Gendlin, E.T. (1984). The client's client: The edge of awareness. In R.L.

Levant & J.M. Shlien (Eds.), Client-centered therapy and the person-
centered approach. New directions in theory, research and practice, pp.
76-107. New York: Praeger. From
http://previous.focusing.org/gendlin/docs/gol_2149.html

The Client's Client: The Edge of Awareness

Eugene T. Gendlin
University of Chicago

What Is That, Exactly, From Which the Change-Steps

Come?

The client's side of the change process has usually been discussed in
relation to the question: Exactly to what, in the client, should the
therapist respond? The usual answer was "the feeling," but that term can
be confusing.

No, it is not exactly "the feeling", although responding to that is in the

right direction. We want to respond to that in the client from which
change steps come. Let me therefore ask instead: What is that, in the
client, from which change-steps come? That is not exactly "feeling",
certainly not the familiar and identifiable feelings. Changesteps come
rather from an unclear "edge," a "sense" of more than one says and
knows.

We now call such an unclear edge a "felt sense." Since it is felt, we need
to be precise about how does it differs from the usual, clear and
recognizable feelings.

Two Differences Between Feelings and Felt Sense: Felt

Sense is Unclear and Less Intense.

For example, a client may feel angry and say why. In an effective therapy
process that would "open up" and further steps would arise. But suppose
the client says: "I'm angry, I told you why, and that's all. Nothing further
comes." Let us say the therapist has responded to the anger and its
reasons. What exactly is not happening?

When therapy works, certain steps of process would come here. Do they
come from the feeling of anger, exactly? Many therapists think so. They
lead their patients to feel such an anger more and more intensely. They
assume that process-steps come from feelings, so the anger must not
have been felt sufficiently. But people often have the same feelings over
and over, quite intensely, without change-steps coming.
For example, the change steps might be:

C: (silence)... (breath)...
,feels sort of heavy.... like
it wants to stay angry...

T: something
there wants to stay angry.

C: Mhm... (silence)... Oh
(breath)... yah... if I stop
being angry I won't do
anything about it... yes...
I'd love to just say it's OK
and not have to cope with
the situation. I've done
that so often.

These steps did not come exactly from the feeling of anger. Rather, the
"heavy" quality is what opens into these steps. That heavy quality is the
felt sense. More intensity of anger would not bring it up. The heavy
quality is not as strong as the anger.

The felt sense is less intense than the ordinary feelings. Without quiet
concentration one may lose hold of it. From a felt sense very intense
feelings can come, but the felt sense itself is less intense.

People change through feelings they have not consciously felt and
expressed before. More intensity of familiar feelings does not bring
change. People often feel and strongly express repetitious feelings, yet
process-steps do not come.

The steps of change and process do not come directly from the
recognizable feelings as such.

They come, rather, from an unclear, fuzzy, murky "something there", an

odd sort of direct datum of awareness. But most often there is no such
datum at first, when people turn their attention inward. Typically one
finds the familiar feelings and no indefinable sense.

One person describes it this way: "For a long time I could not find that
unclear 'sense.' I would pay attention to emotions but they seemed to be
just what they were, clear and obvious, and felt in my body. The
breakthrough about this came when I began to notice that the emotions
had more to them. An analogy: If the emotion were a triangle with
smooth edges and fixed angles, the felt sense appears when I look more
closely and find that a cloudy shape sticks out from behind the triangle."

Once they have it, people say the unclear sense "was" there, all along,
but not noticed. Before, however, it simply was not there. Its first coming
is a striking event in its own right.
The Difference Between the Usual Body Sensations and a
Felt Sense of Something in One's Life.

While people think of a problem, or have troublesome feelings, they are

usually uncomfortable in their bodies. But, although the feelings may be
physically experienced, they are not this bodily discomfort as such.

If during a strong feeling someone is asked to attend to the stomach and

chest, to "see if you are comfortable there," the unease which comes
there is quite different from the feeling.

This bodily unease turns out to be less intense and not as rough on the
person as the strong feeling.

There is typically also an odd sort of gratitude which comes from this
bodily discomfort, as if "it" were thankful for one's attention.

About half or a third of people have difficulty attending directly to the

comfort/discomfort in the middle of their bodies. They do not sense the
middle of the body from inside. That seems strange to those who have
always done it. People have to discover this simple human capacity before
they can find the felt sense. We have developed specific little steps for
this difficulty, for example: "Put your attention in your right toe ... now in
your knee ... can you find your knee without moving it? ...now your groin
... come up into your stomach, how is it in there? Warm and fuzzy, or
how?"

Once people can sense the stomach and chest from inside, there is a
further distinction, the really important one:

Ordinary bodily sensations are, for example, a belt that is too tight, or a
pain, a stomach ache, sexual arousal, the heart pounding. These
sensations are only bodily. The uneasy sense of a situation or problem is
also there, in the middle of the body. (It may be positive: the opening-out
sensation in the chest is the sense of some freeing event.)

The difference is that the ordinary bodily sensation does not contain an
"of." The sense of your belt being too tight does not contain in itself the
complexities and reasons why you tightened it. It is just the belt's
pressure. However, a very similar bodily sensation of tightness may come
in your stomach as your sense of a whole situation. That equally physical
"tightness" is the felt sense of that situation. Implicit in it are more of the
complexities of the situation, than you know or could think.

Most current body-work methods miss the felt sense because they work
just with physical sensations, usually the peripheral muscles.
Emotions make bodily sensations, one's heart pounds and one coughs,
spits, pants, yet the physical sense of the implicit complexity is not in
those bodily sensations, nor in the emotion. The felt sense differs from
both.

Another exact specification: in Gestalt therapy spontaneous images and

emotions come from bodily attention without a felt sense. The person
does not have a sense of the source, from which they come. That source
does not itself come, as a datum. For example, imagery and words pop in
while attending to tense shoulders. But there is no felt sense in the
shoulders. Either before or after such spontaneous material comes, the
person could, (but in Gestalt therapy usually does not) attend to the
middle of the body, where a felt sense of the shoulder-tension and of the
imagery could come.

The felt sense comes in the middle of the body: throat, chest, stomach, or
abdomen.

The Difference Between "Denied Experience" and What

Comes From a Felt Sense:

The body-sense of a situation (the felt sense) is always new, fresh, the
way the body now has the problem. Some content from the past may
come also, but the felt sense is always more, the new whole of the now.

This is very often misunderstood. Some therapists want the content to be

about the present, the so-called "here-and-now". But past experience is
always implicit in any present. Other therapists think nothing can come in
a person except a re-living of some repressed past. But experience is
always present. Reliving a past event is the present experiencing of it,
fresh, now, and has the quality of the present interaction.

Therapeutic steps are not a re-emergence of denied experience. What

matters most for change-steps is precisely the new implicit complexity of
the bodily living. Of course the past is in it. But the felt sense of now is
much more than the contents from the past, which may stand out.

Change steps can arise from the felt sense of reliving the past. They may
not, if the past content alone is emphasized and the quality of the whole
does not form as a datum.

