This page does several things. It sets out, in some detail, the nature of the existential therapy that I offer. It is also an About Me page that conveys my qualifications and experience.
What is the existential therapy that I offer?
I practice both philosophical counselling, which is the focus of my other website, and existential therapy, which is the focus of the present website. The existential therapy if offer is that philosophical ocunselling, but in combination with mainstream psychotherapy.
A human being is a composition of various elements. For example, you are consciousness, but you also have a psychological structure. Consciousness is the You that I am addressing right now, who is awareness, presence. It is I. Your psychology, by contrast, is the collection of those traits, patterns, processes, instincts and so on at the level of cognition, emotion, action, and so on. The difference between philosophy and psychotherapy reflects this distinction.
Psychotherapy is the analysis and reshaping of our psychology. Our psychology is often out of conscious awareness. Hence we have developed psychotherapy, which is a technology that we, as conscious beings, wield to both uncover our psychological patterns, and to reshape them.
Philosophy, by contrast, is the effort we make as consciousness. When we do philosophy we are attempting to perceive, judge, reason, intuit, remember, imagine, choose, will and so on, in better ways. As beings of consciousness, we are attempting to be conscious in better ways, we are attempting to enact our our better possibilities.
There is another important difference between philosophy and psychotherapy. The celebrated therapist Irvin Yalom saidthat the main point of psychotherapy is to remove obstacles. It is a negative work, in that sense, which clears the ground for something else. Psychotherapy encounters disordered thinking and aims to create order. It encounters unhealthy behaviours and cultivates healthy ones. Of course, there is more to life than order or health. There is the cultivation of those things which give meaning and value to life, such as direction, purpose, goodness, happiness, and so on. These things take us beyond a psychological lens, and so beyond the work of psychotherapy. They take into the realm of philosophy.
Philosophy is the cultivation of meaning and value in life. In classical terms, it is the pursuit of wisdom and virtue, of what is true and good. It is the cultivation of all those personal qualities at the level of the intellect and will, as well as emotion and action, which lead to human flourishing--to a life of strength, goodness, purpose, meaning, happiness, succcess, and so on.
My existential therapy is a combination of psychotherapeutic and philosophical work. In the following section, I will explore those philosophical dimensions. In the section after that, I will explore the psychotherapeutic dimension. As stated, this is also an About Me page, and I will begin by speaking personally about what philosophy is for me, and how I came to this work. In doing so, I am describing the nature of philosophy as I practice it--as I offer it to you.
Existential Therapy as Philosophy
I discovered philosophy as a rural, working-class, high-school drop-out. I went from working in a factory to studying and then teaching it at The University of Melbourne and elsewhere. I was drawn to philosophy through wonder, but also because of its power to help us cope with life's suffering, to find meaning, to become a better person, and to make life better. Philosophy is a natural human activity, and I had it baked into me from a young age, without ever knowing its name. I grew up in the Mallee (north-western Victoria), in a world of tradesmen and farmers. From around the age of 10, if I was not at school then I was doing heavy physical work. When that work was alongside the older men who would sometimes help my father, we would talk about life, trying to make sense of what it is to live meaningfully, and of what it is to be a decent human being, especially in a hard world, and of how to navigate that world, and of what happiness consists, and so on. When those elders were not present, the demands on my body during those long days stacking bricks, timber, roofing iron, left my mind free to reflect without distraction. Both those conversations and those solitary reflections were framed by the hardness of the work, the immensity of the sky, and the sense of possibility I felt when I looked at the distant horizon. Without knowing its name, I received an early training in philosophy as wonder, as intellectual or rational reflection, as a commitment to the true and the good, as existential and poetic intuition, and in general as a serious examination of life: of hardship and tragedy, of the need for compassion, and the need for wisdom and strength, and of life as a realm of much possible meaning. Later, in young adulthood, I wandered into a bookstore and walked out with Meditations by Marcus Aurelius--a classic book of Stoic philosophy. From Aurelius I was led to Plato, Aristotle, and the other Stoics--to classical philosophy. I discovered the same kind of reflection I was raised in, but taken to a whole other level by some of the wisest people who ever lived, labouring under the logical, artistic and moral disciplines that guide thinking to its best and most life-changing possibilities.
That is what philosophy is for me, in terms of why I came to it, why I have dedicated my life's energy to it, and what it is that I offer to you. Philosophy is the pursuit of wisdom and of all those personal qualities (virtues) that make us strong, good, happy, and which lead to a meaningful and flourishing life. If this sounds different to academic and modern philosophy, it is. Academic philosophy is a more scholarly and detached approach. It is an intellectual activity focused on theory and the like. It is very different to classical philosophy, to the kind philosophy which drew me, and which I offer. I did very well academically, but a university career was not the right place for philosophy as I have described it. What I wanted to do, as a philosopher, was speak one-on-one with people, helping individuals make sense of their concerns, and helping them to craft a more capable, good, meaningful, and flourishing life. I wanted to become highly skilled in this practice, which meant devoting much of my time to it, which meant making it my career. This is what the Stoic Epictetus did, but I was not sure what form this would take in today's world. Would I offer a kind of tutoring, or something more like counselling? Would we meet at a cafe, or in a formal office for a more intensely private conversation? At some point I came across a movement called Philosophical Counselling, and knew I had found my path. That movement was small but growing in Europe and America, indeed there were already peak bodies, suggested career pathways, conferences, publications, and so on. I decided I would become a philosophical counsellor.
The word philosophy is a conjunction of two ancient Greek words and means the love of wisdom. Philosophy is the pursuit and cultivation of wisdom. What is wisdom? I have two main definitions. First, wisdom is a vision of things which is as true and good as possible. Consider that definition in light what I said above, that "I was drawn to philosophy through wonder, but also because of its power to help us cope with life's suffering, to find meaning, to become a better person, and to make life better." We realise those goals by seeing more clearly, which is to say through an increase in truth. It is not detached truth, of course, but truth that is good, in the sense of beneficial. A true and good vision includes a mindset that is sane, lucid, and which improves our experience, way of being, relationships and so on. Human beings are distorted by egotism: delusion in place of truth, selfishness or at least self-referential thinking, in place of goodness. We project our egotism onto the world, and so perceive our distorted perceptions as objective reality. To do philosopher is, for example, to push beyond fear or anger, and the rationalisations or distorted fantasies which follow that, to see things more truly in the sense of more objectively, with greater reason, justice, compassion, and so on. That is an example of what is meant by truth and goodness. Philosophy is the cultivation of such wisdom in general, especially in the contexts and challenges that are particular to your life.
