International Journal of Philosophical Practice

The American Society for Philosophy, Counseling, and Psychotherapy (ASPCP) was founded on the premise that philosophical and psychological practices are interdependent and mutually supportive. While psychological practice can benefit from becoming more philosophical, the converse is also true. In contrast, the American Philosophical Practitioner’s Association, under the direction of Louis Marinoff, has driven a wedge between these two practices. In this paper, I show how philosophical therapies such as my own Log­ic-Based modality, and psychological therapies, especially Rational-Emotional Behavior Therapy (REBT) work together synergistically. I hold that the APPA bifurcation of psycho­logical from philosophical practice is artificial, impractical, and self-defeating. Further, I maintain that Marinoff’s position that there is a distinct class of “sane” clients appropriate for the latter form of therapy serves to propagate a dangerous popular stereotype, that clients who “need” conventional psychological therapy must therefore be “insane.”

This paper comments on Cohen’s “Philosophy with Teeth” (also in this issue), and raises four questions surrounding the relationship between philosophy and psychology, most of which are requests for clarification from Cohen but two of which are more critical in character: Against Cohen’s claim that APPE disavows any intrinsic connection between philosophical counseling and psychology, it is suggested that this still leaves open the pos­sibility of an instrumental connection. And against Cohen’s claim that pure philosophy is “grist for the classroom” or for “stimulating discussions over coffee,” it is maintained that pure philosophy may have more “teeth” than what this suggests.

This paper argues for an intrinsic connection between Logic-Based Therapy (LBT) and empirical psychology, a connection that suggests the need to employ both philo­sophical and psychological theories in the clinical setting. This link is established by arguing that LBT is conceptually grounded in naturalized epistemology, the view introduced and defended by W. V. O. Quine in the aftermath of his attack on the Analytic-Synthetic dis­tinction. Naturalized epistemology places empirical psychology and logic on the same epis­temic foundation, and, it is argued, it is this foundation that both supports the application of logic in the clinical setting and connects logic to empirical psychology. One consequence of this view is that LBT should be understood as providing a theoretical framework for other forms of philosophical counseling, an idea that establishes the logic-based approach to therapy as the sine qua non of the counseling enterprise.

Over the last two decades the practice of applied philosophy has undergone re­surgence. It is now common for philosophers to sit on ethics committees in hospitals, or to provide ethical advice to businesses, and many universities and colleges now offer courses in practical philosophy. Despite this, practical philosophy is subject to increasing criticism, with persons charging that (1) it is philosophically shallow, and (2) it has little to offer persons grappling with concrete ethical problems, either because (a) its techniques or too removed from such problems, or (b) because ethical theory is too abstract. In this paper I develop responses to these criticisms, and offer suggestions as to how practical philosophy should be developed.

This response to Taylor’s paper, “The Future of Applied Philosophy” (also includ­ed in this issue) describes Taylor’s understanding of the problems that practical philosophy faces; describes Taylor’s responses to these problems, and offers criticisms of his arguments.

In this essay, I take up the question of whether Gerd B. Achenbach’s ‘beyond-method’ method provides a suitable approach to counseling for the philosophical counselor. Achenbach maintains that the best method to counseling is one that is beyond any one single system. Many scholars have expressed an increasing dissatisfaction with such a methodology. Although these critiques of Achenbach are helpful, I argue that they do not capture the real problem with his counseling method. After I discuss this additional difficulty, I conclude that it is beyond all dispute that the methods of philosophical counseling should be advanced along different lines.

In critical thinking we learn the importance of being fair, and opening up closed and biased minds. In practical philosophy we must learn how to find our happiness in a world where others act with evil intentions. In contemporary Kenya one major challenge is how to react to those who might use witchcraft to try to harm oneself or one’s family. Regardless of whether witchcraft is “real” or not, it is possible to discern the root cause of witchcraft practices as due to jealousy and selfishness. By addressing the root problem, cases of witchcraft practice will diminish. The paper uses Kenyan philosopher Odera Oruka’s “sage philosophy” methodology, to interview rural sages who have reputations as being wise in their communities, so that professional philosophers can learn from their wisdom. For example, Saulo Namianya sees his role as helping to “level tongues” that had been high-pitched in their anger, so that people can discern the cause of a dispute and have it resolved. Adala Otuko emphasizes controlling one’s fear when one first sights a charm. Ngaimarish ole Mulo explains how to encourage parties who are sparring with each other to stop and consider the perspective of the other party. The sages are shown to be wise counselors who encourage critical thinking in their communities.