Change-steps have amazing wisdom and creative novelty. They are

nothing like mere emergences of the past. It may have seemed so,
because past events are often dramatically part of a present therapy
process. Also, in traditional theory all experience had to come from the
outside. For example, imagination could only be some (perhaps
scrambled) version of what was once seen or heard externally. Today we
recognize the vast creativity of imagination, far beyond what could be
made from external experiences. And the change-steps involve much
more than imagination alone.

The change-steps on which therapy depends take account of more

simultaneous requirements than one could ever think, let alone think
simultaneously. The felt sense is that new whole from which such steps
come.

Therefore we must emphasize the difference between denied past

experiences, and the whole bodily sense of now. But that is often not
there to be sensed. A person may have to be quiet and deliberately let
that holistic sense come as a datum.

The Difference Between Feelings Inside a Problem and the

Felt Sense of the whole:

Whether one attends to a whole situation or to some tiny aspect of it, the
bodily felt sense of that will be a whole. This sounds contradictory, I
know. But the bodily sensing of the smallest aspect of anything is an
implicitly complex whole, not really smaller than the sensing of some
large topic. It is always the whole bodily living of ...

This wholeness is a characteristic of the felt sense.

The usual feelings and emotions are only parts of a situation. With those
feelings we feel inside a problem, surrounded by it, part of it. But if we
become distant and "objective," we don't feel the problem at all. In
ordinary experience there is no way to feel a problem as a whole we
confront.

It may be only the left side of a nose, the when the body's living of that
becomes a datum, it is sensed as "that whole thing."

Process steps are changes of that whole. The whole map changes. The
step can not be located on the previous map.

The Difference Between Very Deep Relaxation and the Felt

Sense:

Hypnosis and very deep relaxation have been found and discarded by
Freud and many others since then. We must work with more than
"consciousness" but not by narrowing or circumventing the conscious
client.

The felt sense, which I also call "the edge of awareness" is the center of
the personality. It comes between the usual conscious person and the
deep, universal reaches of human nature, where we are no longer
ourselves. It is open to what comes from those universals, but it feels like
"really me." The felt sense and each small step comes already
"integrated" and not as so-called "unconscious material."

The felt sense is always a freshly made unique living. Its inward coming is
sensed as more truly "me" than the familiar feelings.

Against Vivisection:

The reader may now check how well I have communicated up to now.
Can you follow this specification?:

The most common sort of unhelpful inward activity today is not mere
intellectualization or rationalization, nor even the same feelings over and
over. Today the most common ineffective attempt to help oneself inside is
what we now call "vivisection." One is very active "upstairs" in one's
mind, drawing maps and attempting to understand one's trouble, thinking
this, and thinking that, but instead of merely intellectualizing, one feels in
one's gut every move one makes upstairs! Just about all these
moves hurt.

Attending to These Hurts and Gut Feelings Generated by

One's Own Cutting is Not Focusing, and Is Not to be
Recommended!!

In the days when people were largely out of contact with their feelings,
the map-making upstairs was mere intellectualizing. Now it is worse! That
is your gut you are now cutting up, this way or that, as
directed from your head.

The inward process we are specifying involves keeping quiet, and sensing
the unease in the body, directly, whole as it comes, without putting ones
maps, cuts, and distinctions on that. If you let your attention
go directly to the bodily unease, you feel a little bit better.

Then let that make the map, let that sort itself into whatever parts or
pieces it falls into on its own. But begin always with "that whole business"
and not with anything you cut out of your living inside.

However well you think you have defined a problem, consider it as also
undefined. Use what you have been calling it merely as a pointer, and call
it "all that", whatever it may be and whatever may go with it, without first
cutting it up and feeling the effects of this cutting.

Teaching the Client Role:

We began "teaching" the client how to find such a felt sense, many years
ago when repeated research studies had shown that those who did not
approach therapy in this way became failure cases. Today what we call
focusing can be shown to anyone.

Then and now we teach listening (the therapist role) as well as focusing
to the public. I am going to use some examples from the beginnings of
such teaching, in order to pursue our question: What is that, from which
change-steps come?

For example a client, (or a person to whom we were listening) is asked to

check an empathic response. "Please don't just agree out of politeness. Is
what was said back to you quite right?" But the person in the client role
might check only the words: "Yes, that's what I said."

What exactly is wrong with that, as a reaction to a listening response?

When therapy is effective, the client does something more with a listening
response than just checking the words. What more?

What do we assume the client will do with a listening response?

We hope and assume that clients will check the response, not with what
they said or thought, but with some more inner being, place, datum...
"the felt sense," we have no ordinary word for that.

An effect might then be felt, a bit of inward loosening, a resonance . What

seemed to be there was expressed and heard. It need not be said again.
For some moments there is an easing, inside. (In theoretical terms the
interpersonal response has carried that forward.) Soon something further
comes. What "was" there turns out to have more to it.

We hope the clients will "check" not only what we say, but also what they
say with that inward one. Thereby a distinction comes to be within the
person: the usual self is checked with the felt sense.

Those research clients who are later successful, differ from failure cases
in exactly this respect. It can be heard on the tape. After saying
something, they often stop to check. For example: "I feel helpless...
uhm... is that right?..." After a silence they might then say: "No... that's
not right. Uhm... I can sense it, right there, but I don't know what it is.
(Silence)...Oh, (breath)... whew, yes, it's... " as a large shift occurs. Or
they might say: "...oh ... one thing about it is... " as some new facet
came.

It turns out that the deliberately speaking client to whom we relate is not.
The one to whom our responses are chiefly addressed! Rather we hope
the speaking one will take our responses down to consult that other one,
the felt sense. We hope the client will let that one speak, will wait for
what comes from that one, will work to find words that "resonate" with,
rather than interrupting, lecturing, or interpreting that one.

Here we discover a fascinating analogy:

The Client's Client:

In specifying the client's side of therapy process we discover a distinction

within the person. This distinction is a strong corroboration of client-
centered therapy.

The felt sense is the client inside us. Our usual conscious self is the
therapist, often a crudely directive one who gets in the way of our inward
client all the time. That therapist frequently attacks in a hostile way, or at
least wants to use all the old information, claims to be smarter than the
client, talks all the time, interrupts, takes up time with distant inferences
and interpretations, and hardly notices that "the client" is prevented from
speaking. That "directive therapist" hardly knows the client is there. That
"therapist" starts without the client, as the old joke had it, and goes on
indefinitely without the client.

Research shows that those clients succeed, who are client-centered with
their felt sense.

Of course this is not a person within a person, but a certain kind of self-
response process.

But it would be imprecise to call it being client-centered "with oneself."

Rather, one needs the distinction within the person between the usual
self, and the felt sense. The latter is exactly that part to which client-
centered responses are directed.

From Plato to Freud people have distinguished different parts of the

psyche. Here now arises a distinction which is best delineated in client-
centered terms.

The Felt Sense is the Client's Client:

The client's attitudes and responses toward the felt sense need to be
those of a client-centered therapist! And that is focusing. I can therefore
specify focusing further, if you will consider some client-centered
principles in this new way.

Here are some client-centered maxims which acquire a new meaning

when applied internally, within one person.
Usually the felt sense does not even form and come, unless the inner
"therapist" first gives attention and silent waiting time. The client's inner
"therapist" (his conscious self) must shelve a lot of knowledge and
surmise, must refrain from many interesting interpretations, and prefer
instead to wait, silently, while for some time nothing much comes.

