What is Philosophical Counselling?
What is Philosophical Counselling? Because the approach is uncommon, this page is focused on providing a definition. I said on the homepage that Philosophical Counselling is a combination of philosophy and counselling. In what follows I will define counselling, and then philosophy, and then their combination as Philosophical Counselling. It is worth noting that these are my definitions, reflecting my training, experience, and views, and that other professionals in each of these three fields may define things differently.
I wrote here about the background which brought me to this work. In short, I found philosophy incredibly helpful for dealing with suffering and finding meaning in life, and I saw that its combination with counselling would create a very potent form of help for other people who are suffering, struggling, or who simply who want to make life better. So I studied counselling as well, and spent years in mainstream counselling roles honing my skills, all with the goal of eventually working purely as a philosophical counsellor.
I should add that Philosophical Counselling is for everybody. I come from a rural, working-class background of people who dropped out of highschool, as I did (I later went to university). My clients include academics and therapists, as well as people who have not read a book since they left highschool. Philosophical Counselling is suitable to anybody who is willing to work on insight and change. I tailor my work to the temperament, talents, and desires of each client.
Counselling
There are different ways of defining counselling. I define it in terms of three elements:
1) A set of conversational skills in listening, questioning and reflecting, aimed at eliciting clarity and motivation, which is to say, choice and change. This is the essence of counselling.
2) A therapeutic relationship that is empathetic, non-judgemental, and honest, which both enables you to look more lucidly at life and yourself, and to heal, grow, and move forward.
3) Therapeutic knowledge and experience, which includes the collective experience and insights of the field, plus empirical research, combined with the individual counsellor's training and experience.
I am a counsellor and a psychotherapist, though I prefer the former term because it is more open. By "open" I mean that counsellors like myself are trained and experience in an array of psychotherapies, and draw from them as needed, without dogmatic adherence. I have knowldge and skills from across a variety of humanistic, psychodynamic, and cognitive-behavioural therapies. Importantly, I went quite deep into a philosophical variation of humanistic therapy called Existential Therapy. That is an umbrella title for a cluster of related approaches such as those of Emmy van Deurzen, Irvin Yalom, and Viktor Frankl. All of these psychotherapies are integrated into my counselling, and that in turn is integrated with philosophy to form Philosophical Counselling.
One of the best things you can do for your life is to spend a period of time in counselling or psychotherapy, with a professional who can do deeper work. Just as you might go to personal training to benefit your body, psychotherapy helps you work on the psychological dimensions of your being, with the aim of greater insight, freedom, capability, and happiness. At the same time, therapy is limited. For we are more than our psychology: we are a mystery called consciousness, intelligence, free will, who seeks a life of genuine flourishing, meaning, strength, goodness, and wisdom. This is where philosophy comes in.
Philosophy
The word philosophy is a conjunction of two ancient Greek words, philos and sophia, which translates as love of wisdom. A philosopher is a lover of wisdom, or we might say, a pursuer of wisdom. What is wisdom? It can be thought of in two ways. First, wisdom is a more true and good vision of things. Second, wisdom is a virtue, and the beginning of all the virtues.
Wisdom as the more true and good....
We need a view of life, of our concerns, of ourselves, of each other, of reality, which is adequately true and good. We need such a view if we are to participate in what is good in life. We also need such a view in order to steer ourselves well: lessening the bad, increasing the good, and creating a meaningful individual life. A wise philosophy is a philosophy we can live by.
But what is wisdom? We tend to assume that it is knowledge--a true set of beliefs--but that is not quite right. Wisdom is a quality, or rather a collection of various qualities. It is all those qualities of the mind which are good and which lead to truth. Hence, to be wise is to perceive and think with courage, and justice, and curiosity, compassion, firmness, charity, rationality, and so on. Because these are qualities of the mind, we call them the "intellectual virtues." To see and think wisely, is to exercise the intellectual virtues. Philosophy is the recognition and cultivation of these virtues. This leads us to the second way of thinking about wisdom: as a virtue, and the beginning of all the virtues.
