Philosophical counselling as an alternative to mainstream therapy
This is a long reflection on the service I offer, for people who appreciate greater detail. It is divided into sections:
- over-view of philosophical counselling
- the nature of wisdom
- the nature of virtue
- my psychotherapeutic background
- my philosophical influences
Philosophical counselling
Philosophical counselling arose in Europe and spread to America during the second half of the twentieth century. It was inspired by the virtues of psychotherapy, as well as by an awareness of the limitations of therapy's psychological focus. Today there are peak bodies, training courses, conferences, and publications dedicated to philosophical counselling. At the same time, it remains a comparatively small field. It was while teaching philosophy at The University of Melbourne and elsewhere that I decided to become a philosophical counsellor. As far as I know, I am the first person in Australia to make it my career.
Philosophical counselling is philosophical guidance that is offered by a trained philosopher. It uses also the framework and skills of modern counselling: a confidential, empathetic, knowledge-based, and skillful conversation designed to elicit such things as clarity, action, personal growth. Counselling and psychotherapy are different, as I will discuss further below, and about half the philosophical counsellors study psychotherapy as well, in the service of their philosophical counselling, and that is what I did.
The nature of philosophy
This is a quick summary of the nature of philosophy as I practice it. My work is rooted in the tradition called classical philosophy, which is to say, philosophy as practiced by the ancient Greeks. I am a passionate student of Plato, and so of his mentor Socrates, and of those in the long tradition Plato set in motion, which includes his student Aristotle, his inerpreter Plotinus, and others such as the Stoic Epictetus. The classical tradition of philosophy continues up to our day.
The word philosophy is a conjunction of two ancient Greek words--philos and sophia--which mean love and wisdom. The whole point of philosophy is contained in those two words. A philosopher is a lover. What do they love? Wisdom. Why? Because it is good, and leads to the good. How so? Because wisdom is the love of the good. It is alignment with, and participation in, whatever is truly good. A philosopher loves wisdom because they love the good in life.
The trouble in life is that often we think we are aiming at what is truly good, but we are mistaken, deluded, and aiming at an imitation of it. We are fooled. Or we are led astray by egotism or enslaved by a desire. This is why we need wisdom: to see what is true and good, and to pursue it. Of course, we can have a belief about what is good but that can easily be overwhelmed by egotism or desire. Wisdom is different to a belief. It is knowledge in the deepest sense: you know it, you feel it in your bones, you are shaped by it. Wisdom is the kind of knowledge that arises from sustained, deep attention, in concert with reason and striving. Beginning with your mind, wisdom is therefore the transformation of your whole being: head, heart, and hands. Philosophy changes you at your very core; it changes your life.
When we look at a good life, and when we look at what makes a person wise and happy, and when we look at what goes wrong in life, and at what makes a person foolish and unhappy, we see that there are three aspects to ourselves that we need to work on:
People today often assume that the concept virtue has a moralistic meaning, but that is wrong. The concept comes from Socrates and Plato, and the ancient Greek word they used is ἀρετή (arete), which means excellence or good quality. To cultivate virtue is to cultivate excellent or good human qualities. There are many virtues we can work on, but all of them, and a good life in general, hinge on cultivating four in particular, which we call the cardinal virtues. The cardinal virtues are wisdom, courage, temperance, and justice. A simple way to think of them is to start with mind, and the need for wisdom, and then to see ourselves as needing, on the one hand, to push ourselves, and on the other, to restrain ourselves, in a variety of ways which sculpt a good way of being and a good life. It is a kind of Ying and Yang. (Yes, classical philosophy, the tradition of Plato, has so many parallels with Buddhism, Daoism, Hinduism and so on, but it is distinctly Western at the same time, in its emphasis on reason.)
A moment ago I pointed to three aspects of the self--mind, ambition, desire. There is a virtue that corresponds to each of these. When the mind is in a good state, it is wise. The contrary is called foolishness or blindness. When the ambitious part is in a good state, we call it courage. The contrary we might call egotism; it is the potential tyrant, aggressor, or narcissist in us. When desire is mastered, that is called temperance: we enjoy life, but are not enslaved to our desires, they do not create disorder in our lives. I am speaking of three parts of the self here, but of course a good life has a unity, so we can speak of a fourth virtue called justice, which brings these three parts into balanced harmony.
Notice that I have slid between talk of how philosophy pursues things, and how it transforms us. Philosophy aims at whatever is genuinely good, true, and beautiful. In that sense it seeks whatever is genuinely good in reality and in life. In that same sense it seeks to sculpt the self, for example at virtues such as courage, self-mastery, compassion, creativity, hope, and so on. It aims at anything that truly makes life worth living.
As Epictetus would point out, the above work has an intrinsic value first of all. Virtue makes us more strong and happy, as intrinsic capacities, and regardless of how things go in life. As Aristotle would point out, virtue also increases the likelihood of achieving the good things we want that are external and so subject to chance. For example, a just and compassionate person is much more likely to create deep, loving relationships, and a courageous and self-controlled person is more likely to succeed in their career, even if those outcomes are not guaranteed. More than anything else in life, wisdom and virtue make them likely. Wisdom and virtue are the most important ingredients for a strong, good, happy, successful, flourishing life.
Philosophy and Psychotherapy: as contraries, and complements
The above is a summary of classical philosophy in the tradition of Plato, and it is very different to how most people speak today. Yet, when people hear it, it pulls on many of them, like something forgotten but deeply yearned for.
The above is very different to the language and thinking of our therapeutic culture, which has relativised the words, for example meaning and value instead of truth and goodness. Ours is a beningly nihilistic culture: in place of wisdom, therapeutics, in place of higher goods, comfort and material success. We have reduced our vision of ourselves to mechanisms, to neurological states and the like. The natural state for many people in this culture is confused despair. Confused, because I have everything I want, and yet....
This is as far as I will go in gesturing at the problems with psychotherapy, which are really problems with modernity, of which therapy is only an expression.
Unlike animals, human beings are divided creatures. This is because our being is a combination of two very different ways of knowing and being:
Philosophy is that effort which we make to grow as a conscious being. It is an effort of intellect and will, toward wisdom and virtue. Toward, that is, the ability to know, to love, to choose, to make good, to encounter and enjoy the good. Psychotherapy, by contrast, is work we do on our psychology to avoid being dominated, deluded, and harmed by it, and to bring it into alignment with our conscious life in its values, goals, and depths. For this reason, the renowned psychotherapist Irvin Yalom wrote that the role of psychotherapy is mainly negative. It is the work of clearing away psychological obstacles to better and higher living. By implication, philosophical counselling begins where psychotherapy leaves off. Psychotherapy clears away obstacles, then philosophy guides the person to build a strong, good, happy self and a flourishing life. This relationship between psychological and philosophical work is why psychological theory and practice has had a central (if secondary) place in philosophy ever since Plato. To cultivate wisdom and virtue, to cultivate strength, goodness, happiness, success, and flourishing in life, is to do philosophical work first and foremost, but it often requires psychological self-awareness and growth. We need to do both kinds of work. For that reason I studied counselling and psychotherapy to master's level, and spent years working as a mainstream therapist.
What I offer is philosophical counselling, not psychotherapy, but it draws richly on psychotherapy as an additive. I help you do the psychological work needed to clear away obstacles, but the focus is the positive work of becoming more wise and virtuous.
I will now explore the heart of philosophical counselling, which is the cultivation of wisdom and virtue. Afterwards, I will discuss the psychotherapeutic modalities on which I draw.
Philosophical counselling arose in Europe and spread to America during the second half of the twentieth century. It was inspired by the virtues of psychotherapy, as well as by an awareness of the limitations of therapy's psychological focus. Today there are peak bodies, training courses, conferences, and publications dedicated to philosophical counselling. At the same time, it remains a comparatively small field. It was while teaching philosophy at The University of Melbourne and elsewhere that I decided to become a philosophical counsellor. As far as I know, I am the first person in Australia to make it my career.
Philosophical counselling is philosophical guidance that is offered by a trained philosopher. It uses also the framework and skills of modern counselling: a confidential, empathetic, knowledge-based, and skillful conversation designed to elicit such things as clarity, action, personal growth. Counselling and psychotherapy are different, as I will discuss further below, and about half the philosophical counsellors study psychotherapy as well, in the service of their philosophical counselling, and that is what I did.
The nature of philosophy
This is a quick summary of the nature of philosophy as I practice it. My work is rooted in the tradition called classical philosophy, which is to say, philosophy as practiced by the ancient Greeks. I am a passionate student of Plato, and so of his mentor Socrates, and of those in the long tradition Plato set in motion, which includes his student Aristotle, his inerpreter Plotinus, and others such as the Stoic Epictetus. The classical tradition of philosophy continues up to our day.
The word philosophy is a conjunction of two ancient Greek words--philos and sophia--which mean love and wisdom. The whole point of philosophy is contained in those two words. A philosopher is a lover. What do they love? Wisdom. Why? Because it is good, and leads to the good. How so? Because wisdom is the love of the good. It is alignment with, and participation in, whatever is truly good. A philosopher loves wisdom because they love the good in life.
The trouble in life is that often we think we are aiming at what is truly good, but we are mistaken, deluded, and aiming at an imitation of it. We are fooled. Or we are led astray by egotism or enslaved by a desire. This is why we need wisdom: to see what is true and good, and to pursue it. Of course, we can have a belief about what is good but that can easily be overwhelmed by egotism or desire. Wisdom is different to a belief. It is knowledge in the deepest sense: you know it, you feel it in your bones, you are shaped by it. Wisdom is the kind of knowledge that arises from sustained, deep attention, in concert with reason and striving. Beginning with your mind, wisdom is therefore the transformation of your whole being: head, heart, and hands. Philosophy changes you at your very core; it changes your life.
When we look at a good life, and when we look at what makes a person wise and happy, and when we look at what goes wrong in life, and at what makes a person foolish and unhappy, we see that there are three aspects to ourselves that we need to work on:
- First, we are consciousness, mind, intellect, and that needs work.
- Second, we are ambitious for certain things in life, and we need to steer ourselves and our ambition well.
- Third, we have many desires for pleasure and gratification, and we need to shape our desire and action to serve what is best for our lives.
People today often assume that the concept virtue has a moralistic meaning, but that is wrong. The concept comes from Socrates and Plato, and the ancient Greek word they used is ἀρετή (arete), which means excellence or good quality. To cultivate virtue is to cultivate excellent or good human qualities. There are many virtues we can work on, but all of them, and a good life in general, hinge on cultivating four in particular, which we call the cardinal virtues. The cardinal virtues are wisdom, courage, temperance, and justice. A simple way to think of them is to start with mind, and the need for wisdom, and then to see ourselves as needing, on the one hand, to push ourselves, and on the other, to restrain ourselves, in a variety of ways which sculpt a good way of being and a good life. It is a kind of Ying and Yang. (Yes, classical philosophy, the tradition of Plato, has so many parallels with Buddhism, Daoism, Hinduism and so on, but it is distinctly Western at the same time, in its emphasis on reason.)
A moment ago I pointed to three aspects of the self--mind, ambition, desire. There is a virtue that corresponds to each of these. When the mind is in a good state, it is wise. The contrary is called foolishness or blindness. When the ambitious part is in a good state, we call it courage. The contrary we might call egotism; it is the potential tyrant, aggressor, or narcissist in us. When desire is mastered, that is called temperance: we enjoy life, but are not enslaved to our desires, they do not create disorder in our lives. I am speaking of three parts of the self here, but of course a good life has a unity, so we can speak of a fourth virtue called justice, which brings these three parts into balanced harmony.
Notice that I have slid between talk of how philosophy pursues things, and how it transforms us. Philosophy aims at whatever is genuinely good, true, and beautiful. In that sense it seeks whatever is genuinely good in reality and in life. In that same sense it seeks to sculpt the self, for example at virtues such as courage, self-mastery, compassion, creativity, hope, and so on. It aims at anything that truly makes life worth living.
As Epictetus would point out, the above work has an intrinsic value first of all. Virtue makes us more strong and happy, as intrinsic capacities, and regardless of how things go in life. As Aristotle would point out, virtue also increases the likelihood of achieving the good things we want that are external and so subject to chance. For example, a just and compassionate person is much more likely to create deep, loving relationships, and a courageous and self-controlled person is more likely to succeed in their career, even if those outcomes are not guaranteed. More than anything else in life, wisdom and virtue make them likely. Wisdom and virtue are the most important ingredients for a strong, good, happy, successful, flourishing life.
Philosophy and Psychotherapy: as contraries, and complements
The above is a summary of classical philosophy in the tradition of Plato, and it is very different to how most people speak today. Yet, when people hear it, it pulls on many of them, like something forgotten but deeply yearned for.
The above is very different to the language and thinking of our therapeutic culture, which has relativised the words, for example meaning and value instead of truth and goodness. Ours is a beningly nihilistic culture: in place of wisdom, therapeutics, in place of higher goods, comfort and material success. We have reduced our vision of ourselves to mechanisms, to neurological states and the like. The natural state for many people in this culture is confused despair. Confused, because I have everything I want, and yet....
This is as far as I will go in gesturing at the problems with psychotherapy, which are really problems with modernity, of which therapy is only an expression.
Unlike animals, human beings are divided creatures. This is because our being is a combination of two very different ways of knowing and being:
- we are intelligent consciousness--intellect and will
- we have also a sense-based psychology, which is often unconscious, and which we share with the animals
- Problem: consciously we value and aim at certain things, but our animal, often unconscious psychology wants something else, and so there is a struggle, which can undermine and even harm us. Addicts know this all too well, but we all experience it. This is also the root of psychiatric disorders: a distorted psychology overwhelms rational, lucid consciousness.
- Problem: when our lower psychology dominates, our conscious life becomes its play-thing. We rationalise and project; we make up self-centred, deluded stories about reality; we are blind to the reality of others, and use them for psychological purposes and even harm them; we lose contact with what is true, good, just, beautiful...with what is real and what nourishes the soul, so that when delusion or numbness fails, we fall into despair or bitterness.
