Wise Therapy

Tim LeBon

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2001
• ISBN:
  9781446240380
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Psychotherapy
• Index: Psychology

Independent on Sunday October 2nd

One of the country?s lead­ing philosophical counsellers, and chairman of the Society for Philosophy in Practice (SPP), Tim LeBon, said it typically took around six 50 ­minute sessions for a client to move from confusion to resolution.

Mr LeBon, who has ?published a book on the subject, Wise Therapy, said philoso­phy was perfectly suited to this type of therapy, dealing as it does with timeless human issues such as love, purpose, happiness and emo­tional challenges.

` Wise Therapy, is part of a series aimed at promoting an integrative attitude as its ethos. Among all the many perspectives of psychotherapists and counselors, philosophy needs to take its place and needs to find its voice. Tim LeBon has provided an effective means by which counselors can bring philosophy into their work with clients? - APPA journal

`Tim Le Bon?s Wise Therapy is a comprehensible and well argued book dealing with the practical therapeutic applications of philosophical research that may well be of interest to philosophers but -- as the author himself intends -- will be of most obvious benefit to therapists and counselors, both by informing their dialogue with clients in new ways and by helping them become more informed about ways to resolve the ethical dilemmas arising within the context of their own work? - Metapsychology

`A fascinating workshop for therapists and clients, backed up a thorough degree if philosophical acuity? - Journal of the Society for Existential Analysis

`I strongly recommend the book for philosophers as well as practitioners, teachers, students and supervisors in counselling and psychotherapy? - Self and Society

`Provides some additional and valuable arrows for the therapist?s quiver? - Irvin Yalom, author of Love?s Executioner

`Like Aristotle, Tim LeBon examines what is said and extracts what is best from it…. There are many fascinating exercises designed to bring out and enlighten the client?s values, conception of the good life, well-being, happiness, pleasure, and the proper place of reason in life…. Wise Therapy is well written and engaging. The case histories are illuminating examples of therapeutic techniques at work, the thought experiments are well designed, and the philosophical position adapted from the internal debates of the philosophers is level headed…. I recommend it highly to philosophers with an interest in counselling, and psychological counsellors with an interest in philosophy? - Jeff Mason, The Philosophers? Magazine

`Tim LeBon has… authored a text which should become a staple on the philosophical counsellor?s bookshelf…. Wise Therapy is a concise, well-written book…. His ability to relate philosophical concepts to counselling concerns is admirable and attests to the skill and knowledge he possesses as a working counsellor. But, by far the most important part of Tim LeBon?s book to PC is the last chapter, "The Counsellor?s Philosophical Toolbox"? - Craig Munns in The Examined Life

` Tim LeBon has done a good job of offering practical approaches to some of the most important and vexing issues that arise in counselling…. Tim LeBon?s book contains helpful suggestions, practical information, and useful examples, and would make a good addition to the library of any counsellors willing to allow philosophy to turn mere client sessions into wise therapy? - Peter Raabe, Practical Philosophy

Wise Therapy is an original and practical guide to how philosophy can benefit counselling and psychotherapy. Tim LeBon argues that therapy, informed by philosophy, can help clients make better decision and achieve emotional wisdom. He uses philosophical approaches to explore issues of right and wrong, the emotions and reasons, well-being and the meaning of life, and develops a ?counsellor?s toolbox? of techniques that can help practitioners apply the wisdom of philosophy to good therapeutic practice.

For counsellors who may find philosophical approaches to therapy useful, this work addresses key philosophical topics - the emotions, free will, the meaning of life and ethics. It is jargon-free where possible and assumes no previous philosophical training.

From The Independent, 16th November 2004

Plato is my agony aunt

It was the end of a love affair that broke her heart. Could the wisdom of the great philosophers show her how to be happy again? Claire Smith tries a novel form of therapy

"The unexamined life is not worth living, " Socrates said. Nor is the life you?re left with after your boyfriend has left you for another woman - at least, that?s how it felt in October last year when mine broke rank and went off with an art student from Cleveland, Ohio. We were over there for the opening of his new art exhibition. He?d flown over four days before me and had met her at a party. Supposedly, they "connected".

