What is Philosophical Counselling?
Philosophical Counselling is very old--a revival of how philosophy was done in ancient Greece and Rome--but it is also new, having developed again as an idea during the second half of the twentieth century. It now boasts professional associations, conferences, publications, and the like in Europe and America.
Each philosophical counsellor will work differently, based on their philosophical commitments, temperament, and interpersonal skills. Many take a very academic approach, which reflects also the theoretical mindset of modern philosophy. In my case, I came to philosophy as a rural, working-class, high-school drop-out. I was gripped by classical philosophy--Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics and so forth--and its ability to help me cope with life's suffering and hardships and to find meaning and happiness. I went on to teach philosophy at The University of Melbourne and did very well academically, but what I love about philosophy, and how I work and live as a philosopher, reflects that ancient mindset. Philosophy should challenge, guide, and transform who you are and how you live. It was for this reason I that I decided to become a philosophical counsellor, working independently. In what follows I will describe my service in some detail. I will start with my studies in counselling and its impact on my work today, and then move to philosophy as I practice it, and then summarise my Philosophical Counselling.
Counselling, Psychotherapy
It was while teaching philosophy that I discovered the practice of Philosophical Counselling. I realised instantly that this was to be my career and passion. There is no formal pathway to such a career in Australia--nobody else was doing this here--so I had to make it up. It seemed obvious that I should study a degree in counselling, to develop the psychological insight and the higher-level conversational skills that I would need for such work. So I studied multiple qualifications across time in counselling and psychotherapy, including ultimately a masters degree. My original intention was do no more than that, when it came to mainstream therapy, however the study led to a passion for psychotherapy in itself, and to offers of work. Ultimately, I spent fifteen years as a mainstream therapist working in 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, and management coaching for interpersonal skills. I designed and delivered training to counsellors, and was head-hunted multiple times to teach counselling at tertiary institutions (which I always turned down, due to time constraints). I was registered with the national counselling association at their most senior level. I did all this work while continuing to teach philosophy until 2014, at which point I started a private practice alongside that organisational work.
People often confuse Counselling with Psychology, but they are very different. At the risk of grossly simplifying the matter, Psychology today is increasingly based on "the medical model" and draws many of its concepts from Psychiatry (especially through the DSM). By contrast, Counselling and Psychotherapy as I used trained in them are not at all clinical, but focused rather on the generation of insight, motivation, and personal growth in the client. (Today there a movements to make counselling more clinical, so as to gain access to Medicare rebates and the like, which in my opinion is a deeply misguided and destructive move.)
Through my studies, both formal and informal (I was a voracious learner), I developed knowledge and skills across many of the major therapies, including the humanistic, psychodynamic, and cognitive-behavioural fields. Above all, however, I went deep into an approach known as Existential Therapy. That is a philosophical approach to mainstream counselling and psychotherapy. There are many versions of it, including those of van Deurzen, Spinelli, Yalom, Frankl, Cannon, and others. My private practice focused on Existential Therapy, and I built a reputation in that field.
Why did I not simply remain an Existential Therapist? After all, it is philosophical, it is much more established than Philosophical Counselling, it is more popular, and so on. Why did I not conclude that this was the true destination, a mainstream therapist who practices this more philosophical modality? For a start, it is obvious to me both as a philosopher, and as somebody very experienced in the approach, that Existential Therapy is a therapeutic version of existential (and phenomenological) philosophy. In many ways that is a good thing, but it is also a significant limitation. One reason is that existentialism seeks to provide an antidote to the nihilism of modernity, however it does so in a way which assumes that the story modernity tells is true. Modernity presents a mechanical, reductive vision of life. In such a vision, life loses meaning. Existentialism seeks to creatively or willfully rebel as a way of overcoming that nihilism, but while that might appear to work for monied intellectuals in a cafe, it is not enough in real life. I say this as a therapist who worked for years talking to people who were standing on bridges or before nooses. As a philosopher rooted in ancient philosophy, both East and West, but especially Plato and Aristotle, neither am I so sure that modernity's vision is true. What I am certain about, is that there are alternative visions.
This issue extends to therapy more broadly. Our society has replaced religion with Psychiatry, Psychology, and Psychotherapy ("the therapeutic society" as Reiff and Lasch called it). During the 20th century, our therapeutic society taught us to see ourselves as psychological mechanisms. Now in the 21st century, it teaches us to see ourselves through the lens of psychiatric disorders, which have become identities, and sources of value (often weaponised). All these disciplines are becoming also grossly commercialised, in ways that are highly degrading of those professions' standards, scientific standing, and public authority and, more importantly, damaging to the culture and to individuals. The result of this therapeutic society is that people objectify themselves and each other, which creates narcissism and nihilism. People also become more passive with regard to their inner lives and moral character, awaiting the experts and technology. Perhaps this explains why, as the culture becomes ever more therapeutic, people seem to become ever more disordered.
By contrast, Plato and Aristotle challenge us to become far more capable in life, and in a way that is profoundly meaningful. We learn to draw on and cultivate our own capacities rather than any expertise or technology. Life becomes more of a "hero's journey." Aristotle gives us detailed guidance in how to do this. He developed a sophisticated psychology which is arguably superior to that modern, reductive version. Of course, most people--including those who have formally studied (modern) philosophy--are ignorant of what Aristotle said, are impoverished by our culture even as these riches lie there, available, beneath our feet as our heritage.