We find it hard to put aside all we know about ourselves and about the
specific problem, so that we might hear what comes from the felt sense.

At first, our "directive therapist" often interrupts. Interpretations and

inferences continue in our heads. We must "shelve" these again and
again, so that we can listen to the felt sense.

What comes from a felt sense may at first seem less sophisticated than
what we can think. If we receive and resonate that, soon what comes is
more intricate and more correct than what we could think.

We learn that what comes from the felt sense has its own logic and its
own good reasons, even if these are not immediately apparent.

We do not impose our values to give direction to the ensuing steps. On

the contrary, we often learn through experiencing with the client, that
some ways of living and feeling can be good, although our values seemed
opposed. Now they don't conflict, and yet we didn't discard our values.
The initial values play a role and are also altered in such steps.

We try to receive whatever comes from a felt sense. We let it be, at least
for a while. We try not to edit it, change it, or immediately push it further.

Neither do we agree with what first comes from a felt sense. We know
there will be further steps. We develop an attitude of welcoming whatever
comes, even if it seems negative or unrealistic. We know that further
steps can change it. Such steps can come only if we first receive and
welcome what is now here.

Sometimes we have an idea, but we don't decide if it is right. We keep it

tentative and consult the felt sense. If there is an easing, a resonance in
response to what we propose, we attend to that till more comes from
that.

New Specificity:

Here I do not want to repeat the focusing instructions and the trouble-
shooting specifics which were presented in a very detailed way
in Focusing (Gendlin 1981). I would like to present the most recent work.
Therefore what I can say here is not sufficient to enable people to find
focusing for themselves.
We divided the focusing instructions into six "movements". We now find it
essential to teach these parts separately, giving time and individual
attention to each person with each part.

I will summarize these six and offer one or two new specifics on each.

1. Just as we would not tell clients at the start of an hour what to work
on, so also we don't let the internal directive therapist quickly set the
topic. The client might spend a minute or two, scanning inwardly, sensing
the various things that are there, only then choosing what to work on.

The first focusing movement, "making a space" was once a simple

preliminary. Before actually focusing one took a kind of inventory of what
was just now in the way of feeling good in the middle of one's body. To do
this, one attends there and senses what, just now, is in the way of feeling
good there.

For example one might find: "Oh... sure, my sadness about my breaking
up with____ , yes, of course, that's there... (breath) and...oh, I have to
call the dentist,...and...gee, I'm tired!" Three or four, usually of very
unequal importance, might happen to be what one finds. Each of these is
greeted kindly, and "placed" somewhere in a space in front of oneself,
one by one. In the center of one's body one feels some physical relief
with each placing, even though these problems have not been focused on,
only shelved. In this freed space one begins to focus on one of these, or
on something else.

From this humble preliminary movement has developed, among other

things a method of working psychotherapeutically with cancer patients.
(Focusing Folio, Vol 2, #4, 1982, and Vol 3,1983.) It began because
cancer patients were reputed to be characteristically poor at sensing their
bodies from inside. It seemed a good clear research prediction that they
would be unable to do the first movement of focusing. Instead, they could
all make a space, and find the good bodily energy that comes then.

A new, more elaborate version of the first movement opens a vast space
that has more kinds of significance than I can discuss here.

2. In a very directive therapy the patients are often inwardly silenced.

What would come in them, step by step, cannot arise, because these
therapists do not intend what they say to be inwardly checked and
corrected by the patient. Describing their therapy hour, such patients
usually report "what my therapist says..."

Client-centered therapists (perhaps all effective therapists) intend what

they say to be corrected by the client. Often what is not right in a
response lets what is right suddenly arise more sharply in the client.
Inside ourselves, too, something can come distinctly to correct what we
try to tell ourselves. For example, some little thing went wrong today. We
tell ourselves "It's all right ...It doesn't matter ...soon I will have
forgotten it... mature people don't get all upset about such trivia.... it's
OK.... it's OK.... look at it this way...." and so on. Each of these things is
contradicted by the discomfort which "talks back" and vividly corrects our
attempts to think it away.

When a discomfort is already there, one can turn and attend to it. But
often there are only the familiar feelings.

To let the felt sense come is the most difficult part of focusing. One
specific way among others is based on the effect I just described. There is
an irony in making use of this effect. Although knowing that there is a
problem which is not "OK", one deliberately says, inwardly, "It's OK, the
whole thing is all right. I'm quite comfortable about all that." Putting one's
attention in the middle of the body, one usually senses, suddenly and
vividly, the body talking back, giving one a much more distinct body-
sense of that particular problem or situation. What an interesting effect
this is!

A bodily sensation can come and talk back so as to correct wrong

statements. The body can understand the words and knows the situation
too. It can disagree with our words. In the theory section we will
reformulate this in better terms.

A medium level of relaxation is needed for this bodily talking back. Most
people spend the day with their bodies at maximum tension so they sense
few variations in it. On the other hand, much relaxation prevents this
bodily talking-back. In hypnosis, for example, the body actually gets
comfortable when you tell it to do so. No felt sense will come to correct
the words.

3. Therapists can paraphrase most of what a client says, but are wise to
keep crucially charged words the same. We might paraphrase a long story
as merely "what they did". But if the client uses the word "apprehensive,"
we would not change it to "scared" or "worried" because then the client
might lose hold of what that word right now brings. Such a word can be a
"handle" helps to hold on to a whole suitcase.

In focusing, when a felt sense comes, one concentrates on its quality, and
tries to find a handle-word for that quality. Just trying for a word helps
one to stay with felt sense as a bodily sensation, rather than going into
the familiar feelings and thoughts of the problem. Is it "jumpy" or more
like "heavy"? Is it "flat" or perhaps "crowded" or "pushed back" or how?
Might an image fit that quality? The most important function of doing this
is to help stay with the felt sense. If nothing fits, call it "that quality."

4. When a quality-word seems right, we "resonate" it, as in a client-

centered response. We ask: Does this word (or image) really fit? The felt
sense must answer.

The body's knowledge of words is surprisingly fine and demanding. A

given quality-word resonates. Other words that seem equivalent are
rejected by the body. If the felt sense stays static, if the word doesn't do
anything, the word does not resonate. Try another. When a word or
phrase or image fits, a slight but grateful physical effect comes each
time you think the word (or freshly re-picture the image.)

With this physical effect the whole problem is loosened in the body. Now
we advise doing it several times, not just once.

5. How often as therapists are we happy we resisted making an

interpretation that seemed so very right?.. A few moments later the
client's directly sensed unclarity opens, and totally alters what the
problem seemed to be. Often our interpretation was not even on the right
topic.

That phenomenon happens also inside. One knows a lot about oneself,
after all. And yet this holistic unclear felt sense "knows" more. When a
step comes from it, one's whole map of some trouble changes.

Of course the felt sense cannot answer if it is not there, just now.
Remembering it from a few moments ago is not good enough. Now, "Is
the felt sense still there? Ah, there it is again." (If it does not come, try
saying the problem is all solved...)

I have written about the felt shift as a flood of physical relief. But even a
slight bit of "give" subtly changes the whole. That feels good when a
problem has been stuck for a long time. When normally tense and
mobilized, one might miss it. Monitor for bits of slight relief in the felt
sense.

