Up: [[Gendlin Focusing]] Course: Focusing with Leslie Ellis on Jung Platform Created: 2024-01-23 Updated: 2026-01-24 Focusing is a process developed by Dr. Eugene Gendlin, a philosopher working at the University of Chicago. Gendlin collaborated with Carl Rogers, who was working in the psychology department, on a research question — “What makes therapy successful?” The two men recorded the first ten minutes of thousands of sessions of therapists from various psychological traditions. Carl Rogers was hoping to show that the unconditional positive regard of the therapist was a defining factor of successful therapy. But it wasn’t. Rather, it was how the client spoke in the first couple of minutes of therapy. If the client was tentative and uncertain it reflected that they were getting in touch with a [[felt sense]] in the moment that moved and changed as they connected to it. Rogers was disappointed in the results and turned his efforts toward the development of group therapies. But Gendlin stayed interested. He wrote a dense, almost unintelligible, philosophical treatise called *A Process Model* arguing that our body and environment are one. Fortunately, he also made focusing an approachable five or six step process.