I grew up in the Mallee--a rural childhood in the harsh but evocative landscape of north-western Victoria. I come from a family of people who left school early and did physical work. In the heat and dust of that environment it was easy to feel the cruelty of life, but in the silence of that heat there was a sense also of something else. My memories as a young child include staring often at the magnitude of the sky, and especially at the horizon, which fades and shimmers in that place, and which seemed an evocation. Even the falling-down timber houses and rusting farm equipment seemed to glow with a hint of more. There was a feeling of reality as containing depth. That was a depth of stories: a sense, at the periphery of the mind's vision, just out of focus, of being surrounded by other lives, births, deaths, loves, and pains, folded up in the unconscious memory of place. But it was more than that: existence itself had a feeling. In that heat, light, and silence, it was as though the landscape held up each thing in turn, in a kind of question: not only what it is, but that it is. Aristotle said that philosophy begins in wonder. Later in life I would work with people for whom philosophy began in suffering. It begins in many ways, but that is where I became a philosopher.
I dropped out of high-school early and left home at 17. In part that was to escape an abusive step-father in a fibro house in a tiny dusty town. But it was equally to pursue a passion: I was a musician, and for some years I made a living at that. Then a religious conversion, which lasted a number of years, drew me to Italy where I entered a monastery. That is a story for another time. A year later I found myself back in Melbourne, working in a factory, when I wandered into a bookstore and walked out with a copy of Marcus Aurelius' Meditations, the classic work of Stoicism. I had discovered the formal tradition known as philosophy, and encountered its power for helping us to live well. I decided to study it formally, so I made my way into The University of Melbourne where in time I taught philosophy, both there and elsewhere.
In the subsequent years I focused my studies on certain philosophers. Most of all that included Socrates and Plato, with their profound vision of what life is and of what our lives can become, when we orient ourselves to the highest values and possibilities of our humanity. Also, their student Aristotle, with his richly concrete articulation of what a good and happy life looks like for a human being, and how that is achieved. I followed the thread of the ancients into the quite incredible world of medieval philosophy, with its rich development and synthesis of Plato and Aristotle. Among 20th century philosophers I was drawn to Ludwig Wittgenstein, and to various existentialists and phenomenologists. Above all, I was influenced by the modern platonists--philosophers who draw on Plato today--including Iris Murdoch, Simone Weil, and (the Australians) Raimond Gaita and Christopher Cordner. You might be familiar with Gaita's popular memoir Romulus, My Father. Cordner had a great impact on me during my undergraduate years, both academically and personally, and was later my master's supervisor. At the university I took advantage also of the opportunity to become more widely and deeply educated across the classics, history, literature, art, music, as well as law and science.
The word philosophy is a conjunction of two ancient Greek words: philos and sophia. Philos means love, and sophia means wisdom. Hence, philosophy is the love of wisdom. As a form of love, philosophy is therefore also the pursuit of wisdom. That is what you and I are doing when we engage in philosophical coversation: we are pursuing wisdom.
The element of philos, of love, in the definition of philosophy should not be skipped over. Philosophy pursues wisdom but it is also, vitally, an act of love. Love transforms the lover, they become changed both by the nature of what they love, and by the quality of their love. When you do philosophy in this spirit, it transforms you.
The archetype of the philosopher is Socrates, a craftsman who lived in Athens 2500 years ago. Socrates engaged people in conversation during their day to day life. His student Plato wrote a series of dialogues which portray those conversations. Socrates' point was to invite people to examine their lives, which is to say, to pursue wisdom about their lives through conversation. Socrates lies at the heart of all philosophy, but especially at the heart of the classical philosopher. Socrates is the paradigm for my practice of philosophical counselling.
I learned about Socrates through the writings of his student, Plato. Plato in his turn went on to develop a profound vision of what life is--and can become--when we focus our mind and will on an unconditional commitment to truth, goodness, justice, beauty, and so forth. Raphael's painting The School of Athens shows Plato pointing upward, to a life oriented by such higher values. Beside him stands his student Aristotle, pointing down to the material details. Aristotle explored what virtue and character are, and how we cultivate them, and how they lead to greater strength, meaning, happiness, and flourishing. Aristotle created a framework for cultivating those qualities and outcomes in our own lives.
Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, each in their different ways according to their very different temperaments, saw the unity between (1) the pursuit of wisdom as the love and so cultivation of truth and goodness and (2) the various consequences which also follow from that cultivation: an increase of inner strength, of meaning, of happiness, and of flourising in life.
