PHILOSOPHICAL COUNSELING IS NOT A DISTINCT
FIELD
Abstract
There is currently a movement advocating "philosophical
counseling." Autobiographical material pertaining to my
development as a philosopher, then a human services professional,
then a psychoanalyst, charts how I came to believe that
philosophical training was under-rated, and training in psychology
was over-rated, as an appropriate intellectual foundation for
psychotherapy. However, these fields are not distinct. Laws
governing the practice of psychology are arrogant in their scope,
and make virtually everything out to be the practice of psychology.
The scope and nature of philosophy isn't any clearer. The kind of
thinking encouraged in psychology is liable to be exactly the wrong
sort of thing for training therapists. Unfortunately, philosophers are
liable to not be good therapists either. The lack of neat distinctions
between philosophical counseling and psychotherapy provides an
argument against a monopoly on therapy-like activities by
psychologists. On the liberal side this is an argument in favor of
freedom of speech, of belief, and trade, for the applied
philosopher. On the conservative side, it may also be an argument
for certification (as opposed to licensure) for both psychologists
and philosophers, in the interest of protecting the vulnerable by
promoting truthful self-representation.
-
Since the time of Thales in the 6th century BC philosophers have
had the reputation of being useless. That is unfair. Indeed, Thales
was something of a shrewd businessman. Still, philosophers have,
themselves, contributed to the image of being off in the clouds.
Seen as useless but also harmless, philosophers have generally
been at liberty to talk about what ever they wished. That is an
important liberty, worth protecting. Of late there seems to be
something of a movement of "applied philosophy," including a
subset called "philosophical counseling," which presumes that
philosophers have something useful to offer and seeks to protect
the liberty to do so. I am an advocate of this movement. It is not a
tidy movement that might speak with one voice, and one will find
advocates of everything from philosophers doing psychotherapy to
philosophers seeking to find a market for the most abstract of
speculations. Now the prospect arises that they might do harm, if
only the harm of doing no good for those who might be vulnerable
to false hopes. While wanting to be mindful of the potential for
harming the vulnerable, I wish to champion the legitimacy of
applied philosophy and of philosophical counseling, down to and
including much that might be popularly understood as
"psychotherapy." This is partly because I genuinely believe that the
extensive study of philosophy is very practical in many ways.
Partly it is because I think that it might be a very good
background, if only a partial one, for that therapy-like realm.
Partly, it is because I believe very strongly in freedom. This is
about freedom of speech. The sort of "psychotherapy" I am
interested in is a matter of talking. No one should need a license to
talk. This is about freedom from unfair restrictions on trade. No
one should be prohibited from trying to make a living though
advocating dialogue. It is about freedom of religion. No one should
be prohibited from the opportunity to give or receive divergent
forms of counsel in matters that address the grounding of beliefs
about what to feel and what to value in the conduct of ones life.
The points I want to address will be clearer if put in personal
context. Of course, an autobiography is not an argument.
As a beginning philosophy teacher in the mid 60's I was alarmed to
find students coming to my office hours with their personal
problems. I don't know what they saw in me. Maybe it was that I
lectured on areas of philosophy that spoke to my own angst and
searching. My doctoral dissertation was on the topic of
self-deception. I was very favorably inclined toward the
existentialism of Sartre and "ordinary language philosophy" as
found in the later Wittgenstein and in Gilbert Ryle. I still am. At that
time I was rather hostile to Freud and his followers. I have
reversed myself entirely on that score. By now my way of
understanding Sartre, Freud, and subsequent developments in
psychoanalysis, leads me to finding these theories far more
complimentary than would be widely supposed. Anyway, I would
send these students-in-distress off to the student health center, not
for lack of interest in their struggles which very much resonated
with my own, but because I thought that as a philosopher I had no
business meddling with things better left to "trained therapists." In
time I came to be-shall I say-less in awe of the training of
psychotherapists, and more bold about the possible relevance of
training that was primarily in philosophy. At one point, when I was
in the middle of trying to get a suicidal student to go to a University
counselor, a (therapist) friend said, cryptically, "You ain't much,
Mike, but you're all she's got." Something gelled. At about the
same time I had another crystallizing experience when my wife (at
the time) and I were passengers in the back seat of a GTO being
driven by a very inebriated friend who was also a ranking figure at
a local psychiatric hospital. At the instant when our speeding car
lost all contact with the ground as it cleared the dip of an
intersection, I had an insight. Something of an epiphany. I realized
that lots of therapists didn't have their acts together, really, and that
maybe I was being too hard on myself for presupposing that,
pathetic and angst-ridden philosopher that I was, they were in a
position to be helpful and I was not. Students were coming to me
with their problems whether I liked it or not, and often as not they
just didn't take my advice to go elsewhere. They resonated with
something about me. I thought I'd better get some more training.