I said that I have two main definitions of wisdom. The definition just offered risks making wisdom sound like an outcome, a product of our efforts. Wisdom is partly that--a perception, vision, mindset that is as true and beneficial as possible. More deeply, however, wisdom is an activity. Or rather, it is a set of activities. Wisdom is the sum of a range of activities, at the level of the head and the heart, which Aristotle called the intellectual virtues.
We can define a virtue as any activity that genuinely benefits life and which we habituate. In terms of the intellectual virtues, that includes reasoning, in the sense of thinking that is logical, is a virtue. We can do it well or badly, and we can do it inconsistently or we can turn it into a stable habit, a way of being, a feature of our character. Likewise, courage at the level of the head and the heart. For example, all of us avoid certain aspects of our inner life, such as memories or possibilities which haunt us but which we merely block out, or possibilities of thought and life which, for reasons of fear, we pull back from. Intellectual courage faces these things and pushes forward. Likewise temperance, which is the virtue of self-mastery, in the sense of creating balance and order in ourselves. Consider that egotism I mentioned. We are tempted to give in to self-serving grievance, or righteous self-pity, or mental laziness or gluttony (e.g. screens), rather than to take a balanced view, and to direct our minds well. Plato spoke of a fourth virtue: justice. By justice, Plato means balance and harmony between the virtues, which is to say between the various aspects of our being, so that we are rational, but also spirited and courageous, as well as self-controlled, and so on. Imagine a person who has one or two of these, but not the others. Of course, a virtue is any activity which leads to human flourishing, and so there are many intellectual virtues, such as reason, intellectual courage, intellectual humility, curiosity, intellectual care and rigour, intellectual autonomy (thinking for yourself) and firmness, intellectual perseverance, intellectual honesty, fair-mindedness, intellectual empathy or empathic imagination, open-mindedness, practical wisdom in the sense of possessive the knowing you need, love of truth, intellectual creativity, and so on. Consider what it is to be like around such a person. Consider what it is like to be them. Consider what difference these mental virtues can make in hard times. The work of cultivating intellectual virtue, is the work of creating a mind and inner life which is emotionally strong, good, happy, purpose-driven, meaningful, and capable and successful in life. It is to create a flourishing mind; a flourishing intellect and will, a flourishing head and heart.
Consider all that I have just said, and it relates to our deeper desires, including the things which bring us to mainstream counselling and psychotherapy. It is a mistake of modern culture not to give such philosophy a place at the therapeutic table, as a form of counselling. Such philosophy, practiced within the framework of counselling, may be more effective and do deeper work, than mainstream counselling and psychotherapy. That, however, is a discussion for another day.
Alongside the intellectual virtues, Aristotle speaks also of the character virtues. For the most part they are the same virtues, but at the level of emotion and action. The ancients knew what modern cognitive and behavioural reseatch has abundantly shown: that a change in how we think, causes a change in how we feel and act. The intellectual virtues flow into our emotions and into our actions. By working at the level of the intellectual virtues, which is what we do in Philosophical Counselling, we are forming also the character virtues.
Classical philosophy, the philosophy which is my focus and practice, is the cultivation of wisdom and virtue. Of the intellectual virtues--our best qualities of head and heart, intellect and will--and the character virtues--those same qualities in emotion and outward action. A life of such cultivation becomes a life of flourishing, or what Aristotle called eudaimonia. It is hard to translate that word, but in essence it is the life which decent and sane people long for: the possession and enjoyment of wisdom, emotional strength, moral goodness, a sense of meaning and purpose, happiness, and success in making life work and achieving those things one most desires, for example love, a happy family, a meaningful career, friendship, and so on. Eudaimonia refers to things which are universal to all human beings, as well as desires which are particular to you. Some of these are out of your control, of course, for chance can rob you of many things, while others are in your power, as Stoic philosophy points out. Consider the line from that very Stoic film The Shawshank Redemption: "there's something inside you that they can't get to. That they can't touch. It's yours." In that sense, even though there is much that is out of our control, at the same time character is fate. The cultivation of wisdom and virtue leads to eudaimonia or flourishing, but it is also the activity which we call flourishing, the activity of being more wise, good, happy, at peace, purposeful, and so on. Classical philosophy is a multi-millennia tradition of guidance for cultivating flourishing through the cultivation of wisdom and virtue.
The paradigm for doing such philosophy is Socrates. In the marketplace, on the road, at the festival, he would engage people in conversation about what they were doing and seeking, whose goal was an increase in wisdom and virtue. Philosophical counselling, as I do it, is likewise such a conversation. As conscious beings, we exercise our head and heart in conversation about the things which concern you. We seek greater wisdom as a more true and good vision. And we exercise wisdom in the sense that we speak and think together in ways that are more virtuous: more rational, more courageous, more just, more creative, more hopeful, and so on. This is conversation that changes the head and the heart. That leads also to a change of emotion and action.
Some people come to philosophical counselling with concerns that fall mainly into the category of what Aristotle calls contemplative wisdom. They want to make sense of reality, or human nature, or the state of the world in general. Others seek what Aristotle called practical wisdom. They want to help with the kinds of problems and goals which people take to mainstream counselling: changing their emotional life, for example in the context of depression, despair, fear, anxiety, anger, boredom and so on. Or changing habits, or improving relationships and or their work life, or questions of life direction, and so on. Consider how fear or anxiety can be improved through the cultivation of courage as a stable virtue, combined with the wisdom to more clamly accept your vulnerabilities. Consider how chronic anger can be a rebellion against reality, and how wisdom can transform it, or how it can be a consequence of egotism and fear, and how virtues such as humility and healthy pride can change that. Of course, other clients come to philosophical counselling simply because they value a life of wisdom and virtue, and the flourishing it leads to.
Some people want pure philosophical counselling of the kinds just described. Other people want that philosophical help, but they also want the distinct kind of help that psychotherapy offers. That is why I practice existential therapy, which is a combination of philosphical counselling and mainstream psychotherapy. I will turn now to that psychotherapeutic element.
Existential Therapy as psychotherapy
It was while teaching philosophy at The University of Melbourne and elsewhere that I decided to become a philosophical counsellor. As far as I know, I am the first person in Australia to make make that my career, and so I had to design my own path. As an initial step I decided to study counselling. I define counselling, which is different to psychotherapy, as a framework and set of skills, for helping people reflect and change. In that sense it is theoretically open, and is usually paired with a certain field of knowledge and related know-how. For example, there are grief counsellors, and marriage counsellors, and pastoral (religious) counsellors, and career counsellors. In my case I pair the framework and skills of counselling with philosophy, in the form of philosophical counselling.
