Iluminismo Zen: Origens e Significado
Unfortunately this book gives very few clues as to the mystical experience stimulated by Zen practice. Infelizmente, este livro dá algumas pistas muito sobre a experiência mística estimulado pela prática do zen.
The most valuable material addressing this issue is found near the very end of the book. O valioso material mais sobre este assunto é encontrado perto do final do livro. In chapter 12 we learn that some Zen students are guided through a variety of experiences on the way to "enlightenment". Any experiences short of enlightenment are labeled as: useless, destructive, and sometimes evil.
No capítulo 12, aprendemos que alguns estudantes de Zen são guiados através de uma variedade de experiências sobre a forma de "iluminação":.
Todas as experiências curtas de iluminação são rotulados como inútil, destrutiva, e às vezes mal. These lower experiences include mystical visions and profound emotional openings. Essas experiências inferiores são visões místicas e profundas aberturas emocional.
In addition to these experiences comes a sensitivity to sense impressions. Além dessas experiências vem uma sensibilidade para as impressões sensoriais. During advanced Zen practice, light reflections, colors, and sounds are perceived sharply and felt deeply.
Durante a prática Zen avançado, reflexos de luz, cores e sons são percebidos de forma acentuada e sentiu-se profundamente. Next, the disciple can enter a state of mental clarity and physical tranquility. Em seguida, o discípulo pode entrar em um estado de clareza mental e tranquilidade física.
Dumoulin reports: "The liberating experience is different from the feelings of exultation and sudden luminous insights that occur along the way of practice, particularly in the final phases.
The accounts show Zen enlightenment to be a cosmic experience. In the sudden breakthrough of the mind, the universal unity of reality that includes or expands the self is experienced, and this is an indescribable---and hence nonarticulated---way.
Experiences of so-called cosmic consciousness perhaps come closest to the Zen experience, but in the case of Zen enlightenment, the basic Mahayanist doctrine of universal Buddha-nature in all living beings gives this term a more precise sense: that of the holiness and original pureness of all reality, which is one.
Dumoulin relatórios: libertadora experiência diferente é a partir do sentimento de exultação e súbita insights luminosos que ocorrem ao longo do caminho da prática, particularmente no final fases A ". Contas mostram Zen para a iluminação ser uma cósmica.
A experiência da descoberta súbita da mente , a unidade universal da realidade, que inclui ou expande a si mesmo é experiente, e esta é uma indescritível --- --- e, portanto, como não articulados. experiências da chamada consciência cósmica, talvez mais se aproximam da experiência Zen, mas no caso de iluminação Zen, o Mahayanista doutrina básica universal da natureza búdica, em todos os seres vivos dá a este termo um sentido mais preciso: o da santidade e pureza original de toda a realidade, que é um.
domingo, 28 de novembro de 2010
sábado, 20 de novembro de 2010
HOW GETTING IN TOUCH WITH FEELINGS HAPPENS:
THE PROCESS OF REFERENCING
AKIKO DOI, M.A., is a doctoral student in the clini cal psychology program at Kobe College. Prior to entering the graduate course in psychology, she worked as a translator after finishing her undergrad uate course in American literature and linguistics. Her current interests include the process of explicat ing verbal symbolizations.
AKIRA IKEMI, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist and a professor of counseling psychology at Kobe College. He has worked as a clinical psychologist in depart ments of psychiatry and psychosomatic medicine. He is currently working in corporate medical centers from a focusing oriented perspective that he studied with Eugene Gendlin at the University of Chicago. He is a certifying coordinator of the Focusing Institute and an executive director of the Japan Focusing Association.
International Network
Summary
In psychotherapy, the client constantly checks or tries to explicate his or her feelings, which produces different words for feelings. The process of explicating feelings may also result in changes in the feel ings themselves. This “checking out” of feelings is called “referring to” the feelings. Referring to the feeling and explicating the feeling are essential for feelings to embark on the change process. In this article, we discuss the process of referring to feelings in psychother apy. Using Carl Rogers’s and Eugene Gendlin’s theories, we propose a process of “referencing.” The referencing process involves not only the client’s referring to feelings but also the “happening together” of the client and therapist in explication. The exploration of the refer encing process will, hopefully, contribute to the sophistication of how the feeling process occurs in interaction, which is a central issue in humanistic psychology.
Keywords: feeling process; referring to feelings; congruence; interaction; referencing process
What is called “feelings” or “the feeling process” is crucial for humanistic psychology. Instead of intellectual analysis, humanis tic psychology relies on the feeling process as a source of knowledge about the person. Personal growth and self actualization—issues that characterize humanistic psychology are also directed by the feeling process. Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers agreed that what is self actualizing or growth promoting for a person feels right for that person. There is felt rightness to certain ways of liv ing and being for a person, even though the felt rightness may involve hardships and obstacles. Resolutions in humanistic psychotherapies accompany relevant felt changes, not just intel lectual interpretations or behavioral modifications.
Humanistic psychologists, moreover, rely on the person as a source of knowledge on how the person gets in touch with, and how the person articulates the feeling process. For example, humanistic psychologists would not rely solely on measures of certain bio chemical substances in the blood and then determine whether the person has high anger or low anger. Although such measures can be valuable in humanistic research, the humanistic researcher would also ask the person whether he or she feels the anger and how. How the person feels is best described by that person, rather than by an outside measure.
In psychotherapy, clients get in touch with and describe their own feeling processes. In such explications, the words used to describe feelings may change. Moreover, the feelings articulated may also change or be carried forward in the process of explication. For instance, a person may say,“I feel frustrated...not really, more like I’m angry. . . .Itseems to touch a place here that feels hurt.” Here, by the very act of checking, the feeling produces different words for the feeling. This checking out of the feeling is called “ref erence,” or “referring to” the feeling. We can notice here, that not only do the descriptors change but also the feeling itself is chang ing in the process. It feels different to be frustrated, angry, or to be feeling hurt. Referring to the feeling and explicating the feeling is essential for feelings to embark on the change process. We can say, simply, that the client “got in touch with a hurt feeling,” but more accurately, the person was referring to a sense that is now called “hurt.” In the process that the client is now embarking on, the hurt may change into yet another feeling. The act of referring to the feel ing is thus essential to understand how change is brought about.
In this article, we discuss the process of referring to a feeling in psychotherapy. Through careful examination of Carl Rogers’s and Eugene Gendlin’s theories, the article proposes a process of referencing. The referencing process differs from the client’s referring to her feelings, in that the referencing process is conceptualized as a happening that occurs between the therapist and the client. The discussion of the referencing process will, hopefully, refine and carry forward the significance of client centered and experiential concepts as they are used in psychotherapy practice, as well as illu minate the feeling process that is central in humanistic psychology.