I was doing very well academically. I was a philosopher "in my bones." It was clear that this would be my work's life. Yet, I could not see myself in an academic or scholarly career. I wanted to do philosophy with people from all walks of life, to engage them in conversation that would help them with their personal concerns and with their pursuit of the good. If I had asked an academic philospher, they may have suggested that I become a psychologist or psychotherapist instead of a philosopher, but that would not do. I saw clearly the limitations of psychotherapy, versus the deeper power of philosophy with regard to the real nature of people's concerns. I was unsure of how to proceed, especially in a world where one needs to pay the rent. Was this idea of therapeutic philosophy some kind of fantasy? How would I practice it? I had been musing on that idea for some time, when I came across the idea of philosophical counselling. In that idea, which a handful of people in Europe and America were practicing, I recognised exactly what I had been seeking.
I began forming a vision of what philosophical counselling might look like as a career, and developing a practical plan for how to enact it. While continuing in my work as a philospher I would (1) study counselling to masters level, (2) work as a mainstream therapist within counselling organisations, and then in time I would (3) practice purely as a philosophical counsellor in private practice. The counselling would provide the practical framework and skills for my philosophical counselling, while psychotherapy would give me psychological know-how which I could integrate into my work with people.
These days I am on the other side of that plan: I am a masters-qualified counsellor and psychotherapist, with over a decade of experience working in mainstream organisations as a mainstream therapist, as well as in a private practice during the 2010s, focused on existential therapy. I now work solely in private practice as a philosophical counsellor. I believe I am the first and only person in Australia to do this work, or at least, to make it my sole career and income.
I gained my first counselling job through the recommendation of one of my trainers who suggested I had a talent for the discipline. Indeed, I did fall in love with the riches of therapy. And so, across fifteen years, I worked in counselling organisations which included: a suicide prevention service focused both on crisis intervention (I spent a lot of time talking people back from bridges); a service focused on rural and isolated men and their relationships (I piloted what may be the first rural video counselling service in the country); an Australian Defense Force, and a combat veteran's, counselling service; a bereavement-after-suicide service; and workplace counselling (EAP) providing mainstream counselling to employees, and interpersonal and motivational coaching to managers. Within these services I worked also with the wide variety of other issues which come up in any counselling. I worked alongside other counsellors but also psychologists and clinical social workers, and so learned much about their tools and ways of thinking. Other work included employment in designing and providing counsellor training. I was headhunted and offered academic positions at large counselling educational institutions, but each time I declined in favour of a continued focus on the practice of counselling (plus, I was still teaching philosophy at university up until 2014).
During those years I was a voracious learner well beyond my formal studies, taking deep dives into many mainstream approaches to counselling and psychotherapy and applying them in my work, and entering such therapies as a client to experience them from the inside. These included the humanistic approaches such as Carl Roger's person-centred therapy, the various psychoanalytic and psychodynamic therapies, beginning with Freud, and various existential therapies including those of Emmy van Deurzen, Irvin Yalom, and Viktor Frankl.
Existential therapy draws fundamentally on existential philosophy, and its associated way of doing philosophy called phenomenology. This is an important movement in philosophy, which achieved its cultural height during the middle of the 20th century, and whose big names include Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Gabriel Marcel, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, and Camus, and so on. Such philosophy--and the therapy based on it--helps us to better understand our human condition. For example, existential analysis reveals how many of our problems are not disorders, so to speak, but reactions to reality, to our condition as human existents. This is a surprise to many people, who thought there was something wrong with them in particular, and who have been taught by our therapeutically-obsessed culture to reduce everything to psychological or psychiatric disorders, so it enables a whole different way of understanding themselves and of approaching their problems. This "way" is essentially, again, the way of the virtues: based on existential wisdom about the human condition, I arouse and so face life through my capacities for courage, creativity, passion, strength, and so on.
I mentiond phenomenology, which is a form of analysis that guides people to explore and better understand their experience, the structure of their experience, their way of being, and the world as they experience it. Of course, psychoanalysis was already doing all this. Phenomenology is, however, in my opinion a better way of doing such an exploration, for it sheds light on things as they are, or as we experience them, rather than in terms of some pet theory. It seeks to "bracket off" explanation and theoretical assumptions, to see more clearly what is there.
There is also a stoic element to much of existentialism, though it is shaped by other movements such as romanticism, which means that existentialism combines that stoicism with a strong aesthetic aliveness and commitment to passion. One faces the hardness of life with courage and determination, but also creativity and passion, while also drinking in the beauty of the world. I think here of Albert Camus' essays collected under the title Summer in Algiers. Emmy van Deurzen articulates this romantic-stoic-existentialism well: life is tough, and her form of therapy helps people to look unflinchingly at how life works, while also becoming more capable of standing up to its challenges, and of creating the happiness of which we are capable.