The foundational principle of stoic counsel is the claim that one’s psychological and emotional health need not depend upon anything that does not directly answer to the exertion of one’s will. Whatever the difficulty, whatever the circumstance, the ideally rational agent will concern himself only with that which is entirely a matter of his own choosing, and will remain imperturbable by anything that he cannot directly control through the force of his will alone. The ideally rational agent will, thereby, rid himself of psychological and emotional distress. In this paper, I attempt to elucidate and defend this element of stoic counsel.

Philosophical practice or counseling has been described as a cluster of meth­ods for treating everyday problems and predicaments through philosophical means. Not­withstanding the variety of methods, philosophical counselors seem to share the following tenets: 1. The counselee is autonomous; 2. Philosophical counseling differs from psychological counseling and 3. Philosophical counseling is effective in solving predicaments. A critical examination shows these to be problematic at both theoretical and practical levels. As I believe that philosophical practice is a valuable contribution both to philosophy and to psychology, though not devoid of potential dangers and misuses, I suggest that philosoph­ical counselors reconsider the theoretical and empirical validity of their tenets. Using my experience as a philosophical counselor, I attempt in this paper to contribute to this task while introducing the reader to what are, in my opinion, the main problems in the field.

Kierkegaard’s philosophical writings in the area of human freedom have great explanatory powers and strong relevance for philosophical counseling and psychotherapy. This paper will explore those principles that have a bearing on helping people deal with life’s issues. Freedom is an overarching term that encompasses many concepts. All of these concepts, in turn, describe different manifestations of the self. The self is central to Kierkegaard’s philosophy of freedom. He describes the self in dynamic and structural terms and by levels of consciousness. Despair is a key concept in this philosophy; it is a deep level of anxiety that signals whether the self is moving forward in freedom, or withdrawing into unfreedom. A case study will be used to exemplify these concepts within a psychother­peutic milieu.

Beginning from the recognition that “philosophical counseling” is a form of counseling and must acknowledge the extent to which it shares a framework with other kinds of counseling, this article articulates a modest agenda for philosophical counselors and the organizations that represent them. Philosophical counselors may enrich counseling more effectively from the inside, in alliance with other counselors. Respecting the experience and expertise of counselors will help other counselors to appreciate the value philosophy may have for their practice. The general search for allies, who share the sense that philosophy has value for everyday life, may lead, in connection with counseling, to greater involvement of philosophers in training programs for counselors.

In this essay, I address the question of whether a clear-cut division of labor can be maintained between what a philosophical counselor attempts to accomplish in a counseling context and what a formally trained psychologist endeavors to bring about in the same context. The defense of this outlook proceeds by maintaining a bifurcated analysis between the philosophical problem implied by the client’s predicament and the cause of the client’s problem. Thus, the job of a philosophical counseling, so to speak, is to focus on the former, and the responsibility of a psychologist is to concentrate on the latter. Certainly, the intuition behind affirming this viewpoint has the tide of victory set in its favor. However, I strongly suspect that its apparent strength rests upon a confusion of what would qualify as an accurate philosophical statement implied by the client’s problem. In fact, I argue that any philosophical statement that correctly expresses the psychological predicament of the client is going to be related to what caused the client’s problem in the first place. Thus, I conclude that because of this link, a philosophical counselor cannot avoid psychologizing, to some extent, the predicaments of a client while practicing philosophical counseling.

