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HOME Publications: BUDDHISM COUNSELLING FOCUSING PHILOSOPHY
Paper presented at the 12th International Focusing Conference, Pforzheim, Germany,
May, 2000.
Talking of parts
Campbell Purton
In focusing, but also more generally when we reflect on our lives and situations, we can
often identify different aspects or parts of ourselves. This is particularly clear when we
•have conflicting desires. In such situations it can be natural to say, for example, that
something in me wants to speak out but that another bit wants to avoid making a fool of
myself. It becomes most natural to speak of 'parts' where the desires involved are
fairly settled aspects of our personality, rather than passing impulses. For example, it
was not just that in that moment something in me wanted to speak out, but that there is
a part of me which consistently wants to speak out in situations like this. Further, we
often find that our settled dispositions tend to cluster together, so that when the part of
; me that wants to speak out is active, so are certain other parts, such my impatient part,
and my 'not caring what anyone else says' part. These parts together form something
that could be called a 'subpersonality' or 'configuration'. People often give names to
such configurations, for example 'the rebel', 'the child', 'the critic'.
Two kinds of conflict
Conflict between the parts can be distressing, so that becoming aware of the different
parts and their needs can be the first step towards negotiating a way forward which is
acceptable to all the parts. A natural analogy here is with a democratic state, in which
each person's voice is heard, and a fair balance is worked out. The agreed solution to
the conflict may involve one part having to wait to get what it wants, or another part
accepting a substitute gratification and so on. Often the conflicts between parts are
resolved bL a system of priorities. Yes, I would like to make more money, but not if
that involves so much stress that my health is going to be damaged. Through clarifying
our priorities we try to arrange our desires and aversions into a reasonably coherent
self. This sort of procedure we could term 'integration' or 'individuation'.
In such integration the different parts are all basically acceptable. Some may be given
a low priority, but that is not because there is anything intrinsically bad about them; it
is just that they are not so important as certain other parts. Were it not for the potential
conflict with other parts, these less important parts would be entirely welcome. A very
simple sort of example would be that where I want to go and see a film but also want to
have a quiet evening at home. Both desires are perfectly acceptable to me; the only
difficulty is that I cannot satisfy them both at once. So there has to be some
compromising or prioritising. If I look inside and sense what I most want it may
become clear what that is, and the matter is settled. Or I may on reflection realise that I
can after all see the film next week, so that the choice is not as stark as I'd thought; that
is, I realise that I can to a large extent have it both ways.
Consider now a different kind of conflict. Examples would be:
' I'm afraid of answering the phone, but I want to get rid of this fear'
‘I keep wanting to have a cigarette, but I'm holding on to my resolution to conquer this
craving'
‘I wish I didn't have that bit of me that always gets upset when I hear people arguing'
I'd like to be the sort of person who really feels pleased when other people are
successful'
I say that these are examples of a different land of conflict because in these cases the
objects of the desires or aversions are of a very special kind. In this kind of example
our desires or aversions are directed towards certain other desires and aversions. I'm
afraid of answering the phone, and I don't like having that fear. I want a cigarette, and
I want not to have that want. My fear of answering the phone is a straightforward
aversion, and it no doubt conflicts with a straightforward desire to answer ringing
phones. But if that were all the conflict amounted to all I would need to do would be to
say, 'Well, since I have both these desires, and they are both perfectly acceptable in
themselves, I'll compromise by answering and not answering on alternate days, so half
the time my wanting to answer will be satisfied, and the other half my not wanting to
answer will be satisfied'. The reason that this does not constitute a satisfactory
resolution of the conflict is that the person's fear and their desire not to be afraid are
not on the same level. The fear of answering the phone is a straightforward fear, a
ground-level fear, as it were, which is directed towards ringing telephones. But the
desire which the person has is directed not at telephones, but at their own fear. The
conflict here is not between two parts of the person, but between the person and a
particular part. A satisfactory resolution of the conflict would lie in the person
overcoming their fear of telephones, rather than in compromising with it. In this sort
of conflict the ideal resolution lies not in prioritisation or compromise, but in removing
the desire or aversion in question. The parson addicted to nicotine wants to get rid of
that craving. The person who gets upset by arguments doesn't want to be like that. The
person who can't feel pleased at the success of others wants his or her desires to be
different from what they currently are.