- Goal: life is about becoming more conscious. It is about living fundamentally at the level of intelligent consciousness, and aligning our whole being with that. This means that our lives are in contact with, and an embodiment of, the things that are true, good, just, beautiful and so on. Those can be many different things. It means also that our animal nature participates in those qualities, so that eating and sex and ambition and so on all embody or serve them. Eating, for example, becomes goodness for the body but also exploration, adventure, high-quality pleasure, shared joy, and so on.
Philosophy is that effort which we make to grow as a conscious being. It is an effort of intellect and will, toward wisdom and virtue. Toward, that is, the ability to know, to love, to choose, to make good, to encounter and enjoy the good. Psychotherapy, by contrast, is work we do on our psychology to avoid being dominated, deluded, and harmed by it, and to bring it into alignment with our conscious life in its values, goals, and depths. For this reason, the renowned psychotherapist Irvin Yalom wrote that the role of psychotherapy is mainly negative. It is the work of clearing away psychological obstacles to better and higher living. By implication, philosophical counselling begins where psychotherapy leaves off. Psychotherapy clears away obstacles, then philosophy guides the person to build a strong, good, happy self and a flourishing life. This relationship between psychological and philosophical work is why psychological theory and practice has had a central (if secondary) place in philosophy ever since Plato. To cultivate wisdom and virtue, to cultivate strength, goodness, happiness, success, and flourishing in life, is to do philosophical work first and foremost, but it often requires psychological self-awareness and growth. We need to do both kinds of work. For that reason I studied counselling and psychotherapy to master's level, and spent years working as a mainstream therapist.
What I offer is philosophical counselling, not psychotherapy, but it draws richly on psychotherapy as an additive. I help you do the psychological work needed to clear away obstacles, but the focus is the positive work of becoming more wise and virtuous.
I will now explore the heart of philosophical counselling, which is the cultivation of wisdom and virtue. Afterwards, I will discuss the psychotherapeutic modalities on which I draw.
The cultivation of wisdom
"The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts."
--Marcus Aurelius
"We are shaped by our thoughts; we become what we think."
"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 Buddha
Philosophy is the love and pursuit of wisdom. The heart of philosophical counselling is the cultivation of wisdom.
Wisdom is the ability to see and think, with clarity and depth, about the things that matter. It is also to be a sound judge of how things are and of what to do.
Wisdom is not some mysterious talent that falls on some and not others. Rather, wisdom is composed of ingredients which can be recognised and cultivated. You can make yourself more wise. This is the point of philosophical counselling. Philosophical counselling is for people who want to become more wise, with all that follows on that.
Aristotle divides wisdom into two kinds:
There are also two ways to think about the nature of wisdom:
I will say something about each.
Contemplative wisdom
One way of seeing life leads to despair. Another to fear. Another to anger. Another to peace. Another to motivation and achievement, whether outwardly or within. If the truth about some aspect of life is unpleasant or distressing then so be it--truth is better than delusion, and the challenge is to live well with reality. Oftentimes, however, a person's negative picture of life is distorted, and sometimes it is outright false. This invites the Socratic work of examining one's picture of life, and of improving it, or even rejecting it for something better. That is the work of reason. It is also the work of cultivating virtue--both the intellectual virtues, and the character virtues (virtues of emotion, desire, action). It is also the work of intuition and imagination. Classical philosophy is transformative attention to life. We need a vision of life that is as true and good as possible.
Practical wisdom
Alongside contemplative wisdom, practical wisdom has an equally vital part to play in philosophical counselling, especially when the client's goals go beyond contemplative reflection, for example when they seek it as an alternative to mainstream therapy. Practical wisdom is the ability to recognise what to do, and how to do it, in any situation. It is traditionally described as "doing the right thing, in the right way, for the right reason, to the right degree." Will things be okay if I quit this job right now? How do I get these people to understand? What do I most need to work on in myself? How do I balance independence and dependence in my relationship? How do I achieve happiness in my particular life, and what does that involve on a daily basis? Practical wisdom is the cultivation of the ability to ask the right questions, to find answers to them, and to enact them will, in the practical sphere of life.
Some peope say that wisdom comes from experience. Or that suffering makes us wiser. That is untrue. Loosely-speaking, many people become worse through experience. For example, somebody suffers a significant betrayal or interpersonal disappointment. Because they are relatively unreflective (they ruminate, but they do not reflect) their egotism, vices, and psychological forces get an easy hold on them. So they naively and arrogantly conclude that they are unique in their suffering. Thus they become envious of the apparet naivety, ease, and happiness of others, which makes them bitter, and over time that bitterness and all that flows from it becomes their way of being. What is missing here? Experience is neutral. It is the perspective we take on it which shapes us. As Epictetus wrote: "We are shaped not by events, but by our opinion of them."
Aristotle points out that practical wisdom grows through a feedback process between experience and reflection. By reflection, I do not mean rumination. I mean the wise and virtuous exercise of the intellect and will: the exercise of reason, intellectual virtue, intelligent imagination and so on, all of which I am about to discuss. We experience some aspect of life, and we wisely and virtuously reflect on it. That reflection leads to insight: insight into this kind of situation, into the effects of our actions, and the value of our response, and who we are, and so on. When we face such a situation again, we respond in a new way, guided by our new insight. That leads to a new experience, which again we reflect on, which refines our previous insight. On and on this process of experience, and reflection, and experience, goes. It becomes a whole way of living: as a wisely reflective person. This is how we grow in wisdom: by living reflectively.
A map of life
Life is multi-faceted, and that process of experience and reflection leads to a plethora of insights, altogether which create a map of life. That is another feature of wisdom which I mentioned above. This is a map both of the big pictures of life, and of how to live it: it is both contemplative and practical. It is therefore also a normative map, because it tells us what is true and good and what matters, and it tells us what to pursue or avoid and how. Our map guides us through life. As above, by living reflectively we continually modify this map, adding new insights and correcting old ones in light of further experience and reflection. This is what we sometimes call "the getting of wisdom." Not only does this ongoing pursuit of wisdom make life fascinating, not only does it fascinate and wake us up, but whether the question is how to respond to depression, or whether to date this person, or how to deal with a bully, the quality of our map contributes greatly to the outcomes of our life. Furthermore, and very importantly, it shapes who and what we become across time. Philosophy, the pursuit of wisdom, the map we live by, is, as I say, transformative.
An activity and ability
I said that wisdom is an activity and an ability. This claim takes us to the heart of wisdom as a set of ingredients we can cultivate. I will set out three major activities which constitute the three main ingredients of wisdom: reason, the intellectual virtues, and imagination.
Reason
One ingredient of wisdom is reason. We need to reason well, or to put it differently, to perceive and think well, if we are to see life in ways that are true and good. Aristotle mapped out the ingredients (or steps) to doing this, which are called "the three acts of the intellect." They are:
To think well, to think rationally, to think critically, is to examine your concepts, and your judgements (which are combinations of concepts), and your reasoning (which are combinations of judgements). As a philosopher, one of my key skills lies in paying attention to each of these in my own thinking and in the thinking of others. I do that by my knowledge of logic, but more informally by a practice known as "Socratic questioning." That is, I engage you in curious, exploratory conversation, to help you analyse any or each of these factors whenever there is a hint of error in them that is worth examining. So, you do not need to become a logician, instead I imitate Socrates, who would engage people in coversation about their concerns, via questions and noticings that would lead them to examine their own thinking, so that they could abandon error, and perceive, judge, and reason in ways that are more true and good.
This examination matters because our thinking matters. As the quotes above from Marcus Aurelius and the Buddha point out, how we think shapes our whole life. It shapes our further thinking, it shapes our decisions, it shapes our emotions and desires, it shapes our actions, it also shapes our experience and sense of the meaning of things, it shapes the direction and shape of our life, and it shapes who we become and what values we embody. This insight lies at the core of classical philosophy. It was picked up by modern psychological research, which provides a mass of empirical research to show that it is true, as well as modern psychotherapy such as cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT), which is a more narrowly psychological and therapeutic version of this insight and cultivation.
The intellectual virtues
There is more to wisdom than reasoning well. An just person sees a different world to an unjust one. Likewise, a courageously hopeful person versus a pessimistic one. Your vision of life depends on your qualities as a person. This includes the qualities of your mind. We call good mental qualities "intellectual virtues."
Nathan King wrote a book called The Excellent Mind: Intellectual Virtues for Everyday Life which is very accessible and recommended. The contents page provides us with a nice list of primary intellectual virtues: curiosity--a healthy appetite for knowledge; carefulness--mind your evidence; autonomy--think for yourself; humility and self-confidence--own your weaknesses, and your strengths; honesty--don't distort the truth; perseverence--overcome obstacles; courage--persist despite threats; open-mindedness and firmness--transcend and maintain your perspective; fair-mindedness and charity--a just, as well as kind and compassionate, view of life.
Consider what a difference it would make to your thinking--and so also to your emotions, actions, and the shape and direction of your whole life--if your thinking embodied all these virtues to a higher degree. I help you to cultivate such virtues.
Imagination
Imagination is something that happens to us--a fantasy takes over our mind, or in sleep we dream--and that can be a good teacher, for example when a dream alerts us to something we are ignoring. Importantly, however, imagination is also something we can choose to do. It can be a chosen activity. Many forms of classical philosophy make a fine art of the intelligent, intentional use of imagination.
Consider the many spiritual exercises of Stoicism, such as the view from above, the death-bed meditation, and pre-meditatio malorum ("meditation on future potential evils"). Taking the latter, consider a fear you have carried in your life. It is not something that has happened. Rationally it may be unlikely to occur, but that is, at least partly, beside the point, for the vulnerability of the human condition means that it could happen. And for whatever reason, you are psychologically fixated on it. For many people, this fear is so terrible to them that they cannot look at it clearly, even as it mentally haunts them. They are bullied and oppressed by it, they are avoidantly backed into a corner of their own mind, and they suffer chronic distress. Not only that, but their fear undermines their character here and now, for when we give into fear as a habit then we become cowardly. And not only that, for any vice breeds many others, and other negative consequences besides.
There are two main steps to a premeditatio malorum:
Do you fear and imagine being old, sick, poor, homeless? I live in north-western Victoria. There are many relatively impoverished people here, young and old, living in caravans and the like. They are real, thoughtful, vulnerable people just like you. How do they deal with this? Many of them work at greater wisdom and acceptance; they cultivate enjoyable social bonds; they cultivate the skills and community needed to deal with relative poverty; and so on. Let's take another common example, do you fear doing something publically for which everybody then hates you? A crime, whether legal, or merely social? In that state of social death, what more profound philosophical or spiritual meaning could you cultivate and live according to? What good thing could you do with your damaged life that is much more meaningful than what you are likely to do on your current, comfort-seeking trajectory?
In premeditatio malorum, you have probably not experienced the feared situation, but you intentionally live through it in your imagintion. You may do this in depth, detail, and often. Because the root of who and what we are lies, not in outward action, but in our mind and heart (from which outward action flows), therefore to do this imaginative, heroic work is to become a wiser, stronger, more virtuous person here and now.
Have you suffered very painful and damaging things in your life, and later when asked if you wished it had never happened, you realise that without that experience you would not be the person you are today? In premeditatio malorum, you engage in the growth that can emerge from suffering, but in response to suffering that is currently only in the imagination. Of course, while it may be in the imagination only, nonetheless the distress is very real. It is a terrible thing to live in fear.
Of course, there is a more positive side to the use of imagination that almost goes without saying. Just as you reason your way to a better future, so too imagination provides a powerful means for envisioning new possibilities, and even for testing them out. That enables and motivates you to do new, better things; to choose a better path forward in life, and to make it actual. This is a major part of philosophical counselling: I help you to see other possibilities and to pursue them.
I have not touched on other ways of knowing, indeed I have focused on the more active: reason, intellectual virtue, intentional imagination. There are more contemplative forms of knowing that are intellectual in the classical sense, but not rational in the modern, calculative sense. This is why we speak of intuition as well, and what it can teach us. However, this section has become long, and we must move on, and that discussion must take place another time.
How I guide you in these
People's lives are limited by their thinking. Conversely, we are made more free, strong, happy, good, and flourishing by means of good thinking and effort. Classical philosophy, and so philosophical counselling, helps a person to cultivate wisdom, which is to say, reason, intellectual virtue, and imagination. How does it do this? I engage you in conversation about your concerns, asking questions or making observations which lead you to reason better, to enact the intellectual virtues, and to exercise more beneficial imagination. You do not have to learn the theory behind this, rather I guide you to reflect in ways that implicitly embody and develop these things. Of course, if you want to read about and better understand the theory and practice for yourself, I very gladly help you in that. My goal is not simply to help you catch a fish, but to teach you how to fish.
The main practice in philosophical counselling is Socratic questioning. I might question your concepts, or judgments, or reasoning about something. For example, with respect to concepts, you call human beings "an invasive species," but what does that concept mean? What is written into it, and is each assumption sound, and on examination do you agree with each element, and do you apply all of them to human beings? This is not pedantic, rather it may lead to recognition that one's experience of life was based on an error, on confused metaphors and logic with real consequences. That may not follow from a mere moment of analysis, but it may follow from a series of such analyses.
I might also ask questions that lead you to exercise the intellectual virtues: "Okay, you are angry at yourself (or them), but you yourself said you are possibly being unjust. How so? How might all this look, from a perspective which, perhaps, is more just?" The discussions may lead to questions such as "What is justice itself, and how does that differ from the concept of justice you have carried hitherto, which seems distorted in such and such a way?" Notice how this will often lead to deeper, wider growth, beyond dealing with the particular concern of the day. For example you gain a clearer vision of justice which shapes your perception, thinking, feeling, and action in future.