REFERENCE AND CARL ROGERS’S OBSERVATIONS
The term reference is a term that is often used in linguistics to describe what words refer to. The word “computer,” for instance, refers to this machine that I am now using to write this manu script. Gendlin (1964) used the word “referent” (“direct referent”) in psychotherapy to express a particular feeling yet unclear, to which a client was referring to in the therapeutic interview. Later, he coined the word “felt sense” to point to the direct referent. Tech nically, the expressions “direct referent” and “felt sense” can be used interchangeably. Both involve feelings, which are not yet clearly formulated. For example, a client may say:
Well, I have this sort of heavy feeling....no, heavy isn’t really the right word . . . some stuckness.
In this sample statement, the client’s words are explicating a certain direct referent or felt sense, expressed by the words “heavy feeling,” “no, heavy isn’t the right word,” “some stuckness.” These words do not seem to fit exactly with the direct referent. During the pause, the client is checking her words against her direct referent. This checking is essential for this kind of statement to be uttered, because without this checking, the client will not know that “heavy isn’t really the right word” for the direct referent that she is trying to articulate. The expression “refer to” or “referring” is used to point to this checking. Referencing, as we discuss later, explicates the complex interactional nature of the referring.
Although it was Eugene Gendlin who used words such as “refer,” “reference,” and “referent” in the field of psychotherapy, we can see clearly that the phenomena of referring were observed by other therapists, before Gendlin began to use these words. Particularly, Carl Rogers observed and described clients referring to feelings during the therapeutic interview. We quote Rogers here, from his book Client Centered Therapy (1951), a book published before Eugene Gendlin began to work with Rogers (Gendlin [2002] reflects that he began to work with Carl Rogers in 1952):
As she struggles to find her true feelings for her father, the one which matches her sensory experience, she uses the interview as a tryout ground. (p. 83)
In this observation, we can see that Rogers did not take the cli ent’s words as definitive, as the client referred to her feelings (about her father) and explicated the direct referent, trying out dif ferent words to express the referent. Seeing that the client was “using the interview as a tryout ground,” Rogers stayed with the client during the process of referring and explicating.
We can also assume that because Rogers reflected the client’s thoughts and feelings, without interpreting them, the process of referring to the direct referent was facilitated. Rogers’s reflections served as a mirror that accurately reflected what was articulated by the client. The client then checked back these reflections to see whether they accurately explicated her thoughts and feelings. As a result, Rogers (1951) quoted several clients remarking that these reflections on the part of the therapist helped clients understand themselves better:
My psychologist took my views and thoughts and made them so that I could understand what was going on. He didn’t conclude them but stated them back to me so I could draw my own conclusions. (p. 70)
I was never conscious that he was reflecting or restating things . . . but he would clear them up for me, bring me back to earth. (p. 37)
It can be observed here that reflecting the articulations of the client enhances the process of referring and explicating. Rogers made these observations in practice, but in theory, Rogers inter preted his observations in a slightly different context, that of empathy, acceptance, and congruence. In theory, he emphasized not the technique of reflecting, but the attitude of “accepting the client as she is,” and of trying to understand the “internal frame of reference” of the client.
This emphasis on the attitudes of the therapist is understand able and remarkable, given the sociohistorical context of Rogers’s works. Rogers revolutionized the field of psychotherapy by demon strating that each person had a self direction implicitly and that utilizing these implicit understandings in therapy was so much more valuable than the diagnostic and therapeutic interpretations imposed onto the client by the therapist. He emphasized the per son as the source of knowledge and facilitated the genuine encoun ter between persons—beyond roles, races, religious creeds, politi cal structures, and masks. (These attitudes are much needed in the political situation today.) Thus, in therapy, as early as 1951 he emphasized therapist attitudes because “earlier presentations over emphasized technique” (p. 19). He wrote: “Our concern has shifted from counselor technique to counselor attitude and philoso phy” (p. 14).
By emphasizing the attitudes, however, Rogers did not elabo rate specifically on the process of referring to the direct referent. For example, in his comments regarding the two previous quotes from his clients, Rogers stated that it was the acceptant attitude of the therapist that brought about the changes in the clients. True, the therapist’s acceptance and the therapist’s attention toward the internal frame of reference of the client were essential for the interview; however, these attitudes do not explain specifically why the therapist’s reflections “would bring me back to earth.”
The process of referring to a direct referent and the ensuing changes that occur in the client was later articulated in detail by Eugene Gendlin’s (1964) theory of experiencing.
EXPERIENCING AND CARL ROGERS’S CONCEPTS
Apparently, Rogers maintained a keen interest in the concept of experiencing as elaborated by Gendlin. However, to us, it appears that Rogers had to make efforts to reconcile or to integrate the experiencing process into his own concepts regarding the therapist attitudes of empathy, acceptance, and congruence. In the chapter, “The Process Conception of Psychotherapy,” Rogers (1961) elabo rated on the process of experiencing and thereby described the cli ent’s process of referring to the direct referent. However, as Rogers himself acknowledged, this chapter “borrowed heavily from Eugene Gendlin” and much of this chapter was actually quoted from Gendlin. In a chapter originally published in 1975 (Rogers, 1980), Rogers finally took in Gendlin’s concept of experiencing and wrote:
I have drawn on the concept of experiencing as formulated by Gendlin (1962).. . . Gendlin’s view with which I concur, is that he is checking them against his ongoing psychophysiological flow within himself to see if they fit. This flow is a real thing and people are able to use it as a referent. In this case, “angry” doesn’t match the felt meaning at all, “dissatisfied” comes closer. (pp. 141 142)
Here, Rogers explicitly uses the word “referent” and then goes on to explain a transcript of his session with a case (Mrs. Oak) illus trating Gendlin’s experiential theory.
However, in the same chapter, we can find Rogers’s (1980) clas sic views regarding reference, expressed as “labeled in awareness” (Italics added): “It seems to me that only when a gut level experi ence is fully accepted and accurately labeled in awareness, can it be completed....Itisthe sensitive empathic climate that helps to more experiencing forward to its conclusion, which in this case is the uninhibited experiencing of ” (p. 158).
These quotes demonstrate the classic views of Carl Rogers. He emphasized that acceptance and empathy were the preconditions that make referring possible. He has incorporated the phenome non of referring and experiencing but maintained the view that the empathic and acceptant attitude of the therapist makes, or helps, the experiential process.
