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Abstract

This article is based on a treatment intervention study teaching Focusing (Gendlin, 1981), a mind-body awareness technique, to four men with AIDS. Philosophical and therapeutic questions regarding the lifeworlds (lebenswelt) of persons with HIV spectrum illness are raised. Both quantitative and qualitative analysis are presented with an emphasis on the phenomenological method suggested by Giorgi (1975) and others. The analysis uses material from the tape recordings of each session addressing the aspects of change reported by each participant. Borrowed from the words of one of the participants, the shift in capacity to listen to oneself over time is called the "recovery of will." This process has three movements, which are characterized by the reduction of judgmental self-beliefs, fresh dialogue with significant processes within the self, and the integration of new knowledge derived from the process of listening and being heard.

It is as though he listened,

and such listening as his enfolds us in a silence

in which at last we begin to hear

what we are meant to be.

Lao-Tse

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The Recovery of Will in Persons with AIDS

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