When it comes to seeing clients, I work part-time, for my profession is fully that of a philosopher, or more specifically a philosophical counsellor. So I live out a passion and commitment to full-time work on the continuous development of myself philosophically, through reading and writing. I continue to read therapy, though above all I read philosophy, including that which addresses my personal concerns, but above all that which serves my work as a philosophical counsellor. That is philosophy that helps us to make sense of life and to live well. That is enough about me. In 2020 I left my office in Carlton, Melbourne, and began working purely from home by phone and video. I live in central Victoria, in an old home by the forest. Beyond my work, I am a busily gigging a jazz drummer, and I have a passion for restoring and (moreso) riding vintage motorcycles.
I dropped out of high-school early and left home at 17. In part that was to escape an abusive step-father in a fibro house in a tiny dusty town. But it was equally to pursue a passion: I was a musician, and for some years I made a living at that. Then a religious conversion, which lasted a number of years, drew me to Italy where I entered a monastery. That is a story for another time. A year later I found myself back in Melbourne, working in a factory, when I wandered into a bookstore and walked out with a copy of Marcus Aurelius' Meditations, the classic work of Stoicism. I had discovered the formal tradition known as philosophy, and encountered its power for helping us to live well. I decided to study it formally, so I made my way into The University of Melbourne where in time I taught philosophy, both there and elsewhere.
In the subsequent years I focused my studies on certain philosophers. Most of all that included Socrates and Plato, with their profound vision of what life is and of what our lives can become, when we orient ourselves to the highest values and possibilities of our humanity. Also, their student Aristotle, with his richly concrete articulation of what a good and happy life looks like for a human being, and how that is achieved. I followed the thread of the ancients into the quite incredible world of medieval philosophy, with its rich development and synthesis of Plato and Aristotle. Among 20th century philosophers I was drawn to Ludwig Wittgenstein, and to various existentialists and phenomenologists. Above all, I was influenced by the modern platonists--philosophers who draw on Plato today--including Iris Murdoch, Simone Weil, and (the Australians) Raimond Gaita and Christopher Cordner. You might be familiar with Gaita's popular memoir Romulus, My Father. Cordner had a great impact on me during my undergraduate years, both academically and personally, and was later my master's supervisor. At the university I took advantage also of the opportunity to become more widely and deeply educated across the classics, history, literature, art, music, as well as law and science.
The word philosophy is a conjunction of two ancient Greek words: philos and sophia. Philos means love, and sophia means wisdom. Hence, philosophy is the love of wisdom. As a form of love, philosophy is therefore also the pursuit of wisdom. That is what you and I are doing when we engage in philosophical coversation: we are pursuing wisdom.
The element of philos, of love, in the definition of philosophy should not be skipped over. Philosophy pursues wisdom but it is also, vitally, an act of love. Love transforms the lover, they become changed both by the nature of what they love, and by the quality of their love. When you do philosophy in this spirit, it transforms you.
The archetype of the philosopher is Socrates, a craftsman who lived in Athens 2500 years ago. Socrates engaged people in conversation during their day to day life. His student Plato wrote a series of dialogues which portray those conversations. Socrates' point was to invite people to examine their lives, which is to say, to pursue wisdom about their lives through conversation. Socrates lies at the heart of all philosophy, but especially at the heart of the classical philosopher. Socrates is the paradigm for my practice of philosophical counselling.
I learned about Socrates through the writings of his student, Plato. Plato in his turn went on to develop a profound vision of what life is--and can become--when we focus our mind and will on an unconditional commitment to truth, goodness, justice, beauty, and so forth. Raphael's painting The School of Athens shows Plato pointing upward, to a life oriented by such higher values. Beside him stands his student Aristotle, pointing down to the material details. Aristotle explored what virtue and character are, and how we cultivate them, and how they lead to greater strength, meaning, happiness, and flourishing. Aristotle created a framework for cultivating those qualities and outcomes in our own lives.
Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, each in their different ways according to their very different temperaments, saw the unity between (1) the pursuit of wisdom as the love and so cultivation of truth and goodness and (2) the various consequences which also follow from that cultivation: an increase of inner strength, of meaning, of happiness, and of flourising in life.
I was doing very well academically. I was a philosopher "in my bones." It was clear that this would be my work's life. Yet, I could not see myself in an academic or scholarly career. I wanted to do philosophy with people from all walks of life, to engage them in conversation that would help them with their personal concerns and with their pursuit of the good. If I had asked an academic philospher, they may have suggested that I become a psychologist or psychotherapist instead of a philosopher, but that would not do. I saw clearly the limitations of psychotherapy, versus the deeper power of philosophy with regard to the real nature of people's concerns. I was unsure of how to proceed, especially in a world where one needs to pay the rent. Was this idea of therapeutic philosophy some kind of fantasy? How would I practice it? I had been musing on that idea for some time, when I came across the idea of philosophical counselling. In that idea, which a handful of people in Europe and America were practicing, I recognised exactly what I had been seeking.