I have spent my life studying, and seeking to live, by the riches of such philosophy. It is the essence of my philosophical counselling: to offer others these riches, this transformation. Of course, it makes a very great difference to my philosophical counselling that I spent two decades devoted in mainstream therapy, especially Existential Therapy. I just spoke of the misgivings I have about mainstream therapy, which are based partly on my experience as a therapist. I love therapy, but it has become a two-edged sword, and we should take the good and be careful about the other side. My decades of study and work in mainstream therapy have given my what I sought, when I first decided to study them on the path to Philosophical Counselling: far greater psychological skills and knowledge, greatly enriches my work today. After all, Philosophical Counselling should be wise, and it is unwise to narrow our lens too much when it comes to helping people, who are made up of various elements, including the psychological alongside their more conscious powers. Let us move on to those more conscious powers, the work of intellect and will, or wisdom and virtue. The work of seeing clearly, taking meaningful action, and becoming a more virtuous person in all the different ways that make life good.
Philosophy
As a philosopher, I am rooted in the classical Western tradition of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, which continues through Stoicism (Epictetus, Aurelius), Neoplatonism (Plotinus), and Scholasticism (Aquinas), through the Renaissance and up to our time among certain philosophers. 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, and so a pursuer of wisdom. This is often passed over in haste. I remember a very clever but superficial academic philosopher telling me that philosophy means love of knowledge. That definition may suit a pure intellectual, but it is wrong: we pursue wisdom. We fall in love with wisdom, and so are challenged and changed by it. Note also, that a philosopher is not a sophist--a wise person--but rather always a lover of wisdom. Following Socrates, we always recognise that humility is the beginning of wisdom.
What is wisdom? Here are three answers that are highly relevant to Philosophical Counselling:
1) Wisdom is a more true and good vision of things as a whole.
2) Wisdom is the ability to understand a situation, and to make good practical judgements and decisions.
3) Wisdom is a virtue, and the beginning of all the virtues.
With respect to the first form of wisdom, we need a vision of life as a whole which is adequately true and good. Most people are dissatisfied with fantasy and self-hypnosis--they want a picture of life that is as true as possible. But what if we find two pictures which are both rationally compelling? Imagine that one throws acid on life's meaning, or encourages callousness, while the other is rich in its sense of the meaning of life and of other people. Some people are attracted to the first kind of answer, but I prefer the second, as do most reflective people. My point is that, alongside truth, we need an understanding of life that is as good as possible. Our inner life, and our way of being, are shaped by the kind of picture we hold of the world and of life. Aristotle refers to this as "theoretical wisdom," though today we would say "philosophical wisdom."
With respect to the second definition, we need the wisdom to steer ourselves well at a practical, daily level: to navigate people and situations, to make good decisions, to lessen the bad and increase the good. We need to know what to do and how to do it. Aristotle called this "practical wisdom." Of course, this practical wisdom, and the above theoretical wisdom, are mutually dependent. A failure in one typically worsens the other, and an improvement in one typically improves the other. As I said above: Our inner life, and our way of being, are shaped by the kind of picture we hold of the world and of life.
We come to the third definition. What is wisdom made of? In modernity we assume it is knowledge--a set of true beliefs--or a technical capacity, but that is not right. Wisdom is a quality, or rather, it is the exercise of various personal qualities. Wisdom is all those qualities of the mind which are good and which lead to truth. In classical philosophy we have a name for such good qualities: virtues. On this website I keep referring to wisdom and virtue as if they are two different things, but actually wisdom is a virtue too, and the beginning of all the virtues." The ancient Greek word for a virtue is arete, which means a human excellence. The virtues are our best qualities as human beings. They are intentional habits we have developed--achievements--and so they are distinct from those dispositions which nature and nurture happen to have given us. A virtue is something you choose to work on.
There are different categories of virtue. Wisdom is the exercise of what Aristotle called the intellectual virtues. The intellectual virtues, or wisdom, include that first type I mentioned above: theoretical wisdom, a vision of life in general, as well as all the knowledge which is valued for its own sake. The intellectual virtues include also the second type above: practical wisdom. I mean rationality or critical thinking, plus intellectual forms of courage, justice, self-control, creativity, and so on. Again, these are all qualities that you can choose to cultivate. Philosophy is the work of understanding these virtues, and gaining insight into their presence and absence in you, and then cultivating the virtues that make for wisdom. That make you into a more courageous, reasonable, just, empathetic, creative (et cetera) thinker.
I have just defined wisdom as the practice of the intellectual virtues. I have explained how there are two categories of the intellectual virtues: theoretical wisdom, which is the getting of knowledge in itself, and practical wisdom, which is the good use of knowledge through the exercise of intellectual virtues--all those good qualities of mind such as reason and justice. If the intellectual virtues, both theoretic and practical, constitute one over-all category, the other over-all category is the moral virtues.
