hmmm, its been a while since ive read Gendlin, but i liked him, and it seems like lots of the work of noticing what and how we feal, learning to put words to experience, and then you seem to be asking about the linkages of emotions as they have risen out of the matrix of experience.... and learning to make those links conscious as well. and that's all great, imo, whether you take focusing as a template, or as one source of information and technique among many. thats my first thought.
next thought: seems to me, that anything we say in the room provides direction, whether subtly or overtly, that words collapse the potential of where people go in their minds into a single point, give it direction. and, our bodies also communicate, so our experience helps to shape client experience, and vis versa. its two subjectivities in the room co-creating a moment. we are the insturment we use in the room. hopefully we're clean insturments, that we notice what gets touched in us and work what is asked in our personal psychologies, so that we can be present for the client in their process, in the way they need it. why am i saying this. because assessment is really important, and to assure its not our own pathos that puts a spin on the assessment of clients, well, you get the point.
i think we're always "reading" our clients and they are always reading us. probably more than we realize.
so why is detective work bad?
seems to be part of our job is to be able to hear into psychodynamics in ways that clients don't know how to. they feel them, yes, but dont have a way of making meaning or changing unconscious patternings of behavior, which in some opinions, it seems yours and mine included, includes affect as the basis of behavior and social conditioning, giving rise to the patternings of the self, something like that.
so we need to be able to see and think about those patternings, and our capacity to have our fealings, a literacy in emotions, including naming, and a capacity to think about the dynamics of psyche are what we get paid for.
working my way slowly to assessment. seems to me that our job is to notice, and to reflect that back in digestible bits to our clients. while clients may be narrating expereince at one level, we are listening at many. that listening at many is the assessment process. it is detective work, but that doesnt mean its bad or violating or dehumanizing. it means we are taking the time to think about this unique individual in the room, to feel what its like to be with them, to notice what is occuring, and to create hypotheses, as moments unfold, are these hypothesises validated or modified? and so we progress, often not knowing, that is part of the art, tolerating anxiety, and doing our best, bringing our skills to the question at hand, which is the capacity of a person to tolerate and honor the unique nature of their beingness....

i dont think there is a complete scentance, nor one that isnt a run on in that whole hubabalu of words there, but perhaps there is something in there that rings a bell and furthers the discussion you are pursuing.

and, when folks are in a potent affective state, i often just ask, do you know this place, is this familiar, what can you tell me about it, and 9 of 10 times, we're in childhood..... goes right there.

are you working with people right now, or still in school and not yet in training?

peace.
be.