Philosophical Counselling
The earliest 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 ancient Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius wrote: "The things you think about determine the quality of your mind. Your soul takes on the colour of your thoughts." The Judeo-Christian proverbs state that "As you think, so shall you be." A modern cognitive-behavioural therapist writes that "The greatest discovery of any generation is that a human can alter [their] life by altering [their] thoughts." The twentieth century philosopher Iris Murdoch wrote: "Man is a creature who makes pictures of himself, and then comes to resemble the picture." And the greatest of them all--Bruce Lee--said "As you think, so shall you become." The thing which most shapes us in life is the way we direct our mind and heart: how we look, how we think. As a philosophical counsellor I combine counselling with the power of philosophical reflection, to help people to look and think in better ways, to improve themselves and their lives.
Philosophical Counselling is the combination of philosophy and counselling. Counselling is a set of conversational skills and a way of being which elicits clarity and motivation in a client. Philosophy is, to use the language of Plato, the search for truth and goodness. Truth refers to such things as insight, clarity, perspective. Goodness includes experiencing life as good, being good, and having a good life: meaning, value and purpose, cultivating our better qualities, and flourishing in life. The word philosophy itself is ancient Greek, and means love of wisdom. Philosophy is wise reflection, and so it is relevant for anybody who seeks to reflect wisely on anything that matters.
I have just described philosophy and counselling as ways of reflectively achieving certain things: insight and motivation, wisdom and meaning and so forth. At the same time, both disciplines are also repositories of wisdom. For example, a counsellor like myself has decades of experience and has spoken in depth with thousands of people. This means that I have seen and learned much, and I offer that to each new client. Counselling ans pychotherapy are in themselves collections of built up insight. Likewise, as well as being a powerful way of reflecting, philosophy is a collection of the wisdom of the finest minds and hearts from across the millennia, and the role of a philosopher like myself is to draw on that wisdom in ways that are relevant to concrete, individual lives.
Below are a series of typical questions which we wrestle with in life. As you read them, you may notice that while there are practical and psychological aspects to each question, they are in essence philosophical questions. We have been trained in the last century to reduce all life to science and technology, for example the mechanisms of clinical psychology. We have been trained to take our life challenges to medical or clinical professionals, as though such things are disorders or illnesses. The manual of psychiatric diagnosis indicates that if a person's child dies and they are still grieving after three weeks, then due to the persistence of that grief they may be diagnosed with clinical depression or disordered grief. As a philosopher I reject this reduction of ourselves to machines, and so I do counselling in a very different way. We are not mere mechanisms, whose primary concern is functioning, comfort, and satisfation. We are human beings, mysterious centres of consciousness, whose primary concern is with meaning and value, truth and goodness, with loving well, experiencing life fully, and holding true to certain things. The truth of this may become evident as you consider the following questions--the kinds of struggles people bring to counselling--and reflect on how central some of them are to your life. Note that they are, first of all, philosophical, and only secondarily practical and psychological. Even the question of "how" is philosophical: it is a question of what sense I can make of this, of how I can fit it all together, and of how the effort of mind and heart can bring about an answer.