In short, these are conflicts not between parts, but between the person and a part. The
person wants the part to be different, because then the person will be more fully
themself.
Feelings about feelings
Making sense of this requires some reflection on what it is to be a person. I am
inclined to accept the philosopher Harry Frankfurt's (1971) view that a person is just
the sort of being who can reflect upon and take up attitudes towards their own desires
and aversions.' Animals don't do this. A cat may be angry or afraid, and may be
caught in a conflict between these feelings; but then what happens is just that the
stranger feeling wins. What the cat does not do is wonder about whether it is
appropriate to be angry or afraid in this situation. It can't sit and say to itself I'd
really like to be rid of this stupid fear I have of small dogs; I know that if I stand there
and spit at them they will retreat, but somehow I can't bring myself to do if. The cat
can't reflect like this, I believe, not so much because it lacks language but because it
lacks self-consciousness. It experiences fear, but it isn't aware that it is afraid. It is
because there is no self-consciousness that the cat can't have desires or aversions which
are directed towards its own desires and aversions, and hence cannot have conflicts of
the sort we have when we want to be different from the way we are.
Through having self-consciousness human beings are vulnerable to having a kind of
conflict which animals are not vulnerable to, but human beings also have access to a
means of resolving such conflicts which animals neither have nor need. The human
being w}io is troubled by having feelings which they don't want to have, can stand back
and reflect on those feelings. It is important that such reflection can go beyond simply
getting a feel for priorities and possible compromises. That would just be a
sophisticated human way of sorting out what animals do unselfconsciously, a human
way of sorting out an animal type of problem. The human solution to the human type
of problem doesn't involve prioritising and organising the feelings that are already
there, but transforming them. The person who is afraid of answering the phone wants
to be different in such a way that he or she will no longer have the fear, or at least no
longer be troubled by it.
What I have said may seem to conflict with a widely-held principle that we should be
accepting of all of our experience. But much here depends on how we understand the
term 'acceptance'. Consider again the person who is afraid of answering the
telephone. Such a person might deceive themself about the reality of their fear. They
might say 'Oh, I don't seriously have a fear of telephones. I'm just a bit lazy or
something'. Now if this is a bit of self-deception and they really are afraid of
telephones, then they can be said not to be accepting their fear for -what it is. If on the
other hand they reflect on the situation, perhaps with a sympathetic friend, they may
come to say something like 'Well, if I'm honest I really am scared of answering the
phone - if s irrational, but there it is. I do have this fear'. Such a person has, in an
important sense, accepted their fear. It's there. That' show it is. But acceptance in
this sense is quite different from being happy about having the fear. Having accepted
that they are afraid, the person may well say something like 1 accept that I have this
fear, but now what I really want is to be rid of it. I hate being afraid like this. I'm told
there are ways of overcoming such fears; let's see what can be done'.
At this point in the conversation it would seem inappropriate to say: "Maybe you would
like to say 'Hello' to that part of you which wants to be rid of the fear". The response
to this would probably be "What do you mean? I want to be rid of the fear. I'm caught
in it, I don't want to be caught in it, and I'm going to try my best to overcome it".
Now consider a slightly different scenario: A client in therapy says "I hate being afraid
lpce this" and the therapist says something like "Maybe you'd like just to say 'Hello' to
that feeling of hate". This time the client replies "Yes, it's there. I really do hate this
fear... .1 didn't realise how hooked into this I am.... Yes, there really is a part of me
that hates the fear part... ..this doesn't feel good... .1 need to get back a bit from the
hating part... get a better feel of it... it's natural enough for it to be there... .it wants to
remove the fear... .but if s not helping... .1 need to get a sense of the whole
situation... .it's a hating-being-afraid situation. ..I really want to get clear about all
this..." At this point I think the therapist would be wise simple to let the process
unfold. But someone really keen on parts talk would be committed to saying
something like "So there's a part of you that really would like to be clear about all
this". To which the client would be justified in replying "What do you mean? I want
to be clear about it. I'm caught in something here, and I want to be clear and free".
In both these little scenarios we come to the same sort of place, the place where the
client naturally rejects the parts talk because they have realised what they really want.
In the first scenario this point is reached earlier than in the second. In the first scenario
the client is caught in the fear, and they (not a part of them) wants to be free of it. They
hate the fear in a wholehearted, constructive way; they know that this is something they
really want to be rid of, and the energy in this will help them to do something about it.