The five months that followed were a roller-coaster of confusion, vitriol and despair. I knew there?d been problems in our relationship. We saw the world very differently; he delighted in the charm of the ordinary, I wanted maximum divinity. He walked; I galloped. He drank tea; I loathed the stuff. But, along the banks of the Thames, we?d made a promise to always stick together. Our love was something unique: "transcendental", I called it. And besides, we recycled. Surely a commitment to save the world would save our relationship? Alas, no.

So there I was, a woman scorned. Hell truly hath no greater fury. And what made it worse was that I still believed in our transcendental love. If I wanted to change the way I was feeling, I needed to alter the way I was thinking. But how? A few bottles of wine and a sharp blow to the head might have done the trick. Fortunately, there?s an older, more trusted way of turning your head on its head that counsellors are starting to use: philosophy.

The idea of employing Plato as an agony aunt was begun in 1981 by the German philosopher Gerd Achenbach. Although philosophy spends a lot of its time asking real-life questions that affect real-life people - What is happiness? And is it always wrong to lie? - most of the debate goes on in ivory towers. What Achenbach and subsequent philosophers including Tim LeBon, the chairman of the UK?s Society for Philosophy in Practice, wanted to do was "give practical application" to this gigantic library of great thoughts.

So how does it work? Like most types of therapy, you sign up for a set of sessions. "Two would give you a new perspective on one issue; six would help you to make a major life-decision, like a career change; with 12 you can start to rethink your entire life philosophy, " explains LeBon. Each session lasts 50 minutes and costs £50 - and, no, you don?t have to have any previous knowledge of philosophy.

"If you think of Friends, it would suit Ross and Chandler more than Joey, " LeBon says. "It?s for anyone who wants to make their emotions more intelligent. Or for those who have tried other kinds of therapy, and want something more cerebral."

The first session begins with the patient venting off about whatever?s troubling them. The rant over, the counsellor then picks out some key concepts that are crucial to the problem - in the case of heartbreak, it is love and happiness that come hurtling to the fore - and then gets the patient to define what they mean. So, what is love? What is happiness?

To kick-start the patient?s thinking, LeBon describes what a great philosopher had to say about it. In my case, he tells me what Plato wrote about love in his Symposium: that to stop man fighting the gods, Zeus decided to cut each human in two, so they would lose their strength. "This, then, is the source of our desire to love each other, " Plato said. "Each of us is a ?matching half? of a human whole, because each was sliced like a flatfish, two out of one, and each of us is always seeking the half that matches him."

This method of probing what we might think are "obvious" ideas, such as love and happiness, was devised by Socrates in the squares of Athens. "The only I thing I know is that I know nothing at all, " he boasted. What Socrates showed was that although many of the thinkers of his time thought they knew what justice, happiness and goodness meant, their understanding was tied in to their personal agenda and world view, and, what?s more, when pushed, their ideas often contradicted themselves.

A bit like me on love. Whereas part of my understanding of love was something that gave life meaning, made it worth living and bound us together, I also believed that true love was "transcendental": that it was out of this world, and it didn?t matter if the two people who loved each other couldn?t get along in the day-to-day. Love was bigger than the mundane.

But when it came to the next stage of the therapy, critical thinking - "to check out whether your assumptions stand up to examination" - I walked head first into a contradiction. If I think love?s purpose is to make life worth living, but then say it?s irrelevant to daily life, surely my two ideas of love are not compatible?

As the cogs in my brain start to creak into motion, I feel myself taking a step back from my predicament: thinking about how I?ve been thinking. This idea I had of transcendental love might have started off as a romantic dream. But when the relationship stopped working, and I found myself feeling trapped and frustrated, I used it to justify the mechanics of a relationship that just didn?t work in the daily grind. I used it to lie to myself.

In the final stage, LeBon gets me to start thinking about how to go forward. "You can?t change what has happened, " he says. "You can?t change that he?s left you, or how you behaved in the relationship. So, as the Stoics did, let?s work on controlling the controllables: the things that you can change."