Pursue any thought, image, or anything that brings such a bit of relief.

6. We do not argue with what comes in the client; call it unrealistic,

selfish, or bad. We receive anything the client offers. We give it time. We
don't instantly ask "And why is that?" or "What's the next step?"

he steps of change can only come from this. so we must let it be here for
a little while.
Recently we alert people to notice how the inner "directive therapist" can
rebut and obliterate what comes with a felt shift. This can happen so
swiftly one might not notice. No sooner does something come with that
characteristic shift or "give" inside than it is gone again!! What happened?
Someone inside quickly said: "That's unrealistic, foolish, I can't afford it,
that would be quitting, that can't be right."

This sixth movement, "receiving," needs separate teaching. With practice

one learns to move old voices aside before they crowd out the physical
sense of the shift. Instead, one can repeat whatever words came with the
shift, sensing if they make that shift again. In this way the shift is there
for a stretch of time. Let the old voices stand aside and wait. This is only
a little step. I am making no decisions yet. This little step came only just
now. Let me keep it for a little bit, and see more what it is.

In a minute there can be another round of focusing. But right now, let me
see if I can sense this shift, over and over.

About Instructions:

The scheme of these six is very helpful, but we do not rigidify it. Humans
are vastly more complex and surprising than any scheme, let alone a
simple one of six parts.

We give "split-level" instructions: "Try to apply our instructions as exactly

as you can, but the moment they seem to do some violence in you, stop,
don't run away, instead: see directly, what you have there." On one level,
"please follow", and on another level, "please don't follow" the
instructions.

After all, we are specifying and teaching the individual's own inwardly
arising process. The split-level instruction is to find your process with our
diagram, or where the diagram fails.

Very early in learning focusing most people come to a point where

they laugh and say: "Oh, that was the trouble I was trying to 'do it right'
and that got in my way." After this laugh, they know.

For example, a felt shift comes on our diagram at the fifth movement. In
fact it can come any time. Of course you would receive what came.

Many therapists have found it very effective to teach focusing directly to

their clients. Such didactics need to be clearly marked off from the regular
therapy interaction.

Focusing During Therapy:

All these instructions can be used during psychotherapy, but in a certain
way. This brings me to a wider principle.

There are many theories and many other useful avenues of therapy. All of
them can be used on a client-centered baseline. By this I mean:

Whatever I say or do in therapy is instantly checked against the client's

inward response. It means I rarely say or do two things consecutively
without a client expression between. Then I respond in a listening way to
whatever the client expresses, and again to what further comes. I always
give priority to the client's own step. Whatever else I can do must wait.

That transforms the character of interpretations, instructions, and any

other useful avenue of therapy.

I must swiftly discard whatever I tried if it did not help, so that it does not
get in the way of the client's own process.

At first clients think they must explain why what I said was wrong. I often
interrupt: "Oh, I can see I was wrong. Sense again how it is for you."
Clients who work with me soon recognize that what I say is no statement
about them but an invitation to them to sense inwardly. I often verbalize
this at first: "But is that right...or how should that be said?"

Once people know that this is my intent, what I say wrongly is much less
disturbing and swiftly discarded.

Even when helpful, other things must not replace listening too often.
(That certainly includes focusing instructions.) Too many helpful
interruptions block the client's own inwardly arising process, or worse, it
will never arise. There need to be long periods when I purely listen and
reflect.

How Focusing Transforms Talking:

Most people live in their talking as they talk. Especially in client-centered

therapy clients are accustomed to "lay out" their problems and concerns.
The attention is on what is being said. Focusing changes this. Whatever
the client wants to do is still welcomed, including this kind of talking. But
now the expectation is not that the laying out of the issue will do the job.
Rather, the change-steps will come through inwardly sensing the edge.
When that opens, the process moves.

This requires that client-centered responses point more precisely. Not

enough is gained if the response is more or less right. A good response
points and makes contact with that, from which the client spoke, rather
than restating what was said.
When the client did not express an unclear edge, we can point to that. To
do so leads to a number of specific response modes:

a. Just saying a deeply felt spot over a few times, quietly and
slowly, can help a person discover the broader bodily sense from
which steps come.

b. At times the therapist can say, "Lets be quiet for a moment, so

you can sense all that." Or, if true, the therapist can say
"Wait...I'm still feeling what you just said... uh... " These are ways
of slowing the talking down so more can happen.

If the client then goes right on talking, we would respond as usual and
not stick to some suggestion of ours.

c.We can sometimes add to the content something like:

"...and that is not yet clear" or "...and you don't know yet
what that is" or "...and there is this sense there, that it could
become different, but it's not clear yet how." People are socially
accustomed to stop talking when they come to an unresolved
edge. It often helps to refer to that edge as such.

d. Even when no edge seems there, the client might find one if the
therapist refers to one as if a it were there, a concretely sensed
version of what was said.

For example: the client says: "I must not want to do this (get a job, meet
new people, write an assignment) since when the time comes, I don't do
it." A regular client-centered response might be: "you think you must not
want to, since somehow you don't do it." A focusing-inviting response
might be: "Something in you doesn't want to..", or "There's some sense
of not wanting to...", or "When the time comes, something stops you."

Another example: Client: "I really think that's why I stay with him, it's
because I need the security." A focusing type of response might be:
"You're pretty sure it's for security, that sense there, of holding on to
him."

Almost anything can be reflected with an implicit invitation to sense "it"

as that, right there. If you tell me that you like this chapter I could reflect
that you have a liking of my chapter there. You might then more directly
find that datum, that sense, that place in you where you like it, that
spot, that.

What I described here may seem only a grammatical form, and an

awkward one at that. Better grammar can probably be devised. But there
is a great difference between talking about, and pointing. Many clients
talk about. Some of them can turn inward and attend directly, as soon as
a therapist points.

e. Focusing can be taught with occasional small-scale instructions.

Explicit didactic focusing-teaching is much swifter but it ought to happen

in a time set aside for it, not in midst of an ongoing therapy process. But
as single bits all the instruction can fit into, and aid the client's ongoing
process.

All the instructions and specifics I have offered here lend themselves to
being used, singly, at points where the client might use them. All focusing
instructions and specifics can be used this way.

The client can ignore such single instructions. They do not disrupt one's
regular way of responding. Whatever the client does or says can be
responded to acceptingly.

We can explicitly invite the client to see if it is possible to find such a

sense inwardly. One would add "Can you sense that now?" or "Can you
feel that not-wanting, now?"

Or, "If you stay quiet inside for a minute, can you sense this not-wanting
you think must be there?"

Here are more examples: "If you thought right now of going to the
newspaper to look for a job opening...what kind of feeling-quality would
come in your body?"

Or, even: "Stop for a minute. I'd like to ask you something. Can you put
your attention in the middle of your body? How is it in there right now?
(The client says it is fine in there.) Now think of this whole thing about
looking for this job... what comes in there? ...(facial expression)...OK,
stay with that for a minute, gently."

It is often important to help people discover the bodily aspect of the

unclear edge. Many people have never attended inwardly in the body in
that way, and need a little while to discover it.

Another example:

C: "I'm just so angry."