Training as what? There wasn't such a thing as a "licensed
philosopher." I didn't want to be a psychologist. Nearly everything
that I'd written or lectured on was critical of the whole causal
perspective of psychology, and, as a young Wittgensteininan
"Turk" I had nothing short of contempt for the philosophy of mind I
found rampant through the social sciences. But, truthfully, I rather
liked hearing other people's struggles, especially when I felt that
mine helped me to hear theirs. Obviously, I needed help. For one
thing, whether I liked the word 'therapy' or not, I obviously needed
a lot of it, and I sought it out. But I also, obviously, needed
training. So I audited or sat in on every course or workshop or
lecture from which I could hope to better my ill-preparedness. I
involved myself in every sort of "encounter group" and
self-exploration arena I could find. And I got informal, but very
structured and rigorous consultation and supervision I could
arrange to have. Basically, I put together several thousand hours of
training. This was still training for a non-existent field. That was
what I did with the decade of the 1970's. As there was no field
there was no way to test it, and I felt I needed to be tested.
Although ineligible to sit for any of California's licenses, as I did not
have degrees in the right fields, I was able to take and pass an
examination that had weight in other states, to become a Nationally
Certified Counselor.
For some while I was steeped in the "encounter group movement"
and an advocate of all manner of forms of group and individual
interventions such as the "person centered" approach of Carl
Rogers and the "gestalt" work of Fritz Perls. It was becoming
more and more plain to me that a great deal that was called
"psychotherapy" was an extension of philosophy, being practiced
by people who failed to see this. I was convinced that really vital
exploration of philosophical issues came alive on the personal
plane, when affect was tapped rather than by-passed. So it wasn't
quite that these fads in therapy were doing what philosophers did,
but they were doing what philosophers had some claim to the right
to be doing. And they didn't seem to know this. The widespread
caricature of the philosopher as a useless person immersed in a
useless field has always provoked my anger. My insecurity and
defensiveness mixed with self-righteousness and a willingness to go
on the offensive. In 1980 I wrote a paper on "The Philosopher As
A Personal Consultant." It was provocative catharsis. Having
ventilated, I left the paper in a drawer, only dusting it off recently
to have it published last spring. (The paper can be found at
http://www.philosophers.co.uk/current/russell.htm) My
presentation today is a spin-off from that work, and was written
before my reversal on the worth of psychoanalysis. The argument
then was that "psychotherapy" was such a muddled term that
maybe no one ought to "do it", but that whatever "it" was-I liked
the term "personal consulting"-- philosophy, if anything, was a
better background than the social sciences and better than
medicine. I believed this-and still do-but I was also being spiteful.
If, as I imagined they surely would say, the psychologists were
going to say I had no business doing the sorts of things I was
doing, I would rejoin that this applied philosophy was something
the psychologists had no business doing! The same for the field of
medicine. For one thing, the "turf" to be fought over was patently
philosophy in taking up, at every bend, the sorts of things
philosophers have always been addressing and looking at it with a
lot of help from philosophical theory and rather little help from
empirical methodology. Secondly, it actively encouraged affect and
subjectivity by both (or all) participants. Psychology and medicine,
I maintained, promoted exactly the wrong sort of thinking for a
form of inquiry which demanded one be able to join with clients to
see, and feel, things from their experiential vantage point.