To work out what can be changed, he gets me to try out a thought experiment, a method often used in philosophy to imagine other worlds where people can have different codes of behaviour. Thought experiments shatter your preconceived ideas of how the world should be and let your imagination run wild to how the world could be. "I find Viktor Frankl very useful here, the Austrian psychiatrist and concentration-camp survivor who actually believed that everything in life happens for a purpose, " LeBon says.

"Suppose this break-up did happen for a reason that will work to your benefit, " he suggests. "What might that be? The answer might be that you can now focus on something important that was denied in the relationship. Or - the Hollywood version - so you?ll meet someone who is really right for you."

Temporarily freed of any sense of responsibility for the relationship that was, and its sorry demise, the list came fast. I could now travel more; he didn?t like me travelling on my own, but too often he didn?t want to go anywhere, preferring to stay in his studio and make art. I?d love to meet someone with a similar sense of adventure to mine.

For the first time in two years, I was being honest with myself about what I really wanted - listening to those voices that we all have inside our heads, and too often try to muzzle.

So did philosophy save me? Well, I?m now dating a travel writer I have to run to keep up with. I still haven?t got over the fact that my replacement came from Cleveland, Ohio. But I guess I never will.

Tim LeBon can be reached by e-mail at [email protected]

A FEW WORDS FROM THE WISE

Compiled by Ed Caesar

· "At the touch of love, everyone becomes a poet" - Plato

· "There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness" - Friedrich Nietzsche

· "That man shall live as his own master and in happiness who can say each day ?I have lived?" - Horace

· "The good of man is the active exercise of his soul?s faculties in conformity with excellence or virtue... Moreover this activity must occupy a complete lifetime; for one swallow does not make spring, nor does one fine day; and similarly one day or a brief period of happiness does not make a man supremely blessed and happy" - Aristotle

· "There is nothing on this earth more to be prized than friendship" - Thomas Aquinas

· "Whatever you do... love those who love you" - Voltaire

· "Happiness is not an ideal of reason but of imagination" - Immanuel Kant

· "Happiness is a state of which you are unconscious. The moment you are aware that you are happy, you cease to be happy" - Jiddu Krishnamurti

· "Love is an ideal thing. Marriage is a real thing" - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

I shrink, therefore I am

Therapy has many answers, but some questions require the help of a philosopher, says Clint Witchalls

Sunday November 21, 2004

The Observer

Danny had worked in the City of London for 10 years. As a research analyst, stockbroker and fund manager, he?d made a lot of valuable contacts, earnt a lot of cash, and learnt some important business skills. However, as he approached his mid-thirties, he no longer felt good about himself or what he did for a living, and he found his colleagues cold and unfriendly. A chronic illness made him realise his mortality, and he began to reassess his priorities.

Danny had been struggling with his career conundrum for nearly five years when he met David Arnaud, a philosophical counsellor. After a few soul-searching sessions, Danny arrived at a decision. Today, he teaches economics to sixth-formers, and he loves it. ?It?s a much better lifestyle, ? he says.

Many people are turning to philosophical counsellors to get answers to questions such as: ?How do I make sense of myself?? ?What is important to me?? ?Where am I going?? These are perhaps not the sort of questions that require psychiatric intervention, but Arnaud, who recently completed the first empirical study of philosophical counselling in the UK, has found that within just five sessions the majority of clients, with important decisions to make, tend to move from a state of concern and confusion to a resolution.

Modern philosophical counselling can be traced back to 1981, when the philosopher Gerd Achenbach opened the first practice near Cologne. Achenbach referred to the new discipline as ?therapy for the sane.? Today, there are hundreds of philosophical counsellors around the world, with the movement particularly strong in the US, Britain and the Netherlands.

?The dilemmas people face aren?t always primarily psychological, ? says Alex Howard, a philosophical counsellor from Newcastle. ?If people face problems that are social or economic, it doesn?t make sense to define their problems in purely psychological terms.? Tim LeBon, a founder member of the Society for Philosophy in Practice (SPP) and author of Wise Therapy, adds: ?We are faced with far more life choices than our grandparents, yet have far fewer resources to deal with them. Our grandparents may have gone to a priest or to other family members for advice; most people don?t trust these solutions any more and so want to make their own well-informed, well thought-out choices. Philosophical counselling can help these people - people in mid-life crises who are wondering how to make the most of the rest of their life. People who want to take stock of their values.?

