I. What is Counselling?

What is Counselling? How does it differ from Psychotherapy? Is it s psychological activity, or something else? This essay is a reflection on such questions. I came to the study of Counselling as a philosopher, and that meant I paid careful attention to the conceptual nature of the activity, and to its relationship to other ideas and cultural practices, including those that go far back and deep in our culture. This post is the first of a series:
I. What is Counselling?
II. What is Psychotherapy? What is the relationship between the philosophical and the psychological?

Complexity and incoherency

We should start by noting that Counselling and Psychotherapy are less a product of intelligent design, and more a product of cultural evolution. These two titles are "umbrella terms" for many different paradigms, worldviews, theories, practices, and concerns. What we now view as a unified profession arose in many places, driven independently by many very different people. The field is much less unified and coherent than people imagine. We are dealing with a collection of practices that have no single, universal essence, but rather which share a family resemblance. When we define Counselling and Psychotherapy, and when we compare them to each other, we should ask: which Counselling, and which Psychotherapy?

This does not undermine the effectiveness of Counselling and Psychotherapy, as the research makes clear. On the contrary, it means there is something for everybody. But it does make it hard to define Counselling and Psychotherapy. It means I cannot help but over-generalise, making sweeping assertions which ignore important exceptions. This means that my claims below cannot but be controversial; some professionals will agree, and others will disagree. 

The first question we might ask about this profession, is whether Counselling and Psychotherapy are the same thing? Many therapists say they are, my training treated them as interchangeable, and I do too. Some therapists, however, will argue that Psychotherapy is different because, they claim, its theory, practice, or goals go deeper. I agree and disagree with that assertion. Again this is hard to discuss and debate, because Counselling is not one thing and neither is Psychotherapy. I disagree with the claim that Psychotherapy is the deeper activity for two reasons.

First, insofar as Counselling and Psychotherapy are the same thing, it is the therapist and client who bring the depth, not the theory or technique. Some psychotherapists who make claims of greater depth betray a technocratic vision. (Some others display conceit.)

Secondly, it is arguable that insofar as we want to distinguish them, it is not that Psychotherapy is a deeper version of the same activity, but rather that they are very different activities. In many cases, though not all, I think Counselling is the exercise and cultivation of what Aristotle called phronesis, or practical wisdom. That will be a new concept even to many counsellors, but I suggest it is what most have been doing all along, albeit implicitly. 
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Counselling as practical wisdom

Practical wisdom is itself a virtue that we cultivate. As a virtue, it is an activity, an ability. Practical wisdom is the ability to deliberate well about what is good, beneficial, and effective in the concrete, variable situations of human life, and to act on that deliberation.

Practical wisdom is the exercise and cultivation of the intellectual and character virtues. You try to think more rationally, courageously, compassionately, creatively, with balance, and so on regarding your concern: how to perceive and think about it, how to feel about it, what to do about it, and how to do that. Then you act, whether that be the inner action of changing your perspective and thought, or your emotions and desires, or your external actions and way of being in the world. Afterwards, you revise these efforts and their outcomes in light of experience, so that you may further refine them, or try something different. In short, you seek a more true and good vision of you concern, as well as of yourself and your context, and you seek to improve yourself intellectually, emotionally, and behaviourally, all so that you can do better with the wide array of concerns and challenges in your life.
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Ideally, practical wisdom is developed through conversation with a mentor: somebody who possesses this virtue, and who is able to understand it, explain it, and guide others in it. The cultivation of practical wisdom has universal aspects which are independent of particular contexts: it is always the cultivation of the intellectual and character virtues. But it is also equally dependent on context. We need experience to become wise. Experience in itself does not make us wise, but neither does reflection in itself; wisdom comes from wise reflection on experience. This is why two people can suffer in the same way, and one becomes more wise through that suffering, while the other becomes more foolish, for example more bitter and egotistical. All of this means that our practical wisdom is lop-sided. Somebody might be very practically-wise when it comes to money, business and the like, another when it comes to love and friendship, and another when it comes to creativity, or to physical adventure and danger. Many readers will have observed that their parents have wisdom and virtue which they lack, but that they have wisdom and virtue which their parents lack. When we look to a mentor for the sake of cultivating practical wisdom with respect to our particular concerns, we best seek one who possesses practical wisdom in that particular domain.

