Intro: An experiential "turn" in poetry
Intro: An experiential "turn" in poetry - by Konstantinos Mavromatakis
There is poetry that turns towards the body, symbolizing inner bodily sensations and subjective experiences rather than just describing the external world. Traditionally, poets were more outer-oriented, but many now utilize their art to represent inner reality.
Several examples illustrate this newfound focus on inward symbolism. Pushkin captures struggling with inner flames of passion one tries to resist. Solomos references a hero's courage through their restless guts. Bukowski takes the reader into his body to describe experiencing a "blue bird" that he alternately relies on and fears. These poets ethereally portray subtle feelings through tangible images.
Songs too frequently blend outer events with their inner reverberations. Lyrics cited bring listeners from an outside wind into the singer's "inner home." Another example starts from the earth's core before pausing in the poet's gut. Symbolizing inward experiences seems innate and universally resonant. Even pop incorporates this perspective.
However, not all poetry centers on embodied sensation. Porcia's work remains more cerebral, showing interpersonal dynamics without physical descriptions. Still, his micro-portraits intimately depict experiences.
To conclude, the process of finding words for vague inner pre-concepts resembles psychotherapy aiding patients in symbolizing problems. Poetry historically helped comprehend the material world and now mirrors therapeutic methods in representing inward terrain. As creative curiosity defines pre-verbal realities, it coincides with treatment by giving form to formless feelings.
Book Review: The Psychology and Philosophy of Eugene Gendlin
Book Review:
The Psychology and Philosophy of Eugene Gendlin, Making Sense of Contemporary Experience Editors Eric R Severson and Kevin C Krycka, Routledge, 2023
This book “brings together a collection of essays written by scholars inspired by Eugene Gendlin’s work, particularly those interested in thinking with and beyond Gendlin for the sake of a global community facing significant crises”.
Gendlin’s philosophy owes much to his philosophical predecessors. Several of the essays tussle with how Gendlin’s work interacts with these major thinkers. It would take a philosopher to make any more fruitful comment about those discussions, so I will leave that to the more philosophically-inclined. But there is more that’s of interest.
Gendlin’s psychology was greatly influenced by Carl Rogers’ person-centred approach. One of the interesting things is how, to use a Gendlin term, he crossed his philosophical reflections with his practice of psychology to create something new, including Focusing, Thinking at the Edge (TAE) and Philosophy of the Implicit (POI).
Interest in Gendlin’s work is now turning towards what it might contribute to understanding our social, cultural, environmental and political context. Several essayists cross their work with Gendlin’s ideas. Donata Schoeller in Towards a concept of “freedom to make sense”, draws directly on Gendlin’s work on the felt-sense and TAE. Her project is to “sketch out features of a freedom that plays out in conditions that allow us to sense the problems, dilemmas and questions that arise from actual experience….. basic patterns within cultural political and economic systems… “
Robin Chalfin, a psychotherapist, quietly insists that Focusing or TAE on their own are not enough to change any system. Rather, it is essential to have a deep knowledge of what keeps systems such as racism or sexism in place as well as using felt-experience (including what she calls the ‘unfelt felt sense’ of our own biases and blind spots) to articulate what is not working in these systems: both must be in place to bring about change.
Ole Martin Sandberg’s essay on Missing the Felt-Sense: when correct political arguments so wrong is right up to date. In discussing the rise of Trump (King of the Gut Feel), he warns against too much reliance on ‘gut feelings.’ On the other hand, we might be more careful about criticising people who, on the surface, didn’t ‘trust the science (of vaccines)’ but their own gut feelings. They may have solid reasons for mistrusting a health system that is not always equitable or transparent. When we can listen to, rather than dismiss this surface mistrust, Sandberg claims, it may well be that new concepts emerge which benefits everyone. He quotes Gendlin’s Process Model :“We must permit exactly what has emerged and we must tell ourselves carefully just how we have it so far”.
Several contributors point to the need to take Gendlin’s work further, to flesh out what’s there implicitly as well as acknowledge the limits of what he addressed concerning the social and political arena. The essayists have no doubt that his work can be useful in helping address challenges facing the world. Grappling with this book might be a good place to start thinking about that.