Counselling and psychotherapy are different, but my counsellor training focused on both. I define a psychotherapy as a particular theory of human nature, especially in terms of what goes wrong with it, from which emerges a set of insights and practices for helping. Counselling is an open framework and set of skills; psychotherapy is the embodiment of a certain theory. That theory is usually psychological in nature. There are many such theories, and so there are many psychotherapies. I chose to counselling degrees which included study of the various psychotherapies, in order to bring their psychological insights to my philosophical counselling. Those insights serve a dual purpose, both enriching my way of reading people--my understanding of the implicit, the unspoken and unseen--while also providing explicit helpful insights to share with my clients.
I studied counselling and psychotherapy to master's level. I seemed to have a knack for the art, and by the end of my counsellor training I had been offered numerous academic and therapeutic roles by my educators. My original plan was to complete those degrees, and to move as quickly as possible in pure philosophical counselling. However, I developed a passion for the mainstream psychotherapy in itself, and so went on a fifteen-year journey which in which I had multiple points of focus at once (there was a point where I was teaching philosophy, working as a mainstream counsellor in organisations, and running a private practice focused on philosophical therapy, all at once). That journey included working as a mainstream therapist in a variety of organisations, focused on issues such as bereavement, suicide crisis intervention, rural men's counselling, an Australian Defense Force and a war veteran's counselling service, workplace counselling (EAP), and management coaching for interpersonal skills. In that context I developed skills across the many major approaches to therapy within the broad three camps: the humanistic, the psychodynamic, and the bognitive-behavioural. I designed and delivered training to counsellors, and was head-hunted multiple times to teach counselling at tertiary institutions (which I always turned down--my focus was on the practice). I was registered with the Australian Counselling Association, ultimately at their most senior level. In 2012 I started a private practice in Carlton, Melbourne, focused on existential therapy. Hence I spent the 2010s engaged, among other things, in a decade's long dive into existential therapy. Importantly, that mainstream therapeutic background greatly enriches the quality of my work, as I will discuss below. The quality of a therapist derives in large part from the effects of decades of intensive work in the field. Mainstream psychotherapy retains an important place in my work today in the form of existential therapy, in which I blend philosophical counselling with psychotherapy.
What are some of the mainstream psychotherapies that are present in my existential therapy? I draw from across the cognitive-behavioural, humanistic, and psychodynamic therapies, each of which is an umbrella term for a variety of further approaches, such that they cover most of the mainstream therapies. The cognitive-behavioural therapies (CBT) help us to map and restructure our thinking and action. That naturally leads to emotional change as well. In the practice of CBT, clients are often surprised to uncover "core beliefs" which they hold, and to which they were blind, and which are problematic, but which have directed many of their thoughts, emotions, and actions. Often these core beliefs have led to problems like depression, anxiety, chronic anger, procrastination, self-hate, and so on. The behavioural dimension of CBT helps people to step into new behaviours and to habituate them, which reorders their activity in more healthy ways, and which also expands their way of being. Behavioural change shapes our thoughts and feelings in turn. Over-all, cognitive-behavioural therapy helps people to see and map their thinking and behaviour; it enables them to choose a better way of thinking and acting; and it guides them in habituating that improvement. CBT can be done in a very robotic and boring way, which has turned many people off, however the field is growing to include a more relational approach, which draws on values and passions, and which works with people's motivational temperaments.
Another field of therapy which deeply informs my work is humanistic therapy. Like CBT, humanistic therapy is an umbrella term for a range of approaches. The paradigmatic form, in my view, is Rogerian or Person-Centred Therapy. That is a deceptively simple and yet potentially profound practice. To understand this approach I tend to draw more on philosophy than therapeutic theory. Simone Weil, for example, wrote that "Attention is the rarest and purest of generosity." Person-Centred Therapy is the the art of seeing and of hearing, in a world where we largely objectify and reduce not only each other, but also ourselves. If CBT is healing through reason, Person-Centred Therapy is healing through love, in the sense of offering the core conditions: being real with people, offering an attitude of unconditional respect and care, and engaging in a close empathetic reading of, and sensitivity to, the other.
At the heart of most of the humanistic therapies is the philosophical practice of phenomenology. Phenomenology is the study of consciousness. It guides us in laying aside preconceptions in order to perceive how things actually are, especially at a subjective and felt level. Many people have, for example, blocked, disowned, or frozen parts of their emotional life, and phenomenology helps you to see, feel, and become more comfortable and free, with those aspects of yourself. That leads not only to greater self-awareness, but it creates shifts in your emotional life, and it allows you to become more relaxed and responsive and capable of happiness, and more free to act in ways which are more in accord with your conscious values. A problem with the humanistic therapies has been their tendency to indulge in half-baked philosophies, and their tendency toward anti-intellectualism. The latter buttresses the former, because any serious criticism of their questionable claims, is labelled as "over-thinking" or being "out of touch with the body". Of course, a truly wholistic view respects both intellect and emotion, reason and feeling, and knows how to integrate them properly within the whole. You might imagine that a person who is trained in philosophy will have experienced a few frustrations with humanistic therapy and with some of the cultish types who practie it. Nonethless, we should look beyond the bathwater to the baby, in which case we find a therapy which is rich and valuable.
Psychodynamic therapy is the third modality I mentioned. Psychodynamic therapy suggests that there are dynamic forces at the unconscious or subconsious level of our psychology. Consider a family interaction where there is a surface level of interaction, and most people only see that level at the time, but you can feel that there is something else going on, strongly, and out of awareness. Consider also, the idea of defense mechanisms. A defense mechanism is a strategy we employ, often at an instinctive or even unconscious level, to shield ourselves from disturbing thoughts and feelings. A defense mechanism distorts, denies, or otherwise falsifies reality. Examples include repression (burying a painful memory), denial (refusing to see reality), projection (attributing one's unacceptable feelings to others), and rationalisation (creating logical excuses for illogical or unacceptable behaviour). Lists of the defenses range from thirty to fifty. Life can be very hard, and the defenses evolved as coping mechanisms, which means that in extreme contexts, or in moderate amounts, they help us. You may be going through a hard time, but when you do your job it is appropriate often to repress your emotions, forgetting yourself and focusing on the work, especially if that involves working with others. Of course, if such a defense becomes extreme and rigid, and pervades important areas of your personal life, then it undermines your happiness, as well as your capacity for truth, and even goodness. Everybody engages in certain defenses, and psychodynamic therapy helps us to conceptualise and recognise them, and to work on change such as the cultivation of healthier ways of coping and dealing with reality.