When philosophers cultivate a professional interest in philosophical practice as a form of counseling therapy, the implicit bias of their practice is likely to emulate the “helping profession” model of client engagement. The effort seems noble enough, but emulating the model of the helping professions might actually be incommensurate with the philos­pher’s calling. The philosophical temperament emulates a less constraining but more aggressive model of intervention than we find operating in the professional domain of therapeutic counseling practices. While the philosophical temperament resolves to question and analyze its subject-matter without the encumbrances of social constraint or the promise of utility, it employs methods of philosophical questioning and analysis decidedly more agonistic than can be motivated under the auspices of the “helping profession” model of therapeutic intervention. The philosophical temperament is a challenging temperament, a probing, testing, exploring, engaging temperament whose only vested commitment is to further inquiry. After setting up this distinction between philosophical practice and the helping professions I pose some thoughts regarding the philosophical encounter within a counseling situation, with emphasis on the challenge of translating back and forth between the client’s subject matter and the philosopher’s frame of reference. In the course of negoti­ating these challenges, the philosophical temperament encounters two divergent paths we must learn to travel with equal facility: we must make room for beneficial critique in philosophical counseling while motivating effective critical perspective within the client’s own world-view. The challenge is to see such a philosophical encounter as a place of translation, in which the counselor’s philosophical temperament is exposed to the alterity of the client’s domain of experience without losing its critical facility. In this way, the philosophical encounter is exercised in a movement between worlds, as an interweaving dance of translation and innovation characteristic of a “place” of mutual engagement. The resulting tension in these dialogical encounters is a direct consequence of the philosophical intervention in a client’s personal life. The philosopher’s challenge is to negotiate carefully between two domains of translation (between the cognitive-emotive domain of lived-experience and the philosophical domain of conceptual thinking, reflective inquiry and critical analysis), and to establish connections between these domains to facilitate philosophical encounters in a space of shared listening.

This paper explores the possibility of using panels to trace the history of a client’s right to quality life. The distinguishing mark of this approach is that the client is viewed in the perspective of becoming more truly personal rather than on being human. The focus is on relations. The three streams of associations that make us who we are exist at the level of psyche, other persons, and the environment. That approach to client care allows us to fine tune the fragile ratio of client needs to staff resources. The process is illustrated through the development of a treatment plan for an adult female resident exhibiting bipolar disorder and paranoid schizophrenia.

Since the traumas of the last quarter of the 20th century forced all professions into the light of public scrutiny, we have seen the destruction of the parochial boundaries of the ethical understandings of the past, and the development of a cosmopolitan professional ethics. It is now understood that we have to have an ethics that travels well, whose principles operate with equal force and plausibility in all disciplines. Without good passports, principles become locked into their own disciplines, Ethics as a subject loses its integrity, and every profession has an excellent reason to insist that “their” ethics have nothing to do with the rest of the world. Consideration of professional ethics as a whole shows that the general principles that we use travel very well indeed, and rapidly smokes out those that do not. “The Doctrine of Double Effect” is one of the non-travelers; from that fact we explore the possibility that the Doctrine is radically misconceived even in its home discipline of­medicine.

Reasoning can promote psychological development, so even if the role of philosophical counselor is defined strictly in terms of assisting the reasoning of the client, we can expect client-centered philosophical inquiry to yield psychological benefits. The practices of philosophical counseling and psychotherapy permeate one another to some degree while also diverging in characteristic focus. Philosophical counselors are particularly well suited to helping clients think through their situation in the world.

Sarah Waller proposes that cognitive therapists and philosophical counselors ought to consider the feelings of the client of paramount importance in belief system change rather than the rationality of the belief system. I offer an alternative strategy of counseling that reinstates the place of rational belief revision while still respecting the importance of emotions. Waller claims that, because of the problem of under-determination, the counseling goal of rational belief revision can be trumped by the goal of improved client affect. I suggest that, if we consider a different ontology for the domain of counseling—one whose objects are dialogues (the goal of counseling becomes greater information of dialogues), we can accommodate a place for emotions in rational belief revision. I then note some limitations of the new proposal and the possibility of incommensurability in the comparison of our different views.

Philosophers are generally reluctant to say much about the meaning of dreams, especially since Sigmund Freud appropriated the interpretation of dreams as part of psychoanalysis. In this essay I will first review some of the theories of dreams proposed by early philosophers that are now considered largely outdated. I will then critically examine the two powerful theories instituted by Freud and Jung by explaining them and then pointing out their flaws and weaknesses. In response to the failings of these theories I offer a lesser known but more recent theory formulated by Ernest Hartman that is supported by both his own empirical research and that of others. And finally I discuss how this intuitively more reasonable approach can be very helpful to the philosophical counselor whose client wishes to discuss the meaning of her dreams.