Objective neutrality, it seemed to me, was just what was not
wanted, whether this be medical distance or the objectivity of
replicable observable experiment so valued in the social sciences.
What was wanted, it seems to me, was the ability of the
practitioner to think enough within the perspective of the client as
to be able to see just how to make that person's world
comprehensible, and at the same time, be able to see where it
might fail. This, I thought, is rather exactly what philosophers do,
minus the receptivity to affect.
This last "minus," however, looms all too large. I did not and do
not think it likely that the vast majority of philosophers I have
known would be at all promising as personal consultants. As a
group they are, I think, far too hampered by idiosyncrasies, and far
too removed from their own or anyone else's affect. They are, I'd
say, pretty out of touch. Besides, I don't think many philosophers
went into that study expressly because they wanted to make a
profession of listening to the personal struggles of others, and those
who did have that sort of career aspiration would typically be
persons who studied psychology, or medicine, regardless of the
shortcomings of these fields. Even so, in theory, and depending
greatly on the specifics of their studies, the philosophers had the
best sort of preparation.
Shortly after writing that paper I had the opportunity to embark on
training in psychoanalysis. California law allows certain
psychoanalytic training institutes to train persons with doctorates
from disciplines not traditional to mental health, and these persons
may practice as "research psychoanalysts" provided that this is as
an "adjunct" to research or teaching that they do. I completed the
required five years of psychoanalytic training in 1988, and have
maintained a small private practice in addition to my teaching
duties since that time. Having "become legitimate" cooled my
anti-therapy passion considerably. Now in the "club" I have
become more conservative about who I would like to have join!
Still, I think the basic arguments are sound.
I still think philosophy a much under-rated academic background
for a broad spectrum of applied concerns, including things
therapy-like, and I continue believe psychology is a vastly
over-rated academic discipline. I choke on the arrogance of a
field-psychology-- that is prepared to legislate a near monopoly on
an immense range of human activities which they would claim to be
their sole province, while simultaneously seeking, in effect, a
copyright on the bulk of vocabulary with which a competing
discipline might seek to promote a competing trade. Here is how it
is put, in California law (I shall highlight portions of particular
interest to me):
[ http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/calaw.html ]
CALIFORNIA BUSINESS AND PROFESSIONS CODE
SECTION 2900-2918
2900. The Legislature finds and declares that practice of
psychology in California affects the public health, safety, and
welfare and is to be subject to regulation and control in the public
interest to protect the public from the unauthorized and unqualified
practice of psychology and from unprofessional conduct by
persons licensed to practice psychology.
2901. This chapter shall be known and may be cited as the
"Psychology Licensing Law."
2902. As used in this chapter, unless the context clearly requires
otherwise and except as in this chapter expressly otherwise
provided:
(a) "Licensed psychologist" means an individual to whom a license
has been issued pursuant to the provisions of this chapter, which
license is in force and has not been suspended or revoked.
(b) "Board" means the Board of Psychology.
(c) A person represents himself or herself to be a psychologist
when the person holds himself or herself out to the public by any
title or description of services incorporating the words
"psychology," "psychological," "psychologist," "psychology
consultation,""psychology consultant," "psychometry,"
"psychometrics" or "psychometrist," "psychotherapy,"
"psychotherapist," "psychoanalysis,"or "psychoanalyst," or when
the person holds himself or herself out to be trained, experienced,
or an expert in the field of psychology.
2903. No person may engage in the practice of psychology, or
represent himself to be a psychologist, without a license granted
under this chapter, except as otherwise provided in this chapter.
The practice of psychology is defined as rendering or offering to
render for a fee to individuals, groups, organizations or the public
any psychological service involving the application of psychological
principles, methods, and procedures of understanding, predicting,
and influencing behavior, such as the principles pertaining to
learning,
perception, motivation, emotions, and interpersonal relationships;
and the methods and procedures of interviewing, counseling,
psychotherapy, behavior modification, and hypnosis; and of
constructing, administering, and interpreting tests of mental abilities,
aptitudes, interests, attitudes, personality characteristics, emotions,
and motivations.
