"Kathy McGuire studied with Dr.
Eugene Gendlin at the University of Chicago and did her dissertation on
"Listening and Interruptions in Task-Oriented Groups" in 1975.
She had a thirty-year career as a psychotherapist and workshop leader and
published her manual, The Experiential Dimension in Therapy in 1984. She
was a co-founder of the original Changes group in Chicago in the early
1970s and has been the Johnny Appleseed of Listening/Focusing Communities,
using her manual Building Supportive Community: Mutual Self-Help Through
Peer Counseling, 1981 (new edition titled Focusing In Community: How To
Start A Listening/Focusing Support Group, also in Spanish, 2007) to start
Listening/Focusing Communities wherever she has lived.
At her website for Creative Edge Focusing, she has posted her many articles
and free instructions for bringing Listening/Focusing into relational
conflict resolution, businesses and organizations, education, parenting,
supportive communities, spirituality, and counseling."
Kathy and Edwin demonstrate "Interactive Focusing," where each speaker
offers empathic reflection to the previous speaker before taking his or
her own turn. Interruption and argument are avoided, empathy is
demonstrated, and each speaker is able to speak from their deeper felt
sense of the issue, knowing they will not be argued with or interrupted.
This video illustrates how knowledge of Gendlin's Focusing by the speaker
deepens a session with the Listener just offering Empathic Reflection.
Being committed to Focusing Partnership and the Changes self-help model, I set
out in this video to show how peer counseling is safe because the Focuser is
"in charge" of the session, asking for what she or he needs, making
corrections until reflections by the Listener feel "just right." The Listener
is just a peer, trying to help, not a therapist with unequal, magical power.
My Listener, Edwin Rutsch of The Center for Building A Culture of Empathy, has
some exposure to Focusing but, as a Listener, he uses only Empathic Reflection
and no other form of guiding for me as the Focuser. Remember, Carl Rogers used
ONLY reflection throughout his career as the founder of Client-Centered
Therapy. It was we Gendlinites who added Focusing Suggestions as a way to go
deeper. So, you will see a great example of the power of "just Listening."
And, I give myself Focusing Guiding as I take myself deeper, demonstrating
"the Focuser is in charge."
I start out with a work-related issue which opens into deep meanings related
to my broader living.
After 25 minutes, suddenly a stuck, frozen body posture unfreezes and opens
and carries forward into deeper meanings, so the video also illustrates the
importance of gestures and body postures as 'symbolizations' of felt
experiencing.
And also, seeing how much more deeply my Focusing turn goes after the first 25
minutes reinforces my belief that Focusing Partnership turns, each way, need
to be at least 40 minutes, giving time to get below 'clearing a space' and
more deeply into felt meanings.
I hope you will
stick it out to minute 25 to see the deep unfolding of the body posture!
The content of my turn is the History of Focusing wiki, which was what came
up. But, don't get stuck on the content. It is the process that is important.
Kathy McGuire
Empathic Design
Workshop (2015-10-06) Empathic Bonding: Gendlin's Focusing In
Empathy Circle First hour is an empathy circle, hour 2 and 3 is the human-centered design
process where we redesign the empathy circle process.
In part one, Kathy McGuire is moved to tears and deep self-disclosure as she uses Focusing
in the context of empathic listening. Future speakers also disclose more
deeply, sharing their tears. "Empathic bonding" leads group members to feel
very loving toward each other."