What truly matters in life? What should I aim at? What is it to be good--a genuinely decent human being--and how do I become more good? How do I balance that with my contraints and other desires in life? How do enact all the qualities of goodness, without being exploited or abused? Indeed, should I choose to become more cynical and hard instead? And how do I make sense of, and deal with the pain of such abuse? As I reflect I realise that there are multiple ways I could be as a person, with many good arguments for different options, so how do I choose? How do I navigate conflicting values or concerns within myself, or in conflict with others? Should I see myself more as an individual or as part of a group (couple, family, community)? Should I accept how I am or try to change, and if the latter, am I wisely overcoming my ego, or fooling myself as I cave to social pressure? How much should I try to change others, and what does such influence legitimately involve? What is it to be happy, and how do I create a genuinely happy life? Is happiness the highest goal, or is there something else? Is happiness one thing, or a combination of things, and what are they? How much of happiness is something I create, and how much of it is chance? How does mindset and effort influence this? Is anxiety merely a disorder in need of clinical treatment, or does it reflect something essential to existence and the human condition, such that it calls for a different, deeper response? What about other feelings such as anger, guilt, despair, or sorrow? How do I distinguish between anger which is healthy and just, and anger which merely expresses my egotism? In general, how do I become more lucid and less delusional? Am I adequately rational, and how can I know? What is the ideal form of being rational, and how does that balance with emotion and intuition, and how do I achieve that ideal? What is my purpose in life? Do I invent or discover it? Likewise, is value or meaning real, or a mere preference? What kinds of value are there in life, and how do I weigh them? For example, self-care versus other-care, security versus open experience, independence versus dependence, aloneness versus togetherness, relative values versus more absolute values, and so on. How do I cultivate and embody my new insights, given my tendency to fear or despair and an associated lack of discipline? Is it worth thus striving, or is this all just a meaningless game? How do I know my answers to these questions are sound, for example that I will not come to regret my direction and form of life later on...when "it is too late"? And what does "too late" actually amount to? How can I feel at home in the world, and experience the world as a good place? How do I make sense of evil or suffering? How should I respond to such things, whether it is "moral evils" such as casual callousness or gratuitous cruelty, or "natural evils" such as chronic pain or natural disasters? How do I contend with the banal evil in myself--my inward violence, or callousness, or simple selfishness and stupidity? How do I contend with that in others? Is there a philosophy which can make me stronger in coping with life's evils? What is it to love a person, and what am I loving in another? What is my loved one after they die? Should I "move on," or dedicate myself to their memory, and how do I navigate such contradictions and complexities? Should I offer unconditional love, or tough love, to my difficult friend or adult child? What if either decision goes horribly wrong, for example my child's life goes badly--how do I live with that? How do I live lucidly and healthily with my regrets and wrong-doing? What is freedom, and in reality do I actually want it, or am I afraid of it and avoiding it? What is death, and how am I reacting to mine? How do I live with the disappointments of what I wanted but could not have? Is life asking more of me? Is there some meaningful possibility which I need to explore and perhaps to pursue? What more is available to me to make life worthwhile when I am gripped by suffering, despair, poverty, or pain? I want to believe in God but I am having trouble, what does philosophy tell me? I am an atheist and want to find more meaning, how can philosophy help me?
Many of the above questions are asked in dichotomous ways--either this or that--which is a good starting point for exploration, however the questions and the answers often become more complex. These questions are also asked in a general way, but my point is to consider how they are vital and concrete issues in your life, the stuff of daily care and striving. As I said above, the challenge of life is primarily philosophical, more than psychological. It is about meaning and value. And even at the more psychological and practical level, it is true that the person who can find a Why, can find a How. If you want something badly enough, you can make it happen, you can find the means, or overcome the psychological tangles. The issue is in the wanting: issues of meaning and value, of purpose and direction. This is not to downplay the psychological and practical, which are certainly an impotrant part of my counselling, but it is to point to the heart of things. Philosophical Counselling is about getting to the heart of things. As a dynamic human being you will readily find your own way forward, insofar as you have sorted those things out.