Finally, I might lead you also into imaginative reflection, for example through a premeditatio malorum about your fears. Or I might ask questions which lead you to better intuit and recognise your deeper desires, or the felt possibilities for a better future. Or we might explore your fundamental intuitions, and build something better based on those that seem sound and important.
Wisdom is a virtue, and the beginning of all the virtues
I have set out the nature, and the primary ingredients of, wisdom, especially insofar as I help you work on it. This invites an important question: would we call a person wise, whose understanding and speech are wise, but whose way of being does not reflect that? The answer is complicated, but we generally think of a wise person as one whose mind is wise, but whose emotions and actions are also wise, in the sense that they align with and reflect that wisdom. This brings us to our next section, on virtue.
We don't call hypocrites wise. We need to cultivate wisdom, but we also need to shape our emotions, desires, and actions according to wisdom. In contrast to the intellectual virtues, this is the cultivation of the character virtues. They are the embodiment of wisdom at the level of emotion, desire, and action.
The cultivation of the character virtues
"Character is fate."
--The ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus
"Watch your thoughts, they become your words; watch your words, they become your actions; watch your actions, they become your habits; watch your habits, they become your character; watch your character, it becomes your destiny."
--Lao Tzu, the ancient Chinese founder of Taoism
A character virtue is:
A virtue is different to a "psychological strength," which is something you happen to possess by nature or nurture. A psychological strength is something you are fortunate to have. A virtue is something you have achieved. You have freely chosen to pursue it, and have worked at it. Hence, a virtue can be described as a quality, but also as a habit, which becomes a stable trait of your character.
The character virtues include--but are far from limited to--courage to face fear and adversity, temperance to master your desires and find balance, justice to ensure fairness in your dealings with others, compassion to feel with and for your fellow beings, integrity to align your actions with your principles, perseverance to endure in the face of obstacles, curiosity to pursue understanding and truth, wit to engage with the world with intelligence and levity, friendliness to build bonds of community and goodwill, magnanimity to live in a generous and admirable way among others, humility to see yourself accurately and remain open to learning, industriousness to apply yourself fully to meaningful work, patience to accept the inevitable delays and frustrations of life with grace, and love in its fullest sense, as the active, devoted pursuit of good things, including the good for others.
Virtue is an ancient Greek concept. It is any "good quality" that embodies or leads to human flourishing, which is to say, the best life for human beings. The best life is defined, not by a dogma or theory, but by ongoing, patient attention to ourselves and others, to see what we most long for and need. What we long for is not a hypothetical mystery, rather it is as I have described: to be wise, strong, good, happy, successful, and to live a meaningful and flourishing life. Of course, not everybody expresses a desire for these things or recognises their worth, especially when it comes to wisdom and goodness, but the question is: do you want this? Again, the forms these take are kaleidoscopic across humanity. Nonetheless, these goals these define what the virtues are: they embody, or lead to, these things.
In philosophical counselling I help you to to cultivate the particular virtues you need. Which virtues we focus on will depend on your challenges and goals; on your current virtues and vices; and on that bigger sense of what is needed for a truly good, flourishing life. The work always centres around the classical notion of the cardinal virtues: wisdom, courage, temperance, and justice.
The relationship between wisdom and the other cardinal virtues is captured in the classical statement that "wisdom is a virtue, and the beginning of all the virtues." Wisdom is a virtue in the sense that it is composed of activities such as reason and the intellectual virtues. Wisdom is the beginning of the virtues in the sense that it shapes our emotions, desires, and actions--the character virtues.
Courage and temperance are polar virtues. Courage (or fortitude) points to expansion, assertion, fulfillment of potential, the hero's journey. Temperance by contrast isself-control, discipline, moderation, and self-mastery. Courage governs the more spirited side of our nature, while temperance governs our appetites and animal psychology. Justice is the virtue that balances each of these part of the self, and the relationship between the virtues, so for example that our spirited side does not become a tyrant, or our appetites do not ensalve us. The cardinal virtues constitute a schema for thinking about how we are, and wherein we might improve, in order to live better.
To consider how the cultivation of virtue can help you with a particular challenge in your life, think about the particular qualities of your challenge, and then consider what virtues will answer that challenge and make things better. If a person is depressed, for example, I will do such an analysis with them. Of course, depression does not have a single cause or nature, each case of depression may differ from the next, but let's imagine that what emerges through the analysis with a particular client is, first of all, the element despair. The corrective which that calls for is the virtue of hope. Yes, hope can happen to you, but it is also something you do, enact, cultivate. Of course, we don't yet know enough yet about the nature of this person's despair, and so about the nature of the hope needed, as well as what obstructions will face them in cultivating that. So we might start by exploring to what degree this person's despair is something that happens to them, and in what ways it may be something they are enacting or causing. If the despair is the result, for example, of a worldview they have adopted which naturally causes despair, and if on examination we see that that worldview is questionable, then the despair and depression is indeed--in that respect--something the person is doing to themselves. So we will need to examine the worldview: the quality and nature of the concepts, the truth of the judgements, the soundness of the reasoning, and the presence or not of the intellectual virtues. This is the cultivation of wisdom, which as I said is in a sense a virtue. But what if (1) this worldview causes despair, and (2) it does not hold up to scrutiny, and yet (3) this person won't abandon it? Perhaps they say that they can see its flaws, or perhaps they deny its flaws, and yet either way they refuse to give up the view, or it persists in them at an implicit level. Is that a case of stubborn arrogance, in which case they need to cultivate humility? Or are they displaying fear at giving it up, which calls for increased courage? or are they angry at life, and so taking revenge by means of this nihilistic philosophy, and they need to cultivate the virtuous wisdom of amor fati? I could go on, but hopefully you get the drift. I am likely, with this person, to do psychotherapeutic reflection as well, but we do not reduce ourselves to our psychology. We recognise the ways in which we are making things happen as a matter of foolishness and vice, or the ways in which what is needed is increased wisdom and virtue.
In summary
These two sections on wisdom and virtue point to the heart of classical philosophy as a transformative guide to life, and so of my philosophical counselling. The cultivation of wisdom and virtue is the cultivation of the qualities of head and heart which enable you to navigate life, both in terms of its challenges, and its opportunities, and to craft the life you want, and to cultivate a truly good, strong, happy way of being. I will now say more about my psychotherapeutic background, which I bring into my philosophical counselling as an addition.
Mainstream therapy
Before proceeding to the main part of this section, I need to clarify the nature of counselling and psychotherapy, and distinguish them from professions with which they are often conflated.
Counselling
I define counselling as a framework and set of skills. The framework includes a professional and confidential conversation, and the skills are conversational in nature. Counselling is aimed at advising or guiding the client according to the counsellor's particular expertise; or helping the client exercise practical wisdom regarding their challenges or goals; or guiding the client toward insight and personal growth, especially of a psychological kind.
The skills and framework that constitute counselling are somewhat a-theoretical, and can be applied to many fields of life. For example, a counsellor may focus on your life challenges and on your psychological well-being, and in doing so they may specialise in one of the psychotherapies (this is the form of counselling in which I was trained). Or a counsellor may guide couples to relate better, based on research and related therapeutic practices. A financial counsellor will financial counselling, while a social work counsellor may have a person to improve their practical functioning in life. There are also pastoral counsellors who guide people to face life better through the beliefs of their religion. And of course, there are now philosophical counsellors.
Psychotherapy
By contrast with counselling, a psychotherapy is constituted by a particular theoretical commitment. That is, a psychotherapy is a particular psychological theory of human nature, and of what goes wrong in individuals, and of how to address that. It is also the practice of addressing those problems with individuals, through the application of the theory in the form of techniques. I adress the three main camps of psychotherapy below: the humanistic, the cognittive-behavioural, and the psychodynamic.
I am trained in counselling and psychotherapy. That is, I completed qualifications in counselling to master's level. That training included a study of all the major camps of psychotherapy as well. For that reason, I am called a counsellor, but also psychotherapist.
Psychology and the clinical professions
People often confuse counselling and psychotherapy with the professions of psychology and psychiatry. That is a significant mistake. Psychology and psychiatry are often referred to as "clinical" professions, because they often take a medicalised view of human nature and its ills. Hence, many psychologists base their work on a diagnostic manual such as the DSM, and provide related clinical services such as assessments, diagnoses, associated treatments, over-sight and reports, referrals, and so on. I am not trained to provide any of those practices or services.
A simple way to think of the distinction between psychotherapy and psychology, is to consider the difference in how they help you understand and address your problems:
All that I have just said is grossly simplistic. There are two reasons in particular for that unfortunate fact. First, people consistently conflate psychotherapy with psychology. That is a problem, because most psychotherapists do not provide clinical services, which the client may need or want. So I err on the side of gross clarity, at least as a starting point. Secondly, it seems to me that many people unreflectively assume that these professions were rationally designed. That they are coherent in themselves and in their distinctions from and relationships with each other. That is far from the case. They each evolved, in isolation and sometimes competition with each other, and each has competing and even warring camps within. It's a messy evolution, with twisting roots going in every direction. Consider, also, that some psychotherapists do adopt a clinical way of working, even if that is far from the norm, and also that a significant minority of psychologists are critical of the clinical approach and seek to work in a more humanistic way. We are using umbrella terms, for what amount to a patchwork of related but different views and practices.
The psychotherapies
Let us now move on to the main theme of this section: the forms of psychotherapy that enter into my philosophical counselling. As mentioned, I studied counselling and psychotherapy to master's level. I seemed to have a knack for the art, and by the end of my training I had been offered numerous academic and therapeutic roles by my educators. That led to years spent working as a mainstream therapist in a variety of organisations focused on issues such as bereavement, suicide crisis intervention, rural men's counselling, an Australian Defense Force and a war veteran's counselling service, workplace counselling (EAP), and management coaching for interpersonal skills. I designed and delivered training to counsellors, and was head-hunted multiple times to teach counselling at tertiary institutions (which I always turned down--my focus was on the practice). I was registered with the Australian Counselling Association at their most senior level.
In that context, I developed skills across many mainstream approaches to therapy within the broad three camps: the humanistic, the cognitive-behavioural, and the psychodynamic. Those titles are umbrella terms that include most of the psychotherapeutic approaches. I will describe each camp so that you have a sense of what I am drawing on when I utlise the insights and skills of mainstream therapy in our work together. I will emphasise the ways that the therapies draw on philosophical ideas, which they do to a great degree. (It is therefore my opinion that psychotherapeutic training should include practical philosophical training too.)
Humanistic therapies
There are many forms of humanistic therapy, such as the person-centred, Gestalt, and existential therapies. The humanistic therapies largely draw on a philosophical method called phenomenology. Phenomenology helps us to ariculate and understand our conscious experience, which includes intellect and will, but also emotion and embodiment. In humanistic therapy the focus is especially on our emotional and embodied experience. For example, humanistic therapy helps us to "get in touch with" our deeper feelings. This has become the butt of jokes, but consider times when you were suffering and yet you did not know how you felt, or at least you could not articulate it, and consider how worse that made things. Conversely, consider times when you discovered how you were "really feeling" and how helpful that was. Consider what it is to be cut off from you desires, not knowing what you want, and so not being able to make decisions--that can seriously handicap a person's life.
Cognitive behavioural Therapies (CBT)
From the middle of the 17th to the middle of the 19th centuries, Western culture passed through two cultural epochs: the Enlightenment and Romanticism. The Enlightenment was the age of rationalism and science. That led to a mechanical, disenchanted experience of the world. Romanticism arose in response, to assert the importance of experience, feeling, the inner life. Both the Enlightenment and Romanticism are major influences on today's world, and their influence on psychotherapy goes deep. The humanistic therapy just described is the child of Romanticism. Cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT) embodies the temperament of the Enlightenment.
Cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT) cares less for experience, and trusts more in the outcomes of scientific research. Thus it provides many empirically-validated techniques for changing your thinking and your behaviour. Because feeling often flows from them, CBT changes your feelings too. Like humanistic therapy, there are many versions of CBT, from classical CBT and REBT, to Schema Therapy, ACT, and so on.
In its founding and formation, and especially in the case of Albert Ellis, CBT drew explicitly on the classical philosophy called Stoicism. CBT's roots lie in Stoicism and the Enlightenment. In return, CBT brings much scientific insight to the cultivation of wisdom (cognition) and virtue (behaviour and emotion).
Psychodynamic therapy
The psychodynamic (or psychoanalytic) vision of our unconscious psychology is that of an instinctive animal, which lacks our human concern for reason, morality, and so on, and which drives instead at comfort, gratification, and status. In this way, psychodynamic theory mirrors classical philosophical psychology in many ways, including with respect to (1) the classical division between intelligent consciousness and our sense-based or animal psychology, and (2) the recognition of how that division can amount to a conflict between conscious values and blind desires, and (3) the attempt to reshape or sublimate our psychological forces to serve our conscious goals.
A major way that psychodynamic therapy helps is by revealing your unseen psychological patterns. You tell yourself you are being generous, when really you are trying to get something. You blame yourself, claiming you are bad or stupid, because that feels safer than recognising that some things our painfully out of our control. We call these "the defense mechanisms" and there are many of them. Everybody's life is partly shaped by a particular set of such defenses. The therapist's job, at least on my study and training, is in part to discern your particular defenses, and to point them out to you, or, for prudential reasons, to say nothing and instead work with you in ways that work on your defenses. For example, if a client's raging egotism, which often reflects deep psychological wounds, is expressing itself in an unjust perspective on another's reasons and actions, I might give the appearance of going along with their bitching, while here and there I will subtly "notice" and mention thingswhich point to a bigger, more just perspective. I slowly guide the client to see beyond the limits set by their defenses, and to feel and act in bigger ways. As the client grows, their defenses become unnecessary and fall away, or we can work at explicitly removing them. Of course, this work is never complete, but the work of self-awareness makes a great difference in itself.