I said that a psychotherapy is a particular psychological theory of human nature, and that there are many different theories and so psychotherapies. Broadly speaking, I view these different theories, when they are sound, as reflections of different dimensions of our (human) being. In particular, I view them as representing three major dimensions of our being, in the form of three therapeutic doorways: the intellectual door, the emotional door, and the behavioural door. None of these is the one, true door. This is why I have sought skills across many therapeutic modalities, and why I favour an integrationist approach. Any therapist works with many different people, and most people's temperament will lead them to respond better to a certain door, which means that different clients across the day will each require a different way of working. A highly intellectual person with a very restricted emotional life may find Humanistic Therapy somewhat frustrating, and when I work with such a person I will take that into account. If they want psychotherapy (i.e. existential therapy rather than pure philosophical counselling) then will lean toward purely philosophical as well as cognitive-behavioural work, which is likely to speak to their natural understanding and strengths. With another person, with a more emotional temperament and set of felt needs, the therapeutic element may consist largely of phenomenological exploration and articulation of their experience. In short, I will do what works with each individual. Of course, therapy must balance two things: "meeting you where you are at", with leading you to somewhere better. That better place is often into a more expansive way of being. Henc, if a person seeks deeper therapeutic work then I may lead them to work on neglected or less developed areas of their being. With a mainly emotional person, I may help them cultivate greater reason. With a mainly intellectual temperament, I may encourage greater aliveness to feeling and an increased capacity to articulate that. With somebody who is too passive in the world, I may guide them into a more pro-active engagement with the world. Please note that this integrationalist spirit does not reflect any kind of rejection of therapeutic specialisation. In fact, I believe it is good to cultivate both a basic therapeutic breadth, while also commiting and going deep into one or two specialist approaches. The issue is less about such choices, and more about the vision and thinking that goes on behind therapy and which informs it. All therapists need to be able to see the big picture, to exercise the wisdom which can see the whole and the proper relations of the parts. The pursuit of wisdom, the disciplined and skillful exercise intellectual virtue, is not an explicit part of therapist training or practice, but it should be, for it is essential and primary. Psychotherapy should be wise. It should see well beyond the psychological theory on which it is based, and well beyond the psychological lens itself, to the wider and higher dimensions of our lives as human beings.
I, myself, have a therapeutic specialisation, alongside that broader, integrative use of the mainstream psychotherapies. Above all, I have focused on the existential therapies. The tite Existential Therapy That is again an umbrella term for a range of related but different approaches. In 2012 I started a private practice in Carlton, Melbourne, dedicated to these existential therapies, and so I spent the 2010s honing my knowledge and skills in them. For example, I took deep dives into the psychodynamic-existential therapy of Irvin Yalom, the Logotherapy of Viktor Frankl, the Sartrean therapy of Betty Cannon, the radically phenomenological approach Ernesto Spinelli, the Heideggarian approaches of Boss and of Cohn, and so on. Above all, I was most influenced by the work of Emmy van Deurzen, who effectively led "the British school" of existential therapy. Emmy's approach, set down in an array of excellent books, combines existential and phenomenological depth with common sense and a tough-minded pragmatism. It helps people to look deeply, but also challenges them to face up to the hard realities of life, and to dig deeper into their courage, strength, and passion.
I no longer work with organisations, and no longer offer purely mainsream therapy. I have continued on to my goal of Philosophical Counselling, and my task now is the slow expansion of that work. In the years to come I have plans to offer multiple creative practices in that field, for example a service which combines personal growth work with the intensive study of classical logic (the art of reasoning well in life). Alongside pure Philosophical Counselling, however, I offer also this practice called Existential Therapy, which combines philosophical and psychological help. My practice of Existential Therapy is Philosophical Counselling, plus elements from the mainstream psychotherapies, plus elements from the various existential therapies, all as described above. It is the philosophical cultivation of wisdom and virtue, and of psychological insight and growth. The value of this Existential Therapy lies in the fact that often we need both kinds of help and growth.
Before wrapping up, I should say something about the difference between Counselling and Psychotherapy, versus clinical mental health professions such as Psychology and Psychiatry. I am a qualified counsellor and psychotherapist. I am not a psychologist. When I worked for a decade in counselling organisations, I worked alongside many psychologists, forming close friendships with quite a few of them which led to years of conversation in which we explored what we share professionally, and what makes us different. I became rather conversant in clinical psychological concepts and ways of working, which are rooted in such schemata as the DSM. My training is very different to a psychologist's, however. Counselling and Psychotherapy are disciplines which aim to elicit insight, life changes, and personal growth. Psychology, Psychiatry, and the other clinical disciplines, focus on assessments, diagnoses, treatments, management, and so on. They think and act according to "the medical model". I work with people's psychology, in the way of a counsellor and psychotherapist, which is different to engaging in clinical practices with regard to a person's psychology, which is the work of many psychologists (yes, the same root word gets used in many ways, which can be confusing). Confusion about these differences is very common, and it is a serious problem when you need clinical services but accidently see a personal growth professional (like myself) instead, and if you want to do insight and personal growth work then you will likely by very dissapointed with a clinical professional. My intake form includes terms and conditions which clarify this distinction. Indeed, I go into much more detail than I would like, but this is such a confusing area for many people that I go above and beyond, so that people know the difference. The distinction points to something else of importance. Our therapeutic culture encourages people to abdicate personal responsibility and to place responsibility for themselves onto professional helpers. "I'm not getting the help I need!" While I love therapy, I am deeply critical of the therapeutic culture, which encourages such passivity, grievance, entitlement, and the ideological and weaponised use of clinical concepts, and which is expressive of a broader nihilistic ideology that afflicts our culture. I am nobody's "clinician", nobody is "in my care". Rather, I am people's conversation partner, who brings many insights and skills to that conversation, of I type which can greatly help them to cultivate psychological insight, life improvements, and personal growth, as well as the philosophical work of pursuing wisdom, virtue, and a deeper, more flourishing life. My client's benefit from my service, to the degree that they are proactive with what I offer.
In summary
In summary, the Existential Therapy that I offer is a combination of my philosophical counselling, with the best of mainstream counselling and psychotherapy. That includes psychodynamic, cognitive-behavioural, and humanistic therapy, as well as various established approaches to Existential Therapy. It is a personal growth discipline and not a clinical discipline. Psychotherapy helps people cultivate insight and personal growth at the psychological level. Philosophy helps people cultivate wisdom and virtue. That means the intellectual virtues and the character virtues--our best qualities and potential at the level of the head, heart, and hands. The cultivation of wisdom and virtue, especially when combined with psychological insight and growth, leads also to increased strength, success, happiness, meaning, goodness, and flourishing. Hence, this kind of therapy helps you deal with your specific concerns, but in a way that makes you and your life better in general. Finally, this work goes beyond mere theory and technique, and what I offer to you is the accumulation of decades of dedication philosophical and psychotherapeutic practice, helping tens of thousands of people at the coal-face of the human condition and its struggles.