I began forming a vision of what philosophical counselling might look like as a career, and developing a practical plan for how to enact it. While continuing in my work as a philospher I would (1) study counselling to masters level, (2) work as a mainstream therapist within counselling organisations, and then in time I would (3) practice purely as a philosophical counsellor in private practice. The counselling would provide the practical framework and skills for my philosophical counselling, while psychotherapy would give me psychological know-how which I could integrate into my work with people.
These days I am on the other side of that plan: I am a masters-qualified counsellor and psychotherapist, with over a decade of experience working in mainstream organisations as a mainstream therapist, as well as in a private practice during the 2010s, focused on existential therapy. I now work solely in private practice as a philosophical counsellor. I believe I am the first and only person in Australia to do this work, or at least, to make it my sole career and income.
I gained my first counselling job through the recommendation of one of my trainers who suggested I had a talent for the discipline. Indeed, I did fall in love with the riches of therapy. And so, across fifteen years, I worked in counselling organisations which included: a suicide prevention service focused both on crisis intervention (I spent a lot of time talking people back from bridges); a service focused on rural and isolated men and their relationships (I piloted what may be the first rural video counselling service in the country); an Australian Defense Force, and a combat veteran's, counselling service; a bereavement-after-suicide service; and workplace counselling (EAP) providing mainstream counselling to employees, and interpersonal and motivational coaching to managers. Within these services I worked also with the wide variety of other issues which come up in any counselling. I worked alongside other counsellors but also psychologists and clinical social workers, and so learned much about their tools and ways of thinking. Other work included employment in designing and providing counsellor training. I was headhunted and offered academic positions at large counselling educational institutions, but each time I declined in favour of a continued focus on the practice of counselling (plus, I was still teaching philosophy at university up until 2014).
During those years I was a voracious learner well beyond my formal studies, taking deep dives into many mainstream approaches to counselling and psychotherapy and applying them in my work, and entering such therapies as a client to experience them from the inside. These included the humanistic approaches such as Carl Roger's person-centred therapy, the various psychoanalytic and psychodynamic therapies, beginning with Freud, and various existential therapies including those of Emmy van Deurzen, Irvin Yalom, and Viktor Frankl.
Existential therapy draws fundamentally on existential philosophy, and its associated way of doing philosophy called phenomenology. This is an important movement in philosophy, which achieved its cultural height during the middle of the 20th century, and whose big names include Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Gabriel Marcel, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, and Camus, and so on. Such philosophy--and the therapy based on it--helps us to better understand our human condition. For example, existential analysis reveals how many of our problems are not disorders, so to speak, but reactions to reality, to our condition as human existents. This is a surprise to many people, who thought there was something wrong with them in particular, and who have been taught by our therapeutically-obsessed culture to reduce everything to psychological or psychiatric disorders, so it enables a whole different way of understanding themselves and of approaching their problems. This "way" is essentially, again, the way of the virtues: based on existential wisdom about the human condition, I arouse and so face life through my capacities for courage, creativity, passion, strength, and so on.
I mentiond phenomenology, which is a form of analysis that guides people to explore and better understand their experience, the structure of their experience, their way of being, and the world as they experience it. Of course, psychoanalysis was already doing all this. Phenomenology is, however, in my opinion a better way of doing such an exploration, for it sheds light on things as they are, or as we experience them, rather than in terms of some pet theory. It seeks to "bracket off" explanation and theoretical assumptions, to see more clearly what is there.
There is also a stoic element to much of existentialism, though it is shaped by other movements such as romanticism, which means that existentialism combines that stoicism with a strong aesthetic aliveness and commitment to passion. One faces the hardness of life with courage and determination, but also creativity and passion, while also drinking in the beauty of the world. I think here of Albert Camus' essays collected under the title Summer in Algiers. Emmy van Deurzen articulates this romantic-stoic-existentialism well: life is tough, and her form of therapy helps people to look unflinchingly at how life works, while also becoming more capable of standing up to its challenges, and of creating the happiness of which we are capable.
When it comes to seeing clients, I work part-time, for my profession is fully that of a philosopher, or more specifically a philosophical counsellor. So I live out a passion and commitment to full-time work on the continuous development of myself philosophically, through reading and writing. I continue to read therapy, though above all I read philosophy, including that which addresses my personal concerns, but above all that which serves my work as a philosophical counsellor. That is philosophy that helps us to make sense of life and to live well. That is enough about me. In 2020 I left my office in Carlton, Melbourne, and began working purely from home by phone and video. I live in central Victoria, in an old home by the forest. Beyond my work, I am a busily gigging a jazz drummer, and I have a passion for restoring and (moreso) riding vintage motorcycles.