Find a Focusing Professional - HIDEO TANAKA

Bio

Hideo Tanaka, Ph.D., is a lecturer at Kansai University, Japan. He has been focusing for over 30 years. He spoke with Eugene Gendlin about the background of “Experiencing and the Creation of Meaning” (Gendlin, 1962/1997), such as the philosophies of Plato, Aristotle, Wilhelm Dilthey, John Dewey, George Herbert Mead, and Susanne Langer in a TAE workshop (2004) in New York. He completed his master’s degree with Prof. Naohiko Mimura, studying Gendlin's philosophy. He completed his doctorate with Prof. Akira Ikemi, studying Gendlin's psychology. He received the Incentive Award of the Japanese Association for Humanistic Psychology in 2021. He has been invited to be a presenter at one of the Focusing Highlights supported by TIFI and a featured speaker at the Gendlin Symposium 2023.

Blog post: Focusing practice

Hideo Tanaka (2025, April). Experiential focusing on problems that have been underrated.

Hideo Tanaka (2025, March). “Experiencing, Expression, and Understanding” and “hermeneutic circle”

Hideo Tanaka (2025, January). “Action steps” getting more emphasis on Gendlin’s writings

Hideo Tanaka (2024a, October). Rugby analogy for explaining Focusing practice

Hideo Tanaka (2024b, October). Official YouTube Video: Demonstration and Explanation of TAE by Gendlin Himself

Hideo Tanaka (2024, May). Gendlin’s View on “Gut Feelings”

Hideo Tanaka (2024, April). When the level of the Experiencing Scale “rises too high”

Hideo Tanaka (2023a, September). Comparing Felt Sense to Cotton Candy

Hideo Tanaka (2023b, September). Listening to “Ode to Joy” from Beethoven's 9th Symphony in a Focusing-Oriented Way: Commentary Using an Official Video

Blog post: Person-Centered Approach

Hideo Tanaka (2025, March). Gordon’s “Parent Effectiveness Training” in terms of Rogers’ ‘necessary and sufficient conditions’: acceptance or empathy?

Hideo Tanaka (2024, June). “Reflective listening” without necessarily “empathic understanding”

Hideo Tanaka (2023, September). Focusing-Oriented Listening and "Positive Regard"

Blog post: Gendlin’s philosophy

Hideo Tanaka (2025, April). Each chapter in “A Process Model” (Gendlin, 1997/2018)

Hideo Tanaka (2025a, March). Anthology: Primatology, Ethology, Psychology, and Chapter VII of “A Process Model” (limited access)

Hideo Tanaka (2025b, March). Anthology: 10 writings that prepared or supplemented “A Process Model” (Gendlin, 1997/2018) (limited access)

Hideo Tanaka (2025a, February). Collection of Links: Focusing Practice and “A Process Model”

Hideo Tanaka (2025a, January). Collection of links: Gendlin’s “Reflexivity”: Its Historical Background and Uniqueness

Hideo Tanaka (2025b, January). Gendlin’s Contemporaneity with New Trends in the Philosophy of Science from the 1950s to the 1960s

Hideo Tanaka (2025c, January). The relationship between science and philosophy in “A Process Model”: with reference to Plato’s “Republic”

Hideo Tanaka (2024a, December). Collection of links: Philosophers who preceded “A Process Model” — with a focus on the philosophical background of the first half of the 20th century

Hideo Tanaka (2024b, December). McKeon’s “methods” & Gendlin

Hideo Tanaka (2024, October). Aristotle’s example of the acorn and the oak from Gendlin’s point of view

Hideo Tanaka (2024, June). Collection of links: On “Experiencing and the Creation of Meaning” (Gendlin, 1962/1997)

Hideo Tanaka (2023a, September). Gendlin’s basic term, “explication”: Q&A with Dr. Donata Schoeller

Hideo Tanaka (2023b, September). Vague image of “experiencing”: with reference to W. James and H. Bergson

Hideo Tanaka (2023, August). The Past in the Here and Now: Lecture at the Japanese Association for Humanistic Psychology

Hideo Tanaka (2023a, April). Anthology: Dilthey as a Precursor of Gendlin.