The word "moral" is used more lightly and widely than in contemporary society, where the meaning has been narrow and moralistic. In philosophy, moral simply refers to any form of meaning and value. Joy and friendship are moral phenomena. The moral virtues are all those good qualities, or habits, of character, of emotion and action. To devlop the moral virtues is, for example, to become more habitually courageous, even when you are not reflecting on the matter. It is to make your habitual emotions more reasonable, more just and compassion, to inject them with more self-respect, and so on.
We see here how "wholistic" classical philosophy is. Behavioural psychology has borrowed much from it, but behaviourism reduces us to machines. Classical philosophy integrates all those practices of repetition and so forth, into a bigger picture of reflection, of deeper consciousness, a richer sense of meaning embedded in all that we do. We are not merely shaping behaviour in order to function better, we are cultivating meaningful, good ways of being, in order to be happier, to live more meaningfully, and to be more intelligently skillful and to flourish generally in life.
The benefits of wisdom and virtue
The intellectual virtues (virtues at the level of the mind) can be distinguished from the character virtues (virtues at the level of feeling, desire, and action). Both levels share many of the same virtues, for example courage, yet courage differs at the level of the head, versus courage of the heart, versus courage of the hands. There are also important differences between people's aptitudes. Some people are more present in their head, some more in their heart, and some more in their hands. People also have differing virtues and vices from one another. (The Stoics would say that this is why we are a community, just as the hands, eyes, and feet are all very different but form a community.) It is good to work on increasing and widening the virtues within yourself. Generally this presents itself as a need. For example, you may have the courage to look squarely at your own deeper fears, but not the courage to push back on others, while the next person has the opposite problem. Or you might be highly rational, but deficient in empathy, or vice versa. These imbalances, these deficiences in our mind and character, cause many of the problems in our life, of the kind that people typically bring to mainstream counselling. They also diminish who we are, in terms of character. Life can improve greatly if we work on shaping ourselves to become more wise and virtuous, starting with the obvious deficiences.
To develop your wisdom and virtue is to become a person who is naturally stronger, happier, more ethical, and who finds daily life, and life as a whole, more meaningful. It is likewise to become less despondent, less fearful, less angry, less bored, less insecure, and so on. Such philosophical work is more powerful than anything else we can do to improve our lives. Importantly, it lies in your power to do this work on your wisdom and virtue, and the training equipment needed to strengthen and hone that is simply your life. The virtues are qualities you can intentionally cultivate. You can transform your life in this way.
In summary, 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.
Classical philosophy developed a rich paradigm for understanding and cultivating wisdom and virtue. This is why we call it "a guide to life." During the 20th century we slowly abandoned this focus on wisdom and virtue, in favour of a technocratic view of ourselves, reduced to the lens of behavioural psychology and psychiatry. That trend had some benefits, but also many significant costs. The greatest change and most good happens through your effort of head and heart, intellect and will, wisdom and virtue. We need to rediscover this ancient classical path, which is our truest source of strength, ability, and goodness, no matter what our challenges. This is what I am doing as a philosophical counsellor. Of course, you do not need me to do this work. For this work is fundamentally something you do within yourself, it is not something another does to you as when a doctor or clinical psychologist does diagnoses and treats to you. Yet, a philosopher who is an experienced, mature, skillful guide on this path, is likely to be invaluable. This is especially the case if they practice their philosophy with the relational and conversational skills of counselling is defined above, which as I said elicit insight, motivation, change, and growth.
In summary, 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 provides meaning, 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 stand up, to show up, and 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 that 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 made far more likely by the virtues. And it is rendered less likely through their absence. In this respect it is sometimes said that "character is fate."
A further point about the first aspect of wisdom: forms of contemplation
While I am rooted in classical philosophy, Western philosophy is a 2500 year old tradition and there is richness to be found throughout that history. For example, an area to which I have given much time is the modern Platonists, such as Simone Weil and Iris Murdoch, as well as the Australians Raimond Gaita and Christopher Cordner. Furthermore, Existential Therapy is, for me, Philosophical Counselling as the practice of existentialism, hermeneutics, and phenomenology, the practice of the philosophy of Martin Heidegger and others associated with him. Again, another strong influence on me is Ludwig Wittgenstein. I name these examples because they are highly influential on me, and because here we are are dealing here with a more contemplative side to philosophy. A side that brings a richness to our capacity to gain wisdom at the level of the big picture, but through an analysis of the depths of what is before us: in the reality, people, struggles, and self, that we encounter.
Such philosophy articulates the depths of the implicit in our experience. I am speaking of the meaning and value which is before our eyes but which we fail to see. Which implicity moves us and which, when made explicit, can do more than that: can enlighten and nourish us. Can give us clarity, and give life greater meaning. In describing his psychoanalytic method, Freud wrote that "He that has eyes to see and ears to hear may convince himself that no mortal can keep a secret. If his lips are silent, he chatters with his fingertips; betrayal oozes out of him at every pore." My philosophical education taught me a similar method. Thanks to philosophers like Christopher Cordner, I learned to pay careful attention to the difference between what people say, and what they show. We could also frame that as a discernment of the implicit in what people say. We are often blind to the ethical richness in our lives. We are like a person starving to death because we do not recognise the food growing around us. Or we are like a fish who does not see the water in which it swims, and despairs at the lack of its perceived presence. Much of the despair and nihilism which infects people can be overcome through the work of changing ourselves in terms of wisdom and virtue--living in a higher way--but that begins with a higher vision. Such a vision must be good, but also true. This is the work of truth: we discern meaning and reality here in our concrete lives. That becomes the groundwork of a higher vision. I often have clients say, "I don't know how you do this!" Well, this is how I do it. We are blind. There is more in front of our eyes, if only we would learn to look. Philosophy is guidance and training in such looking. It makes the implicit explicit. It gives voice, it speaks reality, it speaks the greater fullness.