REFERENCE AND CONGRUENCE
Congruence, however, is an important concept articulated by Rogers (1951) that has much to do with the process of referring to the direct referent. We may understand by congruence—that it described the degree to which the direct experiencing—going on in the sensory and visceral level of the person was accurately symbol ized in the experience. Thus, we can say, in contrast to the previous elaboration, that Rogers did indeed address the issue of the client’s referring to and explicating the direct referent. Although this was written before Rogers developed the concept of congruence, Rogers wrote in 1951: “The experience of discovering within oneself, pres ent attitudes and feelings which have been viscerally and physio logically experienced, but which have never been recognized in consciousness, constitutes one of the most deepest and most signif icant phenomena of therapy” (p. 76).
Congruence, together with empathy and acceptance, may pro vide the key concept to describe the referring process in psycho therapy. Empathy and acceptance provided the safe climate in the relationship that allowed the client to refer to and explicate her direct referent, resulting in the client’s gradual recovery of the state of congruence. However, several problems remain and need clarification.
First, we must clarify that Rogers did not specifically equate congruence and the process of referring to the direct referent. To him, congruence meant the degree of overlap between the self concept and the ongoing experiential flow. His formulation reminds us of the psychoanalytic model. Only those experiences that matched the self concept were admitted into awareness, whereas others were repressed from awareness or were perceived in a distorted form.
We must also be reminded of the fact that Rogers (1957) assumed that the therapist was congruent in her relationship with the client, while the client was in an incongruent state. Many client centered therapists then had to assume that the therapist must be congruent in therapy, as this was the necessary and sufficient con dition of therapy. Theoretically, the client, on the other hand, was supposed to be incongruent in the therapy session. Gradually in therapy, the client would become congruent, at which point, ther apy would no longer be needed.
As therapists, we must admit that we cannot be congruent throughout the therapy session. It may even be said that the incon gruence of the therapist contains a richness that really makes the therapeutic relationship function.
From these observations, it may be said that Rogers’s concept of congruence comes close to explicating the process of referring. However, due to certain theoretical limitations mentioned earlier, the concept of congruence needs to be further refined.
THE REFERENCING PROCESS
Happening Together
Let us now consider the process of the client referring to the felt sense or direct referent. In doing so, we use a new paradigm of thinking, called “a process model” (Gendlin, 1998). In this way of thinking, we assume the position of interaction first. As Hendricks (2002) explained, we are used to seeing things as if they were sepa rate entities. For example, we normally think of the lung as sepa rate from air. However, we can see things differently when we see the interaction, namely the breathing process first. The lungs and air are parts of the breathing process. Without this process, the lungs will die. Changes in air (as in people who live in high alti tudes) also affect the way the lungs function. The interaction—in this case, the process of breathing—is what determines what the lungs will be and do. Breathing is a single interaction process that involves the lungs, air, and much more.
From the way congruence is described, we can see that the usual noninteractional way of thinking is utilized. The therapist and the client are seen as separate entities, who are in contact with each other. The former is congruent whereas the latter is incongruent. Let us now view the relationship from the process model, utilizing Gendlin’s thinking, as expressed in the following:
It is commonly said that each of our relationships “brings out” differ ent traits in us, as if all possible traits were already in us waiting only to be “brought out.” But actually you affect me and with me you are not just yourself as usual either. You and I happening together makes us immediately different than we usually are. Just as my foot cannot be the walking kind of foot pressure in water, we occur differ ently when we are the environment of each other. How you are when you affect me is already affected by me, and not by me as I usually am, but by me as I occur with you. (Gendlin, 1998, p. 30)
The presence of the therapist already affects the client, while the presence of the client already affects the therapist. The two become a happening together in interaction. In a part of this inter action, the client refers to his or her felt sense and explicates from the felt sense. Becoming congruent is one aspect of the happening together.
Congruence Reconsidered
In her chapter, Hendricks (2002) defined congruence in a new way. Instead of Rogers’s view that it is a match between experience and self concept, she defined it as follows:
We could say that our definition is the opposite of “match.” It is exactly where there is change that we are congruent. Let’s say con gruence is the experience of wondrous new experiencing coming out of me! Congruence is when our words emerge from our felt sense and carry it forward. (p. 59)
This experiential explication of congruence is remarkably simi lar to, or almost identical with the way we view congruence, although there is a slight difference in emphasis. We emphasize the process of referring to the felt sense, because the act of refer ring to the felt sense is necessary for “words [to] emerge from our felt sense and carry it forward.” Moreover, although this is some what overly technical, we would not say “congruence is when” which would make it seem that congruence is a state that is achieved when two conditions are met (i.e., one: when words emerge for the felt sense; two: when these words carry forward the felt sense). We would say, instead, that the process of becoming con gruent is the referring to the felt sense and letting words emerge from there. Sometimes the words that emerge will carry forward the felt sense, and sometimes not. However, the continuous act of referring to and explicating the felt sense is the process of becom ing congruent.
Interestingly, an identical definition was proposed by Gendlin in 1964 to articulate focusing. He wrote, “Focusing is the whole pro cess which ensues when the individual attends to the direct refer ent of experiencing” (p. 115). Hendricks’s explication and ours would amount to saying that focusing is the process of becoming congruent.
Becoming Congruent and Referencing
To further refine the articulation of the process of referring to the felt sense, we need to integrate the role of the therapist into this process. In another presentation, the second author (Ikemi, 2000) proposed that the felt sense should be considered as a verb, rather than a noun. The felt sense is existence, a living in a situation. The felt sense is a bodily living of situations, including the immediate situation. The interaction in the immediate situation lets one form a felt sense. In many everyday interactions, we do not let the felt sense emerge, nor do we let form a felt sense. If you said, for exam ple, “I feel so much pressure” and I said, “Yeah, me too, let’s go out for a few beers.” We would probably then sit in a bar and talk and not let the felt sense emerge in us. But what if I said, “How does that pressure feel in you?” Then, you would probably refer to your pressure and try to explicate from there. The very emergence or nonemergence of a felt sense is already interactional.
Therefore, for one to have a felt sense, the interaction with the other needs to be such that one can have a felt sense. We might say that such interactions are characterized by empathy (Rogers), acceptance (Rogers), or reconstituting (Gendlin).
The process of the client referring to the felt sense needs the therapist in the interaction to attend to the emergence of the felt sense in the client. Here are some interactional qualities of this relationship.
1. The therapist attends to the client’s felt sense.
2. The client refers to her felt sense and explicates.
3. The therapist reflects client expressions so that the client can check the explications with her felt sense and explicate further.