Hideo Tanaka (2023b, April). Recollections of My Visit to Dr. Gendlin with the English language supervision of Yoshiko Kosaka, Luke Jaaniste, Yacine Haffar, and Jeff Falzone and with the Greek language supervision of Nikolaos Kypriotakis.

English publication

Akira Ikemi, Shimpei Okamura, & Hideo Tanaka (2023). The experiencing model: saying what we mean in the context of Focusing and psychotherapy. In Eric Severson & Kvin Krycka (eds.), The psychology and philosophy of Eugene Gendlin: making sense of contemporary experience (pp. 44–62). Routledge.

Hideo Tanaka (2021). Tapping “it” lightly and the short silence: applying the concept of “direct reference” to the discussion of verbatim records of Focusing sessions (with the English language supervision of Akira Ikemi) [Abstract]. In Nikolaos Kypriotakis & Judy Moore (Eds.), Senses of Focusing, Vol. 1 (pp. 125-38). Eurasia Publications.

English presentation

Hideo Tanaka (2023, September). Gendlin’s philosophical background and the development of his thoughts [Presentation slides and quotes]. Presented at Gendlin Symposium “Deliberative Transformation: Embodied Phenomenology And Process Thinking” (Gendlin Symposium 2023).

Hideo Tanaka (2023, August). Introduction to “Experiencing and the Creation of Meaning” for Focusing practitioners (with the English language supervision of Akira Ikemi). Presented as one of the Focusing Highlights series by the International Focusing Institute.

Hideo Tanaka (2021, April). Tapping “it” lightly and the short silence: applying the concept of “direct reference” or “creative regress” to the discussion of verbatim records of Focusing sessions (with the English language supervision of Akira Ikemi). Paper presented at Saying What We Mean: A Symposium on the Works of Eugene Gendlin (the Gendlin Symposium 2021).

Hideo Tanaka (2015, July). The significance of just touching “this feeling” (with the English language supervision of Akira Ikemi & Naoko Brown). Presented at The 26th International Focusing Conference, Seattle University, WA.

Japanese publication

Hideo Tanaka (2018). The early days of Focusing and the theory of experiencing: studies on the background of how Focusing was formed and practiced [in Japanese, English summary & table of contents]. Doctoral Dissertation, Kansai University.

Hideo Tanaka & Akira Ikemi (2016). Two streams in the early period of Focusing: the sources of the Experiencing Scales and Focusing instructions [in Japanese, English abstract]. Psychologist: Bulletin of the Kansai University Graduate School of Clinical Professional Psychology, 6, 9-17.

Hideo Tanaka (2015). Some issues about the term “congruence” and the solutions proposed by Gendlin [in Japanese, English abstract]. The Japanese Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 33(1), 29-38.

Hideo Tanaka (2004-5). A bibliographic survey about E. T. Gendlin’s early theory of experiencing: influences on his psychotherapeutic studies from W. Dilthey’s philosophy [in Japanese, English summary & table of contents). Bulletin of Meiji University Library, 8, 56-81 &, 9, 58-87.

Hideo Tanaka (2004). What does “direct” in “direct reference” mean? Determine the difference between “reference” and “checking.” [in Japanese. English translation] The Focuser’s Focus: Japan Focusing Association Newsletter, 7(2), 1–6.

Japanese presentation

Hideo Tanaka (2022, Septemper). The past in the “here and now” (The Incentive Award commemorative lecture, in Japanese, English abstract and quotes). Presented at The 41st Conference of the Japanese Association for Humanistic Psychology.

Hideo Tanaka (2020, Septemper). The transition between statements via creative regress to felt sense: with Gendlin’s commentary on Plato’s Dialogues as a guide [in Japanese]. Presented at The 39th Conference of the Japanese Association for Humanistic Psychology.