Alongside its capacity for articulating the implicit forms of goodness and meaning in life, my philosophy also makes a place for an understanding the darker sides of life. For life can be profoundly good, and that is central to my work, but life is also tragic and cruel. Sometimes we can make heroic changes, but we cannot always "overcome." For 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. Such responses are manifold in their possibilities, but here is one example. 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 not only in good times but also in bad. 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 our vulnerability, grief, and suffering.
Philosophy as a library, and a cultural inheritance
I would like to end by adding that philosophy also constitutes a written resource. It is a library of ideas. To quote Mortimer J. Adler, it is "the great conversation." I often recommend clients read Plato or the Stoics or secondary literature on a range of philosophical topics. I do that with respect to the client's specific challenges, and with a view to the broader work and benefits of this wisdom-tradition. Philosophical Counselling is in a sense a form of tutoring: I am teaching you to be a philosopher. I do not mean an academic, rather I mean what it says on the label: a philosopher is a lover of wisdom. They live in a certain way, in the love of wisdom, in its pursuit, in the cultivation of virtue. This is a meaningful life to live. Philosophy is a literary framework, almost a rational spirituality, around which you can build a practice of reading and reflection, which flows into your effort and action of daily life. People who cannot find their way to reading can see me anyway, for the core of philosophy is conversation. However, this further element is also on offer.
I recommend that people read, for the above reasons. I also often recommend activities which appear relevant for the individual and their improvement, whether that be spending time in nature, or attending social gatherings, or creating a personal retreat at certain intervals. Beyond this, there is another reason for recommending philosophical reading, and wider forms of reading and cultural engagement. Philosophy is a cultural practice. We find a version of philosophy in all great traditional civilisations. For example, one of my closest friends has dedicated her working life to activities grounded in Hindu philosophy and spirituality. In my case, as I say, I am embedded in, and in love with, the tradition which is native to me, which flows from ancient Greece, through Rome, into Western Europe. I love its traditional philosophy, but also its tradition of great and beautiful literature, art, music, and spirituality. This wider dimension is has pressed itself on me as important, especially because many people lack of a rich inner life, and while that is not a problem for all people, for many it is an absolute lack, a void in their life. Often this void is their normal state, so while they suffer from this lack, they do not recognise the problem. A lack of a rich inner life can include the absence of an inner culture, a word which in Middle English denotes a cultivated piece of land. A good garden in which to live. A mind that is a good place to be inside. I encourage people to engage with the wider riches of the Western inheritance. In a sense that is compatible even with a secular commitement, we can say that these riches have a spiritual value. They enrich and strengthen, they console and give meaning, they warn and enlighten, they orient and reveal. Consider the heroic and tragic poetry of Homer's Iliad, or the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, or the ethical vision of the New Testament, or the rational spirituality of Roman Stoicism, or the mystical beauty of Plotinus' Neoplatonism, or the sacred architecture of the middle ages--which is mirrored in the cathedral-like philosophical achievements of Thomas Aquinas--or the sublime sculpture of the Renaissance, or the tragic self-awareness of Shakespeare, or the transcendent beauty of Bach, or the glowing world of Romantic poetry, or the psychological richness of the nineteenth century novel, or the over-view of the twentieth century historian. Life looks and feels very different when you feed yourself on a diet of such an inheritance. I am a student of Plato, who spoke of truth, and of goodness, but equally of beauty, as food for the soul.
The combination: Philosophical Counselling
Philosophical Counselling as I practice it, is philosophical guidance within the framework of counselling. Based on what I have said above, we can list some of the ingrediants of this approach. I am listing these in the order I discussed them above, though of course 4, 5, and 6 are the most important ingrediants.
1) Counselling's conversational skills, which elicit insight, motivation, growth, and change.
2) A therapeutic relationship that is empathetic, non-judgemental, and truth-seeking.
3) A rich background of psychological know-how, from my years as a psychotherapist.
4) The philosophical pursuit of wisdom: a transformation of how you see.
5) The cultivation of virtue: a transformation of your way of being.
6) The work of making the implicit explicit, with respect to meaning and value.
7) A rich cultural inheritance that is on offer to clients in terms of recommendations.
In classical philosophy we have a profound resource for living with strength and meaning and goodness. Philosophical Counselling as I practice it, makes this great tradition available to people today, in a sophisticated form which draws on psychotherapy as well. It is for people who want more than mere satisfaction or functioning or materialist success. Philosophical Counselling is for people who want to see life with far greater richness and depth, and to cultivate their better possibilities as human beings, and to deal with their problems and to make life better in that way.
