Interactive Focusing was developed by Janet Klein and Mary McGuire. It is a wonderful tool to enhance empathic understanding of yourself and others, and create deep connections with yourself and others. You can also work in a safe way with conflict, misunderstanding or disagreement between people. It can be used with Focusing partners, couples, families and groups.
On this page are a number of videos and other resources to help you learn more about this method of Focusing.
Interview with Mary McGuire by Masumi Maeda (English-only version):
Interview with Mary McGuire (with Japanese subtitles):
"When we listen to someone share their deep human truth, each of us gets touched in the place within that is home to our own truths." ~ Janet Klein
As Gendlin had already done, Janet Klein was able to recognize what people were already doing in the Focusing partnership. She emphasized moments of the Focusing process in pairs, in which empathy (and self empathy) and mutual listening are deepened and engage partners in intimacy and self-disclosure.
Janet Klein created the Interactive Focusing model to allow partners to use the process on a common theme, such as a conflict that directly involves them, or a project they want to develop together.
In addition to the partnership, other areas of application are: mediation, coaching, couples and family therapy, conflict resolution and support for collaboration and creativity in various contexts.
From Folio Volume 24, 2013
Loving People into Being: An Interactive Focusing Experience (PDF)
Unnamed author
I feel exquisitely vulnerable in sharing this experience in a public journal. I am struggling to find a way to share my words without overexposing the place inside me that feels so vulnerable. For purposes of this article, please call me “unnamed.” Thank you.
From the developers of Interactive Focusing,
MARY McGUIRE & JANET KLEIN
(Simon D'Orsogna YouTube channel)