What is the existential therapy that I offer?
I practice both philosophical counselling, which is the focus of my other website, and existential therapy, which is the focus of the present website. The existential therapy if offer is that philosophical ocunselling, but in combination with mainstream psychotherapy.
A human being is a composition of various elements. For example, you are consciousness, but you also have a psychological structure. Consciousness is the You that I am addressing right now, who is awareness, presence. It is I. Your psychology, by contrast, is the collection of those traits, patterns, processes, instincts and so on at the level of cognition, emotion, action, and so on. The difference between philosophy and psychotherapy reflects this distinction.
Psychotherapy is the analysis and reshaping of our psychology. Our psychology is often out of conscious awareness. Hence we have developed psychotherapy, which is a technology that we, as conscious beings, wield to both uncover our psychological patterns, and to reshape them.
Philosophy, by contrast, is the effort we make as consciousness. When we do philosophy we are attempting to perceive, judge, reason, intuit, remember, imagine, choose, will and so on, in better ways. As beings of consciousness, we are attempting to be conscious in better ways, we are attempting to enact our our better possibilities.
There is another important difference between philosophy and psychotherapy. The celebrated therapist Irvin Yalom saidthat the main point of psychotherapy is to remove obstacles. It is a negative work, in that sense, which clears the ground for something else. Psychotherapy encounters disordered thinking and aims to create order. It encounters unhealthy behaviours and cultivates healthy ones. Of course, there is more to life than order or health. There is the cultivation of those things which give meaning and value to life, such as direction, purpose, goodness, happiness, and so on. These things take us beyond a psychological lens, and so beyond the work of psychotherapy. They take into the realm of philosophy.
Philosophy is the cultivation of meaning and value in life. In classical terms, it is the pursuit of wisdom and virtue, of what is true and good. It is the cultivation of all those personal qualities at the level of the intellect and will, as well as emotion and action, which lead to human flourishing--to a life of strength, goodness, purpose, meaning, happiness, succcess, and so on.
My existential therapy is a combination of psychotherapeutic and philosophical work. In the following section, I will explore those philosophical dimensions. In the section after that, I will explore the psychotherapeutic dimension. As stated, this is also an About Me page, and I will begin by speaking personally about what philosophy is for me, and how I came to this work. In doing so, I am describing the nature of philosophy as I practice it--as I offer it to you.
Existential Therapy as Philosophy
I discovered philosophy as a rural, working-class, high-school drop-out. I went from working in a factory to studying and then teaching it at The University of Melbourne and elsewhere. I was drawn to philosophy through wonder, but also because of its power to help us cope with life's suffering, to find meaning, to become a better person, and to make life better. Philosophy is a natural human activity, and I had it baked into me from a young age, without ever knowing its name. I grew up in the Mallee (north-western Victoria), in a world of tradesmen and farmers. From around the age of 10, if I was not at school then I was doing heavy physical work. When that work was alongside the older men who would sometimes help my father, we would talk about life, trying to make sense of what it is to live meaningfully, and of what it is to be a decent human being, especially in a hard world, and of how to navigate that world, and of what happiness consists, and so on. When those elders were not present, the demands on my body during those long days stacking bricks, timber, roofing iron, left my mind free to reflect without distraction. Both those conversations and those solitary reflections were framed by the hardness of the work, the immensity of the sky, and the sense of possibility I felt when I looked at the distant horizon. Without knowing its name, I received an early training in philosophy as wonder, as intellectual or rational reflection, as a commitment to the true and the good, as existential and poetic intuition, and in general as a serious examination of life: of hardship and tragedy, of the need for compassion, and the need for wisdom and strength, and of life as a realm of much possible meaning. Later, in young adulthood, I wandered into a bookstore and walked out with Meditations by Marcus Aurelius--a classic book of Stoic philosophy. From Aurelius I was led to Plato, Aristotle, and the other Stoics--to classical philosophy. I discovered the same kind of reflection I was raised in, but taken to a whole other level by some of the wisest people who ever lived, labouring under the logical, artistic and moral disciplines that guide thinking to its best and most life-changing possibilities.
That is what philosophy is for me, in terms of why I came to it, why I have dedicated my life's energy to it, and what it is that I offer to you. Philosophy is the pursuit of wisdom and of all those personal qualities (virtues) that make us strong, good, happy, and which lead to a meaningful and flourishing life. If this sounds different to academic and modern philosophy, it is. Academic philosophy is a more scholarly and detached approach. It is an intellectual activity focused on theory and the like. It is very different to classical philosophy, to the kind philosophy which drew me, and which I offer. I did very well academically, but a university career was not the right place for philosophy as I have described it. What I wanted to do, as a philosopher, was speak one-on-one with people, helping individuals make sense of their concerns, and helping them to craft a more capable, good, meaningful, and flourishing life. I wanted to become highly skilled in this practice, which meant devoting much of my time to it, which meant making it my career. This is what the Stoic Epictetus did, but I was not sure what form this would take in today's world. Would I offer a kind of tutoring, or something more like counselling? Would we meet at a cafe, or in a formal office for a more intensely private conversation? At some point I came across a movement called Philosophical Counselling, and knew I had found my path. That movement was small but growing in Europe and America, indeed there were already peak bodies, suggested career pathways, conferences, publications, and so on. I decided I would become a philosophical counsellor.
The word philosophy is a conjunction of two ancient Greek words and means the love of wisdom. Philosophy is the pursuit and cultivation of wisdom. What is wisdom? I have two main definitions. First, wisdom is a vision of things which is as true and good as possible. Consider that definition in light what I said above, that "I was drawn to philosophy through wonder, but also because of its power to help us cope with life's suffering, to find meaning, to become a better person, and to make life better." We realise those goals by seeing more clearly, which is to say through an increase in truth. It is not detached truth, of course, but truth that is good, in the sense of beneficial. A true and good vision includes a mindset that is sane, lucid, and which improves our experience, way of being, relationships and so on. Human beings are distorted by egotism: delusion in place of truth, selfishness or at least self-referential thinking, in place of goodness. We project our egotism onto the world, and so perceive our distorted perceptions as objective reality. To do philosopher is, for example, to push beyond fear or anger, and the rationalisations or distorted fantasies which follow that, to see things more truly in the sense of more objectively, with greater reason, justice, compassion, and so on. That is an example of what is meant by truth and goodness. Philosophy is the cultivation of such wisdom in general, especially in the contexts and challenges that are particular to your life.