I said that philosophy is both wise reflection, and a repository of wisdom gathered through the ages. This distinction points to some of the activities of Philosophical Counselling. There is much exploration of ideas in this work, including not only your own ideas, but perspectives from philosophy. We draw on philosophy's repository. This is an active, two-way conversation, where we shift between the big picture "out there"--reality and its possibilities--and you in particular, including the subtle depths of your subjective experience. As I say, this is also to engage in philosophy as the facilitaion of wise reflection. In particular, this amounts to the exercise of the intellectual virtues. That is, we engage in reflection that is rational, critical, creative, just, perceptive, humble, courageous, and so forth. This concern with the virtues--both the intellectual virtues and the character virtues--lies at the heart of classical philosophy. In this sense, philosophy is the effort to draw forth and cultivate all that is best in you as a human being, at the level of the head, the heart, and the hands. Philosophy is an education and training in the ongoing cultivation of all this "best" that is in you. This tradition is often referred to as Virtue Ethics. Of course, you will already possess many virtues, but Philosophical Counselling helps you to recognise where you are deficient or lacking in certain virtues which you need for a better life, and it helps you to cultivate them, plus with respect to those you clearly possess, it helps you to improve, hone, and round them out, including with respect to your blind spots and growth edges. For this reason, the goals of Philosophical Counselling include your stated goals, but it goes further. It is often like an education and a training: in philosophical wisdom, but also an induction into the better practice of the virtues and the cultivation of those within you. You go to a personal trainer to develop your body, and you go to philosophical counselling to develop your mind, heart, and life.
Beyond the benefits of better ideas, better reflection, and the cultivation of the virtues, there is a further benefit to Philosophical Counselling. The psychiatrist Viktor Frankl noted, in the context of his experience as a prisoner of various Nazi death camps, that it was not those who were strong in body that survived, but rather those who had a rich inner life. Philosophical Counselling is about more than problems, it is about flourishing. Flourishing is increased through the cultivation of a rich inner life. I have an enduring love of ancient and classical philosophy, and literature, and the humanising effect of these, and their enriching effect on our lives. This is a secondary element in my philosophical counselling, but it is a wonderful and powerful aspect nonetheless.
As a philosopher I am rooted in ancient philosophy: Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, Plotinus, and in the modern philosophers who continue these insights. I am educated in such philosophy, and my personal life has been the exploration and living out of these ideas. I combine this with skills, experience and knowledge gained from decades as a therapist, having worked with thousands of people at the coal-face of life, hearing their secrets and helping them in their struggles and striving. My vocation is that of a philosopher and a counsellor, a philosophical counsellor who helps people to free themselves and to deepen and enrich their hearts and minds and lives. This is what I offer to the people who come see me.
The earliest 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 ancient Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius wrote: "The things you think about determine the quality of your mind. Your soul takes on the colour of your thoughts." The Judeo-Christian proverbs state that "As you think, so shall you be." A modern cognitive-behavioural therapist writes that "The greatest discovery of any generation is that a human can alter [their] life by altering [their] thoughts." The twentieth century philosopher Iris Murdoch wrote: "Man is a creature who makes pictures of himself, and then comes to resemble the picture." And the greatest of them all--Bruce Lee--said "As you think, so shall you become." The thing which most shapes us in life is the way we direct our mind and heart: how we look, how we think. As a philosophical counsellor I combine counselling with the power of philosophical reflection, to help people to look and think in better ways, to improve themselves and their lives.
Philosophical Counselling is the combination of philosophy and counselling. Counselling is a set of conversational skills and a way of being which elicits clarity and motivation in a client. Philosophy is, to use the language of Plato, the search for truth and goodness. Truth refers to such things as insight, clarity, perspective. Goodness includes experiencing life as good, being good, and having a good life: meaning, value and purpose, cultivating our better qualities, and flourishing in life. The word philosophy itself is ancient Greek, and means love of wisdom. Philosophy is wise reflection, and so it is relevant for anybody who seeks to reflect wisely on anything that matters.
I have just described philosophy and counselling as ways of reflectively achieving certain things: insight and motivation, wisdom and meaning and so forth. At the same time, both disciplines are also repositories of wisdom. For example, a counsellor like myself has decades of experience and has spoken in depth with thousands of people. This means that I have seen and learned much, and I offer that to each new client. Counselling ans pychotherapy are in themselves collections of built up insight. Likewise, as well as being a powerful way of reflecting, philosophy is a collection of the wisdom of the finest minds and hearts from across the millennia, and the role of a philosopher like myself is to draw on that wisdom in ways that are relevant to concrete, individual lives.