T: "your anger is right

there."

C: "Oh, it's always there.

I'm sick of that anger."
 T: "Let's try something.
Take that whole situation,
all of it, more than you
know, everything that
goes with it, and kind of
step back from it as if you
were going to look at all of
it, like a big picture that
takes up a whole wall in a
large building... What
comes in your body when
you do that?"

In this way the therapist can insert all the focusing instructions and
specifics occasionally at points where a client who knows focusing
probably would let an unclear felt sense come.

But whereas the pointing reflections can be made frequently, instructions,

must remain occasional, if they are not to disrupt the client's ownership
and inner impetus of the process. The therapist must not constantly make
good things happen with instructions. There must be stuck and empty
space and time for the client's inwardly impelled process to arise.

If the interaction becomes troubled, or if the client has feelings in relation

to being instructed, this must instantly take precedence. Focusing-
teaching can be tried again later.

T: Can you get that painful

sense now, if you put your
attention in your body
and, very gently, just stay
next to it?

C: I don't like it when you

tell me what to do inside
myself.

T: You don't like me

directing inside you, and
you want me out of there.
Of course. I'll stop doing
it.

C: But... uhm... I do want

what you know about.

T: Oh, sure, I'll show you

that method some time
soon... You want me out of
your space, but you don't
want me to go away,...
right?

SECTION II. THEORY: WHAT IS THE SOURCE OF PROCESS-STEPS?

The Question:

Our question is the same as in Section I., but now we ask it as a

theoretical question. I will continually refer back to the specifics we have
discussed.

We observe that process-steps have an intricacy and a power to change

us, far superior to our concepts. What comes in process-steps surprises
us. A much more sophisticated "territory" shows itself than we are
capable of formulating or inventing. And a step is not only itself but leads
to further steps.

What is this superior knowing? Are such steps just unrelated to concepts?
How do they differ from the more usual cognition? What is the source of
this intricacy and its steps?

We have to rethink our basic concepts about the body, feeling, action,
language, and cognition to answer this question.

Implicit Concepts:

We have seen that process-steps move beyond the explicit concepts we

deliberately apply. But many more concepts are always already implicit in
any human experience.

The many concepts and structures which are implicit in this wider order
do not function as explicit concepts would. A welter of old theories,
mutually exclusive patterns and systems are always implicit in our
experience, far more of them than we can think. Explicitly the many
contradictory concepts would cancel out. Implicitly not only do they
function together, but they are always only a small part of the implicit
order.

Concepts (the kind that seem separable from particular contexts) are a
late and immensely important human product, enabling people to build
the world further and further. And because humans have already done
that a lot, old concepts are always implicit in any situation and
experience.

But nature is vastly more organized than just by this late and important
development. Even the purest logical thinking involves this greater order
to support it. There is always a whole implicit context of intricately
ordered understandings without which the explicit concepts do not work.
These understandings don't consist only of concepts.

But is there another way to theorize other than by conceptual forms?

Even if there were not, it is wrong to equate order with concepts. Of
course, if there were no other way to theorize, we would have to stop
with this mere denial. We could not think further.

The problems of theorizing in another way have been treated in my

philosophical writings.

Any concept can always be used as its conceptual form, or as the wider
implicit order which we instance just then in using that concept. The wider
order cannot be said or conceptualized. But from a concept we can always
move either logically, or in process-steps from this wider order.

Language:

Language is a larger system different in kind from abstractable concepts.

Some decades ago the Linguistic Analysts showed that words are not
used in accord with the abstractable patterns we call concepts. They tried
to explicate rules for how words are used in various contexts to have
certain effects in situations. But even this attempt failed. The same word
is used in an odd assortment of situations in which it works differently.
The meaning of a word is neither a concept, nor can its use-contexts be
stated.

If you speak more than one language you know that. There is often no
single translation for a word. In the foreign language a word's cluster of
contexts is not that which comes with anyone word of ours. From the
contexts we get a "feel for" how that one word works.

Language-in-use is very finely "ordered," well beyond the abstractable

conceptual type of order. Abstract concepts are certainly always implicit in
the use of words, but even the whole mutually contradictory welter of
them does not come close to the kind of order that governs the use of
words.

Theoretical Proposition 1:

The use of words (and also the use of concepts is implicitly

ordered. This order is different and greater than the kind of order
concepts make. A welter of old concepts is always implicit in any
human situation but cannot determine what we say or do next.

The Linguistic Analysts concluded that a native speaker knows the

language as one "knows" how to ride a bicycle without being able to say
how. The misuse of a word gives one a "sour feeling", as one of them
said. They did not ask how knowledge more intricate than one can define,
can be in a feeling. But we want to ask this question.
Feelings and Interpersonal Situations:

Feelings are usually thought of as internal things, entities, little objects.

Indeed they are a sort of "datum" inwardly "there," but how do such
thing-like data and inner space come about?

The traditional notion of "affects" assumes them as already thing-like.

Other little things are memories, desires, values, needs, perceptions,
information, and so on. To assume these skips how they form.

Of course when we use these words they do work, but that with which
they work is far from being such cut entities. If we think from that in the
case of the word "feelings" we soon discover that they are not just affect-
things but have a wealth of complexity in them. How can we think about
why that is?

An emotion is part of events, or as I want to put it: emotions come in

stories. They occur in a certain spot structured by the story.

Traditional living was usually a repeatable story, with the recognizable

emotions in the right places. There seemed to be a fixed "keyboard" of
them.

In modern urban society the stock routines are failing. We can manage
few situations just as one is supposed to do. Our stories are more varied
and complicated. Therefore the major pure emotions come in us more
rarely.

Feelings (if you follow my use of these words) often have no name. We
have to tell the situational story-detail to convey the feeling. From this we
see that an emotion or a feeling is our living in that story.

Theoretical Proposition 2:

Feelings and interpersonal situations are one system. The

situational complexity is lived in the feelings; felt and lived
complexity constitutes situations and is not something added to
them.

We do not separately experience a situation as if it were merely external,

and then "react" to it with one of a set of feelings, as the usual theory
says. Situations are not external so that feelings would be internal
additions to them. On the contrary, so-called external facts are always
made with implicit assumptions and livings.

Affects are not additions to facts. Facts are and mean what was and will
be lived and felt by someone.
The single mesh of feelings-situations is always already inherent in any
"external" fact. That mesh is more highly ordered than abstractable
concepts, although it always includes an implicit welter of those. Nor can
feelings-and-situations be said, although the system is partly patterned
by language. A nexus of words is always implicit in feelings-and-
situations. But living is not determined in advance to remain within extant
language forms. The reverse: When we live and speak oddly we also
change that implicit nexus of language. New uses of words are then
implicit.

The Body

Feelings and emotions must come or we don't have them. We can

remember them and believe they ought to be there. But to have them
they must come. And this is always a bodily coming.

The coming of feelings in the body is also the coming of the situational
detail, some of which is always linguistically patterned. Our interpersonal
actions are, or include, speech-acts. Therefore words too have this
character:

Words, too, must come. If they don't, we are stuck. There is no inner
dictionary in which to find them. We are quite dependent on their coming.

Abstract concepts also come and when the body is tense they might not!