In the second scenario, too, the client is caught in the fear, but caught also in the hatred
of the fear. Hatred of fear can serve a useful function, as in the first scenario, but in
this second scenario it can't serve its function because the client is caught in the hate.
This leads to another strong feeling, the feeling of wanting some clarity about all this.
Desire for clarity is also something we can get hooked into, and that could lead to a
third and even more complex scenario, but in our second scenario there is no need to
push on to a third level. The regress of having feelings about feelings about feelings
can in principle go on for ever, but in practice it soon reaches a natural stopping point.
This is because the higher levels of feeling function essentially as modifiers of the
lower levels. On the lowest level there is, for example, the fear of telephones. But this
fear causes problems in the person's life, so it is natural for them to want to get rid of
it. The hatred of the fear could function to eliminate the fear, but it isn't effective
because it does not incorporate any real understanding of the fear. So there is
something that needs attention in the hatred. There is a need for clarity, and in our
example that is where the regress stops. This need for clarity is not something the
person is caught in; it is something with which they can fully identify themselves,
something of which they can say 'This is what I really want'. At the lower levels they
can't say this; at the first level they can't wholeheartedly say that they are afaid of
telephones because there is the awareness that they don't need to have that fear. It is
quite different from the fear one might have on encountering a tiger: there the fear is
wholehearted and one rightly runs! At the second level there is the hatred of the fear,
but this is not wholehearted either; there is the awareness that the hatred is in some way
too crude to be effective. At each place where one senses that a feeling isn't quite
right, that it isn't something one can wholeheartedly be with, another feeling arises
which is directed at the first feeling. But this process doesn't go on forever; it goes on
only until the person finds a feeling whidh they can wholeheartedly identic with.
It may help to emphasise the familiar distinction between what we want and what we
really want. In the first scenario the client wants to be away from telephones, but really
wants to be free of the fear of telephones. The wanting to be away from telephones is a
want in which they are caught or trapped; but the wanting to be free of that fear is not
something in which they are trapped. In the second scenario the client wants to be
away from telephones, and is caught in that want; they also hate the fear and are caught
in that too. It is very tangled: what they really want is to be clear about the whole thing
and be able to do something about it, and that is not something in which they are
caught.
Entrapment and 'putting things down'
Some writers on focusing would say that what I am calling entrapment by a feeling is a
matter of having identified with the feeling. I don't think this is quite right. There is
such a thing as identifying with a feeling, and I have already touched on this, but
identification is not at all the same as what I am calling 'entrapment'. I will come
back to the notion of identifying with a feeling shortly, but first want to say a bit more
about entrapment.
By 'entrapment' I mean to refer to all those cases where we are submerged,
overwhelmed, caught in our feelings; where our feelings are living us rather than we
living our feelings. It is this state of entrapment from which we need to liberate
ourselves if we are to be able to focus on our feelings effectively. In focusing we
escape from the entrapment by such procedures as 'creating a distance', 'saying hello',
or 'putting things down'. The escape from entrapment is not necessary in cases where
there is no entrapment. If we are using focusing in trying to solve some intellectual
problem, there is no need to put anything down. For example, Gendlin's "Thinking at
the edge' procedure is recognisably a focusing procedure, but it contains nothing
corresponding to 'putting things down'. However, when we are working on personal
issues there is very often an element of entrapment, and this needs to be worked on
before we can begin to focus.
Now what exactly is involved in 'putting things down' or 'finding a distance'? In her
article 'Relationship = Distance + Connection" Ann Weisser Comell (1995) says
'Finding Distance is a focusing move in which the client finds experiential "distance"
from his felt sense by moving it away from him, or by stepping back from if. Elfie
Hinterkopf (1998) replies that 'it is not the felt sense that is set out. It is the whole
problem along with an overwhelming feeling and often a stuck, frozen separated part
that is set out to allow a felt sense to form '. This seems basically right: it can't be the
felt sense that is set out because the felt sense is what connects us with the problem.
But it remains theoretically obscure what 'setting out a problem' involves.
Experientially it is not obscure at all. We can visualise the problem as a heavy bundle
which we then set down some distance away from us. We then check in our body
whether this imagined setting-down has in fact brought some relief.