Where stressed executives might once have been prescribed a course of tranquillisers or antidepressants, they can now get a dose of Bertrand Russell instead: ?Success is too dearly purchased if all the other ingredients have been sacrificed to obtain it.? While some philosophical counsellors do recommend books for their clients to read, most sessions are about helping the client identify faulty thoughts. For example, a briefing in Aristotelian logic might show a client why their beliefs are erroneous. The person might infer that they?re a screw-up because they?ve screwed up. The counsellor could point out that they?re making an error called ?fallacy of composition? - that is, what?s true of the part isn?t necessarily true of the whole.

In philosophical counselling, problems aren?t pathologised as they are by the psychiatric profession, and the dialogue between client and counsellor is more like a meeting of equals, compared to many therapies where the client is treated like a patient and seen as someone who is, in some way, inadequate. ?Anybody can benefit from philosophical counselling, ? says Howard. ?But it does require someone who is willing to take stock.?

Lou Marinoff, author of international bestseller Plato Not Prozac! has done much to promote philosophical counselling. ?Some people who have stabilised their neurochemistry and validated their emotions now wish to examine or re-examine the criteria of their beliefs, the principles of their conduct, or the meaning of their lives, ? he says. ?With whom shall they do this? Psychologists and psychiatrists can shed light on such issues - as can rabbis, priests, imams and gurus. Philosophers are now rejoining the ranks of helpers.?

LeBon believes certain therapies (such as cognitive behavioural therapy) don?t go far enough in helping their clients. ?For instance, if you are anxious about your relationship, a cognitive therapist would try to dispute your catastrophising and jump to conclusions to make you feel less anxious, ? says LeBon. ?A philosophical counsellor would do this, but would also look for existential meaning in your anxiety - perhaps you really don?t want to be in the relationship and that is what your anxiety is telling you.? LeBon also gives short shrift to psychoanalysts. ?There?s very little evidence for the Freudian unconscious, and it?s time to move on to more intellectually satisfying and helpful therapies, ? he says.

However, Alain de Botton, the man who popularised philosophy as self-help, isn?t ready to bury psychologists and their ilk just yet. ?The truth is that psychoanalysis grew out of philosophy - it?s not some completely new idea, and in fact, done properly, psychoanalysis is philosophical anyway. It may even be dangerous to the mental health of some people to suggest a philosopher rather than a properly trained analyst. The knowledge of analysts when it comes to many emotional problems is now much greater than that of most philosophers.?

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004

1	Wise Therapy: An Introductory Overview

Wise therapy

Brian is sad and sometimes gets depressed, but most of all wonders how he has come to lose touch with all that he used to think important. Claire is a young psychology undergraduate with a career decision looming over her. Torn between pursuing a traditional career and trying to do something more meaningful with her life, such as becoming a counsellor, she is suffering much anguish and anxiety over the decision. Alex, a dying woman with six months to live, urgently wants the opportunity to take stock of her life.

In previous eras, Brian, Claire and Alex may well have gone to their priest or family for help. In the twenty-first century they are just as likely to seek help through counselling. These people do not need to have their unconscious interpreted, or be clinically diagnosed.¹ A listening ear may help, but is it alone sufficient to help them make good decisions, understand the language of their emotions and work out how to lead a meaningful and worthwhile life? More than anything, Brian, Claire and Alex are in need of wise therapy: but have counsellors got the tools and knowledge to be wise therapists?²

Linda has been approached by a couple wanting to take advantage of the low-cost therapy she offers, but she is unsure whether it is ethical to branch out into couple counselling, for which she has no specific training. The latest revelation of Ian’s client’s inner world leaves him with a dilemma about whether confidentiality extends to clients who are potential child molesters. Both of these practitioners realize that to be wise therapists, they need an area of expertise not covered by training programmes focusing on communication skills and psychological theories alone.