Philosophical Counselling is very old--a revival of how philosophy was done in ancient Greece and Rome--but it is also new, having developed again as an idea during the second half of the twentieth century. It now boasts professional associations, conferences, publications, and the like in Europe and America.
Each philosophical counsellor will work differently, based on their philosophical commitments, temperament, and interpersonal skills. Many take a very academic approach, which reflects also the theoretical mindset of modern philosophy. In my case, I came to philosophy as a rural, working-class, high-school drop-out. I was gripped by classical philosophy--Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics and so forth--and its ability to help me cope with life's suffering and hardships and to find meaning and happiness. I went on to teach philosophy at The University of Melbourne and did very well academically, but what I love about philosophy, and how I work and live as a philosopher, reflects that ancient mindset. Philosophy should challenge, guide, and transform who you are and how you live. It was for this reason I that I decided to become a philosophical counsellor, working independently. In what follows I will describe my service in some detail. I will start with my studies in counselling and its impact on my work today, and then move to philosophy as I practice it, and then summarise my Philosophical Counselling.
Counselling, Psychotherapy
It was while teaching philosophy that I discovered the practice of Philosophical Counselling. I realised instantly that this was to be my career and passion. There is no formal pathway to such a career in Australia--nobody else was doing this here--so I had to make it up. It seemed obvious that I should study a degree in counselling, to develop the psychological insight and the higher-level conversational skills that I would need for such work. So I studied multiple qualifications across time in counselling and psychotherapy, including ultimately a masters degree. My original intention was do no more than that, when it came to mainstream therapy, however the study led to a passion for psychotherapy in itself, and to offers of work. Ultimately, I spent fifteen years as a mainstream therapist working in 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, and management coaching for interpersonal skills. I designed and delivered training to counsellors, and was head-hunted multiple times to teach counselling at tertiary institutions (which I always turned down, due to time constraints). I was registered with the national counselling association at their most senior level. I did all this work while continuing to teach philosophy until 2014, at which point I started a private practice alongside that organisational work.
People often confuse Counselling with Psychology, but they are very different. At the risk of grossly simplifying the matter, Psychology today is increasingly based on "the medical model" and draws many of its concepts from Psychiatry (especially through the DSM). By contrast, Counselling and Psychotherapy as I used trained in them are not at all clinical, but focused rather on the generation of insight, motivation, and personal growth in the client. (Today there a movements to make counselling more clinical, so as to gain access to Medicare rebates and the like, which in my opinion is a deeply misguided and destructive move.)
Through my studies, both formal and informal (I was a voracious learner), I developed knowledge and skills across many of the major therapies, including the humanistic, psychodynamic, and cognitive-behavioural fields. Above all, however, I went deep into an approach known as Existential Therapy. That is a philosophical approach to mainstream counselling and psychotherapy. There are many versions of it, including those of van Deurzen, Spinelli, Yalom, Frankl, Cannon, and others. My private practice focused on Existential Therapy, and I built a reputation in that field.
Why did I not simply remain an Existential Therapist? After all, it is philosophical, it is much more established than Philosophical Counselling, it is more popular, and so on. Why did I not conclude that this was the true destination, a mainstream therapist who practices this more philosophical modality? For a start, it is obvious to me both as a philosopher, and as somebody very experienced in the approach, that Existential Therapy is a therapeutic version of existential (and phenomenological) philosophy. In many ways that is a good thing, but it is also a significant limitation. One reason is that existentialism seeks to provide an antidote to the nihilism of modernity, however it does so in a way which assumes that the story modernity tells is true. Modernity presents a mechanical, reductive vision of life. In such a vision, life loses meaning. Existentialism seeks to creatively or willfully rebel as a way of overcoming that nihilism, but while that might appear to work for monied intellectuals in a cafe, it is not enough in real life. I say this as a therapist who worked for years talking to people who were standing on bridges or before nooses. As a philosopher rooted in ancient philosophy, both East and West, but especially Plato and Aristotle, neither am I so sure that modernity's vision is true. What I am certain about, is that there are alternative visions.
This issue extends to therapy more broadly. Our society has replaced religion with Psychiatry, Psychology, and Psychotherapy ("the therapeutic society" as Reiff and Lasch called it). During the 20th century, our therapeutic society taught us to see ourselves as psychological mechanisms. Now in the 21st century, it teaches us to see ourselves through the lens of psychiatric disorders, which have become identities, and sources of value (often weaponised). All these disciplines are becoming also grossly commercialised, in ways that are highly degrading of those professions' standards, scientific standing, and public authority and, more importantly, damaging to the culture and to individuals. The result of this therapeutic society is that people objectify themselves and each other, which creates narcissism and nihilism. People also become more passive with regard to their inner lives and moral character, awaiting the experts and technology. Perhaps this explains why, as the culture becomes ever more therapeutic, people seem to become ever more disordered.
By contrast, Plato and Aristotle challenge us to become far more capable in life, and in a way that is profoundly meaningful. We learn to draw on and cultivate our own capacities rather than any expertise or technology. Life becomes more of a "hero's journey." Aristotle gives us detailed guidance in how to do this. He developed a sophisticated psychology which is arguably superior to that modern, reductive version. Of course, most people--including those who have formally studied (modern) philosophy--are ignorant of what Aristotle said, are impoverished by our culture even as these riches lie there, available, beneath our feet as our heritage.
