Eugene Gendlin Experiential Method Essay

Eugene T. Gendlin born in1926 in Vienna. His family emigrated to the United States to escape the Nazis when he was a child. During the 1950s, He studied under Carl Rogers, the founder of client-centered therapy. Gendlin received his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Chicago, where he became an Associate Professor. Gendlin believes the discovery of meaning is not in the conscious, or, the unconscious as suggested by Freud, not even the congruence between feeling, concept, and expression that suggested by Rogers. Gendlin believes that an organism 's living interaction with its environment (Experiencing) is prior (temporally, and, philosophically) to abstract knowledge about its environment. For example, when a pen falls off a desk, that seems to be proof of the gravity. But, what is "gravity"? Gendlin views gravity as a
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The function of the experiential method is to relate these two dimensions of experience; existence, and, logic. The experiential method approach is about the process, not content. The process approach focuses on how the individual talks in therapy. In the experiential method, verbal contents are only used as indicators of an ongoing experiential activity. The concern is not with the verbal narrative, but with the evidence of an experiential behavior (focusing). In other words, verbalization has a therapeutic effect only when it occurs as a description of experiencing.
The experiencing scale which was created by Gendlin, and, Tomlinson in1967 is the instrument used to measure the presence of inward reference. Inward reference is the description of feelings and reactions characterized by the search of meaning in personal events, feelings, and, ideas as manifest in the speech. The scale consists of seven stages which range from the speech