Below are a series of typical questions which we wrestle with in life. As you read them, you may notice that while there are practical and psychological aspects to each question, they are in essence philosophical questions. We have been trained in the last century to reduce all life to science and technology, for example the mechanisms of clinical psychology. We have been trained to take our life challenges to medical or clinical professionals, as though such things are disorders or illnesses. The manual of psychiatric diagnosis indicates that if a person's child dies and they are still grieving after three weeks, then due to the persistence of that grief they may be diagnosed with clinical depression or disordered grief. As a philosopher I reject this reduction of ourselves to machines, and so I do counselling in a very different way. We are not mere mechanisms, whose primary concern is functioning, comfort, and satisfation. We are human beings, mysterious centres of consciousness, whose primary concern is with meaning and value, truth and goodness, with loving well, experiencing life fully, and holding true to certain things. The truth of this may become evident as you consider the following questions--the kinds of struggles people bring to counselling--and reflect on how central some of them are to your life. Note that they are, first of all, philosophical, and only secondarily practical and psychological. Even the question of "how" is philosophical: it is a question of what sense I can make of this, of how I can fit it all together, and of how the effort of mind and heart can bring about an answer.
What truly matters in life? What should I aim at? What is it to be good--a genuinely decent human being--and how do I become more good? How do I balance that with my contraints and other desires in life? How do enact all the qualities of goodness, without being exploited or abused? Indeed, should I choose to become more cynical and hard instead? And how do I make sense of, and deal with the pain of such abuse? As I reflect I realise that there are multiple ways I could be as a person, with many good arguments for different options, so how do I choose? How do I navigate conflicting values or concerns within myself, or in conflict with others? Should I see myself more as an individual or as part of a group (couple, family, community)? Should I accept how I am or try to change, and if the latter, am I wisely overcoming my ego, or fooling myself as I cave to social pressure? How much should I try to change others, and what does such influence legitimately involve? What is it to be happy, and how do I create a genuinely happy life? Is happiness the highest goal, or is there something else? Is happiness one thing, or a combination of things, and what are they? How much of happiness is something I create, and how much of it is chance? How does mindset and effort influence this? Is anxiety merely a disorder in need of clinical treatment, or does it reflect something essential to existence and the human condition, such that it calls for a different, deeper response? What about other feelings such as anger, guilt, despair, or sorrow? How do I distinguish between anger which is healthy and just, and anger which merely expresses my egotism? In general, how do I become more lucid and less delusional? Am I adequately rational, and how can I know? What is the ideal form of being rational, and how does that balance with emotion and intuition, and how do I achieve that ideal? What is my purpose in life? Do I invent or discover it? Likewise, is value or meaning real, or a mere preference? What kinds of value are there in life, and how do I weigh them? For example, self-care versus other-care, security versus open experience, independence versus dependence, aloneness versus togetherness, relative values versus more absolute values, and so on. How do I cultivate and embody my new insights, given my tendency to fear or despair and an associated lack of discipline? Is it worth thus striving, or is this all just a meaningless game? How do I know my answers to these questions are sound, for example that I will not come to regret my direction and form of life later on...when "it is too late"? And what does "too late" actually amount to? How can I feel at home in the world, and experience the world as a good place? How do I make sense of evil or suffering? How should I respond to such things, whether it is "moral evils" such as casual callousness or gratuitous cruelty, or "natural evils" such as chronic pain or natural disasters? How do I contend with the banal evil in myself--my inward violence, or callousness, or simple selfishness and stupidity? How do I contend with that in others? Is there a philosophy which can make me stronger in coping with life's evils? What is it to love a person, and what am I loving in another? What is my loved one after they die? Should I "move on," or dedicate myself to their memory, and how do I navigate such contradictions and complexities? Should I offer unconditional love, or tough love, to my difficult friend or adult child? What if either decision goes horribly wrong, for example my child's life goes badly--how do I live with that? How do I live lucidly and healthily with my regrets and wrong-doing? What is freedom, and in reality do I actually want it, or am I afraid of it and avoiding it? What is death, and how am I reacting to mine? How do I live with the disappointments of what I wanted but could not have? Is life asking more of me? Is there some meaningful possibility which I need to explore and perhaps to pursue? What more is available to me to make life worthwhile when I am gripped by suffering, despair, poverty, or pain? I want to believe in God but I am having trouble, what does philosophy tell me? I am an atheist and want to find more meaning, how can philosophy help me?
