This article addresses the function of the felt body in focusing-oriented psychotherapy. Focusing, as defined by its founder Eugene T. Gendlin, innovated the person-centered approach with procedures attending to the bodily “felt sense” of the client’s situation. In a recent series of texts, Campbell Purton questioned the bodily nature of a felt sense, which in his opinion results from a misconception about emotions and language. This article aims to assess the extent to which Purton’s critique is cogent and where, on the contrary, it misses the presence and function of the body in psychotherapy. It is argued that contemporary phenomenological and neo-Jamesian theories of emotions offer ample means of defending the bodily nature of feelings.
ColombettiG. (2011). Varieties of pre-reflective self-awareness: Foreground and background bodily feeling in emotion experience. Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy, 54(3), 293–313. https://doi.org/10.1080/0020174X.2011.575003
2.
ColombettiG. (2013). The feeling body: Affective science meets the enactive mind. The MIT Press.
3.
DeonnaJ. A.TeroniF. (2012). The emotions: A philosophical introduction. Routledge.
4.
DeonnaJ. A.TeroniF. (2017). Getting bodily feelings into emotional experience in the right way. Emotion Review, 9(1), 55–63. https://doi.org/10.1177/1754073916639666
5.
EllisL. (2014). The Inner Journey: Focusing and Jung. The Folio, 25(1), 83–91. https://bit.ly/ellis2014
6.
FrijdaN. H. (1986). The emotions. Cambridge University Press.
7.
FrijdaN. H. (2013). The laws of emotion. Routledge.
8.
GendlinE. T. (1964). A theory of personality change. In WorchelP.ByrneD. (Eds.), Personality change (pp. 100–148). John Wiley.
9.
GendlinE. T. (1978). Focusing. Everest House.
10.
GendlinE. T. (1991). Thinking beyond patterns: Body, language and situations. In den OudenB.MoenM. (Eds.), The presence of feeling in thought (pp. 25–151). Peter Lang.
11.
GendlinE. T. (1996). Focusing-oriented psychotherapy: A manual of the experiential method. The Guilford Press.
12.
GendlinE. T. (2018). A process model. Northwestern University Press.
13.
GibsonJ. J. (1979). The ecological approach to visual perception. Houghton Mifflin.
14.
KövecsesZ. (2000). Metaphor and emotion: Culture, language, and body in human feeling. Cambridge University Press.
15.
LakoffG.JohnsonM. (1980). Metaphors we live by. University of Chicago Press.
16.
LakoffG.JohnsonM. (1999). Philosophy in the flesh: The embodied mind and its challenge to Western thought. Basic Books.
17.
LambieJ. A.MarcelA. J. (2002). Consciousness and the varieties of emotion experience: A theoretical framework. Psychological Review, 109(2), 219–259. https://doi.org/10.1037//0033-295X.109.2.219
18.
LederD. (1990). The absent body. University of Chicago Press.
19.
LegrandD. (2007). Pre-reflective self-consciousness: On being bodily in the world. Janus Head, 9(2), 493–519. https://bit.ly/legrand2007
20.
LevineP. A. (2005). Panic, biology, and reason. Giving the body its due. In TottonN. (Ed.), New dimensions in body psychotherapy (pp. 30–39). Open University Press.
21.
MadisonG. (Ed.). (2014a). Emerging practice in focusing-oriented psychotherapy: Innovative theory and applications. Kingsley.
22.
MadisonG. (Ed.). (2014b). Theory and practice of focusing-oriented psychotherapy: Beyond the talking cure. Kingsley.
23.
Merleau-PontyM. (1968). The visible and the invisible. Northwestern University Press.
24.
ParkerR. (2014). Focusing-oriented psychotherapy: The message from research. In MadisonG. (Ed.), Theory and practice of focusing-oriented psychotherapy: Beyond the talking cure (pp. 259–272). Kingsley.
25.
PrestonL. (2016a, November8). An example of working with the implicit [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/j6ussDRcu10
PurtonC. (2014a). The myth of the bodily felt sense. In MadisonG. (Ed.), Theory and practice of focusing-oriented psychotherapy: Beyond the talking cure (pp. 221–233). Kingsley.
31.
PurtonC. (2014b). The trouble with psychotherapy: Counselling and common sense. Palgrave.
32.
PurtonC. (2018, May 10–14). A new way of thinking about focusing. First European Focusing Association Conference, Loutraki, Greece. https://bit.ly/purton2018
33.
RatcliffeM. J. (2005). The feeling of being. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 12(8–10), 43–60.
34.
SchoellerD. (2018, May 10–14). Felt sense—A beautiful yet misleading term. First European Focusing Association Conference, Loutraki, Greece. https://bit.ly/schoeller2018
35.
WampoldB. E. (2001). The great psychotherapy debate. Routledge.
36.
Weiser CornellA. (1996). The power of focusing: A practical guide to emotional self-healing. New Harbinger.
37.
WittgensteinL. (2009). Philosophical investigations. Wiley-Blackwell. (Original work published 1953)