We have done something significant here, but how is it to be described? I would say
that what we have done is to relate to our problem in a different way. We started from
a position where we were living the problem, whereas now we are looking at it or being
aware o/it. We can use the same words in connection with our experiences, yet those
words can work in very different ways. If someone says I'm in pain' this may be an
expression of pain rather than a description of anything. The words in effect
substitute for other more primitive forms of pain behaviour such as crying out or
moaning. When we say I'm in pain' in that way, we are living our pain in OUT words.
We are in the pain and our words express our being in that condition. But it is very
different if the doctor is quizzing us about our symptoms. 'Would you say you are
actually in pain, or is it more a muscular discomfort?' To which the considered
response might be 'This definitely isn't a muscular discomfort - no. I'm in pain'. In
this situation we are using the words to describe our experience, not to express it.
When in focusing we 'set things out' what we are really doing is to move from being
in the experience, from being in a position where our body and behaviour are
expressing something, to a position where we are trying to describe the experience. As
human beings we can stand back from our experiences and look at them as if from
outside, as if these experiences were the experiences of someone else. Animals by
contrast have the experiences, but they are not aware of having them and hence could
not even begin to describe them. The underlying reasons for the difference lie I believe
in the essentially social nature of human beings. I won't try to elaborate on this here,
but simply emphasise again that there is a big difference between being in a state where
you are expressing a feeling and being in a state where you are trying to see what that
feeling is.
It is only when our bodies are expressing our feelings that we become entrapped, and
then only when the expression is in some way inadequate. If we are responding with
our whole self to a problem or situation, then our behaviour expresses the whole feel of
the situation for us. But often we are responding with only a bit of ourselves. For
example we are caught up in our anger and all the rest of the complexity of the
situation is lost. Our body is expressing just the anger, and our saying that we are
angry is just another form of this bodily expression. We are caught in the anger,
tipped by it. What we need to do is to become aware of the anger as afeeling. Rather
than just being angry we need to become aware of our being angry. One way of doing
this is to try to describe the feeling; it is impossible at the same time to be caught in the
anger and to be looking at it and trying describe it. The effort to be aware of the anger
and describe it shifts us out of it. This, I think, is what is happening when in
preparation for focusing we set things out.
Entrapment and identification
I need now to explain why I want to distinguish between entrapment and
identification.
I talked above about being 'caught in' a feeling such as fear. In such situations we are
not fillly ourselves, and it is quite natural to speak of the part of me that is afraid.
When we are caught in an emotion we are passive with regard to that emotion, it is
something that has grabbed us. It is natural here to speak of the emotion as an 'it' to
which / need to relate. Now consider the sort of situation where for some time we
have been pulled two ways. In such a conflict there may come a time when we finally
realise what it is that we really want. For example, suppose someone is torn between
the desire to throw up their job and go round the world, and the fear of what the
consequences of this would be for their family. Such conflicts can go on for a long
time. Sometimes a compromise can be worked out, but not always. After staying with
the felt sense of the whole thing the person may finally come to feel that in spite of all
the attractions of going round the world, it isn't really what they want to do. The
circumstances are such that they had to decide one way or the other, and they have
made their decision, for good or ill. Prior to the decision the person was torn, was
blown this way and that, was unable to act or live in a wholehearted way. After the
decision the two desires, the two 'pulls' towards the different futures, are likely still to
be there. But now the person has identified himself with one desire and dissociated
himself from the other. He will, if he is wise, not ignore the pain or sadness of the
situation, but the fact that he has such feelings does not imply that he is still divided in
himself. He accepts that those feelings are there; how could they not be? But he has
identified (at least for now) with another part of himself. Actively identifying with a
part of oneself is quite different from being caught in a part of oneself. It would be a
completely different case if the divided person had said at the start, without taking time
to get afelt sense of the whole situation, "This going round the world thing is just a
childish fantasy that isn't worth taking seriously. End of story. I'm staying with my
family". That too would be a decision, but an unwise one. Unwise because the
person has not gone through the process that would allow him to identify
wholeheartedly with one option or the other.