I have spent my life studying, and seeking to live, by the riches of such philosophy. It is the essence of my philosophical counselling: to offer others these riches, this transformation. Of course, it makes a very great difference to my philosophical counselling that I spent two decades devoted in mainstream therapy, especially Existential Therapy. I just spoke of the misgivings I have about mainstream therapy, which are based partly on my experience as a therapist. I love therapy, but it has become a two-edged sword, and we should take the good and be careful about the other side. My decades of study and work in mainstream therapy have given my what I sought, when I first decided to study them on the path to Philosophical Counselling: far greater psychological skills and knowledge, greatly enriches my work today. After all, Philosophical Counselling should be wise, and it is unwise to narrow our lens too much when it comes to helping people, who are made up of various elements, including the psychological alongside their more conscious powers. Let us move on to those more conscious powers, the work of intellect and will, or wisdom and virtue. The work of seeing clearly, taking meaningful action, and becoming a more virtuous person in all the different ways that make life good.
Philosophy
As a philosopher, I am rooted in the classical Western tradition of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, which continues through Stoicism (Epictetus, Aurelius), Neoplatonism (Plotinus), and Scholasticism (Aquinas), through the Renaissance and up to our time among certain philosophers. 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, and so a pursuer of wisdom. This is often passed over in haste. I remember a very clever but superficial academic philosopher telling me that philosophy means love of knowledge. That definition may suit a pure intellectual, but it is wrong: we pursue wisdom. We fall in love with wisdom, and so are challenged and changed by it. Note also, that a philosopher is not a sophist--a wise person--but rather always a lover of wisdom. Following Socrates, we always recognise that humility is the beginning of wisdom.
What is wisdom? Here are three answers that are highly relevant to Philosophical Counselling:
1) Wisdom is a more true and good vision of things as a whole.
2) Wisdom is the ability to understand a situation, and to make good practical judgements and decisions.
3) Wisdom is a virtue, and the beginning of all the virtues.
With respect to the first form of wisdom, we need a vision of life as a whole which is adequately true and good. Most people are dissatisfied with fantasy and self-hypnosis--they want a picture of life that is as true as possible. But what if we find two pictures which are both rationally compelling? Imagine that one throws acid on life's meaning, or encourages callousness, while the other is rich in its sense of the meaning of life and of other people. Some people are attracted to the first kind of answer, but I prefer the second, as do most reflective people. My point is that, alongside truth, we need an understanding of life that is as good as possible. Our inner life, and our way of being, are shaped by the kind of picture we hold of the world and of life. Aristotle refers to this as "theoretical wisdom," though today we would say "philosophical wisdom."
With respect to the second definition, we need the wisdom to steer ourselves well at a practical, daily level: to navigate people and situations, to make good decisions, to lessen the bad and increase the good. We need to know what to do and how to do it. Aristotle called this "practical wisdom." Of course, this practical wisdom, and the above theoretical wisdom, are mutually dependent. A failure in one typically worsens the other, and an improvement in one typically improves the other. As I said above: Our inner life, and our way of being, are shaped by the kind of picture we hold of the world and of life.
We come to the third definition. What is wisdom made of? In modernity we assume it is knowledge--a set of true beliefs--or a technical capacity, but that is not right. Wisdom is a quality, or rather, it is the exercise of various personal qualities. Wisdom is all those qualities of the mind which are good and which lead to truth. In classical philosophy we have a name for such good qualities: virtues. On this website I keep referring to wisdom and virtue as if they are two different things, but actually wisdom is a virtue too, and the beginning of all the virtues." The ancient Greek word for a virtue is arete, which means a human excellence. The virtues are our best qualities as human beings. They are intentional habits we have developed--achievements--and so they are distinct from those dispositions which nature and nurture happen to have given us. A virtue is something you choose to work on.
There are different categories of virtue. Wisdom is the exercise of what Aristotle called the intellectual virtues. The intellectual virtues, or wisdom, include that first type I mentioned above: theoretical wisdom, a vision of life in general, as well as all the knowledge which is valued for its own sake. The intellectual virtues include also the second type above: practical wisdom. I mean rationality or critical thinking, plus intellectual forms of courage, justice, self-control, creativity, and so on. Again, these are all qualities that you can choose to cultivate. Philosophy is the work of understanding these virtues, and gaining insight into their presence and absence in you, and then cultivating the virtues that make for wisdom. That make you into a more courageous, reasonable, just, empathetic, creative (et cetera) thinker.
I have just defined wisdom as the practice of the intellectual virtues. I have explained how there are two categories of the intellectual virtues: theoretical wisdom, which is the getting of knowledge in itself, and practical wisdom, which is the good use of knowledge through the exercise of intellectual virtues--all those good qualities of mind such as reason and justice. If the intellectual virtues, both theoretic and practical, constitute one over-all category, the other over-all category is the moral virtues.