I said that I have two main definitions of wisdom. The definition just offered risks making wisdom sound like an outcome, a product of our efforts. Wisdom is partly that--a perception, vision, mindset that is as true and beneficial as possible. More deeply, however, wisdom is an activity. Or rather, it is a set of activities. Wisdom is the sum of a range of activities, at the level of the head and the heart, which Aristotle called the intellectual virtues.
We can define a virtue as any activity that genuinely benefits life and which we habituate. In terms of the intellectual virtues, that includes reasoning, in the sense of thinking that is logical, is a virtue. We can do it well or badly, and we can do it inconsistently or we can turn it into a stable habit, a way of being, a feature of our character. Likewise, courage at the level of the head and the heart. For example, all of us avoid certain aspects of our inner life, such as memories or possibilities which haunt us but which we merely block out, or possibilities of thought and life which, for reasons of fear, we pull back from. Intellectual courage faces these things and pushes forward. Likewise temperance, which is the virtue of self-mastery, in the sense of creating balance and order in ourselves. Consider that egotism I mentioned. We are tempted to give in to self-serving grievance, or righteous self-pity, or mental laziness or gluttony (e.g. screens), rather than to take a balanced view, and to direct our minds well. Plato spoke of a fourth virtue: justice. By justice, Plato means balance and harmony between the virtues, which is to say between the various aspects of our being, so that we are rational, but also spirited and courageous, as well as self-controlled, and so on. Imagine a person who has one or two of these, but not the others. Of course, a virtue is any activity which leads to human flourishing, and so there are many intellectual virtues, such as reason, intellectual courage, intellectual humility, curiosity, intellectual care and rigour, intellectual autonomy (thinking for yourself) and firmness, intellectual perseverance, intellectual honesty, fair-mindedness, intellectual empathy or empathic imagination, open-mindedness, practical wisdom in the sense of possessive the knowing you need, love of truth, intellectual creativity, and so on. Consider what it is to be like around such a person. Consider what it is like to be them. Consider what difference these mental virtues can make in hard times. The work of cultivating intellectual virtue, is the work of creating a mind and inner life which is emotionally strong, good, happy, purpose-driven, meaningful, and capable and successful in life. It is to create a flourishing mind; a flourishing intellect and will, a flourishing head and heart.
Consider all that I have just said, and it relates to our deeper desires, including the things which bring us to mainstream counselling and psychotherapy. It is a mistake of modern culture not to give such philosophy a place at the therapeutic table, as a form of counselling. Such philosophy, practiced within the framework of counselling, may be more effective and do deeper work, than mainstream counselling and psychotherapy. That, however, is a discussion for another day.
Alongside the intellectual virtues, Aristotle speaks also of the character virtues. For the most part they are the same virtues, but at the level of emotion and action. The ancients knew what modern cognitive and behavioural reseatch has abundantly shown: that a change in how we think, causes a change in how we feel and act. The intellectual virtues flow into our emotions and into our actions. By working at the level of the intellectual virtues, which is what we do in Philosophical Counselling, we are forming also the character virtues.
Classical philosophy, the philosophy which is my focus and practice, is the cultivation of wisdom and virtue. Of the intellectual virtues--our best qualities of head and heart, intellect and will--and the character virtues--those same qualities in emotion and outward action. A life of such cultivation becomes a life of flourishing, or what Aristotle called eudaimonia. It is hard to translate that word, but in essence it is the life which decent and sane people long for: the possession and enjoyment of wisdom, emotional strength, moral goodness, a sense of meaning and purpose, happiness, and success in making life work and achieving those things one most desires, for example love, a happy family, a meaningful career, friendship, and so on. Eudaimonia refers to things which are universal to all human beings, as well as desires which are particular to you. Some of these are out of your control, of course, for chance can rob you of many things, while others are in your power, as Stoic philosophy points out. Consider the line from that very Stoic film The Shawshank Redemption: "there's something inside you that they can't get to. That they can't touch. It's yours." In that sense, even though there is much that is out of our control, at the same time character is fate. The cultivation of wisdom and virtue leads to eudaimonia or flourishing, but it is also the activity which we call flourishing, the activity of being more wise, good, happy, at peace, purposeful, and so on. Classical philosophy is a multi-millennia tradition of guidance for cultivating flourishing through the cultivation of wisdom and virtue.
The paradigm for doing such philosophy is Socrates. In the marketplace, on the road, at the festival, he would engage people in conversation about what they were doing and seeking, whose goal was an increase in wisdom and virtue. Philosophical counselling, as I do it, is likewise such a conversation. As conscious beings, we exercise our head and heart in conversation about the things which concern you. We seek greater wisdom as a more true and good vision. And we exercise wisdom in the sense that we speak and think together in ways that are more virtuous: more rational, more courageous, more just, more creative, more hopeful, and so on. This is conversation that changes the head and the heart. That leads also to a change of emotion and action.
Some people come to philosophical counselling with concerns that fall mainly into the category of what Aristotle calls contemplative wisdom. They want to make sense of reality, or human nature, or the state of the world in general. Others seek what Aristotle called practical wisdom. They want to help with the kinds of problems and goals which people take to mainstream counselling: changing their emotional life, for example in the context of depression, despair, fear, anxiety, anger, boredom and so on. Or changing habits, or improving relationships and or their work life, or questions of life direction, and so on. Consider how fear or anxiety can be improved through the cultivation of courage as a stable virtue, combined with the wisdom to more clamly accept your vulnerabilities. Consider how chronic anger can be a rebellion against reality, and how wisdom can transform it, or how it can be a consequence of egotism and fear, and how virtues such as humility and healthy pride can change that. Of course, other clients come to philosophical counselling simply because they value a life of wisdom and virtue, and the flourishing it leads to.
Some people want pure philosophical counselling of the kinds just described. Other people want that philosophical help, but they also want the distinct kind of help that psychotherapy offers. That is why I practice existential therapy, which is a combination of philosphical counselling and mainstream psychotherapy. I will turn now to that psychotherapeutic element.
Existential Therapy as psychotherapy
It was while teaching philosophy at The University of Melbourne and elsewhere that I decided to become a philosophical counsellor. As far as I know, I am the first person in Australia to make make that my career, and so I had to design my own path. As an initial step I decided to study counselling. I define counselling, which is different to psychotherapy, as a framework and set of skills, for helping people reflect and change. In that sense it is theoretically open, and is usually paired with a certain field of knowledge and related know-how. For example, there are grief counsellors, and marriage counsellors, and pastoral (religious) counsellors, and career counsellors. In my case I pair the framework and skills of counselling with philosophy, in the form of philosophical counselling.
