Congratulations to

The Gendlin Center seeks to promote high level academic research that builds on the work that Eugene Gendlin did in philosophy and psychology, as well as encouraging interdisciplinary work. Currently, the Center's primary goal is to promote quantitative research in psychology that will prove the efficacy of Focusing.

We are proud to announce that Siebrecht Vanhooren is the first recipient of the Gendlin Grant. Prof. Vanhooren is in the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences at KU Leuven (University of Leuven) in Belgium. He will be studying the impact of Focusing on depression.

Here is an excerpt from his application for the grant:

Eugene Gendlin has had a profound impact on our understanding of meaning, its connection to our bodily experiences, and how attending to these vague felt senses can help us unfreeze structure-bound experiences like depression. Furthermore, experiential openness can help us to open up to the existential and spiritual realm which reaches far beyond our individuality (Gendlin, 1975).

In the proposed study we want to (re-)introduce Gendlin’s body of knowledge into the current hot debate about meaning in life, depression, and existential psychology (eg. Batthyany & Russo-Netzer, 2014; Russo-Netzer, Schulenberg, & Batthyany, 2016).

In this study we will test if and how experiential openness is related to meaning in life, the experience of our existential concerns, and depression. We strongly belief that this study could promote experiential openness as an important means to shift our relationship with ultimate concerns, to increase meaning in life, and demonstrate Focusing as a promising method to treat depression.

Thank you to all of our generous donors for making the inaugural Gendlin Grant possible. 

Thank you to the members of the Gendlin Center Committee: Prof. Akira Ikemi (Kansai U.), Prof. Kevin Krycka (Seattle U.), Prof. Mary Jeanne Larrabee (DePaul U.), Dr. Rob Parker and Dr. Leslie Ellis (Board liaison).