Susan is a counsellor trying to defend counselling against the attacks of her smug anti-therapy psychiatrist friend, Graham. ‘Empirical studies show that counselling is not a cost-effective way of helping people, and it would be quite wrong to provide public money to subsidize it’ says Graham triumphantly. Susan is sure that there must be a good answer – but is lost for words. How she would like to be a wise therapist who could put such doubters in their place.

What is philosophy and why is it relevant to counselling?

We would all like to be wise therapists. The question is, how can we achieve this? In this book I intend to show how philosophy can help. Philosophy can help counsellors in three ways – in informing work with clients like Brian, Claire and Alex, in helping with therapists’ own dilemmas, like those faced by Linda and Ian, and in assessing the theoretical foundations and benefits of counselling. To back up this assertion we need to go a little more deeply into the nature of philosophy. The Oxford Companion to Philosophy defines philosophy as

rationally critical thinking, of a more or less systematic kind about the general nature of the world (metaphysics or theory of existence), the justification of belief (epistemology or theory of knowledge) and the conduct of life (ethics or theory of value). (Honderich.1995)

This definition brings out three important elements of philosophy – its subject matter, its methods and its systematic nature-all of which are relevant to counselling.

The subject matter of philosophy

The Oxford Companion correctly identifies three major philosophical topics – the general nature of the world, the justification of belief and the conduct of life. All of these are germane to counselling and will be discussed in this book. The question of the meaning of life is perhaps the most fundamental of all metaphysical questions. Logotherapists, inspired by Viktor Frankl, have long argued that the most effective form of therapy is through enhancing meaning. We will look at the question of the meaning of life and go on to explore how therapy can enhance meaning. The justification of belief can sometimes be the matter of esoteric debate in the branch of philosophy called epistemology. However, we will be focusing very much on the practical questions of how clients’ beliefs, preferences and decisions can become more rational and therefore allow the client to live in a more satisfying way. We will also explore the extent to which beliefs and evaluations are relevant to the emotions and the ways in which philosophy can help counsellors construct a better theory of the emotions and help clients move toward emotional wisdom. The conduct of life, the final area of philosophy mentioned by the Oxford Companion, encompasses questions about well-being and right and wrong. Theories about well-being allow us to evaluate the value of counselling and help us clarify and, where appropriate, challenge the values held by clients. Finally, philosophical ideas about right and wrong assist counsellors faced with ethical dilemmas and help them facilitate clients’ decision-making when faced with either prudential or ethical dilemmas.

Philosophical methods

The Oxford Companion’s reference to ‘rationally critical thinking’ accurately implies that philosophers use reasoning and argument rather than mere assertion, observation or experiment to enable them to attempt to answer the questions of philosophy identified above. We need to go beyond this brief definition and identify specific philosophical methods in order to demystify philosophy and make it more accessible to the non-specialist. The five philosophical methods that I have found most useful in both the theory and practice of counselling are:

1. critical thinking;
2. conceptual analysis;
3. phenomenology;
4. thought experiments;
5. creative thinking.

We will be returning to these methods throughout the text; here I will set the scene by saying a little about each method and its use in counselling and this book.

1. Critical thinking³

Critical thinking involves testing whether arguments stand up to critical investigation and seeing whether we have good reason to accept them. We will use critical thinking to assess philosophical theories and also investigate the extent to which critical thinking can help clients toward emotional wisdom, good decisions and enlightened values. Critical thinking’s practical value is now widely recognized and it is increasingly being taught as part of school curricula. Adult counsellors who may have missed out on this education owe it to their clients to be familiar with critical thinking skills, at the very least so they can assess whether to incorporate them into their work. Chapter 6 contains a method for using critical thinking that has been specially adapted for use in counselling.

2. Conceptual analysis

Conceptual analysis is a way of becoming clearer about what we mean. It involves a careful investigation of language and usage and includes searching for definitions and drawing distinctions. The conceptual analysis of evaluative terms such as ‘autonomy’ is important when discussing the benefits of counselling, as we shall see in Chapter 2. Similarly, in Chapter 5 we shall see how conceptual analysis of the meaning of life can help prevent confusions which can be a matter of life and death for clients. As well as benefiting from the conceptual analysis carried out by past philosophers, philosophically informed counsellors can use conceptual analysis in sessions to help clarify client issues. Chapter 6 also provides a method to help you carry out conceptual analysis.