While Freud focused on our subconconscious or unconscious psychology, as animal forces pushing for comfort and gratification, Carl Jung offered a richer conception of what is contained in the unconscious, which included much wisdom. Jung was far from original: both Freud and Jung stand on the shoulders of Plotinus, the third century Roman philosopher who represents the high-water mark of ancient philosophy--the genius synthesis of Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics--and the last great philosopher before Christian Rome outlawed pagan philosophy. (Of course, medieval mysticism drew mainly on him.) Some people today imagine that we can reduce consciousness to the brain, but consider this: every attempt to objectify and reduce consciousness is itself an act of consciousness, a thought within consciousness. That should give serious pause. Plotinus understands the nature of the world by starting with the phenomenon of consciousness, and it is he--not Freud--who introduced the idea of subconscious dimensions of the self--both primitive, but also profound--into Western thought. There is more to us, which is good and sublime, which may not right now see, but which we can wake up to and cultivate. Furthermore, consciousness is fundamentally value-oriented, and there is meaning alive in our experience of the world, to which we are often blind, and that blindness is especially the case when we are despairing, or dissolute, or afraid, or arrogant, and so on.
Positive Psychology
There is another major influence of mine, which is less a form of therapy than a field of research which informs therapy, and which should be mentioned due to its impact on me. It is called positive psychology. Positive psychology arose as a challenge: therapy has spent a century focusing on what goes wrong; perhaps it is time to focus, also, on what goes right, and on how to replicate that, on how to create more of that. Positive psychology is in many ways very clearly a modern psychological variation on the philosophy of Aristotle. It researches wisdom, virtue, flourishing, and related concerns such as will-power. As you might imagination, its research-based insights can be incredibly helpful for philosophical counselling.
Integration of the three psychotherapeutic camps
Each of these therapies--humanistic, cognitive-behavioural, psychodynamic--points at different aspects of us, and each speaks to different client temperaments. For that reason I have studied all these approaches, and have spent years honing skills in each. In psychotherapy this preference for integrating different approaches rather than practicing only one approach is called "integrationism."
At the same time, during those decades that I practiced mainstream therapy and worked at this integration, especially in the context of my counselling work in organisations, I had also a continuous specialisation: existential therapy, which I offered in private practice.
Existential Therapy
Existential Therapy is a philosophically-oriented variant of mainstream psychotherapy. It draws heavily on phenomenological and existential philosophy. Existential therapy is the therapy of meaning and purpose par excellence. Viktor Frankl, existential therapist, Holocaust survivor, and author of Man's Search for Meaning, observed that the person who can find a Why can find a How. If you have adequate meaning or purpose, you can find the means to cope, to achieve the goal, and even to flourish. I have seen this time and again: people are very resourceful...if they are motivated enough. The problem in our nihilistic times is the lack of motivation. The power of existential therapy lies especially in its capacity to explore the meaning implicit in a client's struggles, and to cultivate purpose, direction, and meaning in life.
Given my philosophical background, I was very drawn to existential therapy. In 2012 I started a private practice in Carlton, Melbourne which was focused on this approach and which ran two days a week for almost a decade. I did that while counselling within organisations on the other three days, as well as teaching philosophy until 2014. Hence, I spent the 2010s developing skills across the various versions of existential therapy. That included the approaches of Viktor Frankl whom I just mentioned, as well as of Irvin Yalom, Ernesto Spinelli, Betty Cannon, and many others.
Many fine existential therapists have no formal training in philosophy. In speaking with them, it is implicitly clear that with many of them work in a way that is ultimately psychological. Yet they have an aptitude for bringing existential philosophical concerns into therapy. A leading example is Irvin Yalom, who practices a form of psychodynamic therapy that focuses on existential themes. In Yalom's model, we are confronted by the essential features of the human condition such as death, freedom, isolation, and meaninglessness. In response we suffer anxiety, and as humans are wont to do, we psychologically defend ourselves against that anxiety in all the weird and wonderful ways typical of defense mechanisms. The challenge is to recognise our defenses as defenses, and then to recognise the existential anxieties they are defending against, and then to respond consciously in a better way to those existential realities which elicit the anxiety. "A better way" includes courage, acceptance, creativity, love, and so on.
The existential therapist who influenced me the most was Emmy van Deurzen. For van Deurzen, the goal of therapy is not primarily some remedy for life's challenges such as anxiety or grief--not some cure for being human--rather it is an increase in our clarity, skilfulness, and courage, so that we can face life's realities with wisdom and resolve. Those realities include the "givens" which Yalom points to, but whereas as Yalom offers something like a "theory of everything," van Deurzen's phenomenological approach is intentionally open to the many kinds and variations of life's deep and existential challenges. Van Deurzen offers many intellectual tools for understanding and navigating these challenges and life in general as we experience it. Alongside the tough-minded common sense and philosophical depth of her work, van Deurzen's approach is existential in that it focuses also on the work of becoming more fully, passionately alive.
Some people ask why I did not remain an existential therapist. Why continue with my plan to become a philosophical counsellor? After all, I was building a respected reputation as an existential therapist, within a community that is very active and much more developed than philosophical counselling. I was also at the point where many were asking for formal supervision, which was an interesting new stage in my work, and which would have provided my with a middle class income for the first time in my life. (Counselling typically pays poorly, unless you utterly exhaust yourself in private practice, or charge particularly high rates to clients, both of which I refuse to do.) Here are two reasons. In the first place, I am influenced by existentialism, but I view it as very limited. I am rooted in classical philosophy, which is so much richer and wiser.
Secondly, to remain an existential therapist would be to remain a psychotherapist. A psychotherapist works in a social context, which means according to various expectations and associated pressures, responsibilities, and risks, many of which are not evident to non-therapists. That pushes the therapist to focus and work in certain ways, including ways which can undermine a philosophical focus. My focus is philosophical. That is my priority. So I do not accept those pressures. Hence I left the Australian Counselling Association, and set out purely as a philosophical counsellor, albeit one who draws on psychotherapy as an addition. That was, after all, the long-term goal, which slowly unfolded across two decades. Of course, a person might ask whether the inclusion of psychotherapy makes the work a form of psychotherapy. I answer that a sports coach who has a previous career in psychotherapy, and who draws on that knowledge and skill in their sports coaching, is not thereby practicing psychotherapy, even if the addition therapeutic insight greatly increases the effectiveness of their work. So too with philosophical counselling. To my mind, this is the best of both worlds. Some people should attend mainstream therapy, for some people need a fundamentally psychological approach. That is especially the case when their psychology over-rides their ability to see and think clearly, for example when their trauma is profound or they suffer from a Borderline or Narcissistic personality disorder. Most people, however, may be better served by a modicum of psychological work, and a focus on wisdom and virtue. As stated above, I believe that psychotherapy itself should shift somewhat in this direction, to include philosophical training alongside its focus on our psychology. Among my clients are psychotherapists and psychologists who see me in order to make that shift in their work.
A final thought about psychotherapy
I mentioned that I take an integrationist approach to the different psychotherapies: the humanistic, cognitive-behavioural, psychodynamic, and yes, existential. I also mentor new therapists, simply because it gives me pleasure, and these days about half my clients are psychotherapists or psychologists. There is a perspective I have always found very helpful for myself, which often I share with these people, with regard to the competing psychotherapies: I encourage people to see them as different philosophies.
I am speaking in the plural, because each therapy points to some part of the whole, but not to the whole. From this perspective we step away from "the therapy wars," with their foolishly competing claims to represent the exclusive, objective truth, and instead we view each as a partial, limited truth, which shines a light on some part of the human experience. The bigger picture is not to be found in a single therapeutic theory, or in psychotherapy in general, for example in the therapeutic culture we live in which treats therapy as a theology, but rather in a genuinely philosophical vision that is as comprehensive, as well as true and good, as possible. In this way, we can flexibly appreciate the particular insights and value of any good therapy, and pragmatically place it alongside the others in a way that makes sense.
From this perspective, we are also able to appreciate something more sublime about therapy. There is something beautiful about the psychotherapeutic endeavour, as there is with philosophy and its many "philosophies." I disagree with many aspects of Aristotle, and Stoicism, and yet I find so much in them--enough to keep me returning to them on a daily basis for decades. When we look at the polyphone (and cacophony) of psychotherapies, we see that there is an artistry, a creativity, a wonder, a curiosity, a care, and a love of life, expressed not only in the existence of psychotherapy, but in the kaleidoscope of the many different therapies. A thousand years from now we may look on today's psychotherapy, as people today look on the medieval arts we no longer practice, or no longer recognise (because they have changed so much)--we may see them as so many beautiful and delightful expressions of human wonder, curiosity, and craftsmanship. To note the significant limits of psychological therapy, and of the even more narrow nature of each of the different therapies, is not to devalue them, except insofar as they were previously misunderstood in the sense of over-inflated. Psychotherapy is potent. It is beautiful. It is a patchwork of partial lenses. It is an artwork as much as a truth and a pragmatic help, and the former, initial quality is as important to its effect on our lives, as its latter qualities.
Philosophical influences
Some of my clients have studied philosophy or have an interest in it. For people who are interested, here are some of the philosophers who have most influenced me.
Socrates
Socrates taught us how to think. His model is based on conversation and questions. "You say you are doing this because it makes you happy, but what do you mean by happiness?" It is also based on humility: the person who assumes they know is thereby obstructed from getting at truth. It is an ethos of self-examination: "Know thyself." For we often deceive ourselves and so distort our thinking, which is something the psychodynamic therapists point out. Reason, humility, and self-examination are about more than truth, however. Socrates also gave us a vision of what thinking aims at.
It is through the writing of Plato that we know Socrates. People who have not read Plato carefully often assume that Socrates shares the values of Enlightenment rationalism: all that matters is pure reason. That is wrong. Socrates makes it clear that the most important thing in life, and the goal of philosophy, is to become a truly good man. We can fail at everything else, we can be robbed of everything else, but it is goodness, justice, love, beauty which give meaning to life, and the goal of philosophy is to participate in and embody these values. A homeless, good man, is much better off than a rich, bad man, even if neither know it. If this sounds startling and absurd, that is he accusation thrown at Socrates, in such books of Plato's as Gorgias. In Socrates, the first great philosopher, we have one of the highest visions of the purpose and meaning of life expressed anywhere in history. Socrates lived and died by this vision: he was executed for doing philosophy.
Plato
Plato was Socrates' student, and he wrote many dialogues which feature Socrates, which display the Socratic method of reasoning in action, and which try to make sense of Socrates' astonishing vision of the meaning of life. Scholars cannot agree on where Socrates' end and the insights of Plato begin, so we should thank Plato as much as Socrates for them. I will say less about Plato here, despite the fact that he is my greatest teacher, for much that I would say of him can be said of Plotinus (below), despite their differences.
Aristotle
Aristotle was Plato's student. He did not share in the profundity of Socrates' and Plato's vision, but he was the great systematiser. Think of what it takes to become a master of any one of these disciplines: formal logic, biology, literary theory, political science, psychology, zoology, ethics, metaphysics, natural theology, physics, and rhetoric. Aristotle invented all of them. Of course, they have a history before him, but Aristotle created the disciplines, and made great progress in all of them. He did this while holding down day jobs like tutoring Alexander the Great. I am an ongoing student of Aristotle's logic, and especially of his theory of wisdom, virtue, and flourishing which today is called virtue ethics. I am also a serious appreciater of his psychology and metaphysics, even if I favour Plato and Plotinus over him. Aristotle's systematising gives us frameworks for growth in wisdom and virtue. It is he who set out the distinctions I use such as contemplative versus practical wisdom, and of reason, intellectual virtue, and character virtue.
Whereas Socrates thought virtue was enough for flourishing, Aristotle focused on an array of goods that are needed, some of which are out of our control. Both Socrates and Aristotle make very strong arguments for their differing positions, such that the Platonists and Aristotelians have long been in debate with each other. The reason their disagreement continues is, I believe, because these matters are inherently complex and multifaceted. Of course, that is the nature of our material life: it is partial, fragmented, shot-through with contradictions. The metaphysics of both Plato and Aristotle explain why this is so.
Stoicism
The late Stoics--Epictetus especially, but also Marcus Aurelius--have guided me throughout my adult life. I spoke of Stoicism above in the context of imagination. Stoicism is, for me, a kind of daily reminder and training for living the vision of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. It can be this for anybody who finds power in their words. Every week I will devote time across several days, when the inclination arises, to reading Epictetus, as well as the other Stoics.
Plotinus
For Plotinus, life is a longing for goodness. What do I mean? I am reminded of the words of the modern Platonist Simone Weil: "All human beings are absolutely identical in so far as they can be thought of as consisting of a centre, which is an unquenchable desire for good, surrounded by an accretion of psychical and bodily matter."Like Plato, Plotinus focuses on discerning the implicit meaning and value in our desire and our experience, to which we have been blind. This understanding changes how you read people and their actions. For example, when I speak with a person who is abusing alcohol, I guide them to reflect on what the good, and perhaps the highest good, is that they seek in the wine. We start with the obvious answers, and then work upward. For the wine is a participation in, and shadow of, a greater good they long for. My client's are often astonished at what emerges from this vision and method. Such clarity and insight becomes the means to stop living according to an error, and to re-orient ourselves to the truer good we long for.
Plotinus was the last of the greatest philosophers of antiquity, for the Platonic tradition as "pagan" philosophy was outlawed by decree of the new Christian Roman empire. Plotinus was also the culmination, in the sense that he synethesised Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics, into a profound vision of life. His vision became the basis for medieval mysticism, for it is profoundly spiritual. It is also, however, a powerful inspiration and guide for many atheistic philosophers, such as Iris Murdoch in the twentieth century.
Thomas Aquinas
Another philosopher who ranks alongside all the others, but does not get anywhere near the respect or interest he deserves, is Saint Thomas Aquinas. Thomas Aquinas is by far the greatest Christian philosopher, and for that reason he has been dismissed by secular philosophers. I am among those lovers of Thomas who are not Christians, but who draw on him purely as a philosopher, a man of reason. Of most interest to me is Aquinas' psychology and understanding of virtue, which is a brilliant development of Aristotle's ideas into a much more coherent system.