Theoretical Proposition 3:

We live our situations with our bodies. Feelings-and-actions, the

use of words and also thinking are bodily processes. Actions,
words, and thoughts are implicit in the body.

We can now understand how the body knows and responds so precisely to
words, as I described in Section I. Of course, language is situational
structure. Feelings-situations come in the body. It follows that the body
knows language. But now we need to change the usual concepts of the
body, to think clearly how concepts, language, and situations
are implicit in it.

Especially two puzzles need clarification:

A present bodily event implies further steps of action and words.

An internal bodily event implies external objects and situations.

Time, Change, and Datum:

Process-steps give us a new time-and-space model, called "carrying
forward" (Gendlin, 1964, elaborated since then.) Our steps of change are
not in a linear time continuity. In therapy we change not into something
else, but into more truly ourselves. Therapeutic change is into what that
person really "was" all along. But this sentence makes sense only if the
word "was" does not refer to the usual time positions behind us. Rather, it
is a second past, read back retroactively from now. It is a new "was"
made from now. Let us use this new time-concept instead of reimposing
the old one.

What comes in a small process-step has this new "was." For example:

"Oh...now I can feel the

anger which that bored
feeling really was..."

The anger now seems to have been there before. But it is a step of
carrying forward. We have two pasts now: the anger that "was;" but we
also recall the fuzzy boredom, which was actually on the linear time line
behind us.

Only retroactively can we get to this "was". Only from now "was" it there
before. Time seems retroactive when we examine the process-step
relation in linear time. Actually the new time relation is more complex.
Linear time can be defined as a simpler model within it.

It is not just false to say that this now is what "was." We cannot express
that relation in the old concepts. That change and time-relation is made in
process-steps.

There are many different variants of this "was"-relation in therapy,

thinking, poetry, action and other processes. The varieties of this "was"
are also the various senses of "implicit" and "carrying forward."

Situations, too, have this carrying forward pattern. We don't speak of a

situation unless it is difficult to meet. Otherwise we have already acted
and events flow on. But when there is a situation to be met, we don't
immediately know "the right" action. That action is in one way indicated
by the situation (the action must fit and meet it) and in another way not
indicated since we are puzzled. The situation may be new and unusual,
yet it implies the action needed to meet it. Later events reveal what the
situation "was." Therefore, with hindsight we see what the right action
"was."

This "was" characterizes the carrying forward relation.

The situation does not contain the right action as a problem in geometry
contains its answer, logically following from the givens (though even in
geometry one must often draw an additional line and create further, to
find that sort of implicit answer). The way a situation implies an action to
meet it is very finely ordered and demanding, yet the action will also
change the situation, and not merely follow from how the situation is
already formed.

We can say that an action IS a change-in-a-situation. But it is not just

any change. The implicit action is that one which will change the situation
as the situation demands to be met. And a situation IS the demand for
some action. The two are reciprocal: The situation is the implying of a
change-in-situation. A situation IS an implying of a change in itself.

Now we can formulate the carrying forward relation forward and not only
backward (as a new "was"). A situation is the implying of its own change.
Put more generally:

Theoretical Proposition 4:

Any event IS the implying of next events. An event implies its own
change. Next events carry forward, if they change this event into
what it "was" the implying of.

The implied next event is not already formed and determined, only the
present event is. Other changes, not only carrying forward often happen.
The implied next event might not occur at all. It does not exist as formed
if it does not occur.

"Carrying forward" leads us to conceptualize an event (anything) in a

radically different way than the usual. An event not only is in some way
now, but any event also is the implying of its change.

One need not insist that anything is like that or that this new model is
always superior. But the process-steps in therapy and focusing are better
thought about in this way. Many other aspects of human behavior become
more clearly thinkable with this model (at least as one of several we
might use.)

The "Was" of Carrying Forward as a Characteristic of Body

Life:

Hunger, for example, is more truly an eating that hasn't come yet, than a
state that eventually leads to death, (which of course it also is.) Which
way would you define "hunger?" Would you bring eating into the
definition, or would you only say how hunger is while it is still hunger?

Physiology studies the body very successfully with a conceptual model of

atoms positioned at linear space and time points, but we will never grasp
the unity of body and psyche in that model. The psychological cannot be
related to such a body. But this is not because what is physical and
biological differs from the behavioral and psychological, but because of
the conceptual model currently used in biology and physics. But even
physics needs the model of process-steps. Our model alters just those
assumptions that currently make the major anomalies in physics.
(Gendlin and Lemke, 1983.)

In our new model, biological events "are" in two ways: they are now just
so, and also they are the implying of further events. Let us not separate
some vitalistic entity, drive, need, push, motivation, desire, as an unseen
motor by which each cut event is connected to the next. Instead, let us
not assume cut events that are only present, only at some one time-
"point." Such cut events require an external "observer" to connect them,
as physics now assumes. But we are and study such observers! We live
our own progression, and the formal continuity of points is only one
oversimplified derivative.

Any bit of process is the implying of a next step. From that step,
backwards, the implicit seems to have been what now forms. Actually the
implicit IS for any further event that would have one of these retroactive
relations.

The Environment is Part of What is Implied Next:

If the further body process is implicit, so are the external circumstances

which are involved in it.

The hungry body implies not only feeding, but of course also food.

Any living process is always both environment and organism. The body is
itself a piece of environment. We think of a living body as separate from
everything around it, but the body is also made out of that. It is also itself
an "internal environment." For example the bloodstream is the
environment of the cells. Each internal tissue has its environment. The
body is both environment and living process. Every cell is both, and again
every part of a cell. Body and environment are one system, one thing,
one event, one process.

Just as feeding and food are implicit in a body-process, so also the next
action and the people and things which would be involved in the action.

In this way we understand more clearly how a body event (feelings too) is
implicitly an external complexity in the environment.

We bodily feel the actions which our situations implicitly are.

Many of these actions are or involve words, of course, and we feel those
also in the body. Especially when the implicit actions can not happen do
we sense actually in the body that they are implicit now.

The implied action, for instance eating, might not happen because there is
no food. An implied action can not happen if the people and things it
involves are missing.

What is an "Object"? What is an Inner "Datum" and its

Inner Space?

Earlier I said that we cannot start by assuming already split apart inner
entities or objects like feelings, memories, perceptions, and so on. We
need to ask how such inward "data" come about. Before we do so, let us
ask about ordinary outer entities or objects. Are they just given? I said
no, external facts too are made with our feeling and living. We can now
understand this more clearly.

In the traditional view the outer "objects" are simply given and we react.
For example, when hungry, eating is "the reaction to" food. In that way of
thinking food is an object just by itself. Eating is a reaction to it. I want to
turn that around. Let us say instead that eating isn't just a reaction to
food. Rather, that becomes "an object" only with the organism's digestive
process. This runs through stages of hunger, food-search, feeding,
satiation, defecating, and after a while, hunger again. At the feeding part
of this cycle.

The Body Implies ...

... food and cannot go on without it. At the defecation part of the
cycle the body implies the ground in which feces can be buried.

To put it this way allows me to say: food is not first an object and then
reacted to with feeding. Food is an object because it carries the digestive
process forward.

In this way we theoretically derive the concept of an ordinary "object"

from the concept of "carrying forward." Now the two concepts imply each
other.

