Eugene Tovio Gendlin (born Eugen Gendelin; 25 December 1926 – 1 May 2017) was an American philosopher who developed ways of thinking about and working with living process, the bodily felt sense and the "philosophy of the implicit". Though he had no degree in the field of psychology, his advanced study with Carl Rogers, his longtime practice of psychotherapy and his extensive writings in the field of psychology have made him perhaps better known in that field than in philosophy. He studied under Carl Rogers, the founder of client-centered therapy, at the University of Chicago and received his PhD in philosophy in 1958. Gendlin's theories impacted Rogers' own beliefs and played a role in Rogers' view of psychotherapy. From 1958 to 1963 Gendlin was Research Director at the Wisconsin Psychiatric Institute of the University of Wisconsin. He served as an associate professor in the departments of Philosophy and Comparative Human Development at the University of Chicago from 1964 until 1995. Gendlin is best known for Focusing, a psychotherapy technique, and for "Thinking at the Edge", a general procedure for "thinking with more than patterns". In the 1950s and 60s, under the guidance of Rogers, Gendlin did research demonstrating that a …
Eugene Gendlin
Author details
- Born:
- Dec. 25, 1926
- Died:
- May 1, 2017
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Eugene Tovio Gendlin (born Eugen Gendelin; 25 December 1926 – 1 May 2017) was an American philosopher who developed ways of thinking about and working with living process, the bodily felt sense and the "philosophy of the implicit". Though he had no degree in the field of psychology, his advanced study with Carl Rogers, his longtime practice of psychotherapy and his extensive writings in the field of psychology have made him perhaps better known in that field than in philosophy. He studied under Carl Rogers, the founder of client-centered therapy, at the University of Chicago and received his PhD in philosophy in 1958. Gendlin's theories impacted Rogers' own beliefs and played a role in Rogers' view of psychotherapy. From 1958 to 1963 Gendlin was Research Director at the Wisconsin Psychiatric Institute of the University of Wisconsin. He served as an associate professor in the departments of Philosophy and Comparative Human Development at the University of Chicago from 1964 until 1995. Gendlin is best known for Focusing, a psychotherapy technique, and for "Thinking at the Edge", a general procedure for "thinking with more than patterns". In the 1950s and 60s, under the guidance of Rogers, Gendlin did research demonstrating that a client's ability to realize lasting positive change in psychotherapy depended on their ability to access a nonverbal, bodily feel of the issues that brought them into therapy. Gendlin gave the name "felt sense" to this intuitive body-feel for unresolved issues. Realizing that people could be taught this skill, in 1978 Gendlin published his best-selling book Focusing, which presented a six step method for discovering one's felt sense and drawing on it for personal development. Gendlin founded The Focusing Institute in 1985 (now the International Focusing Institute) to facilitate training and education in Focusing for academic and professional communities and to share the practice with the public. In the mid-1980s, Gendlin served on the original editorial board for the journal The Humanistic Psychologist, published by Division 32 of the American Psychological Association (APA). He has been honored by the APA four times, and was the first recipient of their Distinguished Professional Award in Psychology and Psychotherapy (given by Division 29, this award is now called the Distinguished Psychologist Award for Contributions to Psychology and Psychotherapy). He was awarded the Viktor Frankl prize by the Viktor Frankl Family Foundation in 2008. In 2016, he was honored with a lifetime achievement award from the World Association for Person Centered and Experiential Psychotherapy and Counseling and another lifetime achievement award was given to him that same year by the United States Association for Body Psychotherapy. Gendlin was a founder and longtime editor of the journal Psychotherapy: Theory, Research and Practice as well as the in-house journal of the Focusing Institute called the Folio, and is the author of a number of books, including Focusing-Oriented Psychotherapy: A Manual of the Experiential Method. The mass-market edition of his popular classic Focusing has been translated into 17 languages and sold more than a half million copies.