If you seek to practical wisdom for the sake of your troubled marriage, who is the ideal mentor in today's world? According to my definition they will need to be able to help you to see things clearly, and to shape your thinking, emotions and actions (the intellectual and character virtues). They will have wisdom in this domain, either through personal experience of the issue, or because they are a human being with life experience, who is in the habit of reflecting wisely on that experience. It would be ideal, also, if they have experience in helping many people with this kind of issue, for that is a great teacher. Ideally, they will also understand what today's research shows about such concerns, for example about how relationships go badly, and how they go well, and what helps. Ideally, this contemporary person will also be familiar with other insights and practices that are especially helpful, for example psychological insights and practices, or the social resources and systems one might have to navigate, for example divorce courts or the nature and presence of couples retreats. How do we find such a mentor? What kind of person comes to mind? Specifically, what kind of professional?

Consider all that I have said in the previous paragraphs--my description of practical wisdom, and of the form it might take with respect to marriage troubles, or indeed with respect to any challenge in living well. Is this not what people today seek from a counsellor? And is it not what a counsellor typically provides? If you are a counsellor, is this not a description of what you, or most of you, do?

How can I claim that Counselling is the age-old exercise and cultivation of practical wisdom, when most counsellors have not heard of that concept? Let's start with the fact that good counselling goes well beyond training. Training is a starting point, a springboard, a set of "first principles," and much of what a counsellor does and offers is the consequence of their ongoing private study (reading and so on), their conversation with other counsellors, which includes formal supervision, and above all the substantial learning which happens through doing the work week in and out, across years and with thousands of people. All of this means very little, of course, without the counsellor's efforts to reflect well, and without their own natural wisdom. A good counsellor is trained in a framework, and in skills, and in relevant information, but above all they service lies in helping you cultivate better thought, feeling, and action--the intellectual and character virtues--in order to deal with your concerns in life.

Western culture is full of ancient Greek concepts, practices, and worldviews, as well as Roman ones, and medieval Christian ones, as well as those from the Enlightenment, and more besides, including older European, near Eastern, and northen African concepts, practices, and worldviews. We don't realise this most of the time, because most people do not study the history of ideas, and these are implicit in our culture and our minds. Western individuals in particular like to imagine that their thought and practice is spontaneous and original to them, when in fact they are acting out the implicit ideas, practices, and logic of this layered Western culture. Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle has profoundly shaped how you see the world and how you think, even if you don't realise it. Likewise, today's atheist is deeply shaped by Christianity in his thinking, and a Christian is deeply shaped by secular modernity in her theology, even if some of these people would angrily insist otherwise. Why do we have the idea of counselling in our society? Why did it arise? Was that spontaneous and new? No, it is an old need, and an old actvity, and Aristotle may have given us the best articulation of it. Of course, Aristotle would point out that it is more than a cultural inheritance, for he was a describing a virtue, which is to say, an aspect of human nature at its best. This is what human beings do when they reflect well. So it is natural that we keep doing it, even if the title changes and we have not read previous descriptions of it.

Counselling as a Socratic activity

If it sounds like I am a biased philosopher who sees philosophy in everything, and reduces everything to philosophy, let's notice another feature of Counselling. The practice which is central to classical philosophy is called The Socratic Method, or Socratic questioning. According to my counsellor training, that is also a central practice of much Counselling! Most counsellors will be familiar with this concept as a central practice in their art.

I discussed this method earlier: Socrates, or another philosopher, or in our case a counsellor, asks another person questions of a kind which lead them to examine their assumptions, and expose contradictions in their understanding, and generally stimulate critical reflection. It is not always critical, however; often it is contemplative: we are trying to see what is there, in outer reality, but also within oneself. "How do I actually feel about this? What do I actually think?" The goal is greater clarity and a deeper understanding, so a person can avoid basing their thought, emotion, and action, and so whole life, on confusion, and so they can know themselves, and so they can base their life on what is true, good, and worthwhile. 