Mary Jennings
November 2023
The Psychology and Philosophy of Eugene Gendlin, Making Sense of Contemporary Experience Editors Eric R Severson and Kevin C Krycka, Routledge, 2023 available from The International Focusing Institute book store at The International Focusing Institute Store
Creative Corner: Flow and Protect
by Rennie Buenting
Rennie Buenting, Ireland
Art Piece
Worlds of Focusing - TAE
Thinking at The Edge – The aliveness of experiencing - 25th September
by Marta Fabregat
Have you ever felt that what you were experiencing about a theme in your life was too difficult to share? That the words you knew felt incomplete or insufficient to describe that experience which lives in your life? As if it was almost not possible to describe it in a way that people would understand the exact, direct experiencing that lives in you?
If this resonates with you or even if you have had many moments socially where you were trying to express something and no matter how hard you tried, despite even whether people understood you or not, there was still something inside that was not totally at ease with the expression of that experiencing. Then yes.... you get that felt experience.
I am sitting here at my kitchen table, about to bring my daughter to the school bus to Galway. Last night there was a deadline to have this article done and as I was sensing the enquiry I was embarking on I could feel the many ideas and knowledge, information coming in to be there with me from all the things I knew about Thinking at the Edge...
To write this piece for the IFN newsletter I sat with this quote from Eugene Gendlin´s article An Introduction -Thinking at The Edge:
"You need to stand again in your own experiencing ... in your own felt ongoingness, which is that intricate complexity inside of life ... to put into the world what hasn't been said yet, that you are carrying from your particular experience.”
so...how to write about TAE from my own experiencing as I sat here in front of the computer, knowing that Elaine is there waiting to receive this article to complete the gathering of all the pieces for this season Newsletter.
The first thing that comes when I ask that question is my first attempt at a formal TAE practice with Beatrice Blake. I am sitting with a task that asks me to share - in no more than 500 words - an account of a personal experience, a few paragraphs about Thinking at the Edge.
I sigh...
There is something there already about all of this, this experincing at this time, space, moment. The phrase that comes is different forces.
One force is like many things together, some of which stand firmly and congruently in line, while some are all bunched together and its difficult to differenciate among them. Things I know I have experienced ongoingly within my own process with TAE.
There is another force that is more subtle and has a strength that is very noticeable in my stomach and connected with my head. It feels like a hot air balloon with the balloon being my head with lines going down the torso and a big container that is hollow and alive in its sensation, vibrating subtlely.
The first force is really strong, it wants to “get this done!” and also knows how to do it; it has the discourse, the power with strong meaning; and it is also of course connected with previous and past experiencing.
And the other force is like - wait... a blank page - the word infinite contact comes in relation to this force and I stay here.
It seems that the quality of my sensing, or my being in contact with the different forces or paradoxical experiences is allowing the space in my belly to host those two forces and within that moment something new comes that was not there before...
It is showing me the now, in this alchemical process of birthing ongoingly from a fresh edge of direct experience.
Giving steps on how to continue expressing what TAE really is, How it can be a raw, direct and fresh-in-the moment tool for the creation ongoingly of new steps in our life, new living paradigms, and somehow it is showing me how the creation of this inner space can be created in all of us by allowing the paradox of the living moment to relate, convive and distill what is necessary for this moment.
It is new!! Hooray ….a great relief and a sense of joy and love joins my whole body. Hold on! Something more wants to join me here...its you! The reader, the listener.
Even though you are not here with me in this moment explicitly, somehow I feel you already there as an infinite, ongoing contact with this encounter.
Eugene Gendlin in collaboration with Mary Hendricks and Kye Nelson joined forces to come up with a number of steps where experiencing in Focusing could also go into the public domain.
By bringing our own personal experience, and what we all carry within us that has not been said yet and that is difficult to put into words, we may be able between us to bring about a new world, a new way of relating and ultimately a new ongoing birthing and evolution of humanity.
I bow to Focusing for this as it makes possible a life which is greater and fuller and above all because it brings me back to the intricacy of sensing life as it is...with all of that and all the more in it.
If you want to explore TAE I can only wholeheartedly recommend Beatrice Blake. You can find her ongoing TAE courses here: https://possibility-space.com/learn-focusing-and-tae/
And of course you can find much more about TAE on the TIFI Website here: https://focusing.org/felt-sense/thinking-edge-tae
And there is this article that can also bring a little more clarity... although maybe it would be better if it did not, and served instead as a great starting point to your own, unique experiencing.
https://focusing.org/sites/default/files/legacy/pdf/tae_intro.pdf