Wisdom as a virtue and the beginning of all the virtues....
The oldest recorded words of the Buddha state: "All that we are is the result of what we have thought: it is founded on our thoughts, it is made up of our thoughts." The Judeo-Christian proverbs claim: "As you think, so shall you be." This is an ancient and fundamental insight. To see in more true and good ways, to develop a virtuous mind, is important not only in itself, but because it has a flow-on effect. The state of your mind becomes the state of your whole being, including your emotions and actions. Hitherto a person might have been a bit of a coward, avoiding their fears even at the level of thought, but if they choose now to make a habit of looking at things with courage, then they will also start to feel more courageous in general, and to act with greater courage. At the levels of head, heart, and hands, they become a more courageous person. Again, hitherto a person loathed themselves, perhaps as a defense mechanism, but as they make an effort of seeing themselves with greater justice, compassion, reason, and so forth, they also come to feel differently about themselves, and to act as if they matter: they take care of themselves, they stand up for themselves, they start to trust and enjoy themselves. I could continue with examples related to any problem or any good quality in life. Importantly, the virtues are qualities you can intentionally cultivate. You can transform your life in this way.
So, there are virtues of thinking and seeing (called intellectual virtues), and virtues in feeling and acting (called character virtues). We can define any virtue as:
1) A good personal quality
2) Which you cultivate
3) Which makes you a better person
4) And which makes your life better.
They say that virtue is its own reward. I have suggested that virtues have both an intrinsic value--we care about them in themselves--and extrinsic value: they have flow-on effects, including transforming your whole way of being, but also and importantly, transforming your whole life. Some of the specific benefits of cultivating wisdom and virtue include increased:
Wisdom, as I have described above: a more true and good vision of things, which nourishes us, and which steers us well in life to avoid the bad and increase the good.
Inner strength, resilience, the ability to cope. We gain this through the virtues we cultivate, such as courage, fortitude, practical wisdom, reason, compassion, and so forth, and we gain it through the further consequences of such cultivation which include an increased sense of meaning, value, and purpose. We can see here that there is a unity to the virtues, each increasing the other.
Courage, which in conjunction with other virtues (creativity, truth, love) enables us to put our best foot forward.
Goodness, which is the heart of a meaningful and worthwhile life, no matter what else happens.
Meaning: a life of wisdom and virtue is a more meaningful way of living, and so it is a way being in which we experience a genuine, robust sense of meaning.
Happiness, which is partly a matter of chance, but also a consequence of our capacity for it. The virtues constitute the capacity for genuine happiness, and so its greater likelihood, while their lack (or opposites) can render us incapable of happiness.
Flourishing, which is to say doing well in life, regarding the things we care about. For some people that is a life of stability. For others it is a life of creativity. Or adventure. Or mission. Like happiness, flourishing is partly a matter of chance, but also it is are made far more likely by the virtues. And it is far less likely through their absence. In this respect it is sometimes said that "character is fate."
This philosophy is obviously quite different to modern and academic philosophy. That philosophy is more the love of theory, which is different to philosophy as the love of wisdom and virtue We can call my approach classical philosophy, for it is rooted in the work and spirit of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, and the movements which flowed from them such as Stoicism, Epicureanism, and Neoplatonism. Classical philosophy is the pursuit of the good life. It is guidance for living. I sometimes refer to it as a rational spirituality. Classical philosophy is a practical framework for dealing with everything in life in productive and meaningful ways. In every situation we can ask, how would a wise person see this, what would a wise person do. The tradition helps us to find concrete and profound answers to such questions. It guides us to see and think, and to feel and act, differently. It helps us become the kind of person we would rather be.
Philosophy as a treasury of wisdom....
