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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dignity is man’s creation, not respected by nature or life. It is part of what has been sometimes considered as dangerous hubris or human pride. The inevitable fall from hubris leads either to humility or to humiliation – a middle stage between hubris and humility. When pride is hurt and dignity impaired by the very nature of indomitable, indif­ferent and secretive life, awareness of humiliation as a preferred stage is crucial. It is crucial because it permits to avoid humility, for all those who feel that humility is beyond their power or below their will, while keeping the fighting and ambitious spirit of hubris. Moreover, awareness of our humiliation enables us to apprehend an important, though painful, truth about the human condition.

It is more difficult for clergy to personally cope with confidentiality than any other profession because of the complex relationships found within congregational settings and the blurred boundaries between clergy as counselors and clergy as leaders of congregations. This leads to difficult negotiations regarding confidentiality and openness between clergy and other congregants. It is especially difficult for married clergy who otherwise value candor in their spousal relationship. Guidelines for clergy regarding confidentiality include the presumption of confidentiality, the sharing of information with colleagues only for purposes of furthering the counseling and for professional enhancement. Clergy need to educate the congregation regarding clergy codes of conduct.

The title of this paper is deliberately ambiguous. It could refer either to the central val­ue that philosophical counseling has for philosophy in general, or else it could refer to something (such as personal autonomy, or personal well-being) that philosophical counselors believe to be of value, and that they are able to help their clients pursue. In fact, this paper will be addressing both of these topics in order to demonstrate the links that hold between them, and, in so doing, will attempt to further elucidate the nature of philosophical counseling itself.

Far more than the dialectic philosophy of Socrates, the rhetorical humanist tradition avoids objectivist epistemology, charts a traversable path to practical wisdom, and aptly highlights the importance of aesthetic style. In those and other ways, we argue, it offers a preferable historical basis for today’s philosophical counseling. Advocates of that contemporary practice tend to cite Socrates as its historical progenitor and favor the narrow propositional logic that is ascribed to him. Some practitioners, though, have also grown more attuned to metaphorical and narrative elements in a client’s worldview. We aim to supplement their claims by drawing from principles of classical rhetorical theory, showing a way to rethink the practice of philosophical counseling today.

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

Hume claims that judgment is the active device through which beliefs influence emotions. Without such a device, Hume reasons that beliefs and emotions would not in­teract at all, because beliefs are always about ideas while emotions are reactions to events in the world. Judgment is the link between the theoretical and the applied aspects of the human being, and is, if Hume is right, crucial for any system of philosophical counseling to be successful. No client would attempt to modify his or her beliefs, or reflect on the thoughts of philosophers, without some expectation of an emotional payoff. The counseling process hinges on a link between reason and the emotions, but what is the nature of this link? Since judgment is itself (if we are lucky) a primarily rational process, the question of the connection between reason and the emotions seems to be left unanswered. The purpose of this paper is to examine the link between reason and the emotions by taking judgment to be judgment of truth or falsity. Once a belief is deemed to be true by the client, an assessment is made as to how this truth will affect the client’s well being. I argue that this is true even if the client is severely depressed or believes that he/she does not deserve good treatment or good fortune, or seems otherwise unconcerned with his/her well being. If the truth is judged to be a threat to the well being of the client, an emotional reaction ensues. Likewise, if the truth is judged to be a benefit to the client, an emotional reaction will occur. I argue further that even though different truths will be taken as either benefits or threats depending on the client, the ultimate interpretation of the true statement as either benefit or threat will automatically generate an emotional response. If this ontology is correct, then the philosophical counselor will take as his/her primary role 1) a practitioner of epistemology (determining when beliefs are justified and true) and 2) a trainer in interpretation (determining when beliefs are to be interpreted as blessings or threats.)

One promising form of philosophical practice is to conduct workshops on philosophical counseling for counselors. Since licensed professionals, such as Marriage and Family Counselors and Licensed Clinical Social Workers sometimes confront situations that raise philosophical issues and usually have a philosophical perspective that informs their practice, they could profit from a workshop on philosophical counseling; the workshop also qualifies for continuing education units (CEUs) that are typically required to renew their licenses. This paper describes the principal purposes of a workshop for counselors, the structure of two such workshops, and suggestions for improvement of future workshops.

From the inception of philosophical counseling an attempt was made to distinguish it from (psychological) therapy by insisting that therapy could not be more misleading. It is true that philosophical counselors should not pretend to be able to heal major mental illness; nevertheless they do contribute to positive health—health understood as something more than the absence of mental disease. This thesis is developed by critiquing Lou Marinoff’s book, Plato not Prozac!, but also by ranging more widely in the literature on philosophical counseling. I also interpret philosophical counseling as a form of philosophical ethics.

Contrary to current belief among many philosophers, I attempt to show that philosophical counseling is a form of psychotherapy that is in need of structure and guidance in order for it to prosper as a viable approach to mental health treatment. Methodological approaches are examined including dialectical, solution-oriented, and long-term considerations that comprise the nature of meaning analysis and procedural inquiry. If philosophical counseling is to gain recognition among the helping professions, it will need to embrace a philo-psychological paradigm of theory and practice that emphasizes philosophical eclecicism.

How might philosophically based counseling avoid becoming just one more form of private therapy, to be set alongside all the others now sold to individual consumers? Although several practitioners of philosophical counseling have sought to distinguish their approach from psychotherapeutic models, Foucault’s critique of the dominant modern model of ethical reflection might be used to argue for their essential continuity with one another, based on their common acceptance of the primacy of the imperatives of knowledge. Foucault turned in his late writings to ancient Greek models of ethics as ‘care of the self ’, delineating a self-relation prior to knowledge. This paper argues for the interest and importance for philosophical counseling of the idea of ethics as ‘care of the self ’ in articulating a model of ethical reflection distinct from both rationalist and irrationalist tendencies in modern thought and focussed on self-mastery conceived as addressing our relation to otherness rather than as authenticity or autonomy. Moreover, the ‘aesthetics of existence’ that Foucault prescribes to the present has a significant and affirmative relationship to po­litical life; this distinguishes it from the private and individualistic project, dismissed by Foucault as ‘the Californian cult of the self ’, for which philosophical counseling can all too readily be mistaken.

This paper introduces and examines the concept of permitted suicide in the context of philosophical counseling. It argues that clients suffering from serious, irremediable physical illnesses, such as Lou Gehrigs, multiple sclerosis, cancer, and HIV, should be free to philosophically explore the option of suicide with their philosophical counselors without undue fear of paternalistic intervention to thwart a rational suicide decision. Legal liability, professional duties, and qualifications of philosophical counselors who counsel such clients are explored. It is argued that, within certain professional and legal limits, philosophical counselors are uniquely qualified to take on this professional challenge.