Inner Relationship Focusing

Inner Relationship Focusing is a psychotherapeutic system and process developed by Ann Weiser Cornell and Barbara McGavin, as a refinement and expansion of the Focusing process discovered and developed by Eugene Gendlin in the late 1960s. Inner Relationship Focusing is a process for emotional healing, and for accessing positive energy and insights for forward movement in one's life.

Cornell, while a graduate student in Linguistics at the University of Chicago, met Gendlin in 1972 and learned his technique. In 1980 she began collaborating with him in teaching his Focusing workshops. Using her capacity for linguistics, Cornell helped develop the concept of Focusing guiding, and in the early 1980s she offered the first seminars on Focusing guiding. Her continuation of this process led to her development, with Barbara McGavin, of Inner Relationship Focusing.

Inner Relationship Focusing took shape when Ann Weiser Cornell moved from Chicago to California in 1983 and began teaching Focusing to people who knew nothing about it. She discovered that many people who were not automatically adept at it needed new techniques and new language to draw out their ability to learn the process. Eventually her discoveries of what worked best for the majority of people, combined with the input, inspiration, and insights of her British collaborator Barbara McGavin, evolved into Inner Relationship Focusing in the 1990s. Cornell incorporated her new techniques and insights into her first books, The Focusing Student's Manual (1993) and The Focusing Guide's Manual (1994) – both later revised with Barbara McGavin and published in 2002 as The Focusing Student's and Companion's Manual – and in all of her subsequent books, which have become classic textbooks on Focusing.

Inner Relationship Focusing is a refined and expanded form of Eugene Gendlin's original six-step process of Focusing, which he had detailed in his 1978 book of the same title. Inner Relationship Focusing emphasizes being in gentle, allowing relationship with all parts of one's being, including parts that are in conflict, parts often denied or pushed away as unacceptable or demeaning, parts that are overwhelming, and parts that are so buried or subtle they need to be drawn out with patience and gentleness. In allowing all aspects of the personality to be held in acceptance and awareness, new insights and shifts can emerge and healing can occur. Inner Relationship Focusing therefore emphasizes the relationship of the Self with the various inner aspects, however painful, and it relies specifically on a quality of Presence, or the ability of the Self to be present with these aspects in a quality of friendliness, gentle curiosity, and nonjudgment. A major feature of IRF is gently finding out how a specific aspect or felt experience feels from its point of view. Another feature is giving awareness to parts of oneself that are opposing – either afraid of or objecting to – a difficult or troublesome part. Inner Relationship Focusing radically allows and accepts all parts or inner experiences. It also avoids the extremes of denial/"exile" and merging/identification/overwhelm, through using the quality of Presence to gently experience and navigate one's inner world in a calm, detached, but gently curious and inviting way.

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