The application of such principles and methods includes, but is not
restricted to: diagnosis, prevention, treatment, and amelioration of
psychological problems and emotional and mental disorders of
individuals and groups.
Psychotherapy within the meaning of this chapter means the use of
psychological methods in a professional relationship to assist a
person or persons to acquire greater human effectiveness or to
modify feelings, conditions, attitudes and behavior which are
emotionally, intellectually, or socially ineffectual or maladjustive.
Let me call attention to three features that emerge here. California
law tries to identify representation, or what you may or may not
call yourself. It seeks to identify practice: in a move that probably
involves a circular reference to what you call yourself, it says what
you may and may not do. (The circle comes from defining
psychology as the use of "psychological principles.") And it tries to
identify purpose, highlighting "diagnosis, prevention, treatment, and
amelioration of psychological problems and emotional and mental
disorders…"
I note in passing that the law has lumped together 'psychologist'
and 'psychoanalyst'. This is utterly wrong-headed, but shall not be
central to my interests here. More central for me is the fact that the
law has basically reserved the word 'psychotherapy' for the
psychologist, and my objection to this is that it makes too broad a
claim on too much language. I do support reserving some language
for groups that are subjected to governance and review; this
affords the public some assurance, certainly no guarantee, that
some standards of training and competency have been met.
'Licensed psychologist' is an example of a term where restrictions
on use make sense to me. At least this much of a concession to the
concern for harming the vulnerable is reasonable, in my opinion.
More problematic, in my view, is the de facto copy-writing of the
word 'psychotherapy'. For my immediate purposes it suffices to
note the extraordinary breadth of domain of human activity this law
would govern. I think it makes it against the law for anyone but a
licensed psychologist to sell a pair of shoes.
Back to philosophy. Here is my problem. I want to build a case
for the legitimacy of applied philosophy, including various forms of
"philosophical counseling" some of which admittedly look like what
would popularly be regarded as psychotherapy, but which are
candidly offered as an alternative. I think there are several ways
one might try to do this. (1) One would be to establish that
philosophical counseling is (or can come to be) something distinct
from psychotherapy, hence not part of the domain claimed for
psychology. This is the strategy-or maybe simply the belief-of
some philosophical counselors. I think something like this is the
position of my colleague on this panel, Kent Palmer. (2) The
second would be to allow that psychotherapy and philosophical
counseling might overlap, and then try to overturn the
psychologists' monopoly on the grounds that the laws are miscast.
This was my motive for selecting the topic "Philosophical
Counseling Is Not A Distinct Discipline." Given my own history of
advocating the "philosopher as a personal consultant" I prefer this
stance to the first. This approach sub-divides into three options:
(2-a) Argue that the laws are miscast because the practices -the
activities-that might constitute psychotherapy are so hopelessly
broad and amorphous that it becomes patently unreasonable to
suppose them the sole domain of those trained in any one
academic discipline, or (2-b) argue that the activities are roughly
identifiable and do, indeed, overlap, but that there are compelling
reasons why philosophers ought to be at liberty to do those things
or (2-c) argue that a decisive factor is whether what is done,
whoever does it, is for purposes of diagnosis and treatment of a
disorder. (3) A third route, and the one toward which I am
presently most inclined, is something of a mix of all of the above. I
do think 'psychotherapy' is a generally muddled term, and that the
sorts of activities that fall under its heading are too broad to be the
sole province of any group. Further, the broadest account of the
purpose of psychotherapy-"to acquire greater human
effectiveness"-is certainly sweeping; for psychology to declare this
as its own domain is simply hubris. The more narrow vision where
purpose is linked with diagnosis and treatment fares somewhat
better. But it, too, falters on vagueness. One practitioner's view of
pathology will be another's view of sloppy thinking. One
practitioner's view of treatment will be another's idea of a good
heart-to-heart talk. And even if this vagueness weren't fatal, this
alone would not settle when or whether philosophers might be in a
position to diagnose and treat disorders. My view is that what
could come closest to making out a "distinct field" of philosophical
counseling would not turn so much on what is done nor why it is
done, but on the identity of who does it. Specifically, 'who' with
respect to such things as what they call themselves, the
professional identity through which they represent themselves,
what field might be most fundamental to how they were trained,
and in terms of generalizations about those fields, how they think
about things. In that case the "practice of psychotherapy" will be
partly a matter of what is done, somewhat more a matter of why it
is done, but mainly a matter of whether it is done by someone who
may legitimately be called a psychotherapist because they studied
it, trained in it, and because they think like psychotherapists. This
may or may not be persons who identify themselves as
psychologists, have trained in psychology, think "like a
psychologists." It may or may not be persons who identify
themselves as psychiatrists, who have trained in medicine, who
"think like a doctor." And if I could have it my way, so too with the
practice of philosophy. Granting that some philosophers might
make good psychotherapists, what they might offer which would
make them more or less distinct would be that they trained in
philosophy, identified themselves as philosophers, and thought "like
philosophers."