In defining wisdom (above) I said that qualities are primary, and that beliefs and theories come second. Yet, as with counselling, philosophy is also a collection of thoughts, a building up of insights. Philosophy is "the great conversation," the library of the wisdom of the ages, the writing of some of humanity's finest hearts and minds regarding reality and the human condition and how to live. I bring this library of ideas into my conversations, drawing on philosophy from across the millennia to help shed light on people's concerns. I often recommend reading, tailored to you and your concerns.
Philosophy as attention to suffering....
While I am mostly oriented to classical philosophy, the subjectivist turn in modern philosophy is highly important, and highly influential on how I do Philosophical Counselling. As a philosopher, I am highly influenced by phenomenology and existentialism. Even moreso, I am greatly influenced by Ludwig Wittgenstein, the greatest philosopher of the twentieth century, whose philosophy is often rightly called therapeutic. Above all, I am a platonist (a philosopher influenced by Plato) who has focused on contemporary platonists such as Iris Murdoch, Simone Weil, and the Australians Christopher Cordner and Raimond Gaita. All of these approaches focus on articulating the depths of the implicit in our experience, the meaning and value which is before our eyes but which we fail to see, which moves us and which, when made explicit, can enlighten and further nourish us. This is obviously a highly relevant kind of philosophy for Philosophical Counselling. Importantly, alongside articulating the goodness in life, such philosophy makes a place for the tragedy of life. For life can be profoundly good, and that is central to my work, but life is also dark. Sometimes we can make heroic changes, but we cannot always "overcome." To be human is to be vulnerable, blind, and limited. It is to suffer, and sometimes to be degraded, or corrupted. To do philosophy as I do it, is to pay attention to this too, and to understand and respond to it in meaningful ways. Simone Weil wrote that "attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity." Elsewhere she speaks of such attention as "a just and loving gaze." We need to pay attention for the reasons I spoke of above--to see and be nourished by the good stuff, and to navigate life well--but we can also emphasise the value of attention as an ethical and healing agent, in regard to the darker sides of the human condition. People matter. You, and I, matter. When we suffer, as we all do, then we need to see, and to be seen, and to find words, and to make meaning, and to take heart--whether or not we are able to change anything. To do philosophy in the context of suffering is to move from aloneness to a recognition and felt sense of our common humanity. It is to shine the light of consciousness as intelligence, but also as compassion. It is to seek, and hopefully find, a transcendent point of view that can sustain us. Philosophical Counselling addresses the full spectrum of life, seeking inspiration to live better, challenging us to step onto our hero's journey, while also working at depth with the tragic, with our helplessness, grief, and suffering.
The combination: Philosophical Counselling
Philosophical Counselling as I practice it is the combination of philosophy and counselling. Based on the definitions above, it can be defined as:
1) Counselling's conversational skills, which elicit insight and motivation, especially at a psychological and practical level.
2) Counselling's empathetic, non-judgemental, and honest therapeutic relationship.
3) The knowledge which a counsellor possesses through formal training and through ongoing therapeutic experience.
4) The pursuit of wisdom, a transformation of how you see.
5) The cultivation of virtue, of your good qualities and potential.
6) An awareness and perhaps exploration of the writing of the sages and philosophers from across the ages.
7) The articulation of the depths of our experience for the sake of a richer, and also more compassionate, way of being.
The point of Philosophical Counselling is to do the mainstream therapeutic work that is needed, but to integrate that with the higher pursuit of the cultivation of wisdom and virtue, with all the benefits of that such as inner strength, courage, meaning, goodness, happiness, and flourishing. Often there is a feedback relationship between these two dimensions: in working on your specific challenges, we are working also on those deeper goals, and by working on those deeper goals, you are better able to work with your specific challenges. For some people the combination is important, and we do much classical therapeutic work as well as philosophical reflection. For other people the work is almost purely philosophical. In classical philosophy we have a profound resource for living with strength and meaning and goodness, which is too often neglected. Philosophical Counselling makes this great tradition available to people. It is for those who want more than mere satisfaction or psychological functioning or materialist success, and who want to go further to cultivate their better possibilities as human beings.