The Moralists
I am speaking here of no single philosopher, and in fact of no great philosopher, but rather of a tradition of "scholars, soldiers, and gentlemen" who have articulated the classical vision of wisdom, virtue, and flourishing, for readers down the centuries. They used to be called "moralists" when the word had a wider meaning: how to live well. This wisdom tradition is offered to people from all walks of life, and so it is close to my heart as a philosophical counsellor. We could say that the tradition began with Cicero and Seneca in ancient Rome, writing letters and essays on particular issues pertaining to character, resilience, success, goodness, happiness, and so on. It continued through the middle ages, the Renaissance, and into the modern world with writers such as Montaigne and Bacon, and through the 19th century with the likes of Samuel Johnson, John Stuart Mill, and Emerson and Thoreau. As an example of literature in this field, I have wonderful fat book from the 1930s: Oldham's 100 Great Lives. It offers twenty minute biographies of great people, focused not only on their achievements and insights, but also on how their character and experience made them into what they became. Reading these biographies leads you to consider what you could make of you own life--your neglected potential--and what work you need to do on yourself, and not in some moralistic sense, but in an inspired way.
Existentialism
I have spent time with most of the existentialists: Nietzsche, Heidegger, Sartre, Camus. Their challenge is precisely to find meaning within modernity--within the collapse of religion, the cultural death of God, and the dogmatic rejection of metaphysics and big-picture meanings. Each of these philosophers helps us to think about these matters in our own lives. Camus, for example, offers a wisdom of local living and concerns, which can be very helpful. More deeply, his essays in Algiers inspire a kind of atheistic wonder and mysticism at the fleeting world we are a part of, when experienced in its sublime elements, such as in the ocean.
The phenomenological method, developed by people like Heidegger and Sartre, is a method of seeing the implicit and making it explicit, in consciousness and everyday experience. Phenomenology, and the outlook and method I have taken from Plotinus, as well as the method of Ludwig Wittgenstein, complement each other greatly in ways which have deepened and empowered my philosophical counselling.
Wittgenstein
In many ways, Wittgenstein's method resembles that of phenomenology. I came to Wittgenstein before phenomenology, and I approached the latter with a mind trained by an intensive study in Wittgenstein's method.
There is a small but substantial literature about the relevance of Wittgenstein for psychotherapy and, by obvious implication, even moreso for philosophical counselling. This is no surprise, as Wittgenstein called his philosophy a therapeutic endeavour.
A particular way in which I draw on Wittgenstein in my work has to do with his definition of his philosophical method: a “battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language.” Wittgenstein's method complements the Socratic method, and classical logic, and CBT, insofar as it helps people to recognise their problematic understanding and use of concepts. This is a big deal for your practical life, as philosophers and therapists alike know. As Wittgenstein said, "the limits of my language are the limits of my world." Wittgenstein's analytical method helps us to see clearly and to free ourselves of our "mental cramps" and traps.
Simone Weil
Simone Weil, who died aged 34 during the second world war, is an enigma. A Communist soldier in Spain, a Jewish refugee from the Nazis, a Catholic mystic who praised atheism, and a philosophical genius all rolled into one. In many ways it was Weil who taught me how to read Plato and Plotinus. While Weil wrote much about goodness, love, and so forth, it was her articulation of the depths of our vulnerability that astonishes most readers. Weil's mind cut like a knife, directly into the recesses of the human soul. She manages to articulate many things which we cannot, without her, find proper words for, for example what we are trying to say when we use the incoherent language of human rights. Consider, for example, these words of hers: "At the bottom of the heart of every human being, from earliest infancy until the tomb, there is something that goes on indomitably expecting, in the teeth of all experience of crimes committed, suffered, and witnessed, that good and not evil will be done to him. It is this above all that is sacred in every human being." To read Weil is not necessarily to agree with her vision of the world in toto--certainly, I do not--but it is to be struck again and again by her insights, which change how you see.
Iris Mudoch
Murdoch, who is better known as a novelist, was one of the great philosophers of the 20th century. Murdoch wrote the first book-length study of Sartre in English, and she immediately recognised the central errors of existentialism, even as she articulated what was so attractive about it. In many ways, Murdoch is a Platonic alternative to existentialism, for people trying to find meaning and goodness within a secular, atheistic world. Her novels, such as The Bell, as masterpieces of philosophical psychology in narrative form.
Christopher Cordner and Raimond Gaita
Christopher Cordner was my lecturer and then post-graduate superviser at The University of Melbourne. Raimond Gaita is one of our greatest public philosophers, one of the leading moral philosophers alive today, and a great influence on me (a circle of us at university used to call ourselves, humorously, the Gaita-raters). Both these philosophers represent a kind of Platonism, shot through with something distinctly Australian, that speaks to the modern, secular mind, but which also greatly challenges us to see beyond our technological understanding of ourselves to the implicit forms of meaning and value in which our lives are actually awash.
Can you see a theme here? Philosophy as the discernment of implicit forms of meaning and value in our lives and world, to which we have been blind, and which are not objects for explanation so much as mysteries which grip us, realities and deeper visions of life which can transform us. This is Socrates, Plato, Plotinus, Weil, Murdoch...or what we might call "Platonism." I am a Platonist. My work is the uncovering of what is there. It is a work of attention.
Eastern and other philosophies
Did you notice that when I quoted a Roman or Greek philosopher in the sections on wisdom and virtue, I followed with a quote from an Eastern philosophers. That was not accidental. I was hinting at something: I am interested in wisdom wherever it is to be found. While I do not believe that all cultures are equal (they are like people's characters, with many good but different types, but also harmful types), I do believe in the legitimacy of difference, and its implicit coherency, such that I view the differences in many cultures not only as different embodiments of what it is to be human, but also different embodied lenses on life, its nature, and its meaning, which can teach us much.
While valuing this difference, it is also startling how wisdom and virtue are understood in similar ways the world over. This is because our understanding is true. Put otherwise: our understanding reflects human nature, which is shared by us all.
While I am interested in wisdom wherever it is to be found, I am a Westerner, and I have a distinct love of Western philosophy, which speaks deeply to my psyche, to my being. I love the philosophy and high cultures of Greece, Rome, and medieval and Renaissance and modern Europe. I have no time for the current hatred of the West which I view, both as a philosopher and psychotherapist, as not only deeply ignorant and arrogant, but as deeply pathological. There is good and evil to be found everywhere. That is the human story. There is so much good in our story, in our culture and its philosophy. I come from a poor, rural background, with parents who left school at 14 to support their families, and a childhood where at moments we did not have food on our table. This is the background I brought to my understanding of what it is to enter a university and study philosophy. I speak of philosophy mostly in terms of truth and goodness, and of how it transforms us in those terms, but I have also used another key philosophical term: beauty. In Western philosophy, like so many aspects of the Western story, there is great sublimity, depth, and beauty. You become what you think. This philosophy can transform us.
Final thoughts
The key to dealing with life's problems and making life good, is found above all in our own effort at the level the head and the heart, intellect and will, wisdom and virtue. That is is fundamental premise of the service I offer you.
If I were to list the potential benefits of philosophical counselling I would say that it aims to help you:
"The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts."
--Marcus Aurelius
"We are shaped by our thoughts; we become what we think."
"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 Buddha
Philosophy is the love and pursuit of wisdom. The heart of philosophical counselling is the cultivation of wisdom.
Wisdom is the ability to see and think, with clarity and depth, about the things that matter. It is also to be a sound judge of how things are and of what to do.
Wisdom is not some mysterious talent that falls on some and not others. Rather, wisdom is composed of ingredients which can be recognised and cultivated. You can make yourself more wise. This is the point of philosophical counselling. Philosophical counselling is for people who want to become more wise, with all that follows on that.
Aristotle divides wisdom into two kinds:
- Contemplative wisdom: deeper clarity about life, human nature, yourself, the meaning of things, and so on.
- Practical wisdom: the know-how and good judgement to navigate daily life, deal with problems, and achieve your goals.
There are also two ways to think about the nature of wisdom:
- an activity and ability
- a map of life which emerges from that activity, and which then guides us.
I will say something about each.
Contemplative wisdom
One way of seeing life leads to despair. Another to fear. Another to anger. Another to peace. Another to motivation and achievement, whether outwardly or within. If the truth about some aspect of life is unpleasant or distressing then so be it--truth is better than delusion, and the challenge is to live well with reality. Oftentimes, however, a person's negative picture of life is distorted, and sometimes it is outright false. This invites the Socratic work of examining one's picture of life, and of improving it, or even rejecting it for something better. That is the work of reason. It is also the work of cultivating virtue--both the intellectual virtues, and the character virtues (virtues of emotion, desire, action). It is also the work of intuition and imagination. Classical philosophy is transformative attention to life. We need a vision of life that is as true and good as possible.
Practical wisdom
Alongside contemplative wisdom, practical wisdom has an equally vital part to play in philosophical counselling, especially when the client's goals go beyond contemplative reflection, for example when they seek it as an alternative to mainstream therapy. Practical wisdom is the ability to recognise what to do, and how to do it, in any situation. It is traditionally described as "doing the right thing, in the right way, for the right reason, to the right degree." Will things be okay if I quit this job right now? How do I get these people to understand? What do I most need to work on in myself? How do I balance independence and dependence in my relationship? How do I achieve happiness in my particular life, and what does that involve on a daily basis? Practical wisdom is the cultivation of the ability to ask the right questions, to find answers to them, and to enact them will, in the practical sphere of life.
Some peope say that wisdom comes from experience. Or that suffering makes us wiser. That is untrue. Loosely-speaking, many people become worse through experience. For example, somebody suffers a significant betrayal or interpersonal disappointment. Because they are relatively unreflective (they ruminate, but they do not reflect) their egotism, vices, and psychological forces get an easy hold on them. So they naively and arrogantly conclude that they are unique in their suffering. Thus they become envious of the apparet naivety, ease, and happiness of others, which makes them bitter, and over time that bitterness and all that flows from it becomes their way of being. What is missing here? Experience is neutral. It is the perspective we take on it which shapes us. As Epictetus wrote: "We are shaped not by events, but by our opinion of them."
Aristotle points out that practical wisdom grows through a feedback process between experience and reflection. By reflection, I do not mean rumination. I mean the wise and virtuous exercise of the intellect and will: the exercise of reason, intellectual virtue, intelligent imagination and so on, all of which I am about to discuss. We experience some aspect of life, and we wisely and virtuously reflect on it. That reflection leads to insight: insight into this kind of situation, into the effects of our actions, and the value of our response, and who we are, and so on. When we face such a situation again, we respond in a new way, guided by our new insight. That leads to a new experience, which again we reflect on, which refines our previous insight. On and on this process of experience, and reflection, and experience, goes. It becomes a whole way of living: as a wisely reflective person. This is how we grow in wisdom: by living reflectively.
A map of life
Life is multi-faceted, and that process of experience and reflection leads to a plethora of insights, altogether which create a map of life. That is another feature of wisdom which I mentioned above. This is a map both of the big pictures of life, and of how to live it: it is both contemplative and practical. It is therefore also a normative map, because it tells us what is true and good and what matters, and it tells us what to pursue or avoid and how. Our map guides us through life. As above, by living reflectively we continually modify this map, adding new insights and correcting old ones in light of further experience and reflection. This is what we sometimes call "the getting of wisdom." Not only does this ongoing pursuit of wisdom make life fascinating, not only does it fascinate and wake us up, but whether the question is how to respond to depression, or whether to date this person, or how to deal with a bully, the quality of our map contributes greatly to the outcomes of our life. Furthermore, and very importantly, it shapes who and what we become across time. Philosophy, the pursuit of wisdom, the map we live by, is, as I say, transformative.
An activity and ability
I said that wisdom is an activity and an ability. This claim takes us to the heart of wisdom as a set of ingredients we can cultivate. I will set out three major activities which constitute the three main ingredients of wisdom: reason, the intellectual virtues, and imagination.
Reason
One ingredient of wisdom is reason. We need to reason well, or to put it differently, to perceive and think well, if we are to see life in ways that are true and good. Aristotle mapped out the ingredients (or steps) to doing this, which are called "the three acts of the intellect." They are:
- perception (or conceptualisation)
- judgement
- reasoning (or logical thinking)
To think well, to think rationally, to think critically, is to examine your concepts, and your judgements (which are combinations of concepts), and your reasoning (which are combinations of judgements). As a philosopher, one of my key skills lies in paying attention to each of these in my own thinking and in the thinking of others. I do that by my knowledge of logic, but more informally by a practice known as "Socratic questioning." That is, I engage you in curious, exploratory conversation, to help you analyse any or each of these factors whenever there is a hint of error in them that is worth examining. So, you do not need to become a logician, instead I imitate Socrates, who would engage people in coversation about their concerns, via questions and noticings that would lead them to examine their own thinking, so that they could abandon error, and perceive, judge, and reason in ways that are more true and good.
This examination matters because our thinking matters. As the quotes above from Marcus Aurelius and the Buddha point out, how we think shapes our whole life. It shapes our further thinking, it shapes our decisions, it shapes our emotions and desires, it shapes our actions, it also shapes our experience and sense of the meaning of things, it shapes the direction and shape of our life, and it shapes who we become and what values we embody. This insight lies at the core of classical philosophy. It was picked up by modern psychological research, which provides a mass of empirical research to show that it is true, as well as modern psychotherapy such as cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT), which is a more narrowly psychological and therapeutic version of this insight and cultivation.
The intellectual virtues
There is more to wisdom than reasoning well. An just person sees a different world to an unjust one. Likewise, a courageously hopeful person versus a pessimistic one. Your vision of life depends on your qualities as a person. This includes the qualities of your mind. We call good mental qualities "intellectual virtues."