Putting aside this potential means of distinguishing a philosophical
counselor from a psychologist/psychotherapist by means of how
they identify themselves professionally, is it possible to distinguish
them either by their activities or by their purposes? Even if we
could make a tidy picture of what was to count as philosophical
counseling, what can count as "psychotherapy" is so amorphous
that nothing could (or would) prevent whatever one comes to call
philosophical counseling from being construed by psychology as
one form of psychotherapy-hence, their domain! Incredibly, that's
the law.
Well, suppose one could stipulate a definition of philosophical
counseling that would refer uniquely. But why suppose such an
edict would have any force with people who used the term? I don't
think this a credible forecast of how people would use-continue to
use-this term. Every bit of media coverage I have seen has
discussed philosophical counseling in the same breath with
psychotherapy. So the psychotherapists can't be counted on to
keep the thing distinct, and the general public very likely will not
keep it distinct either. Could the philosophical counselors keep it
distinct? Well, for one thing, do we need a consensus of any and
all who would call themselves philosophical counselors? Can we
or should we (and who is "we" at this point, anyway?) reserve the
term for those who agree to some stipulative and limiting
definition? Suppose that there are some (self-proclaimed)
philosophical counselors who believe they have an especially good
understanding of or Spinoza's, or Sartre's philosophy which will
allow them to be of particular assistance to persons who are
unhappy in a relationship, or anxious about career decisions, or
worried about any of a number of things that engage them in a
personal and potentially emotional way. Or suppose (as is in fact
the case) that there are philosophical counselors who think they
have an especially good understanding of Socrates method of
dialogue, and want to make this available to persons faced with
personal dilemmas. These scenarios do not provide us with a
distinct field because (1) nothing stops any
psychologist/psychotherapist from saying they do this too. (2) The
newspapers and general public are still going to think about this in
a sloppy way, and talk about this as an alternative breed of
psychotherapy. (3) There may still be those who maintain that they
are philosophical counselors, but deny that what they do has any
connection with Spinoza's or Sartre's theories or Socrates'
dialectic.
Might philosophical counseling be distinguished from
psychotherapy by the presence of a peer relationship in the one
case, and the absence of a peer relationship in the other? This
does not hold up. There is nothing to keep philosophical
counselors from being arrogantly removed and unequal, and there
are plenty of modes of psychotherapy which can claim to be fairly
egalitarian. On this matter of peer relationships, let me say that this
is all well and good for those that wish it, but that I have not
wanted nor had a peer relationship with those persons who have
been really helpful for me in my own 'self-exploration'-I'm thinking
here, certainly, of my own analyst ('training analyst')-as well as
some of the philosophy professors who had the greatest impact on
me. Neither do I want a peer relationship with those who seek me
out for 'therapy' ('self-exploration,' call it what you will). On the
contrary, I hope to provide an environment which will facilitate a
constructive sort of regression, I welcome the 'transference', and (I
hesitate to say this because it is so likely that it will be badly
misunderstood) a certain sort of 'dependency' that my clients
routinely feel toward me.
