Training and Supervision

Abstract

We have seen that in Gendlin’s view focusing-oriented psychotherapy is not so much another ‘school’ of therapy as an ‘experientialising’ of the procedures of any school. There could therefore be training courses grounded in the procedures of, say, cognitive-behavioural or psychodynamic therapy, which would differ from the standard courses only insofar as they explicitly incorporated focusing-oriented principles. Although the procedures of the specific schools (such as desensitisation, free association or dreamwork) would be retained, there would be a fundamental re-orientation towards the primacy of the client’s experiencing. Whether such courses will be developed is an open question.