4. The therapist takes in the client’s explications and attends to her own felt sense.
5. The therapist may explicate her own felt sense.
We designate the whole interactional qualities here as the refer encing process. In this process, the therapist and the client do not exist as separate entities. Becoming congruent is a mutual hap pening between the therapist and the client in which both are tun ing into and explicating from the felt sense.
Simple Illustration From a Case
We present a simple illustration from a case presented later (Doi, 2001). We call it “simple” because this kind of interaction, though not dramatic, is frequently observed in therapy. In it, we show that the client and therapist are not separate entities in which the former is incongruent and the latter is congruent. The act of referring to the direct referent on the part of the therapist results in the process of the client to embark on his process of refer ring to the direct referent and speaking from there. A mutual referencing process is happening here.
The client was a man in his mid 20s and had just begun working in a research facility of a major corporation. His problem was that he felt his current job as an engineer was not suited for him. When the therapist first met him, he took a leave of absence from his office because of sleep disorder, depression, and anxiety and was eager to switch to a different job that really suited him.
During the first five sessions, the client repeatedly insisted that his current job was not right for him because he did not have the capabilities that were demanded by his job in engineering R&D. The client was very talkative; however, he did not seem to touch down inside nor did he appear to refer to his direct referent. The therapist asked the client to feel inside for his felt sense of the situ ation, and she also reflected the feelings the client expressed. How ever, the client kept repeating that he had “no capability.” He was going around in circles. Whenever the therapist asked him how he felt about the whole thing, he answered, “It’s difficult to explain,” and did not go much further. The therapy seemed blocked.
In the relationship with this client, the therapist was unable to understand what was really annoying for the client, even after five sessions. The therapist had been trying to find out what was it that made him so upset that he should consider leaving his job. In other words, the therapist felt incongruent, which made her uneasy.
In the sixth session, the client again remarked that he did not want to return to the same office because he might remember the bad feelings and bad atmosphere.
T (Therapist): What was it about the atmosphere that made you feel
bad? (Long silence) C (Client): It’s difficult to explain...Maybe I don’t have the right capa
bility, or the job is not right for me.
This was the answer that had been repeated many times. The therapist still did not understand.
T: You said you might remember the bad atmosphere. What kind of at mosphere was that?
C: Bad atmosphere . . . maybe others don’t find it so bad.
T: (Persistently) But it was bad for you, wasn’t it? Can you let me un derstand what the atmosphere was that made you feel bad? (Silence again) Was it too quiet?
C: No, it was not like that.
T: Were other people too absorbed in their work?
C: Absorbed in work...Well, it wasn’t easy for me to ask silly ques tions.
Here was a whole new view of the problem. It was not that he had no capability. He felt foolish to ask questions and did not want to bother others with silly questions. Despite this, however, the company gave him difficult research objectives, and he felt over loaded and isolated. The therapist finally understood what was so tough about the job for him.
After the sixth session, the therapy process was changed. Instead of the blocked process in the first five sessions in which the client did not touch down inside, the client gradually expressed his feelings after the sixth session, and the topic was changed from the persistent topic of “not having capability” to how to “communicate with others.”
In this simple case, we would like to show that it was the thera pist’s uneasiness of not understanding, in other words, the thera pist’s direct referent that was first explicated. More exactly, let us trace the interaction according to the five step qualities shown previously.
1. The therapist attends to the client’s felt sense. ——Client’s felt sense is not expressed.
2. The client refers to his felt sense and explicates. ——Client does not refer to his felt sense.
3. The therapist reflects client expressions so that the client can check the explications with her felt sense and explicate further. ——Re flection does not function in explication because the felt sense is not formed.
4. The therapist takes in the client’s explications and attends to her own felt sense. ——The therapist feels uneasy that there is some thing there that she is not understanding.
5. The therapist may explicate her own felt sense. ——Therapist per sistently expresses that she is not understanding and gives exam ples from her own felt sense of the situation (e.g., “Was it too quiet?”)
From there on, the client gradually began to speak from the situ ation as he felt it. His intellectual evaluation that he had no capa bility diminished. He gradually started to work on how tense he felt about asking questions and how he felt “trenched in” from the attacks coming from his boss. He was getting in touch with his feel ings, referring to them and explicating from there. The therapist continued staying with his process in the interactional qualities 1 through 5 shown previously.
It is not as if the client took off the “mask” (Rogers, 1961) and admitted his fears of asking silly questions after he perceived the empathy and acceptance of the therapist. This process can better be explained by mutual referencing process.
THE PROCESS OF REFERENCING AND HUMANISTIC PSYCHOLOGY
This article brings to light several implications that lie at the heart of humanistic psychology. First, we point to the importance of the process of referencing, rather than to particular contents or feelings that are being referred to. We cannot say that if one speaks about personal growth, then we are in humanistic territory, although if one speaks about the oedipus complex, then we are in psychoanalytic territory. Distinctions based on contents are mis leading, because spoken contents often change in explication. What was conceived of as a growth direction could turn out to be a regressive fixation. Conversely, dealing with an Oedipal issue may be growth promoting, bringing out many personal meanings, exis tential and self actualizing issues. Instead of contents, we might say that it is the process of referencing that characterizes human istic approaches.
Humanistic psychologists may become nonhumanistic if they impose humanistic concepts onto the client’s experiences. The fol lowing sample therapist statements make no difference.
1. “Well I see that your problem comes from a growth issue, you know, there’s some part of you that isn’t growing or self actualizing.”
2. “Well, I see that your problem comes from an oral dependent posi tion, you know, there’s some part of you that continues to need your mother.”
Both of these interpretations are imposing concepts onto the cli ent’s experience. (For a more detailed discussion of this issue, see Gendlin’s 1977 critique of Medard Boss.) Instead of contents, humanistic psychologists would attend to the process with which contents arise out of experience.
The process in which contents arise out of experience is the pro cess of referring to the direct referent (felt sense). However, as pre sented in this article, it may be said that this process is not really the client’s process. Referring to the direct referent is already an interaction. The interaction occurs not only inside oneself but also between the person and the other—the therapist. Moreover, the interaction also involves the therapist’s inner interactions. There is a complex matrix of interactions around the felt sense that client and therapist are trying to articulate. We call this mutual interac tion the process of referencing.