For the sake of brevity, let me jump to my conclusion about the
immediate point. While I think it would be possible to give a rough
general account of kinds of conversational activities characteristic
of what would be widely understood as psychotherapy, and given
the sorts of things that are liable to be put under an umbrella of
"philosophical counseling," I do not believe that any list of
activities, alone, could be precise enough to support the legislated
monopoly of one group to the exclusion of the other. On this
score-about activities-I conclude that philosophical counseling is
not and could not be a distinct discipline from psychotherapy.
One of the other means (suggested above) for trying to distinguish
psychotherapy and philosophical counseling was in terms of
differing aims or objectives, viz., the relevance of diagnosis and
treatment in the one field and the absence of this in the other. I
don't think this works either. It has been suggested to me that
almost all psychotherapy "attempts to solve some kind of
psychological problem, either real or perceived. In other words it
is as its name implies, therapy, which has the goal (of) improving
one's condition on the model of moving from sickness to health."
(From correspondence with Kent Palmer.)
The seeming implications of the word 'psychotherapy' not
withstanding, it just isn't so that psychotherapy is ubiquitously
problem focused. Or more precisely, it is problem focused, but in
a way importantly contrary to what might be supposed: It is not
that self-understanding is promoted as a means to solving
problems; what is promoted is focusing on areas of
conflict-problems-as a means to the end of self-understanding.
Admittedly, the term "psychotherapy" propels us into vocabularies
of fixing and healing. That's part of the muddle. In fact, we all live
on a continuum from where the language of emotional pathology
has very plain applicability to paradigms of spiritual achievement.
When to call it "treatment," when "growth," and when
"self-exploration for its own sake" is something of a judgment call.
But the whole enterprise takes on a profoundly different cast if we
reverse the usual presupposition: We emphasize problems in order
to promote understanding, rather than seeking understanding to
cure problems. There are plenty of psychotherapists-very different
breeds of them-who say some really interesting things that run
contrary to the idea that what they do is about being out to fix
things. The most obvious examples come from those who present
what they offer as "self-exploration" or opportunities for "personal
growth." There are, for instance, assorted "humanistic"
therapists-Carl Rogers, Abraham Maslow-who use the language
of "growth" and reject the language of "sickness." In the "Gestalt
Therapy" of Fritz Perls there is more a promoting a "here-and-now
experience" than any direct effort to "fix a problem." William
Glasser's "Reality Therapy" is not about therapists fixing clients,
although it does involve asking clients to evaluate their own
behavior. One could go on. But notice-just with these approaches
to therapy- that the portrait of psychotherapy as inherently about
either a problem focus or medical language does not hold up.
Shifting to the psychoanalytic realm it is relevant that
psychoanalysts routinely debate differences between
"psychoanalysis" and "psychotherapy" or "psychoanalytic
psychotherapy," and arguably the central point is precisely that
psychoanalysis is a method of investigation promoting
understanding for its own sake and not with some objective.
Again, there's no disputing that psychoanalysis is steeped in
sickness-diagnosis-cure language, but there's a really significant
dimension to it in which psychoanalysis is distinguished from
psychoanalytic psychotherapy. Bion's famous edict about the
analyst's entering the session "without memory or desire"
underscores the idea (ideal) of the analyst not having an "agenda,"
not being focused on any particular "problem." Freud's objection
to Ferenzi's efforts to bring about a "corrective emotional
experience" suggests that even when the analyst and patient are
seeking to bring about some change in the patient (even this way of
putting it is appropriately more vague than would be the idea of
"fixing" some specific "problem" it is "unanalytic" to be
self-consciously aiming for that. Freud objects to Ferenzi's trying
to provide a corrective emotional experience. The idea, I think, is
that the best sort of therapy even when it's therapy that's wanted,
paradoxically, does not seek to be therapy, but seeks only to
understand, to "analyze." Consider too that a good many training
analyses as well as required periods of "therapy" for therapists in
training, are not presumed to be undertaken for the sake of fixing
problems or curing pathology . My clients are typically
high-functioning professionals, many of them practicing or aspiring
therapists. This sort of clientele is not at all unusual for
psychoanalysts. I also have taught a range of courses and led a
variety of groups which I think of as promoting "self-exploration".