Counselling and psychotherapy are different, but my counsellor training focused on both. I define a psychotherapy as a particular theory of human nature, especially in terms of what goes wrong with it, from which emerges a set of insights and practices for helping. Counselling is an open framework and set of skills; psychotherapy is the embodiment of a certain theory. That theory is usually psychological in nature. There are many such theories, and so there are many psychotherapies. I chose to counselling degrees which included study of the various psychotherapies, in order to bring their psychological insights to my philosophical counselling. Those insights serve a dual purpose, both enriching my way of reading people--my understanding of the implicit, the unspoken and unseen--while also providing explicit helpful insights to share with my clients.
I studied counselling and psychotherapy to master's level. I seemed to have a knack for the art, and by the end of my counsellor training I had been offered numerous academic and therapeutic roles by my educators. My original plan was to complete those degrees, and to move as quickly as possible in pure philosophical counselling. However, I developed a passion for the mainstream psychotherapy in itself, and so went on a fifteen-year journey which in which I had multiple points of focus at once (there was a point where I was teaching philosophy, working as a mainstream counsellor in organisations, and running a private practice focused on philosophical therapy, all at once). That journey included working as a mainstream therapist in a variety of organisations, focused on issues such as bereavement, suicide crisis intervention, rural men's counselling, an Australian Defense Force and a war veteran's counselling service, workplace counselling (EAP), and management coaching for interpersonal skills. In that context I developed skills across the many major approaches to therapy within the broad three camps: the humanistic, the psychodynamic, and the bognitive-behavioural. I designed and delivered training to counsellors, and was head-hunted multiple times to teach counselling at tertiary institutions (which I always turned down--my focus was on the practice). I was registered with the Australian Counselling Association, ultimately at their most senior level. In 2012 I started a private practice in Carlton, Melbourne, focused on existential therapy. Hence I spent the 2010s engaged, among other things, in a decade's long dive into existential therapy. Importantly, that mainstream therapeutic background greatly enriches the quality of my work, as I will discuss below. The quality of a therapist derives in large part from the effects of decades of intensive work in the field. Mainstream psychotherapy retains an important place in my work today in the form of existential therapy, in which I blend philosophical counselling with psychotherapy.
What are some of the mainstream psychotherapies that are present in my existential therapy? I draw from across the cognitive-behavioural, humanistic, and psychodynamic therapies, each of which is an umbrella term for a variety of further approaches, such that they cover most of the mainstream therapies. The cognitive-behavioural therapies (CBT) help us to map and restructure our thinking and action. That naturally leads to emotional change as well. In the practice of CBT, clients are often surprised to uncover "core beliefs" which they hold, and to which they were blind, and which are problematic, but which have directed many of their thoughts, emotions, and actions. Often these core beliefs have led to problems like depression, anxiety, chronic anger, procrastination, self-hate, and so on. The behavioural dimension of CBT helps people to step into new behaviours and to habituate them, which reorders their activity in more healthy ways, and which also expands their way of being. Behavioural change shapes our thoughts and feelings in turn. Over-all, cognitive-behavioural therapy helps people to see and map their thinking and behaviour; it enables them to choose a better way of thinking and acting; and it guides them in habituating that improvement. CBT can be done in a very robotic and boring way, which has turned many people off, however the field is growing to include a more relational approach, which draws on values and passions, and which works with people's motivational temperaments.
Another field of therapy which deeply informs my work is humanistic therapy. Like CBT, humanistic therapy is an umbrella term for a range of approaches. The paradigmatic form, in my view, is Rogerian or Person-Centred Therapy. That is a deceptively simple and yet potentially profound practice. To understand this approach I tend to draw more on philosophy than therapeutic theory. Simone Weil, for example, wrote that "Attention is the rarest and purest of generosity." Person-Centred Therapy is the the art of seeing and of hearing, in a world where we largely objectify and reduce not only each other, but also ourselves. If CBT is healing through reason, Person-Centred Therapy is healing through love, in the sense of offering the core conditions: being real with people, offering an attitude of unconditional respect and care, and engaging in a close empathetic reading of, and sensitivity to, the other.
At the heart of most of the humanistic therapies is the philosophical practice of phenomenology. Phenomenology is the study of consciousness. It guides us in laying aside preconceptions in order to perceive how things actually are, especially at a subjective and felt level. Many people have, for example, blocked, disowned, or frozen parts of their emotional life, and phenomenology helps you to see, feel, and become more comfortable and free, with those aspects of yourself. That leads not only to greater self-awareness, but it creates shifts in your emotional life, and it allows you to become more relaxed and responsive and capable of happiness, and more free to act in ways which are more in accord with your conscious values. A problem with the humanistic therapies has been their tendency to indulge in half-baked philosophies, and their tendency toward anti-intellectualism. The latter buttresses the former, because any serious criticism of their questionable claims, is labelled as "over-thinking" or being "out of touch with the body". Of course, a truly wholistic view respects both intellect and emotion, reason and feeling, and knows how to integrate them properly within the whole. You might imagine that a person who is trained in philosophy will have experienced a few frustrations with humanistic therapy and with some of the cultish types who practie it. Nonethless, we should look beyond the bathwater to the baby, in which case we find a therapy which is rich and valuable.
Psychodynamic therapy is the third modality I mentioned. Psychodynamic therapy suggests that there are dynamic forces at the unconscious or subconsious level of our psychology. Consider a family interaction where there is a surface level of interaction, and most people only see that level at the time, but you can feel that there is something else going on, strongly, and out of awareness. Consider also, the idea of defense mechanisms. A defense mechanism is a strategy we employ, often at an instinctive or even unconscious level, to shield ourselves from disturbing thoughts and feelings. A defense mechanism distorts, denies, or otherwise falsifies reality. Examples include repression (burying a painful memory), denial (refusing to see reality), projection (attributing one's unacceptable feelings to others), and rationalisation (creating logical excuses for illogical or unacceptable behaviour). Lists of the defenses range from thirty to fifty. Life can be very hard, and the defenses evolved as coping mechanisms, which means that in extreme contexts, or in moderate amounts, they help us. You may be going through a hard time, but when you do your job it is appropriate often to repress your emotions, forgetting yourself and focusing on the work, especially if that involves working with others. Of course, if such a defense becomes extreme and rigid, and pervades important areas of your personal life, then it undermines your happiness, as well as your capacity for truth, and even goodness. Everybody engages in certain defenses, and psychodynamic therapy helps us to conceptualise and recognise them, and to work on change such as the cultivation of healthier ways of coping and dealing with reality.