What is Philosophical Counselling? Because the approach is uncommon, this page is focused on providing a definition. I said on the homepage that Philosophical Counselling is a combination of philosophy and counselling. In what follows I will define counselling, and then philosophy, and then their combination as Philosophical Counselling. It is worth noting that these are my definitions, reflecting my training, experience, and views, and that other professionals in each of these three fields may define things differently.
I wrote here about the background which brought me to this work. In short, I found philosophy incredibly helpful for dealing with suffering and finding meaning in life, and I saw that its combination with counselling would create a very potent form of help for other people who are suffering, struggling, or who simply who want to make life better. So I studied counselling as well, and spent years in mainstream counselling roles honing my skills, all with the goal of eventually working purely as a philosophical counsellor.
I should add that Philosophical Counselling is for everybody. I come from a rural, working-class background of people who dropped out of highschool, as I did (I later went to university). My clients include academics and therapists, as well as people who have not read a book since they left highschool. Philosophical Counselling is suitable to anybody who is willing to work on insight and change. I tailor my work to the temperament, talents, and desires of each client.
Counselling
There are different ways of defining counselling. I define it in terms of three elements:
1) A set of conversational skills in listening, questioning and reflecting, aimed at eliciting clarity and motivation, which is to say, choice and change. This is the essence of counselling.
2) A therapeutic relationship that is empathetic, non-judgemental, and honest, which both enables you to look more lucidly at life and yourself, and to heal, grow, and move forward.
3) Therapeutic knowledge and experience, which includes the collective experience and insights of the field, plus empirical research, combined with the individual counsellor's training and experience.
I am a counsellor and a psychotherapist, though I prefer the former term because it is more open. By "open" I mean that counsellors like myself are trained and experience in an array of psychotherapies, and draw from them as needed, without dogmatic adherence. I have knowldge and skills from across a variety of humanistic, psychodynamic, and cognitive-behavioural therapies. Importantly, I went quite deep into a philosophical variation of humanistic therapy called Existential Therapy. That is an umbrella title for a cluster of related approaches such as those of Emmy van Deurzen, Irvin Yalom, and Viktor Frankl. All of these psychotherapies are integrated into my counselling, and that in turn is integrated with philosophy to form Philosophical Counselling.
One of the best things you can do for your life is to spend a period of time in counselling or psychotherapy, with a professional who can do deeper work. Just as you might go to personal training to benefit your body, psychotherapy helps you work on the psychological dimensions of your being, with the aim of greater insight, freedom, capability, and happiness. At the same time, therapy is limited. For we are more than our psychology: we are a mystery called consciousness, intelligence, free will, who seeks a life of genuine flourishing, meaning, strength, goodness, and wisdom. This is where philosophy comes in.
Philosophy
The word philosophy is a conjunction of two ancient Greek words, philos and sophia, which translates as love of wisdom. A philosopher is a lover of wisdom, or we might say, a pursuer of wisdom. What is wisdom? It can be thought of in two ways. First, wisdom is a more true and good vision of things. Second, wisdom is a virtue, and the beginning of all the virtues.
Wisdom as the more true and good....
We need a view of life, of our concerns, of ourselves, of each other, of reality, which is adequately true and good. We need such a view if we are to participate in what is good in life. We also need such a view in order to steer ourselves well: lessening the bad, increasing the good, and creating a meaningful individual life. A wise philosophy is a philosophy we can live by.
But what is wisdom? We tend to assume that it is knowledge--a true set of beliefs--but that is not quite right. Wisdom is a quality, or rather a collection of various qualities. It is all those qualities of the mind which are good and which lead to truth. Hence, to be wise is to perceive and think with courage, and justice, and curiosity, compassion, firmness, charity, rationality, and so on. Because these are qualities of the mind, we call them the "intellectual virtues." To see and think wisely, is to exercise the intellectual virtues. Philosophy is the recognition and cultivation of these virtues. This leads us to the second way of thinking about wisdom: as a virtue, and the beginning of all the virtues.