Nathan King wrote a book called The Excellent Mind: Intellectual Virtues for Everyday Life which is very accessible and recommended. The contents page provides us with a nice list of primary intellectual virtues: curiosity--a healthy appetite for knowledge; carefulness--mind your evidence; autonomy--think for yourself; humility and self-confidence--own your weaknesses, and your strengths; honesty--don't distort the truth; perseverence--overcome obstacles; courage--persist despite threats; open-mindedness and firmness--transcend and maintain your perspective; fair-mindedness and charity--a just, as well as kind and compassionate, view of life.
Consider what a difference it would make to your thinking--and so also to your emotions, actions, and the shape and direction of your whole life--if your thinking embodied all these virtues to a higher degree. I help you to cultivate such virtues.
Imagination
Imagination is something that happens to us--a fantasy takes over our mind, or in sleep we dream--and that can be a good teacher, for example when a dream alerts us to something we are ignoring. Importantly, however, imagination is also something we can choose to do. It can be a chosen activity. Many forms of classical philosophy make a fine art of the intelligent, intentional use of imagination.
Consider the many spiritual exercises of Stoicism, such as the view from above, the death-bed meditation, and pre-meditatio malorum ("meditation on future potential evils"). Taking the latter, consider a fear you have carried in your life. It is not something that has happened. Rationally it may be unlikely to occur, but that is, at least partly, beside the point, for the vulnerability of the human condition means that it could happen. And for whatever reason, you are psychologically fixated on it. For many people, this fear is so terrible to them that they cannot look at it clearly, even as it mentally haunts them. They are bullied and oppressed by it, they are avoidantly backed into a corner of their own mind, and they suffer chronic distress. Not only that, but their fear undermines their character here and now, for when we give into fear as a habit then we become cowardly. And not only that, for any vice breeds many others, and other negative consequences besides.
There are two main steps to a premeditatio malorum:
- You imaginatively put yourself in the terrible situation of which you are so afraid. This is not easy, because your anxiety screams at you to look the other way and flee. But instead of freezing or running, you willfully turn around and engage, imagining in all its horrible detail the feared event.
- You imaginatively put your best foot forward, in terms of all your inner and outer capabilities. Your inner capabilities include your freedom to choose the attitude and spirit with which you respond to any situation, including those in your imagination which may never happen. As the Stoic Marcus Aurelius wrote, "Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present."
Do you fear and imagine being old, sick, poor, homeless? I live in north-western Victoria. There are many relatively impoverished people here, young and old, living in caravans and the like. They are real, thoughtful, vulnerable people just like you. How do they deal with this? Many of them work at greater wisdom and acceptance; they cultivate enjoyable social bonds; they cultivate the skills and community needed to deal with relative poverty; and so on. Let's take another common example, do you fear doing something publically for which everybody then hates you? A crime, whether legal, or merely social? In that state of social death, what more profound philosophical or spiritual meaning could you cultivate and live according to? What good thing could you do with your damaged life that is much more meaningful than what you are likely to do on your current, comfort-seeking trajectory?
In premeditatio malorum, you have probably not experienced the feared situation, but you intentionally live through it in your imagintion. You may do this in depth, detail, and often. Because the root of who and what we are lies, not in outward action, but in our mind and heart (from which outward action flows), therefore to do this imaginative, heroic work is to become a wiser, stronger, more virtuous person here and now.
Have you suffered very painful and damaging things in your life, and later when asked if you wished it had never happened, you realise that without that experience you would not be the person you are today? In premeditatio malorum, you engage in the growth that can emerge from suffering, but in response to suffering that is currently only in the imagination. Of course, while it may be in the imagination only, nonetheless the distress is very real. It is a terrible thing to live in fear.
Of course, there is a more positive side to the use of imagination that almost goes without saying. Just as you reason your way to a better future, so too imagination provides a powerful means for envisioning new possibilities, and even for testing them out. That enables and motivates you to do new, better things; to choose a better path forward in life, and to make it actual. This is a major part of philosophical counselling: I help you to see other possibilities and to pursue them.
I have not touched on other ways of knowing, indeed I have focused on the more active: reason, intellectual virtue, intentional imagination. There are more contemplative forms of knowing that are intellectual in the classical sense, but not rational in the modern, calculative sense. This is why we speak of intuition as well, and what it can teach us. However, this section has become long, and we must move on, and that discussion must take place another time.
How I guide you in these
People's lives are limited by their thinking. Conversely, we are made more free, strong, happy, good, and flourishing by means of good thinking and effort. Classical philosophy, and so philosophical counselling, helps a person to cultivate wisdom, which is to say, reason, intellectual virtue, and imagination. How does it do this? I engage you in conversation about your concerns, asking questions or making observations which lead you to reason better, to enact the intellectual virtues, and to exercise more beneficial imagination. You do not have to learn the theory behind this, rather I guide you to reflect in ways that implicitly embody and develop these things. Of course, if you want to read about and better understand the theory and practice for yourself, I very gladly help you in that. My goal is not simply to help you catch a fish, but to teach you how to fish.
The main practice in philosophical counselling is Socratic questioning. I might question your concepts, or judgments, or reasoning about something. For example, with respect to concepts, you call human beings "an invasive species," but what does that concept mean? What is written into it, and is each assumption sound, and on examination do you agree with each element, and do you apply all of them to human beings? This is not pedantic, rather it may lead to recognition that one's experience of life was based on an error, on confused metaphors and logic with real consequences. That may not follow from a mere moment of analysis, but it may follow from a series of such analyses.
I might also ask questions that lead you to exercise the intellectual virtues: "Okay, you are angry at yourself (or them), but you yourself said you are possibly being unjust. How so? How might all this look, from a perspective which, perhaps, is more just?" The discussions may lead to questions such as "What is justice itself, and how does that differ from the concept of justice you have carried hitherto, which seems distorted in such and such a way?" Notice how this will often lead to deeper, wider growth, beyond dealing with the particular concern of the day. For example you gain a clearer vision of justice which shapes your perception, thinking, feeling, and action in future.
Finally, I might lead you also into imaginative reflection, for example through a premeditatio malorum about your fears. Or I might ask questions which lead you to better intuit and recognise your deeper desires, or the felt possibilities for a better future. Or we might explore your fundamental intuitions, and build something better based on those that seem sound and important.
Wisdom is a virtue, and the beginning of all the virtues
I have set out the nature, and the primary ingredients of, wisdom, especially insofar as I help you work on it. This invites an important question: would we call a person wise, whose understanding and speech are wise, but whose way of being does not reflect that? The answer is complicated, but we generally think of a wise person as one whose mind is wise, but whose emotions and actions are also wise, in the sense that they align with and reflect that wisdom. This brings us to our next section, on virtue.
We don't call hypocrites wise. We need to cultivate wisdom, but we also need to shape our emotions, desires, and actions according to wisdom. In contrast to the intellectual virtues, this is the cultivation of the character virtues. They are the embodiment of wisdom at the level of emotion, desire, and action.
The cultivation of the character virtues
"Character is fate."
--The ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus
"Watch your thoughts, they become your words; watch your words, they become your actions; watch your actions, they become your habits; watch your habits, they become your character; watch your character, it becomes your destiny."
--Lao Tzu, the ancient Chinese founder of Taoism
A character virtue is:
- a good personal quality
- at the level of emotion, desire, and behaviour
- which, through strategic repetition, you make into a habit
- which makes you and your life better, in terms of human flourishing
A virtue is different to a "psychological strength," which is something you happen to possess by nature or nurture. A psychological strength is something you are fortunate to have. A virtue is something you have achieved. You have freely chosen to pursue it, and have worked at it. Hence, a virtue can be described as a quality, but also as a habit, which becomes a stable trait of your character.
The character virtues include--but are far from limited to--courage to face fear and adversity, temperance to master your desires and find balance, justice to ensure fairness in your dealings with others, compassion to feel with and for your fellow beings, integrity to align your actions with your principles, perseverance to endure in the face of obstacles, curiosity to pursue understanding and truth, wit to engage with the world with intelligence and levity, friendliness to build bonds of community and goodwill, magnanimity to live in a generous and admirable way among others, humility to see yourself accurately and remain open to learning, industriousness to apply yourself fully to meaningful work, patience to accept the inevitable delays and frustrations of life with grace, and love in its fullest sense, as the active, devoted pursuit of good things, including the good for others.
Virtue is an ancient Greek concept. It is any "good quality" that embodies or leads to human flourishing, which is to say, the best life for human beings. The best life is defined, not by a dogma or theory, but by ongoing, patient attention to ourselves and others, to see what we most long for and need. What we long for is not a hypothetical mystery, rather it is as I have described: to be wise, strong, good, happy, successful, and to live a meaningful and flourishing life. Of course, not everybody expresses a desire for these things or recognises their worth, especially when it comes to wisdom and goodness, but the question is: do you want this? Again, the forms these take are kaleidoscopic across humanity. Nonetheless, these goals these define what the virtues are: they embody, or lead to, these things.
In philosophical counselling I help you to to cultivate the particular virtues you need. Which virtues we focus on will depend on your challenges and goals; on your current virtues and vices; and on that bigger sense of what is needed for a truly good, flourishing life. The work always centres around the classical notion of the cardinal virtues: wisdom, courage, temperance, and justice.
The relationship between wisdom and the other cardinal virtues is captured in the classical statement that "wisdom is a virtue, and the beginning of all the virtues." Wisdom is a virtue in the sense that it is composed of activities such as reason and the intellectual virtues. Wisdom is the beginning of the virtues in the sense that it shapes our emotions, desires, and actions--the character virtues.
Courage and temperance are polar virtues. Courage (or fortitude) points to expansion, assertion, fulfillment of potential, the hero's journey. Temperance by contrast isself-control, discipline, moderation, and self-mastery. Courage governs the more spirited side of our nature, while temperance governs our appetites and animal psychology. Justice is the virtue that balances each of these part of the self, and the relationship between the virtues, so for example that our spirited side does not become a tyrant, or our appetites do not ensalve us. The cardinal virtues constitute a schema for thinking about how we are, and wherein we might improve, in order to live better.
To consider how the cultivation of virtue can help you with a particular challenge in your life, think about the particular qualities of your challenge, and then consider what virtues will answer that challenge and make things better. If a person is depressed, for example, I will do such an analysis with them. Of course, depression does not have a single cause or nature, each case of depression may differ from the next, but let's imagine that what emerges through the analysis with a particular client is, first of all, the element despair. The corrective which that calls for is the virtue of hope. Yes, hope can happen to you, but it is also something you do, enact, cultivate. Of course, we don't yet know enough yet about the nature of this person's despair, and so about the nature of the hope needed, as well as what obstructions will face them in cultivating that. So we might start by exploring to what degree this person's despair is something that happens to them, and in what ways it may be something they are enacting or causing. If the despair is the result, for example, of a worldview they have adopted which naturally causes despair, and if on examination we see that that worldview is questionable, then the despair and depression is indeed--in that respect--something the person is doing to themselves. So we will need to examine the worldview: the quality and nature of the concepts, the truth of the judgements, the soundness of the reasoning, and the presence or not of the intellectual virtues. This is the cultivation of wisdom, which as I said is in a sense a virtue. But what if (1) this worldview causes despair, and (2) it does not hold up to scrutiny, and yet (3) this person won't abandon it? Perhaps they say that they can see its flaws, or perhaps they deny its flaws, and yet either way they refuse to give up the view, or it persists in them at an implicit level. Is that a case of stubborn arrogance, in which case they need to cultivate humility? Or are they displaying fear at giving it up, which calls for increased courage? or are they angry at life, and so taking revenge by means of this nihilistic philosophy, and they need to cultivate the virtuous wisdom of amor fati? I could go on, but hopefully you get the drift. I am likely, with this person, to do psychotherapeutic reflection as well, but we do not reduce ourselves to our psychology. We recognise the ways in which we are making things happen as a matter of foolishness and vice, or the ways in which what is needed is increased wisdom and virtue.
In summary
These two sections on wisdom and virtue point to the heart of classical philosophy as a transformative guide to life, and so of my philosophical counselling. The cultivation of wisdom and virtue is the cultivation of the qualities of head and heart which enable you to navigate life, both in terms of its challenges, and its opportunities, and to craft the life you want, and to cultivate a truly good, strong, happy way of being. I will now say more about my psychotherapeutic background, which I bring into my philosophical counselling as an addition.
Mainstream therapy
Before proceeding to the main part of this section, I need to clarify the nature of counselling and psychotherapy, and distinguish them from professions with which they are often conflated.
Counselling
I define counselling as a framework and set of skills. The framework includes a professional and confidential conversation, and the skills are conversational in nature. Counselling is aimed at advising or guiding the client according to the counsellor's particular expertise; or helping the client exercise practical wisdom regarding their challenges or goals; or guiding the client toward insight and personal growth, especially of a psychological kind.
The skills and framework that constitute counselling are somewhat a-theoretical, and can be applied to many fields of life. For example, a counsellor may focus on your life challenges and on your psychological well-being, and in doing so they may specialise in one of the psychotherapies (this is the form of counselling in which I was trained). Or a counsellor may guide couples to relate better, based on research and related therapeutic practices. A financial counsellor will financial counselling, while a social work counsellor may have a person to improve their practical functioning in life. There are also pastoral counsellors who guide people to face life better through the beliefs of their religion. And of course, there are now philosophical counsellors.
Psychotherapy
By contrast with counselling, a psychotherapy is constituted by a particular theoretical commitment. That is, a psychotherapy is a particular psychological theory of human nature, and of what goes wrong in individuals, and of how to address that. It is also the practice of addressing those problems with individuals, through the application of the theory in the form of techniques. I adress the three main camps of psychotherapy below: the humanistic, the cognittive-behavioural, and the psychodynamic.
I am trained in counselling and psychotherapy. That is, I completed qualifications in counselling to master's level. That training included a study of all the major camps of psychotherapy as well. For that reason, I am called a counsellor, but also psychotherapist.