Gendlin has some helpful comments about decision-making in an early paper 'Values
and the process of experiencing' (1967). There he argues that the decisions we respect
(in ourselves and in others) are those which arise from an experiential process in which
we have stayed with or worked through all the complexities of the situation. Similarly,
in their article on 'Standing It' Ann Weiser Cornell and Barbara McGavin say "There
is a tendency to say, 1 have to either stay or go. I can't do both. I should just make a
decision and get it over with'. But when the Focuser can persist in simply being with
all that is there, the hard work of Standing It is rewarded with a transformation that
feels magical, because it could not have been predicted by the logical mind." The only
qualification I would want to make is that transformation of one's life isn't something
that just happens. We open ourselves to the whole complexity of the situation, new
ways of experiencing it emerge, but we are still faced with the choice of what to give
our heart to. If we simply allow the new way of seeing things to take us over, then we
are not really in any better a position than when we started. Suppose that the going-
round-the-world man, at the end of his experiential process says something like "I've
looked at this whole thing and I do feel different now. My need to stay with my family
just is stronger than my need to go round the world. That's how it is." There is a
change here, but I would not call it a transformation. The old parts are still there; it is
just that one of them has come out on top. The old parts, left to themselves, are not
going to transform themselves; they will at best reach some sort of homeostatic
balance or compromise. For there to be transformation, something has to be done.
There has to be something of the nature of will or agency, in which the person
identifies themselves with the new way of seeing things.
Such a transformation can be imagined in the case which I have been discussing. The
man's initial state was one of conflict between the desire to go round the world and the
fear of destroying his family. Through staying with this conflict he finally comes to a
new way of seeing things. For instance he might come to see staying with his family as
more of a challenge and adventure than going round the world. (Or he might come to
see leaving his family as liberating for than as well as for him). But if the new view of
things is to be his view he first has to identic with it. For there to be transformation it
is not enough for him to say 'You could look at it this way'; he needs to be able to say
'This is how I now see if.
It is not easy to express what happens when we identify in this way with a point of view
or a possible way of going forward. It seems to be a matter or getting to a point where
we stop raising further questions, or stop letting ourselves be influenced by things we
still could be influenced by. A simpler sort of example may help here: I close the door
of my house, but as I walk down the road, I suddenly wonder if it locked. I'm almost
sure it did, and yet... I’m uneasy. It's annoying, but I’d better go back and check. It
turns our that it was locked, and I pull it shut and set off again. But then the nagging
doubt returns. Did the lock really click the way it usually does? I didn't actually give
the door a good pull... .1 say to myself 'This is just silly!' But the anxiety won't go
away. I think, 1 know I am in a bit of a state at the moment, and I am forgetting things.
Normally I could be sure that the door was locked, but I know I'm not concentrating on
things today, so maybe it really didn't lock. I'd better go back just one more time'. I
go back. The door is locked. I give it a good pull. Now I'm sure... .1 set off confidently
down the street, but to my distress the anxiety comes back yet again. I can't shake it
off. What am I to do? I stay with the feel of it all. There's that anxiety about the
door. Yes, that's there. And there's the opposing feeling that of course the door is
locked, I've just checked it twice over. I reflect that I am prone to this sort of
obsessional checking, and sense that if I went back and checked again this would not
resolve the problem. I also sense that there is nothing further in my experiencing that is
going to help. What I have now seems to be the whole of it, and the whole of it points
in the direction of walking on and not checking again. But what if I'm wrong and the
door is unlocked and burglars do get in? Well, that that i? a possibility, but I am
feeling now that even if that happened I would still have made the right decision. The
unfortunate outcome would just be bad luck. The sense of what I need to do has
become clear. I am no longer divided in myself. I can wholeheartedly say that what I
really want is to walk on. But can I do it? The anxious part is still there. Well, lean
try. I have identified myself with the part that wants to walk on, but this doesn't mean
I have to rage at the part which wants to go back. No, I can be kind towards this part of
myself. I can say to if I know you're there, and that this is scary. But let's see if we
can move on'.
Once the decision is made the emotional situation is transformed. Before the decision I
was pulled this way and that, I was passive with respect to my feelings. I could identify
wholeheartedly with neither of them. The decision consists in identifying with one of
the parts, but in doing this the whole situation is transformed. My state of mind is no
longer one of being torn. It becomes one in which I know for sure what I'm doing,
even though I may be still be very much aware of the part that pulls against me. But
the parts themselves are now different. The part which I identified with has become a
kind of energy which is helping me to go bravely ahead; it is no longer a part in the
sense of something separate from me. The other part becomes a feeling which I have„ a
frightened feeling which needs care and attention. Later I-not a part of me - may wish
to spend some time with that frightened feeling.
