (emotionally) and cognitively meaningful before these three are split apart. Once a felt sense forms, it is found to lead to steps. New feelings, perceptions, and courses of action emerge. Focusing usually involves many steps before a problem is resolved. (11 pp.)