Psychology and the clinical professions
People often confuse counselling and psychotherapy with the professions of psychology and psychiatry. That is a significant mistake. Psychology and psychiatry are often referred to as "clinical" professions, because they often take a medicalised view of human nature and its ills. Hence, many psychologists base their work on a diagnostic manual such as the DSM, and provide related clinical services such as assessments, diagnoses, associated treatments, over-sight and reports, referrals, and so on. I am not trained to provide any of those practices or services.
A simple way to think of the distinction between psychotherapy and psychology, is to consider the difference in how they help you understand and address your problems:
- Psychology assesses and treats you
- Counselling and psychotherapy elicits your insight and personal growth
All that I have just said is grossly simplistic. There are two reasons in particular for that unfortunate fact. First, people consistently conflate psychotherapy with psychology. That is a problem, because most psychotherapists do not provide clinical services, which the client may need or want. So I err on the side of gross clarity, at least as a starting point. Secondly, it seems to me that many people unreflectively assume that these professions were rationally designed. That they are coherent in themselves and in their distinctions from and relationships with each other. That is far from the case. They each evolved, in isolation and sometimes competition with each other, and each has competing and even warring camps within. It's a messy evolution, with twisting roots going in every direction. Consider, also, that some psychotherapists do adopt a clinical way of working, even if that is far from the norm, and also that a significant minority of psychologists are critical of the clinical approach and seek to work in a more humanistic way. We are using umbrella terms, for what amount to a patchwork of related but different views and practices.
The psychotherapies
Let us now move on to the main theme of this section: the forms of psychotherapy that enter into my philosophical counselling. As mentioned, I studied counselling and psychotherapy to master's level. I seemed to have a knack for the art, and by the end of my training I had been offered numerous academic and therapeutic roles by my educators. That led to years spent working as a mainstream therapist in a variety of organisations focused on issues such as bereavement, suicide crisis intervention, rural men's counselling, an Australian Defense Force and a war veteran's counselling service, workplace counselling (EAP), and management coaching for interpersonal skills. I designed and delivered training to counsellors, and was head-hunted multiple times to teach counselling at tertiary institutions (which I always turned down--my focus was on the practice). I was registered with the Australian Counselling Association at their most senior level.
In that context, I developed skills across many mainstream approaches to therapy within the broad three camps: the humanistic, the cognitive-behavioural, and the psychodynamic. Those titles are umbrella terms that include most of the psychotherapeutic approaches. I will describe each camp so that you have a sense of what I am drawing on when I utlise the insights and skills of mainstream therapy in our work together. I will emphasise the ways that the therapies draw on philosophical ideas, which they do to a great degree. (It is therefore my opinion that psychotherapeutic training should include practical philosophical training too.)
Humanistic therapies
There are many forms of humanistic therapy, such as the person-centred, Gestalt, and existential therapies. The humanistic therapies largely draw on a philosophical method called phenomenology. Phenomenology helps us to ariculate and understand our conscious experience, which includes intellect and will, but also emotion and embodiment. In humanistic therapy the focus is especially on our emotional and embodied experience. For example, humanistic therapy helps us to "get in touch with" our deeper feelings. This has become the butt of jokes, but consider times when you were suffering and yet you did not know how you felt, or at least you could not articulate it, and consider how worse that made things. Conversely, consider times when you discovered how you were "really feeling" and how helpful that was. Consider what it is to be cut off from you desires, not knowing what you want, and so not being able to make decisions--that can seriously handicap a person's life.
Cognitive behavioural Therapies (CBT)
From the middle of the 17th to the middle of the 19th centuries, Western culture passed through two cultural epochs: the Enlightenment and Romanticism. The Enlightenment was the age of rationalism and science. That led to a mechanical, disenchanted experience of the world. Romanticism arose in response, to assert the importance of experience, feeling, the inner life. Both the Enlightenment and Romanticism are major influences on today's world, and their influence on psychotherapy goes deep. The humanistic therapy just described is the child of Romanticism. Cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT) embodies the temperament of the Enlightenment.
Cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT) cares less for experience, and trusts more in the outcomes of scientific research. Thus it provides many empirically-validated techniques for changing your thinking and your behaviour. Because feeling often flows from them, CBT changes your feelings too. Like humanistic therapy, there are many versions of CBT, from classical CBT and REBT, to Schema Therapy, ACT, and so on.
In its founding and formation, and especially in the case of Albert Ellis, CBT drew explicitly on the classical philosophy called Stoicism. CBT's roots lie in Stoicism and the Enlightenment. In return, CBT brings much scientific insight to the cultivation of wisdom (cognition) and virtue (behaviour and emotion).
Psychodynamic therapy
The psychodynamic (or psychoanalytic) vision of our unconscious psychology is that of an instinctive animal, which lacks our human concern for reason, morality, and so on, and which drives instead at comfort, gratification, and status. In this way, psychodynamic theory mirrors classical philosophical psychology in many ways, including with respect to (1) the classical division between intelligent consciousness and our sense-based or animal psychology, and (2) the recognition of how that division can amount to a conflict between conscious values and blind desires, and (3) the attempt to reshape or sublimate our psychological forces to serve our conscious goals.
A major way that psychodynamic therapy helps is by revealing your unseen psychological patterns. You tell yourself you are being generous, when really you are trying to get something. You blame yourself, claiming you are bad or stupid, because that feels safer than recognising that some things our painfully out of our control. We call these "the defense mechanisms" and there are many of them. Everybody's life is partly shaped by a particular set of such defenses. The therapist's job, at least on my study and training, is in part to discern your particular defenses, and to point them out to you, or, for prudential reasons, to say nothing and instead work with you in ways that work on your defenses. For example, if a client's raging egotism, which often reflects deep psychological wounds, is expressing itself in an unjust perspective on another's reasons and actions, I might give the appearance of going along with their bitching, while here and there I will subtly "notice" and mention thingswhich point to a bigger, more just perspective. I slowly guide the client to see beyond the limits set by their defenses, and to feel and act in bigger ways. As the client grows, their defenses become unnecessary and fall away, or we can work at explicitly removing them. Of course, this work is never complete, but the work of self-awareness makes a great difference in itself.
While Freud focused on our subconconscious or unconscious psychology, as animal forces pushing for comfort and gratification, Carl Jung offered a richer conception of what is contained in the unconscious, which included much wisdom. Jung was far from original: both Freud and Jung stand on the shoulders of Plotinus, the third century Roman philosopher who represents the high-water mark of ancient philosophy--the genius synthesis of Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics--and the last great philosopher before Christian Rome outlawed pagan philosophy. (Of course, medieval mysticism drew mainly on him.) Some people today imagine that we can reduce consciousness to the brain, but consider this: every attempt to objectify and reduce consciousness is itself an act of consciousness, a thought within consciousness. That should give serious pause. Plotinus understands the nature of the world by starting with the phenomenon of consciousness, and it is he--not Freud--who introduced the idea of subconscious dimensions of the self--both primitive, but also profound--into Western thought. There is more to us, which is good and sublime, which may not right now see, but which we can wake up to and cultivate. Furthermore, consciousness is fundamentally value-oriented, and there is meaning alive in our experience of the world, to which we are often blind, and that blindness is especially the case when we are despairing, or dissolute, or afraid, or arrogant, and so on.
Positive Psychology
There is another major influence of mine, which is less a form of therapy than a field of research which informs therapy, and which should be mentioned due to its impact on me. It is called positive psychology. Positive psychology arose as a challenge: therapy has spent a century focusing on what goes wrong; perhaps it is time to focus, also, on what goes right, and on how to replicate that, on how to create more of that. Positive psychology is in many ways very clearly a modern psychological variation on the philosophy of Aristotle. It researches wisdom, virtue, flourishing, and related concerns such as will-power. As you might imagination, its research-based insights can be incredibly helpful for philosophical counselling.
Integration of the three psychotherapeutic camps
Each of these therapies--humanistic, cognitive-behavioural, psychodynamic--points at different aspects of us, and each speaks to different client temperaments. For that reason I have studied all these approaches, and have spent years honing skills in each. In psychotherapy this preference for integrating different approaches rather than practicing only one approach is called "integrationism."
At the same time, during those decades that I practiced mainstream therapy and worked at this integration, especially in the context of my counselling work in organisations, I had also a continuous specialisation: existential therapy, which I offered in private practice.
Existential Therapy
Existential Therapy is a philosophically-oriented variant of mainstream psychotherapy. It draws heavily on phenomenological and existential philosophy. Existential therapy is the therapy of meaning and purpose par excellence. Viktor Frankl, existential therapist, Holocaust survivor, and author of Man's Search for Meaning, observed that the person who can find a Why can find a How. If you have adequate meaning or purpose, you can find the means to cope, to achieve the goal, and even to flourish. I have seen this time and again: people are very resourceful...if they are motivated enough. The problem in our nihilistic times is the lack of motivation. The power of existential therapy lies especially in its capacity to explore the meaning implicit in a client's struggles, and to cultivate purpose, direction, and meaning in life.
Given my philosophical background, I was very drawn to existential therapy. In 2012 I started a private practice in Carlton, Melbourne which was focused on this approach and which ran two days a week for almost a decade. I did that while counselling within organisations on the other three days, as well as teaching philosophy until 2014. Hence, I spent the 2010s developing skills across the various versions of existential therapy. That included the approaches of Viktor Frankl whom I just mentioned, as well as of Irvin Yalom, Ernesto Spinelli, Betty Cannon, and many others.
Many fine existential therapists have no formal training in philosophy. In speaking with them, it is implicitly clear that with many of them work in a way that is ultimately psychological. Yet they have an aptitude for bringing existential philosophical concerns into therapy. A leading example is Irvin Yalom, who practices a form of psychodynamic therapy that focuses on existential themes. In Yalom's model, we are confronted by the essential features of the human condition such as death, freedom, isolation, and meaninglessness. In response we suffer anxiety, and as humans are wont to do, we psychologically defend ourselves against that anxiety in all the weird and wonderful ways typical of defense mechanisms. The challenge is to recognise our defenses as defenses, and then to recognise the existential anxieties they are defending against, and then to respond consciously in a better way to those existential realities which elicit the anxiety. "A better way" includes courage, acceptance, creativity, love, and so on.
The existential therapist who influenced me the most was Emmy van Deurzen. For van Deurzen, the goal of therapy is not primarily some remedy for life's challenges such as anxiety or grief--not some cure for being human--rather it is an increase in our clarity, skilfulness, and courage, so that we can face life's realities with wisdom and resolve. Those realities include the "givens" which Yalom points to, but whereas as Yalom offers something like a "theory of everything," van Deurzen's phenomenological approach is intentionally open to the many kinds and variations of life's deep and existential challenges. Van Deurzen offers many intellectual tools for understanding and navigating these challenges and life in general as we experience it. Alongside the tough-minded common sense and philosophical depth of her work, van Deurzen's approach is existential in that it focuses also on the work of becoming more fully, passionately alive.
Some people ask why I did not remain an existential therapist. Why continue with my plan to become a philosophical counsellor? After all, I was building a respected reputation as an existential therapist, within a community that is very active and much more developed than philosophical counselling. I was also at the point where many were asking for formal supervision, which was an interesting new stage in my work, and which would have provided my with a middle class income for the first time in my life. (Counselling typically pays poorly, unless you utterly exhaust yourself in private practice, or charge particularly high rates to clients, both of which I refuse to do.) Here are two reasons. In the first place, I am influenced by existentialism, but I view it as very limited. I am rooted in classical philosophy, which is so much richer and wiser.
Secondly, to remain an existential therapist would be to remain a psychotherapist. A psychotherapist works in a social context, which means according to various expectations and associated pressures, responsibilities, and risks, many of which are not evident to non-therapists. That pushes the therapist to focus and work in certain ways, including ways which can undermine a philosophical focus. My focus is philosophical. That is my priority. So I do not accept those pressures. Hence I left the Australian Counselling Association, and set out purely as a philosophical counsellor, albeit one who draws on psychotherapy as an addition. That was, after all, the long-term goal, which slowly unfolded across two decades. Of course, a person might ask whether the inclusion of psychotherapy makes the work a form of psychotherapy. I answer that a sports coach who has a previous career in psychotherapy, and who draws on that knowledge and skill in their sports coaching, is not thereby practicing psychotherapy, even if the addition therapeutic insight greatly increases the effectiveness of their work. So too with philosophical counselling. To my mind, this is the best of both worlds. Some people should attend mainstream therapy, for some people need a fundamentally psychological approach. That is especially the case when their psychology over-rides their ability to see and think clearly, for example when their trauma is profound or they suffer from a Borderline or Narcissistic personality disorder. Most people, however, may be better served by a modicum of psychological work, and a focus on wisdom and virtue. As stated above, I believe that psychotherapy itself should shift somewhat in this direction, to include philosophical training alongside its focus on our psychology. Among my clients are psychotherapists and psychologists who see me in order to make that shift in their work.
A final thought about psychotherapy
I mentioned that I take an integrationist approach to the different psychotherapies: the humanistic, cognitive-behavioural, psychodynamic, and yes, existential. I also mentor new therapists, simply because it gives me pleasure, and these days about half my clients are psychotherapists or psychologists. There is a perspective I have always found very helpful for myself, which often I share with these people, with regard to the competing psychotherapies: I encourage people to see them as different philosophies.
I am speaking in the plural, because each therapy points to some part of the whole, but not to the whole. From this perspective we step away from "the therapy wars," with their foolishly competing claims to represent the exclusive, objective truth, and instead we view each as a partial, limited truth, which shines a light on some part of the human experience. The bigger picture is not to be found in a single therapeutic theory, or in psychotherapy in general, for example in the therapeutic culture we live in which treats therapy as a theology, but rather in a genuinely philosophical vision that is as comprehensive, as well as true and good, as possible. In this way, we can flexibly appreciate the particular insights and value of any good therapy, and pragmatically place it alongside the others in a way that makes sense.