Wisdom as a virtue and the beginning of all the virtues....
The oldest recorded words of the Buddha state: "All that we are is the result of what we have thought: it is founded on our thoughts, it is made up of our thoughts." The Judeo-Christian proverbs claim: "As you think, so shall you be." This is an ancient and fundamental insight. To see in more true and good ways, to develop a virtuous mind, is important not only in itself, but because it has a flow-on effect. The state of your mind becomes the state of your whole being, including your emotions and actions. Hitherto a person might have been a bit of a coward, avoiding their fears even at the level of thought, but if they choose now to make a habit of looking at things with courage, then they will also start to feel more courageous in general, and to act with greater courage. At the levels of head, heart, and hands, they become a more courageous person. Again, hitherto a person loathed themselves, perhaps as a defense mechanism, but as they make an effort of seeing themselves with greater justice, compassion, reason, and so forth, they also come to feel differently about themselves, and to act as if they matter: they take care of themselves, they stand up for themselves, they start to trust and enjoy themselves. I could continue with examples related to any problem or any good quality in life. Importantly, the virtues are qualities you can intentionally cultivate. You can transform your life in this way.
So, there are virtues of thinking and seeing (called intellectual virtues), and virtues in feeling and acting (called character virtues). We can define any virtue as:
1) A good personal quality
2) Which you cultivate
3) Which makes you a better person
4) And which makes your life better.
They say that virtue is its own reward. I have suggested that virtues have both an intrinsic value--we care about them in themselves--and extrinsic value: they have flow-on effects, including transforming your whole way of being, but also and importantly, transforming your whole life. Some of the specific benefits of cultivating wisdom and virtue include increased:
Wisdom, as I have described above: a more true and good vision of things, which nourishes us, and which steers us well in life to avoid the bad and increase the good.
Inner strength, resilience, the ability to cope. We gain this through the virtues we cultivate, such as courage, fortitude, practical wisdom, reason, compassion, and so forth, and we gain it through the further consequences of such cultivation which include an increased sense of meaning, value, and purpose. We can see here that there is a unity to the virtues, each increasing the other.
Courage, which in conjunction with other virtues (creativity, truth, love) enables us to put our best foot forward.
Goodness, which is the heart of a meaningful and worthwhile life, no matter what else happens.
Meaning: a life of wisdom and virtue is a more meaningful way of living, and so it is a way being in which we experience a genuine, robust sense of meaning.
Happiness, which is partly a matter of chance, but also a consequence of our capacity for it. The virtues constitute the capacity for genuine happiness, and so its greater likelihood, while their lack (or opposites) can render us incapable of happiness.
Flourishing, which is to say doing well in life, regarding the things we care about. For some people that is a life of stability. For others it is a life of creativity. Or adventure. Or mission. Like happiness, flourishing is partly a matter of chance, but also it is are made far more likely by the virtues. And it is far less likely through their absence. In this respect it is sometimes said that "character is fate."
This philosophy is obviously quite different to modern and academic philosophy. That philosophy is more the love of theory, which is different to philosophy as the love of wisdom and virtue We can call my approach classical philosophy, for it is rooted in the work and spirit of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, and the movements which flowed from them such as Stoicism, Epicureanism, and Neoplatonism. Classical philosophy is the pursuit of the good life. It is guidance for living. I sometimes refer to it as a rational spirituality. Classical philosophy is a practical framework for dealing with everything in life in productive and meaningful ways. In every situation we can ask, how would a wise person see this, what would a wise person do. The tradition helps us to find concrete and profound answers to such questions. It guides us to see and think, and to feel and act, differently. It helps us become the kind of person we would rather be.
Philosophy as a treasury of wisdom....