3. Phenomenology

Because of its use in existential–phenomenological and Rogerian counselling, phenomenology is perhaps the philosophical method most familiar to counsellors, but also the one most likely to be the subject of controversy and debate. I will be using the term in the way normally understood by counsellors. This sees phenomenology as ‘a philosophy arguing that events and objects are to be understood in terms of our immediate experience of them as they appear to us’ (Feltham and Dryden, 1993). Spinelli (1989) has described the phenomenological method used in counselling in three steps – epoché, description and horizontalization. These three complementary steps mean first trying to set aside our assumptions and biases, then limiting oneself to describing rather than explaining, and finally treating each item as being of equal potential value. The goal of phenomenology is perhaps most simply understood as a concern for the client’s own subjective meanings. This usually means staying with the client’s material – ‘being with the client’. It also can mean prompting the client for more information to gain a more complete understanding of their subjective meanings. To investigate personal meaning thoroughly, one needs to ask questions, but these tend to be ‘What?’ ‘When?’ and ‘How?’ questions rather than ‘Why?’⁴ (phenomenologists are not trying to explain things). Phenomenology is vital in ensuring that the client feels understood (thus strengthening the therapeutic alliance) and in helping the client and counsellor to work together on the client’s issues. If the counsellor does not understand the client’s subjective meanings and experience, he or she is unlikely to be very helpful.

4. Thought experiments

A thought experiment is an experiment carried out, not in the laboratory, but in our minds. Probably the most well-known thought experiment in the history of philosophy is Descartes’ imagining that an evil genius might be deceiving him about all his thoughts and experiences, an experiment Descartes used to attempt to establish the secure foundations of knowledge. In counselling, as well as helping to find exceptions to clients’ ‘stuck’ thinking, thought experiments can be a vivid and interesting way of exploring what really matters to clients. For example, the Dutch philosophical counsellor Ad Hoogendijk (Hoogendijk, 1995) suggests that career-counselling clients map out a ‘Life Design’, in which they consider their life in five-or ten-year periods between the present time and when they are 80. For each period they should consider where and how they want to live, what relationships they want and what activities they want to be doing, paying no attention to practical limitations. As Hoogendijk says, ‘through the life-design, the career counsellor, together with the counselee, can help translate the latter’s most valued qualities of life into attainable goals and strategies’.⁵

5. Creative thinking

Creative thinking methods such as brainstorming and lateral thinking have long been part of the management trainee’s curriculum (e.g. de Bono, 1982) but have only recently begun to percolate through to philosophy via the practical ethics literature. Creative thinking turns out to be the perfect complement to critical thinking. Whilst critical thinking helps one assess arguments, creative thinking is needed to think them up in the first place. As we shall see, creative thinking helps us both to find ‘the best problem’ (Weston, 1997) and ‘win-win’ solutions to problems (Covey, 1992). Creative thinking methods have con siderable potential for helping with client problem-solving and dealing with rigid and sedimented patterns of thought.

These five methods are the nuts and bolts of the philosopher’s toolbox. We will be using these methods throughout this book to assess philosophical theories and exploring ways in which they can inform a counsellor’s work. They also form the building-blocks for other philosophical methods. We will be looking at my RSVP method that is used in values counselling and the Progress procedure developed by David Arnaud, Antonia Macaro and myself to help in decision counselling. These will be described fully in Chapter 6.

Philosophy’s systematic nature and its attempt to provide answers

The final feature of philosophy to which the Oxford Companion’s definition draws our attention is its systematic nature. Philosophers have always used philosophical methods to try to build systems that contain a coherent, consistent and correct answer to the questions of philosophy. We will indeed be looking at some of the answers that famous philosophers have given about the nature of well-being, right and wrong, the emotions and the meaning of life. One inspiring view of philosophy is to see it as providing the ‘wisdom of the ages’, gathering dust in deserted libraries, urgently awaiting our attention to extract its lessons to enhance modern life. This is broadly the approach taken by Alain de Botton in his highly recommended The Consolations of Philosophy (de Botton, 2000). The only problem is that, particularly when it comes to the fundamental questions we are dealing with in the present book, no one has yet come up with a theory that has met with anything like universal acceptance. For example, although utilitarianism is a very well-known answer to questions about what is right or wrong, stating that right actions are those that produce the largest quantity of total happiness, first-year philosophy undergraduates soon learn of a whole host of formidable criticisms.⁶ This can be very off-putting to would-be philosophers, who soon conclude that philosophy cannot deliver its promises.