The Socratic Method is a method but also an ethos. That word is the root of our word ethical, which is to say, a set of values for living well. Socrates called himself a "midwife," because this method focused on bringing to birth truth within a person, helping them get to their own insight. He believed that people possessed the fundamental wisdom they need within themselves. This is different to the popular notion today that whatever you happen to think or want is correct for you, which is clearly a very problematic notion. Rather, the things we need are within us, and can be accessed if we hone our minds and hearts. Wisdom and virtue are simply the best of a human being coming out. Counselling shares this same ethos. It engages in teaching, yes, but the main activity, the main goal, is to elicit. Counselling aims to elicit the client's own insight and clarity, direction and purpose, planning and action, healing and growth. These are not things the counsellor injects into the client, but rather potentialities within the client which the counsellor helps the client to activate. To use Socrates' language, Counselling helps people give birth to these things from within themselves. The goal is not to give birth to just anything, but to bring forth that which counsellors call insight, clarity, direction, purpose, healing, personal growth, and which philosophers call the intellectual and character virtues. In both cases the goal is human flourishing.

Is Counselling a psychological activity?

If you asked many people whether counselling is a psychological activity, many would say yes. But what does that mean? In what way is this activity of Socratic questioning, and the exercise and cultivation of practical wisdom, a psychological activity as opposed to something else? Indeed, it makes more sense to identify such Counselling as a philosophical activity? If Socrates lived today, he would no doubt read books on Psychotherapy, and on clinical Psychology, and will have thought deeply about those, but he also would have read history, sociology, the various sciences.... Many philosophers do that today, as do many counsellors. None of this makes the activity distinctly psychological however, just as it does not make the activity history or sociology. I put it to you, that when we say that Counselling is a psychological profession, we are being very loose and vague with the concept. In doing sp, we confuse deed, we are confusing ourselves about the nature of Counselling, just as we may be confused about the meaning of  the word "psychological."

Is Counselling a philosophical activity?

The word philosophy is a conjunction of two ancient Greek words and means the love of wisdom. A philosopher pursues wisdom. They seek to live wisely. Description of its activities, as above, suggests that Counselling is actually quite philosophical in its essential nature--in the classical sense of the word, and in an implicit way. It is the exercise and cultivation of practical wisdom. Importantly, we should not see this as some invention by philosophy, owned by philosophers; it is a human virtue, a beneficial human activity, which it is natural for human beings to do. The value in calling it philosophical is to enrich our understanding of it, including by connecting it with sophisticated cluster of concepts and practices for getting at wisdom, and in order to confusion, such as the confusion that comes with calling it "psychological" in some special sense.

If Counselling is philosophical, how is it different to Philosophical Counselling? Mainstream Counselling engages in this activity of practical wisdom, but with a focus on some particular concern, which then comes to define the Counselling. A focus on relationships becomes Couples Counselling. A focus on grief becomes Grief Counselling. A focus on careers becomes Careers Counselling. Further elements are added as discussed above. For example, the counsellor might keep up to date with research which provides helpful information, for example how many graduates of a certain degree are likely to find work in that field. The counselling may draw deeply on a particular Psychotherapy, for example Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy in the case of Addiction Counselling. Other fields of expertise may play an important part, for example a pastoral (religious) counsellor may have a degree in theology as well.

Philosophical Counselling helps with many of the same issues a person might take to mainstream Counselling. What makes it Philosophical Counselling is the fact that the philosophical dimension is its paradigm, and partly constitutes its goals. I will help you with relationship problems or grief, and the central way of doing that is through the cultivation of wisdom and virtue. At this level, dealing with grief is the goal, and wisdom and virtue are the means. At another level, wisdom and virtue are the goal, and grief is simply one more occassion for their cultivation. Of course, most counsellors who concern themselves with broader personal growth will have some version of this dual-focus.

It should be clear that Counselling is highly compatible with Philosophical Counselling. It offers the philosophical counsellor a socially-accepted, widely understood, and effective framework for doing their work. It offers also many skills, for even if it draws much on philosophy, it has honed those skills in very particular ways. Many professional philosophers are not so skilled at empathy and interpersonal understanding, and are not so emotionally and psychologically self-aware, and many are deeply entangled in defense mechanisms which drove them toward philosophy in the first place. A good philosophical counsellor should have the temperament and skills of a good counsellor, and so they have much to gain from counsellor-training and formation.