In these various activities it is quite true that my focus, and, more
importantly, the focus of the people I am working with, is on
"problems". That being so, surely they want solutions to their
problems, and I want this for them too. I believe that what they do
with me within the environment I try to create often will lead to
some modifications and solutions to these problems. What they
talk about and what (little) I do with this would generally,
popularly, be called "psychotherapy." I don't like that term for
reasons which will perhaps get addressed in our dialogue, and
which I have discussed elsewhere. However, I do not see myself,
basically, as trying to solve-or even help them to solve-their
problems. I do find that I particularly listen for conflict and for
feelings which, in my view, are being avoided. Around me, these
people are likely to find themselves addressing-and feeling-hurt. Of
course I partly wish, and they wish, that they were not in conflict
and that they weren't hurting. We both wish they weren't hurting
over their problems. Even so, I don't think what I am trying to do
is about solving what hurts. It would be more accurate to say we
attend to what hurts as a means to broadening ones capacity for
forms of awareness. This might or might not be conceptualized in
terms of cure.
Having said that , and on pain of seeming contradiction, I now
want to propose that personal consulting, therapy, analysis,
philosophical counseling-what-have-you-would not be a powerful
nor even a very interesting experience if there weren't ways in
which the focus was on the client's (patient's, subject's,
call-'em-what-you-like) problems, conflicts, sore spots. It is
exactly in the areas of discomfort, places where feelings are
running too high or not high enough, where one is blinded by what
one doesn't want to see that there's motivation and passion about
exploring. Why would anyone want to consult a philosophical
counselor when they didn't have a hang-up?
Here I wish to insert brief reference to cautions that need to be
discussed at length. In encouraging philosophers to seek ways to
train in and then practice forms of psychotherapy I must emphasize
that there is such a thing as supervised clinical training, and,
regardless of my liberty-minded views of what the law should
allow us to do, I do not think anyone morally ought to wade into
these waters without a very great deal of supervised clinical
training. If this is new territory for the philosopher, the training
should come from persons with professional identities for whom
this is not new. The idea that a philosopher might have a short
course in how to spot pathology so as to limit his or her practice to
the reasonably "healthy" is massively naïve! The prospect that
someone will be seduced away from getting of another and more
urgent kind of professional help is all too real. Even when one
starts with a "reasonably healthy" client, it is terribly easy to
under-estimate pathology that might develop within the process of
the counseling. There is, for instance, such a thing as a debilitating
regressive transference, and the posture of a "philosopher
counselor" is exactly the sort of thing liable to promote it. Indeed,
one might suspect that the sorts of persons who would seek out
the services of a philosophical counselor are exactly the sorts of
persons who will miss the opportunity to examine deeper
emotional issues because of their selection of professionals liable to
collude in that flight from feeling.
The conclusion I would draw in these last paragraphs is that
psychotherapy is not to be neatly distinguished from philosophical
counseling by the presence of a problem focus, and philosophical
counseling is not to be neatly distinguished from psychotherapy by
a purported absence of a problem focus. The broader conclusion I
have wished to promote throughout this presentation is that the
lack of neat and firm distinctions between philosophical counseling
and psychotherapy with respect to what they do and why they do
it provides an argument against a monopoly on therapy-like
activities by psychologists, to the exclusion of philosophers. I have
also proposed that a more feasible means of distinguishing
psychotherapy that is part of psychology from philosophical
counseling that is part of philosophy is not on the grounds of what
is done, nor very much on the grounds of why it is done, but is
mainly a matter of the professional identification of those that do it.
On the liberal side this is, I think, an argument in favor of freedom
of speech, of belief, and trade, for the applied philosopher. On the
conservative side, it may also be an argument for certification (as
opposed to licensure) for both psychologists and philosophers, in
the interest of protecting the vulnerable by promoting truthful
self-representation.
J. Michael Russell
Professor of Philosophy and Human Services
California State University, Fullerton
Research Psychoanalyst and Training Analyst
Newport Psychoanalytic Institute
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