Norman, Gertrude Laura Grace2024-08-152024-08-1519861986https://hdl.handle.net/1828/19148The Myers Briggs Type Indicator, a personality assessment device based on Jung's theory of psychological types is widely used in business as well as personal and career counselling. Focusing, an inner experiential process developed by Gendlin, has been shown by researchers to be an important factor in therapeutic change. This study investigated, from a phenomenological perspective, the way in which five participants, two introverts who preferred sensing perception and three introverts who preferred intuitive perception, personally experienced the focusing procedure. The participants focused on three occasions; twice in training groups held one week apart and the third time immediately prior to the qualitative interview. The phenomenological analysis showed that four of the five participants experienced focusing in a way which may be considered indicative of their preference for sensing or intuitive perception. Two main categories of responses emerged, the subjective (inner) experience of focusing and focusing in the context of the subject's life or the meaning or value the participants attributed to focusing. The two participants who preferred sensing perception gave detailed descriptions of their experience using concrete imagery, expressed frustration with their tendency to let facts or details "get in the way" and used focusing to seek solutions to problems that were presently concerning them and were situation related. Two participants who preferred intuitive perception labelled themselves as "intuitive," recognized intuition as being an important mode of perception to them, felt self-actualizing kinds of activities were important, and used focusing to examine ongoing concerns that were rela­tional in nature (the relationship was with either self or another person). These two participants stressed the importance of developing, using and trusting their "hunches." The fifth participant, although preferring intuition on the Myers Briggs Type Indicator, fell clearly into neither perceptive mode in the circumstances of this study. Reasons for this occurrence are discussed. Significance of the findings and implications for the use of focusing by coun­sellors are discussed and recommendations for future research are made.138 pagesAvailable to the World Wide WebThesis