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,McGavin, Barbara. "The ‘Victim’, the ‘Critic’ and the Inner Relationship: Focusing with the Part that Wants to Die". The Focusing Connection. September 1994. evolved into Inner Relationship Focusing in the 1990s.Cornell, Ann Weiser and Barbara McGavin. "A Brief History of Inner Relationship Focusing". In: The Focusing Student's and Companion's Manual, Volume 1. Calluna Press, 2002. p. ii. Cornell incorporated her new techniques and insights into her first books, The Focusing Student's Manual (1993) and The Focusing Guide's Manual (1994)Cornell, Ann Weiser. The Focusing Guide's Manual. Focusing Resources, 1993.Cornell, Ann Weiser. The Focusing Student's Manual. Focusing Resources, 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.Wehrenberg, Margaret. The 10 Best-Ever Anxiety Management Techniques: Understanding How Your Brain Makes You Anxious and What You Can Do to Change It. W. W. Norton & Company, 2010. p. 149.Gendlin, Eugene. Advance praise for The Radical Acceptance of Everything. 2005. "Ann Weiser Cornell has been teaching for many years in many countries and is well known worldwide. In her previous book and her manuals she has created new specific and accessible instructions for focusing as well as for the teachers of focusing. In person and through her students and writings she has given Focusing to far more people than any other single individual. She is a powerful force in making the world better. She has gone on to create different new processes in new dimensions ...." – Eugene Gendlin, author of Focusing.Gendlin, Eugene. Review of Focusing in Clinical Practice: The Essence of Change. W. W. Norton & Company, 2013. "Ann Weiser Cornell and I have been working closely together for thirty years, and she knows as much about Focusing as I do. Ann has a knack for making the complex understandable and the theory of Focusing accessible to all readers. This book will be helpful to anyone who wants to know my philosophical work and better understand how to bring Focusing into clinical practice. I recommend it very strongly." – Eugene Gendlin, author of Focusing.