The word "moral" is used more lightly and widely than in contemporary society, where the meaning has been narrow and moralistic. In philosophy, moral simply refers to any form of meaning and value. Joy and friendship are moral phenomena. The moral virtues are all those good qualities, or habits, of character, of emotion and action. To devlop the moral virtues is, for example, to become more habitually courageous, even when you are not reflecting on the matter. It is to make your habitual emotions more reasonable, more just and compassion, to inject them with more self-respect, and so on.
We see here how "wholistic" classical philosophy is. Behavioural psychology has borrowed much from it, but behaviourism reduces us to machines. Classical philosophy integrates all those practices of repetition and so forth, into a bigger picture of reflection, of deeper consciousness, a richer sense of meaning embedded in all that we do. We are not merely shaping behaviour in order to function better, we are cultivating meaningful, good ways of being, in order to be happier, to live more meaningfully, and to be more intelligently skillful and to flourish generally in life.
The benefits of wisdom and virtue
The intellectual virtues (virtues at the level of the mind) can be distinguished from the character virtues (virtues at the level of feeling, desire, and action). Both levels share many of the same virtues, for example courage, yet courage differs at the level of the head, versus courage of the heart, versus courage of the hands. There are also important differences between people's aptitudes. Some people are more present in their head, some more in their heart, and some more in their hands. People also have differing virtues and vices from one another. (The Stoics would say that this is why we are a community, just as the hands, eyes, and feet are all very different but form a community.) It is good to work on increasing and widening the virtues within yourself. Generally this presents itself as a need. For example, you may have the courage to look squarely at your own deeper fears, but not the courage to push back on others, while the next person has the opposite problem. Or you might be highly rational, but deficient in empathy, or vice versa. These imbalances, these deficiences in our mind and character, cause many of the problems in our life, of the kind that people typically bring to mainstream counselling. They also diminish who we are, in terms of character. Life can improve greatly if we work on shaping ourselves to become more wise and virtuous, starting with the obvious deficiences.
To develop your wisdom and virtue is to become a person who is naturally stronger, happier, more ethical, and who finds daily life, and life as a whole, more meaningful. It is likewise to become less despondent, less fearful, less angry, less bored, less insecure, and so on. Such philosophical work is more powerful than anything else we can do to improve our lives. Importantly, it lies in your power to do this work on your wisdom and virtue, and the training equipment needed to strengthen and hone that is simply your life. The virtues are qualities you can intentionally cultivate. You can transform your life in this way.
In summary, 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.
Classical philosophy developed a rich paradigm for understanding and cultivating wisdom and virtue. This is why we call it "a guide to life." During the 20th century we slowly abandoned this focus on wisdom and virtue, in favour of a technocratic view of ourselves, reduced to the lens of behavioural psychology and psychiatry. That trend had some benefits, but also many significant costs. The greatest change and most good happens through your effort of head and heart, intellect and will, wisdom and virtue. We need to rediscover this ancient classical path, which is our truest source of strength, ability, and goodness, no matter what our challenges. This is what I am doing as a philosophical counsellor. Of course, you do not need me to do this work. For this work is fundamentally something you do within yourself, it is not something another does to you as when a doctor or clinical psychologist does diagnoses and treats to you. Yet, a philosopher who is an experienced, mature, skillful guide on this path, is likely to be invaluable. This is especially the case if they practice their philosophy with the relational and conversational skills of counselling is defined above, which as I said elicit insight, motivation, change, and growth.
In summary, 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 provides meaning, 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 stand up, to show up, and 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 that 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 made far more likely by the virtues. And it is rendered less likely through their absence. In this respect it is sometimes said that "character is fate."
A further point about the first aspect of wisdom: forms of contemplation
While I am rooted in classical philosophy, Western philosophy is a 2500 year old tradition and there is richness to be found throughout that history. For example, an area to which I have given much time is the modern Platonists, such as Simone Weil and Iris Murdoch, as well as the Australians Raimond Gaita and Christopher Cordner. Furthermore, Existential Therapy is, for me, Philosophical Counselling as the practice of existentialism, hermeneutics, and phenomenology, the practice of the philosophy of Martin Heidegger and others associated with him. Again, another strong influence on me is Ludwig Wittgenstein. I name these examples because they are highly influential on me, and because here we are are dealing here with a more contemplative side to philosophy. A side that brings a richness to our capacity to gain wisdom at the level of the big picture, but through an analysis of the depths of what is before us: in the reality, people, struggles, and self, that we encounter.
Such philosophy articulates the depths of the implicit in our experience. I am speaking of the meaning and value which is before our eyes but which we fail to see. Which implicity moves us and which, when made explicit, can do more than that: can enlighten and nourish us. Can give us clarity, and give life greater meaning. In describing his psychoanalytic method, Freud wrote that "He that has eyes to see and ears to hear may convince himself that no mortal can keep a secret. If his lips are silent, he chatters with his fingertips; betrayal oozes out of him at every pore." My philosophical education taught me a similar method. Thanks to philosophers like Christopher Cordner, I learned to pay careful attention to the difference between what people say, and what they show. We could also frame that as a discernment of the implicit in what people say. We are often blind to the ethical richness in our lives. We are like a person starving to death because we do not recognise the food growing around us. Or we are like a fish who does not see the water in which it swims, and despairs at the lack of its perceived presence. Much of the despair and nihilism which infects people can be overcome through the work of changing ourselves in terms of wisdom and virtue--living in a higher way--but that begins with a higher vision. Such a vision must be good, but also true. This is the work of truth: we discern meaning and reality here in our concrete lives. That becomes the groundwork of a higher vision. I often have clients say, "I don't know how you do this!" Well, this is how I do it. We are blind. There is more in front of our eyes, if only we would learn to look. Philosophy is guidance and training in such looking. It makes the implicit explicit. It gives voice, it speaks reality, it speaks the greater fullness.