I think that the same sort of transformation could happen in the case of the man who
wanted to go round the world. Suppose he decides not to go. After this decision the
emotional situation is one of some sadness that he didn't go round the world, together
with happiness that his family is secure. It may look as if one part has dominated the
other, but this is not quite how it is. That is how it looks up to the point of the decision,
but the decision consists in the man identifying with one part and making it's energy
his own. After the decision the parts are no longer what they were. Where there was
longing and fear, there is now sadness and relief. But is this second state of affairs
better than the first? Yes, if we believe it is better to live with a sense of freedom
rather than being caught in our emotions. Before the decision was made the man was
caught in both longing and fear, he was pulled both ways and could not freely act.
After the decision he feels both sadness and relief, but he is not caught in either of
these feelings. They are simply feelings he has, which inform his life but do not
control it.
Agency and the will
I have said that something of the nature of Will or Agency is crucial in emotional
transformation. This is not an altogether popular notion today, and for good reasons.
We are very familiar with the destruction which can be caused by the attempt to
achieve things by will-power rather than through letting things unfold naturally. Much
of our culture is imbued with a sense that we need to be in control, that we need to get
things done, that left to itself the world will devolve into chaos. These attitudes are of
course linked with our modem way of seeing the world as a physical system, as
something not different from an intricate machine. But this way of seeing things is a
comparatively recent one. It dates back only to the late seventeenth century. Before
that the world was, on the whole, seen as more like an organic system embodying the
interplay of all sorts of life-forces and powers to which human beings needed to relate.
Today many of us have a longing to get back to that old organic way of being in the
world, but we are in danger of forgetting certain aspects of it: the powerlessness in the
face of demonic forces, the acceptance of organic hierarchies, the disparaging of
individual creativity, liberal education, personal freedom, and so on. The old order had
its bad points, which is of course what led to the Enlightenment. Now perhaps things
have gone too far the other way. In this situation, it seems to me, the way forward is
not to throw out our modem scientific way of seeing the world and return to the old
organic way. Rather, we need to see the elements of value in both. As human beings
we belong to the organic order, and if we forget this we cause terrible destruction. But
as human beings we also transcend the organic order, in the sense that we can reflect on
ourselves and choose which aspects of our organic selves we wish to cultivate and
which we do not.
Organic metaphors of nurturing, growth, holism, balance, etc are very popular today as
a reaction against the metaphors of mechanism, analysis, control, and so on. And
yet... .if we have a broken leg we don't just let things take their course. We go to the
hospital and have the bones set. I know a Tibetan Buddhist teacher who returned to
his home after many years, and began to suffer from altitude sickness as they
approached his monastery. One of his students had some pills which can help with
altitude sickness, but hesitated to offer them to the lama, since he felt that this would be
a non-spiritual Western approach to the problem. Instead he offered to chant some
mantras. But the lama said "Never mind the mantras, just give me the pills!" Our
modem way of looking at things has its place; it is helpful in some kinds of
circumstance, though unhelpful in others. What we need, I believe, is not a philosophy
of pure organic unfolding, but a sense of where to let things be and where not to let
things be.
Nietzsche says somewhere that the human soul is like a garden. To create a garden the
gardener has to take into consideration the natural propensities of various plants, the lie of the
land, the climatic conditions and so on. Creating a garden cannot be a forced, mechanical
business. You can't grow just anything anywhere. The organic aspect is crucial. But the
gardener does not just let things grow as they will - that would produce something, but not it
would create a garden. It would not create anything. Creation requires familiarity with the
natural forms and forces at play in a situation, but also a vision that will transform the
situation. Creativity brings something new to the forms that are already there, so that these
forms themselves are changed. A garden is not just a re-arrangement of what was already
there; even with the introduction of no new plants it is a different kind of entity from the
purely organic system which preceded it.
What makes the garden different from a merely organic system is the vision of the
gardener. But rather paradoxically this vision best arises out of the gardener's
familiarity with the natural forces that are at work. To have a vision in advance and
then simply impose it on the landscape is to invite disaster. Instead the inspired
gardener is likely to spend a lot of time wandering around the piece of land, getting the
feel of it. Then he or she sits down and makes some tentative plans, goes back to the
land and tries them out in imagination. Does that feel right? Not entirely. What's
uncomfortable about that? Oh, yes... Slowly a sense of how the garden is to be
emerges. For this garden to be created some trees have to be chopped down. The
gardener likes trees and maybe agonises for some time over whether they do need to
go. And it is important that the answer to this question may be Yes.