Therapists cannot expect the clients to get in touch with feelings and talk from those feelings without attending to their own feel ings. Self disclosure, genuine responses, and sharing on the part of the therapist are tips of the icebergs. Underneath these apparent responses is the continuous attending to the client’s feelings as well as to the therapist’s own feelings. Underneath there is a respect for whatever contents that emerge from the experiences of the client and of the therapist. Through this process of referencing, persons emerge newly, and client and therapist become congruent or genuine.
Interestingly, two recent books on focusing written in Japanese (Ito & Asega, 2001; Kira, 2002) deal with focusing for therapists. Both of these books show how deeply interactions with clients are affected when the therapist attends to his or her felt sense about the client. Moreover, in the United States and Japan, interest in “interactive focusing”(Klein, 2001) is rising. Focusing, in particu lar, and humanistic psychology, in general, would benefit from thinking about therapy concepts from an interaction first perspective.
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personality change. Journal of Consulting Psychology, 21, 95 103. Rogers, C. R. (1961). On becoming a person: A therapist’s view of psycho therapy. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Rogers, C. R. (1980). A way of being. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Reprint requests: Akiko Doi, Graduate School of Human Sciences, Kobe College, 4 1 Okadayama, Nishinomiya, Japan; e mail: BYR10177@nifty.com.
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THE PROCESS OF REFERENCING
AKIKO DOI, M.A., is a doctoral student in the clini cal psychology program at Kobe College. Prior to entering the graduate course in psychology, she worked as a translator after finishing her undergrad uate course in American literature and linguistics. Her current interests include the process of explicat ing verbal symbolizations.
AKIRA IKEMI, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist and a professor of counseling psychology at Kobe College. He has worked as a clinical psychologist in depart ments of psychiatry and psychosomatic medicine. He is currently working in corporate medical centers from a focusing oriented perspective that he studied with Eugene Gendlin at the University of Chicago. He is a certifying coordinator of the Focusing Institute and an executive director of the Japan Focusing Association.
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Summary
In psychotherapy, the client constantly checks or tries to explicate his or her feelings, which produces different words for feelings. The process of explicating feelings may also result in changes in the feel ings themselves. This “checking out” of feelings is called “referring to” the feelings. Referring to the feeling and explicating the feeling are essential for feelings to embark on the change process. In this article, we discuss the process of referring to feelings in psychother apy. Using Carl Rogers’s and Eugene Gendlin’s theories, we propose a process of “referencing.” The referencing process involves not only the client’s referring to feelings but also the “happening together” of the client and therapist in explication. The exploration of the refer encing process will, hopefully, contribute to the sophistication of how the feeling process occurs in interaction, which is a central issue in humanistic psychology.
Keywords: feeling process; referring to feelings; congruence; interaction; referencing process
What is called “feelings” or “the feeling process” is crucial for humanistic psychology. Instead of intellectual analysis, humanis tic psychology relies on the feeling process as a source of knowledge about the person. Personal growth and self actualization—issues that characterize humanistic psychology are also directed by the feeling process. Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers agreed that what is self actualizing or growth promoting for a person feels right for that person. There is felt rightness to certain ways of liv ing and being for a person, even though the felt rightness may involve hardships and obstacles. Resolutions in humanistic psychotherapies accompany relevant felt changes, not just intel lectual interpretations or behavioral modifications.
Humanistic psychologists, moreover, rely on the person as a source of knowledge on how the person gets in touch with, and how the person articulates the feeling process. For example, humanistic psychologists would not rely solely on measures of certain bio chemical substances in the blood and then determine whether the person has high anger or low anger. Although such measures can be valuable in humanistic research, the humanistic researcher would also ask the person whether he or she feels the anger and how. How the person feels is best described by that person, rather than by an outside measure.
In psychotherapy, clients get in touch with and describe their own feeling processes. In such explications, the words used to describe feelings may change. Moreover, the feelings articulated may also change or be carried forward in the process of explication. For instance, a person may say,“I feel frustrated...not really, more like I’m angry. . . .Itseems to touch a place here that feels hurt.” Here, by the very act of checking, the feeling produces different words for the feeling. This checking out of the feeling is called “ref erence,” or “referring to” the feeling. We can notice here, that not only do the descriptors change but also the feeling itself is chang ing in the process. It feels different to be frustrated, angry, or to be feeling hurt. Referring to the feeling and explicating the feeling is essential for feelings to embark on the change process. We can say, simply, that the client “got in touch with a hurt feeling,” but more accurately, the person was referring to a sense that is now called “hurt.” In the process that the client is now embarking on, the hurt may change into yet another feeling. The act of referring to the feel ing is thus essential to understand how change is brought about.
In this article, we discuss the process of referring to a feeling in psychotherapy. Through careful examination of Carl Rogers’s and Eugene Gendlin’s theories, the article proposes a process of referencing. The referencing process differs from the client’s referring to her feelings, in that the referencing process is conceptualized as a happening that occurs between the therapist and the client. The discussion of the referencing process will, hopefully, refine and carry forward the significance of client centered and experiential concepts as they are used in psychotherapy practice, as well as illu minate the feeling process that is central in humanistic psychology.
REFERENCE AND CARL ROGERS’S OBSERVATIONS
The term reference is a term that is often used in linguistics to describe what words refer to. The word “computer,” for instance, refers to this machine that I am now using to write this manu script. Gendlin (1964) used the word “referent” (“direct referent”) in psychotherapy to express a particular feeling yet unclear, to which a client was referring to in the therapeutic interview. Later, he coined the word “felt sense” to point to the direct referent. Tech nically, the expressions “direct referent” and “felt sense” can be used interchangeably. Both involve feelings, which are not yet clearly formulated. For example, a client may say:
Well, I have this sort of heavy feeling....no, heavy isn’t really the right word . . . some stuckness.
In this sample statement, the client’s words are explicating a certain direct referent or felt sense, expressed by the words “heavy feeling,” “no, heavy isn’t the right word,” “some stuckness.” These words do not seem to fit exactly with the direct referent. During the pause, the client is checking her words against her direct referent. This checking is essential for this kind of statement to be uttered, because without this checking, the client will not know that “heavy isn’t really the right word” for the direct referent that she is trying to articulate. The expression “refer to” or “referring” is used to point to this checking. Referencing, as we discuss later, explicates the complex interactional nature of the referring.