Theoretical Proposition 5:

Body process always involves the environment. By implying the

next bits of process the body implies its next environment.
Carrying forward happens when all of the next implied
environment occurs. The part of the implied environment which
might or might not occur is called an "object." An object is what
carries a process forward.

Food changes hunger into satiation. An object (an environment that

carries the implied forward) changes that implying. Hunger implies its
own change, which occurs if food does.

Food and all its characteristics are implicit in hunger. But hunger could
also be carried forward by something new. The implicit is never only
formed. Intravenous feeding can carry digestion forward and so can odd
foods. Implying has both the fine detail of the familiar object and is also
the implying of anything that would carry forward.

The organism's process with the object takes time. I prefer to say the
process makes time. The process makes time by carrying forward. From
its time one can derive the simple linear time in which simple things seem
just to be.

The Different Avenues of Therapy are Different Objects

that Carry Forward:

There are different kinds of "objects" and kinds of carrying forward. As

food carries body-process forward, so also do our physical motions,
interpersonal actions, words, conceptual steps, dreams and our work with
them, as well as other people's words and their actions toward us. These
carry the same single system forward, but in different ways. They can not
replace each other.

The different avenues of therapy can be recognized in these kinds of

carrying forward. Everyone can learn to focus, but everyone also dreams,
feels, thinks, speaks, acts, interacts, moves bodily, imagines, and
sometimes spontaneously acts out. None of these avenues of therapy
should be strange to us. Why make exclusive "methods" of therapy each
using only one of these, when every client has them all? It happens
because we find it hard to learn how to respond along all of them.

Methods using different avenues of carrying forward can all be used on a

client-centered baseline, and to seek process-steps. This changes them.
Their conflicting rationales and styles drop away and they fit together,
because as avenues of human process they were never separate.

For example, interpersonal responses are one important kind of carrying

forward. An empathic response might add nothing to the content, but it is
an interpersonal "object" that carries the body forward in an utterly
different way than the same content would, if felt or said alone.
We find focusing very powerful when done alone, but easier to do deeply
when another person silently keeps one company (and receives anything
one does say). Here is a pure instance of interpersonal carrying forward!
In silence only the receptive attention of another person is added. That
alone is an irreplaceable kind of carrying forward.

An "Inner Object" or Datum is Also a Carrying Forward:

We have seen how the outer objects are derivative from process. The
"inner objects" (and their time) are also made by the organismic process
which they carry forward.

In ordinary action we see and feel the objects in the situation. When "the
feeling" becomes an object, we say it "was" there, all along. Actually this
datum-object is a new carrying forward made from the previous.

"Unfelt feeling" is not a good concept. There was feeling-in-action. Then

symbolic carrying forward made a feeling-datum. That was not there
before.

We can now clarify the fact that we change by feeling a feeling that was
there but not felt. "Unfelt feeling" is contradictory, and "feeling ones
feeling" is redundant. But these expressions do refer to common events
we can now clarify: Why would a person change merely by becoming
aware?

Feelings are not things like stones that can be buried, and still exist in the
same shape. The coming of a feeling-datum is a carrying forward, a
further and different living. People say, "Now that I know I feel this way,
what can I do about it?" Usually they don't know. Neither does the
therapist. It is very fortunate that the whole system is already changed in
the new carrying forward which makes a feeling an object.

Theoretical Proposition 6:

The seeming "thing" we call an internal datum is a carrying

forward process. Its coming changes the body and its implicit
further actions.

Food is not simply a given. It is made into that "object" by the continuous
body process it carries forward. So also, the seeming thingness of a
feeling is its lasting through the process it carries forward.

After a new feeling, new actions may be implicit. A feeling is a change in

what is further implied, which will make more change.
Sometimes what a feeling implies cannot occur. The implying is not
carried forward and does not change further. Then the feeling is remade
freshly, over and over, whenever the person lives in that situation
physically or symbolically.

Then it seems no longer true that "feeling the feeling" is a change.

Actually it is, but the feeling is an implying of further change which does
not happen. The feeling is therefore formed again and again.

Feeling vs. Felt Sense:

Feelings and emotions are parts in a situation. For example, anger comes
in a certain slot in a story and carries it forward in a partial way. We are
taught to count to 10 when angry because the anger is not a sense of the
whole situation. If we do what the anger implies we may later be sorry.
That is because the anger does not carry forward the whole situation.
Therefore the further actions the anger implies do not meet it all.
Ordinary feelings and the actions they further imply carry forward only
part of the situational whole.

We see that easily in new situations. None of the usual feelings and their
implied actions quite fit. New actions are needed.

Such novel actions do not come from the recognizable emotions and
feelings, since these "objects" are made in carrying the usual story
forward in a familiar way.

Is there a way to have a datum of the whole implicit complexity? The felt
sense (previously described) is that datum.

We can see the difference when people move from a feeling to the felt
sense. The feeling is made from (and understandable from) the known,
formed story detail. But in the felt sense the implicit situation is a much
larger whole.

The implicit situation as a felt sense is a single mesh from which endless
detail can be differentiated: what happened to us, what someone did,
why that troubled us or made us glad, what was just then also going on
and made this especially good or bad, what we now need to do about it,
and with whom, why that is difficult, what usually happened in the past
with others, how we feel about that, and how we feel about feeling that
way about it, what we sense others thinking, why it's wrong and why it's
right, on and on.

Yet the felt sense from which all this can come is single, sensed
as that bodily quality, there.
The bodily felt sense is a new type of object or datum. The whole
implying itself becomes a datum, a sensed "that." The whole is changed
by being carried forward by this new type of "object."

To let the body-sense of the whole implied context become a datum is a

new type of carrying forward. Some people in all ages could do this, but it
is new to most people.

Novel Steps are Also Implicit:

Because we have often observed certain body processes like digestion we

know the implicit next step. When we have often seen certain traditions
and cultural routines, we know in advance what action a situation implies.
Later we say it "was" implicit.

But something new could also carry forward and be what "was" implicit.
With current concepts one cannot think clearly about novelty in body-life
and physics, but obviously the universe and evolutionary forms could not
have developed if novelty had been impossible. The difficulty in thinking
about novelty lies not in nature but in the type of concept which reduces
everything to fixed units which can only be rearranged or reorganized to
explain anything new. Genuine novelty is a puzzle for that kind of
concept. The difficulty belongs to the kind of concept not to physics or
bodies.

Especially in modern urban society we often live ourselves into a new and
odd situation. Such a situation is implicit actions, which have never as yet
been formed by anyone.

We know when routine actions will not suffice. How do we sense and
appreciate the subtle oddity of a new situation? We could not, if we could
only feel and think the familiar. Not so. When we feel "stuck," this
stuckness is a sense of more, which correct our attempts to say or do
something usual. The stuckness is our sense of the puzzling situation, the
implicit words and actions we have been unable to devise. The stuckness
is a finely organized sense of why usual ways won't do, and of what
would. The stuckness is an implying of... new next steps never as yet
formed.

If the situation is new and odd, the implicit action has never existed. Yet
it is implicit!