Many of the above questions are asked in dichotomous ways--either this or that--which is a good starting point for exploration, however the questions and the answers often become more complex. These questions are also asked in a general way, but my point is to consider how they are vital and concrete issues in your life, the stuff of daily care and striving. As I said above, the challenge of life is primarily philosophical, more than psychological. It is about meaning and value. And even at the more psychological and practical level, it is true that the person who can find a Why, can find a How. If you want something badly enough, you can make it happen, you can find the means, or overcome the psychological tangles. The issue is in the wanting: issues of meaning and value, of purpose and direction. This is not to downplay the psychological and practical, which are certainly an impotrant part of my counselling, but it is to point to the heart of things. Philosophical Counselling is about getting to the heart of things. As a dynamic human being you will readily find your own way forward, insofar as you have sorted those things out.
I said that philosophy is both wise reflection, and a repository of wisdom gathered through the ages. This distinction points to some of the activities of Philosophical Counselling. There is much exploration of ideas in this work, including not only your own ideas, but perspectives from philosophy. We draw on philosophy's repository. This is an active, two-way conversation, where we shift between the big picture "out there"--reality and its possibilities--and you in particular, including the subtle depths of your subjective experience. As I say, this is also to engage in philosophy as the facilitaion of wise reflection. In particular, this amounts to the exercise of the intellectual virtues. That is, we engage in reflection that is rational, critical, creative, just, perceptive, humble, courageous, and so forth. This concern with the virtues--both the intellectual virtues and the character virtues--lies at the heart of classical philosophy. In this sense, philosophy is the effort to draw forth and cultivate all that is best in you as a human being, at the level of the head, the heart, and the hands. Philosophy is an education and training in the ongoing cultivation of all this "best" that is in you. This tradition is often referred to as Virtue Ethics. Of course, you will already possess many virtues, but Philosophical Counselling helps you to recognise where you are deficient or lacking in certain virtues which you need for a better life, and it helps you to cultivate them, plus with respect to those you clearly possess, it helps you to improve, hone, and round them out, including with respect to your blind spots and growth edges. For this reason, the goals of Philosophical Counselling include your stated goals, but it goes further. It is often like an education and a training: in philosophical wisdom, but also an induction into the better practice of the virtues and the cultivation of those within you. You go to a personal trainer to develop your body, and you go to philosophical counselling to develop your mind, heart, and life.
Beyond the benefits of better ideas, better reflection, and the cultivation of the virtues, there is a further benefit to Philosophical Counselling. The psychiatrist Viktor Frankl noted, in the context of his experience as a prisoner of various Nazi death camps, that it was not those who were strong in body that survived, but rather those who had a rich inner life. Philosophical Counselling is about more than problems, it is about flourishing. Flourishing is increased through the cultivation of a rich inner life. I have an enduring love of ancient and classical philosophy, and literature, and the humanising effect of these, and their enriching effect on our lives. This is a secondary element in my philosophical counselling, but it is a wonderful and powerful aspect nonetheless.
As a philosopher I am rooted in ancient philosophy: Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, Plotinus, and in the modern philosophers who continue these insights. I am educated in such philosophy, and my personal life has been the exploration and living out of these ideas. I combine this with skills, experience and knowledge gained from decades as a therapist, having worked with thousands of people at the coal-face of life, hearing their secrets and helping them in their struggles and striving. My vocation is that of a philosopher and a counsellor, a philosophical counsellor who helps people to free themselves and to deepen and enrich their hearts and minds and lives. This is what I offer to the people who come see me.