Although it was Eugene Gendlin who used words such as “refer,” “reference,” and “referent” in the field of psychotherapy, we can see clearly that the phenomena of referring were observed by other therapists, before Gendlin began to use these words. Particularly, Carl Rogers observed and described clients referring to feelings during the therapeutic interview. We quote Rogers here, from his book Client Centered Therapy (1951), a book published before Eugene Gendlin began to work with Rogers (Gendlin [2002] reflects that he began to work with Carl Rogers in 1952):
As she struggles to find her true feelings for her father, the one which matches her sensory experience, she uses the interview as a tryout ground. (p. 83)
In this observation, we can see that Rogers did not take the cli ent’s words as definitive, as the client referred to her feelings (about her father) and explicated the direct referent, trying out dif ferent words to express the referent. Seeing that the client was “using the interview as a tryout ground,” Rogers stayed with the client during the process of referring and explicating.
We can also assume that because Rogers reflected the client’s thoughts and feelings, without interpreting them, the process of referring to the direct referent was facilitated. Rogers’s reflections served as a mirror that accurately reflected what was articulated by the client. The client then checked back these reflections to see whether they accurately explicated her thoughts and feelings. As a result, Rogers (1951) quoted several clients remarking that these reflections on the part of the therapist helped clients understand themselves better:
My psychologist took my views and thoughts and made them so that I could understand what was going on. He didn’t conclude them but stated them back to me so I could draw my own conclusions. (p. 70)
I was never conscious that he was reflecting or restating things . . . but he would clear them up for me, bring me back to earth. (p. 37)
It can be observed here that reflecting the articulations of the client enhances the process of referring and explicating. Rogers made these observations in practice, but in theory, Rogers inter preted his observations in a slightly different context, that of empathy, acceptance, and congruence. In theory, he emphasized not the technique of reflecting, but the attitude of “accepting the client as she is,” and of trying to understand the “internal frame of reference” of the client.
This emphasis on the attitudes of the therapist is understand able and remarkable, given the sociohistorical context of Rogers’s works. Rogers revolutionized the field of psychotherapy by demon strating that each person had a self direction implicitly and that utilizing these implicit understandings in therapy was so much more valuable than the diagnostic and therapeutic interpretations imposed onto the client by the therapist. He emphasized the per son as the source of knowledge and facilitated the genuine encoun ter between persons—beyond roles, races, religious creeds, politi cal structures, and masks. (These attitudes are much needed in the political situation today.) Thus, in therapy, as early as 1951 he emphasized therapist attitudes because “earlier presentations over emphasized technique” (p. 19). He wrote: “Our concern has shifted from counselor technique to counselor attitude and philoso phy” (p. 14).
By emphasizing the attitudes, however, Rogers did not elabo rate specifically on the process of referring to the direct referent. For example, in his comments regarding the two previous quotes from his clients, Rogers stated that it was the acceptant attitude of the therapist that brought about the changes in the clients. True, the therapist’s acceptance and the therapist’s attention toward the internal frame of reference of the client were essential for the interview; however, these attitudes do not explain specifically why the therapist’s reflections “would bring me back to earth.”
The process of referring to a direct referent and the ensuing changes that occur in the client was later articulated in detail by Eugene Gendlin’s (1964) theory of experiencing.
EXPERIENCING AND CARL ROGERS’S CONCEPTS
Apparently, Rogers maintained a keen interest in the concept of experiencing as elaborated by Gendlin. However, to us, it appears that Rogers had to make efforts to reconcile or to integrate the experiencing process into his own concepts regarding the therapist attitudes of empathy, acceptance, and congruence. In the chapter, “The Process Conception of Psychotherapy,” Rogers (1961) elabo rated on the process of experiencing and thereby described the cli ent’s process of referring to the direct referent. However, as Rogers himself acknowledged, this chapter “borrowed heavily from Eugene Gendlin” and much of this chapter was actually quoted from Gendlin. In a chapter originally published in 1975 (Rogers, 1980), Rogers finally took in Gendlin’s concept of experiencing and wrote:
I have drawn on the concept of experiencing as formulated by Gendlin (1962).. . . Gendlin’s view with which I concur, is that he is checking them against his ongoing psychophysiological flow within himself to see if they fit. This flow is a real thing and people are able to use it as a referent. In this case, “angry” doesn’t match the felt meaning at all, “dissatisfied” comes closer. (pp. 141 142)
Here, Rogers explicitly uses the word “referent” and then goes on to explain a transcript of his session with a case (Mrs. Oak) illus trating Gendlin’s experiential theory.
However, in the same chapter, we can find Rogers’s (1980) clas sic views regarding reference, expressed as “labeled in awareness” (Italics added): “It seems to me that only when a gut level experi ence is fully accepted and accurately labeled in awareness, can it be completed....Itisthe sensitive empathic climate that helps to more experiencing forward to its conclusion, which in this case is the uninhibited experiencing of ” (p. 158).
These quotes demonstrate the classic views of Carl Rogers. He emphasized that acceptance and empathy were the preconditions that make referring possible. He has incorporated the phenome non of referring and experiencing but maintained the view that the empathic and acceptant attitude of the therapist makes, or helps, the experiential process.
REFERENCE AND CONGRUENCE
Congruence, however, is an important concept articulated by Rogers (1951) that has much to do with the process of referring to the direct referent. We may understand by congruence—that it described the degree to which the direct experiencing—going on in the sensory and visceral level of the person was accurately symbol ized in the experience. Thus, we can say, in contrast to the previous elaboration, that Rogers did indeed address the issue of the client’s referring to and explicating the direct referent. Although this was written before Rogers developed the concept of congruence, Rogers wrote in 1951: “The experience of discovering within oneself, pres ent attitudes and feelings which have been viscerally and physio logically experienced, but which have never been recognized in consciousness, constitutes one of the most deepest and most signif icant phenomena of therapy” (p. 76).
Congruence, together with empathy and acceptance, may pro vide the key concept to describe the referring process in psycho therapy. Empathy and acceptance provided the safe climate in the relationship that allowed the client to refer to and explicate her direct referent, resulting in the client’s gradual recovery of the state of congruence. However, several problems remain and need clarification.
First, we must clarify that Rogers did not specifically equate congruence and the process of referring to the direct referent. To him, congruence meant the degree of overlap between the self concept and the ongoing experiential flow. His formulation reminds us of the psychoanalytic model. Only those experiences that matched the self concept were admitted into awareness, whereas others were repressed from awareness or were perceived in a distorted form.
We must also be reminded of the fact that Rogers (1957) assumed that the therapist was congruent in her relationship with the client, while the client was in an incongruent state. Many client centered therapists then had to assume that the therapist must be congruent in therapy, as this was the necessary and sufficient con dition of therapy. Theoretically, the client, on the other hand, was supposed to be incongruent in the therapy session. Gradually in therapy, the client would become congruent, at which point, ther apy would no longer be needed.