Alongside its capacity for articulating the implicit forms of goodness and meaning in life, my philosophy also makes a place for an understanding the darker sides of life. For life can be profoundly good, and that is central to my work, but life is also tragic and cruel. Sometimes we can make heroic changes, but we cannot always "overcome." For 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. Such responses are manifold in their possibilities, but here is one example. 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 not only in good times but also in bad. 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 our vulnerability, grief, and suffering.
Philosophy as a library, and a cultural inheritance
I would like to end by adding that philosophy also constitutes a written resource. It is a library of ideas. To quote Mortimer J. Adler, it is "the great conversation." I often recommend clients read Plato or the Stoics or secondary literature on a range of philosophical topics. I do that with respect to the client's specific challenges, and with a view to the broader work and benefits of this wisdom-tradition. Philosophical Counselling is in a sense a form of tutoring: I am teaching you to be a philosopher. I do not mean an academic, rather I mean what it says on the label: a philosopher is a lover of wisdom. They live in a certain way, in the love of wisdom, in its pursuit, in the cultivation of virtue. This is a meaningful life to live. Philosophy is a literary framework, almost a rational spirituality, around which you can build a practice of reading and reflection, which flows into your effort and action of daily life. People who cannot find their way to reading can see me anyway, for the core of philosophy is conversation. However, this further element is also on offer.
I recommend that people read, for the above reasons. I also often recommend activities which appear relevant for the individual and their improvement, whether that be spending time in nature, or attending social gatherings, or creating a personal retreat at certain intervals. Beyond this, there is another reason for recommending philosophical reading, and wider forms of reading and cultural engagement. Philosophy is a cultural practice. We find a version of philosophy in all great traditional civilisations. For example, one of my closest friends has dedicated her working life to activities grounded in Hindu philosophy and spirituality. In my case, as I say, I am embedded in, and in love with, the tradition which is native to me, which flows from ancient Greece, through Rome, into Western Europe. I love its traditional philosophy, but also its tradition of great and beautiful literature, art, music, and spirituality. This wider dimension is has pressed itself on me as important, especially because many people lack of a rich inner life, and while that is not a problem for all people, for many it is an absolute lack, a void in their life. Often this void is their normal state, so while they suffer from this lack, they do not recognise the problem. A lack of a rich inner life can include the absence of an inner culture, a word which in Middle English denotes a cultivated piece of land. A good garden in which to live. A mind that is a good place to be inside. I encourage people to engage with the wider riches of the Western inheritance. In a sense that is compatible even with a secular commitement, we can say that these riches have a spiritual value. They enrich and strengthen, they console and give meaning, they warn and enlighten, they orient and reveal. Consider the heroic and tragic poetry of Homer's Iliad, or the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, or the ethical vision of the New Testament, or the rational spirituality of Roman Stoicism, or the mystical beauty of Plotinus' Neoplatonism, or the sacred architecture of the middle ages--which is mirrored in the cathedral-like philosophical achievements of Thomas Aquinas--or the sublime sculpture of the Renaissance, or the tragic self-awareness of Shakespeare, or the transcendent beauty of Bach, or the glowing world of Romantic poetry, or the psychological richness of the nineteenth century novel, or the over-view of the twentieth century historian. Life looks and feels very different when you feed yourself on a diet of such an inheritance. I am a student of Plato, who spoke of truth, and of goodness, but equally of beauty, as food for the soul.
The combination: Philosophical Counselling
Philosophical Counselling as I practice it, is philosophical guidance within the framework of counselling. Based on what I have said above, we can list some of the ingrediants of this approach. I am listing these in the order I discussed them above, though of course 4, 5, and 6 are the most important ingrediants.
1) Counselling's conversational skills, which elicit insight, motivation, growth, and change.
2) A therapeutic relationship that is empathetic, non-judgemental, and truth-seeking.
3) A rich background of psychological know-how, from my years as a psychotherapist.
4) The philosophical pursuit of wisdom: a transformation of how you see.
5) The cultivation of virtue: a transformation of your way of being.
6) The work of making the implicit explicit, with respect to meaning and value.
7) A rich cultural inheritance that is on offer to clients in terms of recommendations.
In classical philosophy we have a profound resource for living with strength and meaning and goodness. Philosophical Counselling as I practice it, makes this great tradition available to people today, in a sophisticated form which draws on psychotherapy as well. It is for people who want more than mere satisfaction or functioning or materialist success. Philosophical Counselling is for people who want to see life with far greater richness and depth, and to cultivate their better possibilities as human beings, and to deal with their problems and to make life better in that way.