In defining wisdom (above) I said that qualities are primary, and that beliefs and theories come second. Yet, as with counselling, philosophy is also a collection of thoughts, a building up of insights. Philosophy is "the great conversation," the library of the wisdom of the ages, the writing of some of humanity's finest hearts and minds regarding reality and the human condition and how to live. I bring this library of ideas into my conversations, drawing on philosophy from across the millennia to help shed light on people's concerns. I often recommend reading, tailored to you and your concerns.
Philosophy as attention to suffering....
While I am mostly oriented to classical philosophy, the subjectivist turn in modern philosophy is highly important, and highly influential on how I do Philosophical Counselling. As a philosopher, I am highly influenced by phenomenology and existentialism. Even moreso, I am greatly influenced by Ludwig Wittgenstein, the greatest philosopher of the twentieth century, whose philosophy is often rightly called therapeutic. Above all, I am a platonist (a philosopher influenced by Plato) who has focused on contemporary platonists such as Iris Murdoch, Simone Weil, and the Australians Christopher Cordner and Raimond Gaita. All of these approaches focus on articulating the depths of the implicit in our experience, the meaning and value which is before our eyes but which we fail to see, which moves us and which, when made explicit, can enlighten and further nourish us. This is obviously a highly relevant kind of philosophy for Philosophical Counselling. Importantly, alongside articulating the goodness in life, such philosophy makes a place for the tragedy of life. For life can be profoundly good, and that is central to my work, but life is also dark. Sometimes we can make heroic changes, but we cannot always "overcome." To be human is to be vulnerable, blind, and limited. It is to suffer, and sometimes to be degraded, or corrupted. To do philosophy as I do it, is to pay attention to this too, and to understand and respond to it in meaningful ways. Simone Weil wrote that "attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity." Elsewhere she speaks of such attention as "a just and loving gaze." We need to pay attention for the reasons I spoke of above--to see and be nourished by the good stuff, and to navigate life well--but we can also emphasise the value of attention as an ethical and healing agent, in regard to the darker sides of the human condition. People matter. You, and I, matter. When we suffer, as we all do, then we need to see, and to be seen, and to find words, and to make meaning, and to take heart--whether or not we are able to change anything. To do philosophy in the context of suffering is to move from aloneness to a recognition and felt sense of our common humanity. It is to shine the light of consciousness as intelligence, but also as compassion. It is to seek, and hopefully find, a transcendent point of view that can sustain us. Philosophical Counselling addresses the full spectrum of life, seeking inspiration to live better, challenging us to step onto our hero's journey, while also working at depth with the tragic, with our helplessness, grief, and suffering.
The combination: Philosophical Counselling
Philosophical Counselling as I practice it is the combination of philosophy and counselling. Based on the definitions above, it can be defined as:
1) Counselling's conversational skills, which elicit insight and motivation, especially at a psychological and practical level.
2) Counselling's empathetic, non-judgemental, and honest therapeutic relationship.
3) The knowledge which a counsellor possesses through formal training and through ongoing therapeutic experience.
4) The pursuit of wisdom, a transformation of how you see.
5) The cultivation of virtue, of your good qualities and potential.
6) An awareness and perhaps exploration of the writing of the sages and philosophers from across the ages.
7) The articulation of the depths of our experience for the sake of a richer, and also more compassionate, way of being.
The point of Philosophical Counselling is to do the mainstream therapeutic work that is needed, but to integrate that with the higher pursuit of the cultivation of wisdom and virtue, with all the benefits of that such as inner strength, courage, meaning, goodness, happiness, and flourishing. Often there is a feedback relationship between these two dimensions: in working on your specific challenges, we are working also on those deeper goals, and by working on those deeper goals, you are better able to work with your specific challenges. For some people the combination is important, and we do much classical therapeutic work as well as philosophical reflection. For other people the work is almost purely philosophical. In classical philosophy we have a profound resource for living with strength and meaning and goodness, which is too often neglected. Philosophical Counselling makes this great tradition available to people. It is for those who want more than mere satisfaction or psychological functioning or materialist success, and who want to go further to cultivate their better possibilities as human beings.