As therapists, we must admit that we cannot be congruent throughout the therapy session. It may even be said that the incon gruence of the therapist contains a richness that really makes the therapeutic relationship function.
From these observations, it may be said that Rogers’s concept of congruence comes close to explicating the process of referring. However, due to certain theoretical limitations mentioned earlier, the concept of congruence needs to be further refined.
THE REFERENCING PROCESS
Happening Together
Let us now consider the process of the client referring to the felt sense or direct referent. In doing so, we use a new paradigm of thinking, called “a process model” (Gendlin, 1998). In this way of thinking, we assume the position of interaction first. As Hendricks (2002) explained, we are used to seeing things as if they were sepa rate entities. For example, we normally think of the lung as sepa rate from air. However, we can see things differently when we see the interaction, namely the breathing process first. The lungs and air are parts of the breathing process. Without this process, the lungs will die. Changes in air (as in people who live in high alti tudes) also affect the way the lungs function. The interaction—in this case, the process of breathing—is what determines what the lungs will be and do. Breathing is a single interaction process that involves the lungs, air, and much more.
From the way congruence is described, we can see that the usual noninteractional way of thinking is utilized. The therapist and the client are seen as separate entities, who are in contact with each other. The former is congruent whereas the latter is incongruent. Let us now view the relationship from the process model, utilizing Gendlin’s thinking, as expressed in the following:
It is commonly said that each of our relationships “brings out” differ ent traits in us, as if all possible traits were already in us waiting only to be “brought out.” But actually you affect me and with me you are not just yourself as usual either. You and I happening together makes us immediately different than we usually are. Just as my foot cannot be the walking kind of foot pressure in water, we occur differ ently when we are the environment of each other. How you are when you affect me is already affected by me, and not by me as I usually am, but by me as I occur with you. (Gendlin, 1998, p. 30)
The presence of the therapist already affects the client, while the presence of the client already affects the therapist. The two become a happening together in interaction. In a part of this inter action, the client refers to his or her felt sense and explicates from the felt sense. Becoming congruent is one aspect of the happening together.
Congruence Reconsidered
In her chapter, Hendricks (2002) defined congruence in a new way. Instead of Rogers’s view that it is a match between experience and self concept, she defined it as follows:
We could say that our definition is the opposite of “match.” It is exactly where there is change that we are congruent. Let’s say con gruence is the experience of wondrous new experiencing coming out of me! Congruence is when our words emerge from our felt sense and carry it forward. (p. 59)
This experiential explication of congruence is remarkably simi lar to, or almost identical with the way we view congruence, although there is a slight difference in emphasis. We emphasize the process of referring to the felt sense, because the act of refer ring to the felt sense is necessary for “words [to] emerge from our felt sense and carry it forward.” Moreover, although this is some what overly technical, we would not say “congruence is when” which would make it seem that congruence is a state that is achieved when two conditions are met (i.e., one: when words emerge for the felt sense; two: when these words carry forward the felt sense). We would say, instead, that the process of becoming con gruent is the referring to the felt sense and letting words emerge from there. Sometimes the words that emerge will carry forward the felt sense, and sometimes not. However, the continuous act of referring to and explicating the felt sense is the process of becom ing congruent.
Interestingly, an identical definition was proposed by Gendlin in 1964 to articulate focusing. He wrote, “Focusing is the whole pro cess which ensues when the individual attends to the direct refer ent of experiencing” (p. 115). Hendricks’s explication and ours would amount to saying that focusing is the process of becoming congruent.
Becoming Congruent and Referencing
To further refine the articulation of the process of referring to the felt sense, we need to integrate the role of the therapist into this process. In another presentation, the second author (Ikemi, 2000) proposed that the felt sense should be considered as a verb, rather than a noun. The felt sense is existence, a living in a situation. The felt sense is a bodily living of situations, including the immediate situation. The interaction in the immediate situation lets one form a felt sense. In many everyday interactions, we do not let the felt sense emerge, nor do we let form a felt sense. If you said, for exam ple, “I feel so much pressure” and I said, “Yeah, me too, let’s go out for a few beers.” We would probably then sit in a bar and talk and not let the felt sense emerge in us. But what if I said, “How does that pressure feel in you?” Then, you would probably refer to your pressure and try to explicate from there. The very emergence or nonemergence of a felt sense is already interactional.
Therefore, for one to have a felt sense, the interaction with the other needs to be such that one can have a felt sense. We might say that such interactions are characterized by empathy (Rogers), acceptance (Rogers), or reconstituting (Gendlin).
The process of the client referring to the felt sense needs the therapist in the interaction to attend to the emergence of the felt sense in the client. Here are some interactional qualities of this relationship.
1. The therapist attends to the client’s felt sense.
2. The client refers to her felt sense and explicates.
3. The therapist reflects client expressions so that the client can check the explications with her felt sense and explicate further.
4. The therapist takes in the client’s explications and attends to her own felt sense.
5. The therapist may explicate her own felt sense.
We designate the whole interactional qualities here as the refer encing process. In this process, the therapist and the client do not exist as separate entities. Becoming congruent is a mutual hap pening between the therapist and the client in which both are tun ing into and explicating from the felt sense.
Simple Illustration From a Case
We present a simple illustration from a case presented later (Doi, 2001). We call it “simple” because this kind of interaction, though not dramatic, is frequently observed in therapy. In it, we show that the client and therapist are not separate entities in which the former is incongruent and the latter is congruent. The act of referring to the direct referent on the part of the therapist results in the process of the client to embark on his process of refer ring to the direct referent and speaking from there. A mutual referencing process is happening here.
The client was a man in his mid 20s and had just begun working in a research facility of a major corporation. His problem was that he felt his current job as an engineer was not suited for him. When the therapist first met him, he took a leave of absence from his office because of sleep disorder, depression, and anxiety and was eager to switch to a different job that really suited him.
During the first five sessions, the client repeatedly insisted that his current job was not right for him because he did not have the capabilities that were demanded by his job in engineering R&D. The client was very talkative; however, he did not seem to touch down inside nor did he appear to refer to his direct referent. The therapist asked the client to feel inside for his felt sense of the situ ation, and she also reflected the feelings the client expressed. How ever, the client kept repeating that he had “no capability.” He was going around in circles. Whenever the therapist asked him how he felt about the whole thing, he answered, “It’s difficult to explain,” and did not go much further. The therapy seemed blocked.
In the relationship with this client, the therapist was unable to understand what was really annoying for the client, even after five sessions. The therapist had been trying to find out what was it that made him so upset that he should consider leaving his job. In other words, the therapist felt incongruent, which made her uneasy.