Theoretical Proposition 7:

An event that has never occurred before can be implicit. This often
happens in creative thinking, in art, and in the process-steps of
psychotherapy and focusing. The steps are new and nevertheless
they "were" implicit in the physically experienced felt sense of the
situation or problem.

The whole complexity of situation-feeling is implicit in body process. This

includes whatever makes the situation difficult, and has made easy
routine actions inappropriate. The body's implying (and if a datum forms,
how the situation "feels" in a bodily way) includes more organized
complexity than we can as yet think, say, or act upon. There is no
certainty that a process-step will come. But if one does, it will have a
greater intricacy than we could have thought, said or done before that
step.

Theoretical Proposition 8:

The datum or object we call a felt sense exceeds in intricacy what

we could previously think, say, or act upon. The old forms are
implicit, but more organization is already involved which makes
them inappropriate in very exact ways. The very coming of a felt
sense as a datum is a carrying forward of this greater order. From
the felt sense (in further steps) one can form new and more finely
tuned explicit words and actions, which could not have been
devised before.

"Directions"

Let me show how what I said leads "further." Living tissue is some way
now, but it also is implicitly its further events. We define and name it
from knowing its usual further events, as we define hunger by feeding.
But actually the implicit is some event that carries forward. Any bodily
process could be carried forward in a different way than happened before.
The implicit is never only already formed. Like a situation that must be
met, the implied action is not a fixed form.

Countless situational aspects and their linguistic and conceptual

differentiations are implicit in the body. The familiar routines are a
carrying forward of a vast complexity. They are further developments'
from earlier routines, which are even now still implicit in our bodies along
with the later ones.

When we live oddly, the routinely formed actions and words are implicit,
but now they do not carry the whole implicit bodily complexity forward.
Our "stuck" body-sense is usually thought of as a feeling without words,
or as "pre-verbal," but that is not correct. The felt sense does contain the
language and the situational contexts of words. It is not pre-verbal! And it
implies the new next steps of speech and action, which has never as yet
formed. The coming of the felt sense has already elaborated and further
developed the implicit linguistic and situational system.
Now we understand theoretically how the body-sense can be so finicky
about words used in focusing. We understand how new action and speech
is more intricately implied by the body, than we can define.

In therapy people without great verbal resources become raw poets,

refashioning words to speak from process-steps. What comes freshly is
often more intricate than ready phrases.

Theoretical Proposition 9:

A felt sense is not preverbal. Its forming and coming as a datum is

a new living forward of the implicit complexity of situation and
language. When we live oddly, the implicit acts and speech are
silently altered.

Language is always part of situational structure. The body "knows" (the

felt sense is) the implicit complexity with its language. When we live, act
or speak oddly, further poetically novelty is already implicit.

Therefore a missing next step is not indeterminate, or unorganized, as so

many people want to say. An implicit, missing next step is more finely
organized than the routines, and that is why we cannot easily find or
devise words or actions. Please note: In such a case the routines are still
implicit, and can be done and said. But whatever was the implicit next
step is still the implicit next step, even after we do or imagine the
routines. That is how we know that they have not carried this implying
forward.

An odd situation's implying is more organized than the usual routines and
contains them. The novel implicit is not unrelated to familiar concepts,
phrases, and actions. It includes these and exactly why they will not
suffice.

We arrive here at a new concept: Traditional thinking has only fixed form
or open possibility: if a next step is implied, it is thought of as already
formed. Or, if the next step is open, this is thought to be indeterminate,
and less ordered. We find instead that novel living is more ordered and
includes old forms in a more demanding organization which makes them
insufficient.

A new concept arises if we keep these two together, as we find them

together: a more orderly, demanding implying and novelty. Indeed it is
the greater orderliness of this implying which requires the novelty.

The body's implying of a next step is very familiar to everyone: Inhaling

implies exhaling, hunger implies feeding, cramped sitting implies
stretching. Notice how the word "implies" is used in these phrases. >From
them you can also follow what the word does, if I say: in odd situations
the body implies phrases and actions that have never been formed. Then
words can work as they never did before.

When this greater organization is carried forward, its further implying is

also changed. New further steps are implied and ensue. The process of
steps is not determined within old forms. The process directs itself.

I will use the word "direction" in quotations to say this. Any body process
has "direction": what will carry forward is very finely organized and just
this organization is an implying of new steps. In many situations only new
steps can carry the body forward.

Theoretical Proposition 10:

Bodily implying of concepts, words, feelings and actions has its

own "direction": The next steps are not as yet formed; hence the
"direction" is not definable. Nevertheless it is a more demanding
organization inclusive of more order than familiar steps can carry
forward. The coming of a felt sense is itself this wider carrying
forward and the further steps show that.

A person's inner "client" is not a formed content but a process of self-

responding. We cannot aid the development of this process by making
impacts on the person which circumvent this self-responding and its
steps.

A living event is not only what appears, "it" also is an implicit carrying
forward.

"It" is like an unfinished poem that very finely and exactly requires its
next line, which has never as yet existed. One can feel the next line
implied from reading the lines up to this point. What is written already
requires its further steps. But the written part will also change somewhat
when that next line come. The poem written so far implies its own
change. There might be more than one way but finding even one is not
easy.

I cannot know what I did or said to this person if I don't see the person's
inward reception of it, and the further steps that might come from that.
Conversely, when I speak for myself to others I need them to wait and
come with me the steps that further emerge. I need them to listen and
follow my steps, and not to react to the first thing I said. They cannot
know from one static bit what I mean, nor can I know without the process
of steps. If I move in self-responding alone, the steps will not be those
that can come with this person.
The listening and focusing process is of crucial political significance.

Once people are accustomed to being listened to, and know the inward
checking of focusing, they are quite "spoiled" for the usual type of
authority. They often express shock at the unhappy fact that most
teachers, gurus, and leaders cannot listen. "How could ______ have told
me this about me without asking me?! ..... He didn't even stop to find out
what I was speaking from ....."

What authorities say cannot get inside them in the old way, because
"inside them" is a self-responding process of the sort I describe. Rather,
the attempt at the old kind of authority is experienced as stupid. But also
inside the individual, the representatives of external authority and merely
imposed cognitive form must wait, listen, and dialogue with what comes
in these more intricate steps. The inner authoritarian is no mere analogy
but an actual representative of the form-imposing ways of social "reality."

People who are accustomed to listening can be cowed by power, and

do not necessarily develop political insights even about what is happening
to them. There are many other dimensions to the political problem today.
But listening and focusing are one vital dimension. A kind of human
organization is coming, which would not again be the imposition of power
by some over others.

Thomas Gordon's PET network has taught listening to half a million people
and continues. Our network teaches focusing and listening to the general
public. When these processes are regularly taught in the schools and are
part of the social fabric, much can change which at present cannot.
People will be able to be together in ways they now don't know of. Politics
is human organization and not mere ideas or forms.

It is hard not to overstate or understate the importance of focusing. It

makes process-steps very frequent and lets them be sought at any point.
Without it therapy brings change haphazardly and rather rarely. Focusing
makes specific what every mode of therapy intends but does not specify.
The source of steps, the edge of awareness becomes itself a datum. The
very coming of that datum is a crucial carrying forward. From that datum
come entirely new and subtler steps of speech, thought, feeling, and
action. It is a new development of the human individual.