From this perspective, we are also able to appreciate something more sublime about therapy. There is something beautiful about the psychotherapeutic endeavour, as there is with philosophy and its many "philosophies." I disagree with many aspects of Aristotle, and Stoicism, and yet I find so much in them--enough to keep me returning to them on a daily basis for decades. When we look at the polyphone (and cacophony) of psychotherapies, we see that there is an artistry, a creativity, a wonder, a curiosity, a care, and a love of life, expressed not only in the existence of psychotherapy, but in the kaleidoscope of the many different therapies. A thousand years from now we may look on today's psychotherapy, as people today look on the medieval arts we no longer practice, or no longer recognise (because they have changed so much)--we may see them as so many beautiful and delightful expressions of human wonder, curiosity, and craftsmanship. To note the significant limits of psychological therapy, and of the even more narrow nature of each of the different therapies, is not to devalue them, except insofar as they were previously misunderstood in the sense of over-inflated. Psychotherapy is potent. It is beautiful. It is a patchwork of partial lenses. It is an artwork as much as a truth and a pragmatic help, and the former, initial quality is as important to its effect on our lives, as its latter qualities.
Philosophical influences
Some of my clients have studied philosophy or have an interest in it. For people who are interested, here are some of the philosophers who have most influenced me.
Socrates
Socrates taught us how to think. His model is based on conversation and questions. "You say you are doing this because it makes you happy, but what do you mean by happiness?" It is also based on humility: the person who assumes they know is thereby obstructed from getting at truth. It is an ethos of self-examination: "Know thyself." For we often deceive ourselves and so distort our thinking, which is something the psychodynamic therapists point out. Reason, humility, and self-examination are about more than truth, however. Socrates also gave us a vision of what thinking aims at.
It is through the writing of Plato that we know Socrates. People who have not read Plato carefully often assume that Socrates shares the values of Enlightenment rationalism: all that matters is pure reason. That is wrong. Socrates makes it clear that the most important thing in life, and the goal of philosophy, is to become a truly good man. We can fail at everything else, we can be robbed of everything else, but it is goodness, justice, love, beauty which give meaning to life, and the goal of philosophy is to participate in and embody these values. A homeless, good man, is much better off than a rich, bad man, even if neither know it. If this sounds startling and absurd, that is he accusation thrown at Socrates, in such books of Plato's as Gorgias. In Socrates, the first great philosopher, we have one of the highest visions of the purpose and meaning of life expressed anywhere in history. Socrates lived and died by this vision: he was executed for doing philosophy.
Plato
Plato was Socrates' student, and he wrote many dialogues which feature Socrates, which display the Socratic method of reasoning in action, and which try to make sense of Socrates' astonishing vision of the meaning of life. Scholars cannot agree on where Socrates' end and the insights of Plato begin, so we should thank Plato as much as Socrates for them. I will say less about Plato here, despite the fact that he is my greatest teacher, for much that I would say of him can be said of Plotinus (below), despite their differences.
Aristotle
Aristotle was Plato's student. He did not share in the profundity of Socrates' and Plato's vision, but he was the great systematiser. Think of what it takes to become a master of any one of these disciplines: formal logic, biology, literary theory, political science, psychology, zoology, ethics, metaphysics, natural theology, physics, and rhetoric. Aristotle invented all of them. Of course, they have a history before him, but Aristotle created the disciplines, and made great progress in all of them. He did this while holding down day jobs like tutoring Alexander the Great. I am an ongoing student of Aristotle's logic, and especially of his theory of wisdom, virtue, and flourishing which today is called virtue ethics. I am also a serious appreciater of his psychology and metaphysics, even if I favour Plato and Plotinus over him. Aristotle's systematising gives us frameworks for growth in wisdom and virtue. It is he who set out the distinctions I use such as contemplative versus practical wisdom, and of reason, intellectual virtue, and character virtue.
Whereas Socrates thought virtue was enough for flourishing, Aristotle focused on an array of goods that are needed, some of which are out of our control. Both Socrates and Aristotle make very strong arguments for their differing positions, such that the Platonists and Aristotelians have long been in debate with each other. The reason their disagreement continues is, I believe, because these matters are inherently complex and multifaceted. Of course, that is the nature of our material life: it is partial, fragmented, shot-through with contradictions. The metaphysics of both Plato and Aristotle explain why this is so.
Stoicism
The late Stoics--Epictetus especially, but also Marcus Aurelius--have guided me throughout my adult life. I spoke of Stoicism above in the context of imagination. Stoicism is, for me, a kind of daily reminder and training for living the vision of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. It can be this for anybody who finds power in their words. Every week I will devote time across several days, when the inclination arises, to reading Epictetus, as well as the other Stoics.
Plotinus
For Plotinus, life is a longing for goodness. What do I mean? I am reminded of the words of the modern Platonist Simone Weil: "All human beings are absolutely identical in so far as they can be thought of as consisting of a centre, which is an unquenchable desire for good, surrounded by an accretion of psychical and bodily matter."Like Plato, Plotinus focuses on discerning the implicit meaning and value in our desire and our experience, to which we have been blind. This understanding changes how you read people and their actions. For example, when I speak with a person who is abusing alcohol, I guide them to reflect on what the good, and perhaps the highest good, is that they seek in the wine. We start with the obvious answers, and then work upward. For the wine is a participation in, and shadow of, a greater good they long for. My client's are often astonished at what emerges from this vision and method. Such clarity and insight becomes the means to stop living according to an error, and to re-orient ourselves to the truer good we long for.
Plotinus was the last of the greatest philosophers of antiquity, for the Platonic tradition as "pagan" philosophy was outlawed by decree of the new Christian Roman empire. Plotinus was also the culmination, in the sense that he synethesised Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics, into a profound vision of life. His vision became the basis for medieval mysticism, for it is profoundly spiritual. It is also, however, a powerful inspiration and guide for many atheistic philosophers, such as Iris Murdoch in the twentieth century.
Thomas Aquinas
Another philosopher who ranks alongside all the others, but does not get anywhere near the respect or interest he deserves, is Saint Thomas Aquinas. Thomas Aquinas is by far the greatest Christian philosopher, and for that reason he has been dismissed by secular philosophers. I am among those lovers of Thomas who are not Christians, but who draw on him purely as a philosopher, a man of reason. Of most interest to me is Aquinas' psychology and understanding of virtue, which is a brilliant development of Aristotle's ideas into a much more coherent system.
The Moralists
I am speaking here of no single philosopher, and in fact of no great philosopher, but rather of a tradition of "scholars, soldiers, and gentlemen" who have articulated the classical vision of wisdom, virtue, and flourishing, for readers down the centuries. They used to be called "moralists" when the word had a wider meaning: how to live well. This wisdom tradition is offered to people from all walks of life, and so it is close to my heart as a philosophical counsellor. We could say that the tradition began with Cicero and Seneca in ancient Rome, writing letters and essays on particular issues pertaining to character, resilience, success, goodness, happiness, and so on. It continued through the middle ages, the Renaissance, and into the modern world with writers such as Montaigne and Bacon, and through the 19th century with the likes of Samuel Johnson, John Stuart Mill, and Emerson and Thoreau. As an example of literature in this field, I have wonderful fat book from the 1930s: Oldham's 100 Great Lives. It offers twenty minute biographies of great people, focused not only on their achievements and insights, but also on how their character and experience made them into what they became. Reading these biographies leads you to consider what you could make of you own life--your neglected potential--and what work you need to do on yourself, and not in some moralistic sense, but in an inspired way.
Existentialism
I have spent time with most of the existentialists: Nietzsche, Heidegger, Sartre, Camus. Their challenge is precisely to find meaning within modernity--within the collapse of religion, the cultural death of God, and the dogmatic rejection of metaphysics and big-picture meanings. Each of these philosophers helps us to think about these matters in our own lives. Camus, for example, offers a wisdom of local living and concerns, which can be very helpful. More deeply, his essays in Algiers inspire a kind of atheistic wonder and mysticism at the fleeting world we are a part of, when experienced in its sublime elements, such as in the ocean.
The phenomenological method, developed by people like Heidegger and Sartre, is a method of seeing the implicit and making it explicit, in consciousness and everyday experience. Phenomenology, and the outlook and method I have taken from Plotinus, as well as the method of Ludwig Wittgenstein, complement each other greatly in ways which have deepened and empowered my philosophical counselling.
Wittgenstein
In many ways, Wittgenstein's method resembles that of phenomenology. I came to Wittgenstein before phenomenology, and I approached the latter with a mind trained by an intensive study in Wittgenstein's method.
There is a small but substantial literature about the relevance of Wittgenstein for psychotherapy and, by obvious implication, even moreso for philosophical counselling. This is no surprise, as Wittgenstein called his philosophy a therapeutic endeavour.
A particular way in which I draw on Wittgenstein in my work has to do with his definition of his philosophical method: a “battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language.” Wittgenstein's method complements the Socratic method, and classical logic, and CBT, insofar as it helps people to recognise their problematic understanding and use of concepts. This is a big deal for your practical life, as philosophers and therapists alike know. As Wittgenstein said, "the limits of my language are the limits of my world." Wittgenstein's analytical method helps us to see clearly and to free ourselves of our "mental cramps" and traps.
Simone Weil
Simone Weil, who died aged 34 during the second world war, is an enigma. A Communist soldier in Spain, a Jewish refugee from the Nazis, a Catholic mystic who praised atheism, and a philosophical genius all rolled into one. In many ways it was Weil who taught me how to read Plato and Plotinus. While Weil wrote much about goodness, love, and so forth, it was her articulation of the depths of our vulnerability that astonishes most readers. Weil's mind cut like a knife, directly into the recesses of the human soul. She manages to articulate many things which we cannot, without her, find proper words for, for example what we are trying to say when we use the incoherent language of human rights. Consider, for example, these words of hers: "At the bottom of the heart of every human being, from earliest infancy until the tomb, there is something that goes on indomitably expecting, in the teeth of all experience of crimes committed, suffered, and witnessed, that good and not evil will be done to him. It is this above all that is sacred in every human being." To read Weil is not necessarily to agree with her vision of the world in toto--certainly, I do not--but it is to be struck again and again by her insights, which change how you see.
Iris Mudoch
Murdoch, who is better known as a novelist, was one of the great philosophers of the 20th century. Murdoch wrote the first book-length study of Sartre in English, and she immediately recognised the central errors of existentialism, even as she articulated what was so attractive about it. In many ways, Murdoch is a Platonic alternative to existentialism, for people trying to find meaning and goodness within a secular, atheistic world. Her novels, such as The Bell, as masterpieces of philosophical psychology in narrative form.
Christopher Cordner and Raimond Gaita
Christopher Cordner was my lecturer and then post-graduate superviser at The University of Melbourne. Raimond Gaita is one of our greatest public philosophers, one of the leading moral philosophers alive today, and a great influence on me (a circle of us at university used to call ourselves, humorously, the Gaita-raters). Both these philosophers represent a kind of Platonism, shot through with something distinctly Australian, that speaks to the modern, secular mind, but which also greatly challenges us to see beyond our technological understanding of ourselves to the implicit forms of meaning and value in which our lives are actually awash.
Can you see a theme here? Philosophy as the discernment of implicit forms of meaning and value in our lives and world, to which we have been blind, and which are not objects for explanation so much as mysteries which grip us, realities and deeper visions of life which can transform us. This is Socrates, Plato, Plotinus, Weil, Murdoch...or what we might call "Platonism." I am a Platonist. My work is the uncovering of what is there. It is a work of attention.
Eastern and other philosophies
Did you notice that when I quoted a Roman or Greek philosopher in the sections on wisdom and virtue, I followed with a quote from an Eastern philosophers. That was not accidental. I was hinting at something: I am interested in wisdom wherever it is to be found. While I do not believe that all cultures are equal (they are like people's characters, with many good but different types, but also harmful types), I do believe in the legitimacy of difference, and its implicit coherency, such that I view the differences in many cultures not only as different embodiments of what it is to be human, but also different embodied lenses on life, its nature, and its meaning, which can teach us much.
While valuing this difference, it is also startling how wisdom and virtue are understood in similar ways the world over. This is because our understanding is true. Put otherwise: our understanding reflects human nature, which is shared by us all.
While I am interested in wisdom wherever it is to be found, I am a Westerner, and I have a distinct love of Western philosophy, which speaks deeply to my psyche, to my being. I love the philosophy and high cultures of Greece, Rome, and medieval and Renaissance and modern Europe. I have no time for the current hatred of the West which I view, both as a philosopher and psychotherapist, as not only deeply ignorant and arrogant, but as deeply pathological. There is good and evil to be found everywhere. That is the human story. There is so much good in our story, in our culture and its philosophy. I come from a poor, rural background, with parents who left school at 14 to support their families, and a childhood where at moments we did not have food on our table. This is the background I brought to my understanding of what it is to enter a university and study philosophy. I speak of philosophy mostly in terms of truth and goodness, and of how it transforms us in those terms, but I have also used another key philosophical term: beauty. In Western philosophy, like so many aspects of the Western story, there is great sublimity, depth, and beauty. You become what you think. This philosophy can transform us.
Final thoughts
The key to dealing with life's problems and making life good, is found above all in our own effort at the level the head and the heart, intellect and will, wisdom and virtue. That is is fundamental premise of the service I offer you.
If I were to list the potential benefits of philosophical counselling I would say that it aims to help you:
- deal with your problems
- avoid the creation of new problems
- succeed and flourish in life (work, relationships, and other goals)
- develop psychological self-awareness, know-how, and change
- cultivate strength, skill, and the many other personal qualities that make life better (i.e. the virtues)
- become more rational
- become more wise
- become a better human being morally, for yourself and others
- become more inherently happy (happiness as a capability)
- become more vital, engaged, passionate, authentic
- embody and experience more profound forms of meaning and value