In the sixth session, the client again remarked that he did not want to return to the same office because he might remember the bad feelings and bad atmosphere.
T (Therapist): What was it about the atmosphere that made you feel
bad? (Long silence) C (Client): It’s difficult to explain...Maybe I don’t have the right capa
bility, or the job is not right for me.
This was the answer that had been repeated many times. The therapist still did not understand.
T: You said you might remember the bad atmosphere. What kind of at mosphere was that?
C: Bad atmosphere . . . maybe others don’t find it so bad.
T: (Persistently) But it was bad for you, wasn’t it? Can you let me un derstand what the atmosphere was that made you feel bad? (Silence again) Was it too quiet?
C: No, it was not like that.
T: Were other people too absorbed in their work?
C: Absorbed in work...Well, it wasn’t easy for me to ask silly ques tions.
Here was a whole new view of the problem. It was not that he had no capability. He felt foolish to ask questions and did not want to bother others with silly questions. Despite this, however, the company gave him difficult research objectives, and he felt over loaded and isolated. The therapist finally understood what was so tough about the job for him.
After the sixth session, the therapy process was changed. Instead of the blocked process in the first five sessions in which the client did not touch down inside, the client gradually expressed his feelings after the sixth session, and the topic was changed from the persistent topic of “not having capability” to how to “communicate with others.”
In this simple case, we would like to show that it was the thera pist’s uneasiness of not understanding, in other words, the thera pist’s direct referent that was first explicated. More exactly, let us trace the interaction according to the five step qualities shown previously.
1. The therapist attends to the client’s felt sense. ——Client’s felt sense is not expressed.
2. The client refers to his felt sense and explicates. ——Client does not refer to his felt sense.
3. The therapist reflects client expressions so that the client can check the explications with her felt sense and explicate further. ——Re flection does not function in explication because the felt sense is not formed.
4. The therapist takes in the client’s explications and attends to her own felt sense. ——The therapist feels uneasy that there is some thing there that she is not understanding.
5. The therapist may explicate her own felt sense. ——Therapist per sistently expresses that she is not understanding and gives exam ples from her own felt sense of the situation (e.g., “Was it too quiet?”)
From there on, the client gradually began to speak from the situ ation as he felt it. His intellectual evaluation that he had no capa bility diminished. He gradually started to work on how tense he felt about asking questions and how he felt “trenched in” from the attacks coming from his boss. He was getting in touch with his feel ings, referring to them and explicating from there. The therapist continued staying with his process in the interactional qualities 1 through 5 shown previously.
It is not as if the client took off the “mask” (Rogers, 1961) and admitted his fears of asking silly questions after he perceived the empathy and acceptance of the therapist. This process can better be explained by mutual referencing process.
THE PROCESS OF REFERENCING AND HUMANISTIC PSYCHOLOGY
This article brings to light several implications that lie at the heart of humanistic psychology. First, we point to the importance of the process of referencing, rather than to particular contents or feelings that are being referred to. We cannot say that if one speaks about personal growth, then we are in humanistic territory, although if one speaks about the oedipus complex, then we are in psychoanalytic territory. Distinctions based on contents are mis leading, because spoken contents often change in explication. What was conceived of as a growth direction could turn out to be a regressive fixation. Conversely, dealing with an Oedipal issue may be growth promoting, bringing out many personal meanings, exis tential and self actualizing issues. Instead of contents, we might say that it is the process of referencing that characterizes human istic approaches.
Humanistic psychologists may become nonhumanistic if they impose humanistic concepts onto the client’s experiences. The fol lowing sample therapist statements make no difference.
1. “Well I see that your problem comes from a growth issue, you know, there’s some part of you that isn’t growing or self actualizing.”
2. “Well, I see that your problem comes from an oral dependent posi tion, you know, there’s some part of you that continues to need your mother.”
Both of these interpretations are imposing concepts onto the cli ent’s experience. (For a more detailed discussion of this issue, see Gendlin’s 1977 critique of Medard Boss.) Instead of contents, humanistic psychologists would attend to the process with which contents arise out of experience.
The process in which contents arise out of experience is the pro cess of referring to the direct referent (felt sense). However, as pre sented in this article, it may be said that this process is not really the client’s process. Referring to the direct referent is already an interaction. The interaction occurs not only inside oneself but also between the person and the other—the therapist. Moreover, the interaction also involves the therapist’s inner interactions. There is a complex matrix of interactions around the felt sense that client and therapist are trying to articulate. We call this mutual interac tion the process of referencing.
Therapists cannot expect the clients to get in touch with feelings and talk from those feelings without attending to their own feel ings. Self disclosure, genuine responses, and sharing on the part of the therapist are tips of the icebergs. Underneath these apparent responses is the continuous attending to the client’s feelings as well as to the therapist’s own feelings. Underneath there is a respect for whatever contents that emerge from the experiences of the client and of the therapist. Through this process of referencing, persons emerge newly, and client and therapist become congruent or genuine.
Interestingly, two recent books on focusing written in Japanese (Ito & Asega, 2001; Kira, 2002) deal with focusing for therapists. Both of these books show how deeply interactions with clients are affected when the therapist attends to his or her felt sense about the client. Moreover, in the United States and Japan, interest in “interactive focusing”(Klein, 2001) is rising. Focusing, in particu lar, and humanistic psychology, in general, would benefit from thinking about therapy concepts from an interaction first perspective.
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Hendricks, M. N. (2002). What difference does philosophy make? Crossing Gendlin and Rogers. In J. Watson & M. Warner (Eds.), Client centered and experiential psychotherapy in the twenty first century (pp. 52 63). Ross No Wye, UK: PCCS Books.
Ikemi, A. (Speaker). (2000). Presence, existence and space: Key concepts in focusing oriented psychotherapy [Video]. Lery, Quebec City, Canada: Nada Lou Productions.
Ito, K., & Asega, K. (Eds.). (2001). Focusing for therapists (in Japanese). Gendai no Esprit, 410. Tokyo: Shibundo.
Kira, Y. (2002). Shutaikannkaku to Sono Fukatu ka: Taikenkatei ryoho Karano Shuppatsu to Tenkai [Sense of autonomy and its activation: A development of experiential psychotherapy]. Fukuoka, Japan: Kyushu University Press.
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Reprint requests: Akiko Doi, Graduate School of Human Sciences, Kobe College, 4 1 Okadayama, Nishinomiya, Japan; e mail: BYR10177@nifty.com.
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