How then are we counsellors to treat philosophical systems? The approach taken in this book is to examine each theory critically. If a theory is found to be acceptable, then we can use it – if not, we take the view that most theories contain at least part of the truth and try to construct an acceptable theory out of the admissible elements of each. The emergent theories of well-being, the emotions, right and wrong and the meaning of life can then be used to help the client toward emotional wisdom, good decisions and enlightened values and assess philosophical assumptions made by theories of counselling. For example, the theoretical discussion of well-being and values informs RSVP, an integrated procedure for helping clients explore and develop their values. There is, of course, a danger in all this – namely that the theories that we end up accepting might themselves be flawed. This is an occupational hazard of philosophy, the results of which are unlikely to achieve scientific status. I believe that the best way to use philosophical systems in counselling is to accept that they are a body of ideas rather than a body of knowledge. Philosophical ideas should be put forward tentatively as part of a genuine dialogue with clients, rather than prescribed as an authoritative solution. As counsellors faced with the necessary task of helping the many clients in distress, we must navigate the rocky path between van Deurzen-Smith’s (1994) worthy plea for counsellors to ‘seriously investigat[e] what life is about and what people can do to live it better’ and Wittgenstein’s cautionary dictum that ‘What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence’ (1921).

A philosophical attitude

One notable aspect of philosophy not brought out by the Oxford Companion’s definition is philosophy’s enquiring attitude or spirit. Socrates’ suggestion that ‘the unexamined life is not worth living’ sums up this enquiring attitude. Those who still have the sense of wonder they had as children, and those not easily satisfied by superficial answers, exemplify this philosophical spirit. In counselling, this enquiring attitude can provide vital motivation for client and counsellor alike. Just as patients in long-term psychoanalysis are motivated by curiosity about their unconscious, clients in philosophical counselling are spurred on by a quest to gain a philosophical understanding of their life.

Philosophical counselling and other philosophical forms of counselling

A central aim of this book, though, is to show how philosophy can contribute to counselling practice. A number of enlightened counsellors have of course been applying philosophical methods and ideas for some time. Philosophical counsellors, existential-phenomenological counsellors, cognitive therapists and logotherapists come into this category. These four approaches will all be discussed at greater length in the text; here I will introduce each type of counselling and say a litde about the ways in which they are philosophical.⁷

Philosophical counselling (PC)

One of the most significant recent developments in this area has been the growth of philosophical counselling (PC), a type of counselling that uses philosophical insights and methods to help people think through significant issues in their life. These issues tend to be non-pathological ‘problems in living’ such as questions around direction in life, relationship issues, ethical problems and career dilemmas. The Israeli philosophical counsellor Ran Lahav (1995) has influentially suggested that all philosophical counselling involves ‘worldview interpretation’. By a ‘worldview’ is meant someone’s philosophy of life; worldview interpretation refers to the process of uncovering worldviews, reflecting on them, and applying them to the problem at hand. PC’s roots go back at least as far as Socrates, whose dialogues with his fellow Athenians about ethical issues such as justice, friendship and piety have famously been recorded by Plato.⁸ For the ancients, the idea that philosophy could be anything but practical would have seemed very strange. As Epicurus said, ‘Empty is the argument of the philosopher which does not relieve any human suffering.’ However, since Descar...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Series Editor’s Introduction
• Preface
• 1 Wise Therapy: An Introductory Overview
• Part 1: Ethics
• 2 Well-being
• 3 Right and Wrong
• Part 2: The Emotions, Reason and the Meaning of Life
• 4 The Emotions and Reason
• 5 The Meaning of Life
• 6 The Counsellor’s Philosophical Toolbox
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography and References
• Recommended Reading
• Resources
• Index