Ann Weiser Cornell received a PhD in Linguistics in 1975 at the
University of Chicago, on a
Woodrow Wilson Fellowship from the
National Science Foundation. She then taught Linguistics at
Purdue University from 1975 to 1977. and in 1985 she founded Focusing Resources, an
umbrella organization to offer materials, support, sessions, and trainings on Focusing. In the early 1990s Cornell wrote and published the first of her Focusing books, ''The Focusing Student's Manual
and The Focusing Guide's Manual
, which were revised with Barbara McGavin in the 2000s and published as The Focusing Student's and Companion's Manual'' (2002). In the early 1990s Cornell also began developing and teaching processes that emphasized the radical acceptance and allowance of all aspects, however negative, of the personality – and the ability to be present with whatever negativity comes up during Focusing – in order to return to a place of wholeness. Together with Barbara McGavin, whom she met in 1991, she developed this into a system called
Inner Relationship Focusing. In the early 2000s Cornell and McGavin also developed a theory and process called Treasure Maps to the Soul, an application of Focusing to difficult areas of life, ==Books and trainings==