Focusing is so strange that it's hard not to wonder about its origins. Among the many links is the work of George Herbert Mead. Mead was a social psychologist at the University of Chicago. He usually gets lumped in with the pragmatists - Dewey, Peirce, James. Interestingly, Mead never published a book during his lifetime. After his death, Charles Morris, one of his students, published Mead's class notes under the title Mind, Self, and Society. Morris was one of Gendlin's teachers. Mind, Self, and Society was a Common Core book when I was at the University of Chicago, read by many of the college's students. Mead talks about "situations" construed by an agent in a way very similar to focusing. And Mead refers to the need for interpretation in navigating our way through this world. Focusing might be thought of as a subset of Mead's interpretation.
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AuthorI am Andy Hoover. I was first exposed to what would later become focusing as a college freshman in 1972. I can't say that I understood then what it was about. About a decade later, when I came across the Focusing book, I was researching "right-brain" practices as the key to religious experience. Focusing was a perfect fit. I became a Quaker because I came across Quaker writings that sounded a lot like Focusing. Archives
May 2019
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