Apart from any comment about the usefulness of this stuff, I just want to point out how patently ridiculous it is to name this very, very specific psychological technique “Focusing”. It’s akin to calling a particular 9-step yoga pranayama technique “Breathing”, or a particular diet “The Food Diet”. This usage “Focusing” clashes both with the common understanding of the word and with the more established, specific meditative meaning. It also doesn’t help that normal, everyday focusing is also something that you’d like to talk about in a psychology setting, so the context doesn’t uniquely rule out the other meanings of the word. I’m reminded of Jack Willis, who called his specific brand of Reichian Therapy “The Work”, perhaps in an attempt to make it seem more universal and important than it really was.
I like the name focusing—it creates the feeling of the technique being powerful (since it signals it’s strong enough it can use a non-most-frequent meaning of focus (i.e. to concentrate)). Or maybe I’m feeling it incorrectly—English isn’t my first language—but I do like it.
I’m quite in favor of choosing a better name. I’ll start by proposing a long name that I think captures the essence: “Iterated felt-sense introspection”? Then maybe one could drop the “iterated” part for brevity. Other thoughts?
Apart from any comment about the usefulness of this stuff, I just want to point out how patently ridiculous it is to name this very, very specific psychological technique “Focusing”. It’s akin to calling a particular 9-step yoga pranayama technique “Breathing”, or a particular diet “The Food Diet”. This usage “Focusing” clashes both with the common understanding of the word and with the more established, specific meditative meaning. It also doesn’t help that normal, everyday focusing is also something that you’d like to talk about in a psychology setting, so the context doesn’t uniquely rule out the other meanings of the word. I’m reminded of Jack Willis, who called his specific brand of Reichian Therapy “The Work”, perhaps in an attempt to make it seem more universal and important than it really was.
Yeah, definitely not the name we would have chosen if we’d been naming the technique (we were somewhat stuck with Eugene Gendlin’s choice).
I do think calling it “Gendlin’s Focusing” is probably a bit better.
Ah, but then we’d be misrepresenting it as the full technique?
“Step four of Gendlin’s Focusing” :/ :/ :/
I like the name focusing—it creates the feeling of the technique being powerful (since it signals it’s strong enough it can use a non-most-frequent meaning of focus (i.e. to concentrate)). Or maybe I’m feeling it incorrectly—English isn’t my first language—but I do like it.
Since when are we bound to the original discoverer’s wishes about naming?
I’m quite in favor of choosing a better name. I’ll start by proposing a long name that I think captures the essence: “Iterated felt-sense introspection”? Then maybe one could drop the “iterated” part for brevity. Other thoughts?