Focusing-Oriented Therapy

Focusing-Oriented Therapy (FOT) is an experiential therapy that uses Focusing to facilitate growth. Focusing is a process of noticing and attending to the felt sense, the bodily sensed, and the implicit understanding of situations. Focusing is also taught as a self-help skill, but this is different from its use in therapy. In FOT, the therapist uses Focusing in a therapeutic context, for example, to facilitate other therapeutic procedures.

Historical Context

Eugene Gendlin, a philosopher interested in the relationship between explicit and implicit knowing, wanted to see how meanings could be present before they are described. Thinking that psychotherapy must be a place where this happens, he joined Carl Rogers’s clinic at the University of Chicago in the 1960s.

There, a series of studies conducted by Gendlin and others ...

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