In the same way, it seems to me, when we reflect on what we want to be, we need to
take time over seeing what we have, what our resources are. We need to accept that
everything in us is what it is. But through staying with our experiencing we come to
places where we are uncomfortable, where something feels not right. Again, we need
to stay with that discomfort and see what is in it. What will emerge cannot be foreseen,
but whatever it is it is likely to present us with choices about the direction in which we
want to go. If we go one way then some emotional trees may need to be removed, if we
go another way some new rocks will need to be imported. Given all that, there comes
the point where we have to decide, or to put it another way we have to discover among
our many wants, what we really want. What we really want, I have suggested above, is
on a different level from what we just want, but we can't get to it without fully
experiencing all our relevant feelings. We can think of the things that we 'just want' as
parts of us, but what we really want is what we choose to be in the light of our
awareness of all our experience; it is what we believe can wholeheartedly be.
Let me end by saying how I think all this fits into the focusing process. I would say that
focusing in itself is simply the procedure of staying with the whole complexity of a
situation, getting the felt sense of the situation, and then through some probing or
questioning allowing a new view, a new symbolisation, of the situation to emerge.
Focusing is essentially about the relationship between experiencing and our
symbolisation of that experiencing. It is a way of moving forward in any field in
which progress is not fully determined in advance by fixed categories or forms. But
the application of focusing to personal issues or to therapy brings in two extra
elements which are not present, or at least not so prominent, in other applications of the
procedure. One is the necessity of getting into a position where we can effectively look
at our situation. We can't look property if we are caught up in the feelings which we
need to look at. So first we have to stand back, become aware of our feelings, rather
than simply live them. This gets us to the position where we have some space, some
freedom to begin to focus. The focusing process proper may then lead to new
viewpoints, new ways of seeing and feeling. But now comes the second extra element.
These new ways are so far just possibilities. Yes, we could think, live, feel in that new
way. We hadn't realised such a thing was possible. But equally we could forget about
all this and stay with our old way of living, or we could go on and find some further as
yet unknown way. In principle there are endless possibilities. However the
immediate question is whether we are going to let this particular new way which has
emerged become our way (at least for now). We don't have to. Where focusing gets us
to is a place where new possibilities open should we choose to realise them. In Larry
Letich's (1998) delightful phrase it is not like consulting a talking horse and
automatically doing whatever the horse says.
On the other hand, it also needs to be emphasised that the coming of a new way of
experiencing a situation is no small thing. It is only in principle that there are endless
ways of seeing things. For what we need is not just any old way but a way which will
do justice to all that we experience and allow us to move on. Often it is difficult or
seemingly impossible to find even one really adequate way forward. So when a
possible way does emerge this is normally a huge relief. Now I can go on; I don't have
to follow this new path, but it is a path that I could wholeheartedly follow. It is a
genuine way forward, and that is often as much as we can reasonably hope for.
' There is much else in this paper which has been influenced by Frankfurt's (1971,
1976,1987) work.
References
Comell, AnnWeisser Relationship = distance +connection. Focusing Folio. Summer
1995.
Comell, Ann Weiser and Barbara McGavin. Standing it: the alchemy of mixed
feelings. The Focusing Connection 13, No. 4, July 1996.
Frankfurt, Harry. Freedom of the will and the concept of a person. Journal of
Philosophy, 68 (1971), pp. 5-20
Frankfurt, Harry. Identification and externality. ln A.M.Rorty (ed.) The Identities of
Persons. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976. pp.239-251.
Frankfurt, Harry. Identification and wholeheartedness. In Ferdinand Schoeman
Responsibility, Character and the Emotions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
(1987) pp. 27-45.
Gendlin, Eugene T. Values and the process of experiencing. In A.R.Mahrer The Goals
of Psychotherapy. New York.: Appleton-Century-Crofts (1967), pp. 180-205.
Hinterkopf, Elfie Finding a certain distance: a helpful and even life-saving technique.
The Focusing Connection, 15, No. 6, November 1998.
Letich, Larry. Focusing Discussion List. October 1998.
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