I said that a psychotherapy is a particular psychological theory of human nature, and that there are many different theories and so psychotherapies. Broadly speaking, I view these different theories, when they are sound, as reflections of different dimensions of our (human) being. In particular, I view them as representing three major dimensions of our being, in the form of three therapeutic doorways: the intellectual door, the emotional door, and the behavioural door. None of these is the one, true door. This is why I have sought skills across many therapeutic modalities, and why I favour an integrationist approach. Any therapist works with many different people, and most people's temperament will lead them to respond better to a certain door, which means that different clients across the day will each require a different way of working. A highly intellectual person with a very restricted emotional life may find Humanistic Therapy somewhat frustrating, and when I work with such a person I will take that into account. If they want psychotherapy (i.e. existential therapy rather than pure philosophical counselling) then will lean toward purely philosophical as well as cognitive-behavioural work, which is likely to speak to their natural understanding and strengths. With another person, with a more emotional temperament and set of felt needs, the therapeutic element may consist largely of phenomenological exploration and articulation of their experience. In short, I will do what works with each individual. Of course, therapy must balance two things: "meeting you where you are at", with leading you to somewhere better. That better place is often into a more expansive way of being. Henc, if a person seeks deeper therapeutic work then I may lead them to work on neglected or less developed areas of their being. With a mainly emotional person, I may help them cultivate greater reason. With a mainly intellectual temperament, I may encourage greater aliveness to feeling and an increased capacity to articulate that. With somebody who is too passive in the world, I may guide them into a more pro-active engagement with the world. Please note that this integrationalist spirit does not reflect any kind of rejection of therapeutic specialisation. In fact, I believe it is good to cultivate both a basic therapeutic breadth, while also commiting and going deep into one or two specialist approaches. The issue is less about such choices, and more about the vision and thinking that goes on behind therapy and which informs it. All therapists need to be able to see the big picture, to exercise the wisdom which can see the whole and the proper relations of the parts. The pursuit of wisdom, the disciplined and skillful exercise intellectual virtue, is not an explicit part of therapist training or practice, but it should be, for it is essential and primary. Psychotherapy should be wise. It should see well beyond the psychological theory on which it is based, and well beyond the psychological lens itself, to the wider and higher dimensions of our lives as human beings.
I, myself, have a therapeutic specialisation, alongside that broader, integrative use of the mainstream psychotherapies. Above all, I have focused on the existential therapies. The tite Existential Therapy That is again an umbrella term for a range of related but different approaches. In 2012 I started a private practice in Carlton, Melbourne, dedicated to these existential therapies, and so I spent the 2010s honing my knowledge and skills in them. For example, I took deep dives into the psychodynamic-existential therapy of Irvin Yalom, the Logotherapy of Viktor Frankl, the Sartrean therapy of Betty Cannon, the radically phenomenological approach Ernesto Spinelli, the Heideggarian approaches of Boss and of Cohn, and so on. Above all, I was most influenced by the work of Emmy van Deurzen, who effectively led "the British school" of existential therapy. Emmy's approach, set down in an array of excellent books, combines existential and phenomenological depth with common sense and a tough-minded pragmatism. It helps people to look deeply, but also challenges them to face up to the hard realities of life, and to dig deeper into their courage, strength, and passion.
I no longer work with organisations, and no longer offer purely mainsream therapy. I have continued on to my goal of Philosophical Counselling, and my task now is the slow expansion of that work. In the years to come I have plans to offer multiple creative practices in that field, for example a service which combines personal growth work with the intensive study of classical logic (the art of reasoning well in life). Alongside pure Philosophical Counselling, however, I offer also this practice called Existential Therapy, which combines philosophical and psychological help. My practice of Existential Therapy is Philosophical Counselling, plus elements from the mainstream psychotherapies, plus elements from the various existential therapies, all as described above. It is the philosophical cultivation of wisdom and virtue, and of psychological insight and growth. The value of this Existential Therapy lies in the fact that often we need both kinds of help and growth.
Before wrapping up, I should say something about the difference between Counselling and Psychotherapy, versus clinical mental health professions such as Psychology and Psychiatry. I am a qualified counsellor and psychotherapist. I am not a psychologist. When I worked for a decade in counselling organisations, I worked alongside many psychologists, forming close friendships with quite a few of them which led to years of conversation in which we explored what we share professionally, and what makes us different. I became rather conversant in clinical psychological concepts and ways of working, which are rooted in such schemata as the DSM. My training is very different to a psychologist's, however. Counselling and Psychotherapy are disciplines which aim to elicit insight, life changes, and personal growth. Psychology, Psychiatry, and the other clinical disciplines, focus on assessments, diagnoses, treatments, management, and so on. They think and act according to "the medical model". I work with people's psychology, in the way of a counsellor and psychotherapist, which is different to engaging in clinical practices with regard to a person's psychology, which is the work of many psychologists (yes, the same root word gets used in many ways, which can be confusing). Confusion about these differences is very common, and it is a serious problem when you need clinical services but accidently see a personal growth professional (like myself) instead, and if you want to do insight and personal growth work then you will likely by very dissapointed with a clinical professional. My intake form includes terms and conditions which clarify this distinction. Indeed, I go into much more detail than I would like, but this is such a confusing area for many people that I go above and beyond, so that people know the difference. The distinction points to something else of importance. Our therapeutic culture encourages people to abdicate personal responsibility and to place responsibility for themselves onto professional helpers. "I'm not getting the help I need!" While I love therapy, I am deeply critical of the therapeutic culture, which encourages such passivity, grievance, entitlement, and the ideological and weaponised use of clinical concepts, and which is expressive of a broader nihilistic ideology that afflicts our culture. I am nobody's "clinician", nobody is "in my care". Rather, I am people's conversation partner, who brings many insights and skills to that conversation, of I type which can greatly help them to cultivate psychological insight, life improvements, and personal growth, as well as the philosophical work of pursuing wisdom, virtue, and a deeper, more flourishing life. My client's benefit from my service, to the degree that they are proactive with what I offer.
In summary
In summary, the Existential Therapy that I offer is a combination of my philosophical counselling, with the best of mainstream counselling and psychotherapy. That includes psychodynamic, cognitive-behavioural, and humanistic therapy, as well as various established approaches to Existential Therapy. It is a personal growth discipline and not a clinical discipline. Psychotherapy helps people cultivate insight and personal growth at the psychological level. Philosophy helps people cultivate wisdom and virtue. That means the intellectual virtues and the character virtues--our best qualities and potential at the level of the head, heart, and hands. The cultivation of wisdom and virtue, especially when combined with psychological insight and growth, leads also to increased strength, success, happiness, meaning, goodness, and flourishing. Hence, this kind of therapy helps you deal with your specific concerns, but in a way that makes you and your life better in general. Finally, this work goes beyond mere theory and technique, and what I offer to you is the accumulation of decades of dedication philosophical and psychotherapeutic practice, helping tens of thousands of people at the coal-face of the human condition and its struggles.