Cover of International Journal of Philosophical Practice
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Displaying: 1-5 of 5 documents


symposium: philosophical practice in the twenty-first century
1. International Journal of Philosophical Practice: Volume > 1 > Issue: 4
Eric Hoffman The Future of “Philosophical Counseling”: A Modest Vision
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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.
2. International Journal of Philosophical Practice: Volume > 1 > Issue: 4
Samuel Zinaich, Jr. Challenges to an Emerging Profession: Should Philosophical Counseling be Satisfied with only Worldview Interpretation?
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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.
3. International Journal of Philosophical Practice: Volume > 1 > Issue: 4
James A. Tuedio Assessing the Promise of Philosophical Counseling: Questions and Challenges for an Emerging Profession
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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.
articles
4. International Journal of Philosophical Practice: Volume > 1 > Issue: 4
Kenneth A. Bryson Treatment Plan for Clients of Vocational Centers and Special Care Residential Units
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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.
5. International Journal of Philosophical Practice: Volume > 1 > Issue: 4
Lisa H. Newton But Can It Travel?: The Docrine of Double Effect and the Danger of Interprofessional Motion Disorder
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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.