Talk:Philosophical counseling
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Peter Raabe sent me the article that I have uploaded to this page. It needs some rewriting to be rendered from the neutral point of view, but it looks like a really excellent article. It can also use some general wikification (adding links, mainly). Thanks, Peter! --Larry Sanger
It could be argued that this type of intellectual counseling neglects the emotions and feelings, or what psychologists call the affective domain. But philosophers know that feelings and emotions are not simply irrational events that a person must suffer.
- Does that imply that psychologists think any differently?
Consequently, a negative feeling or an emotion about oneself, for example, can be changed by means of a critical examination of one's perception of oneself, and one's apprehension of the world and one's place in it.
- Just sounds like Cognitive behaviour therapy.
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[edit] Philosophical counseling should not solve emotional problems only, if at all
Philosophical counseling is not directed at solving emotional problems only, if at all. Admittedly, emotional problems can get solved as a side effect. However, what philosophical counseling can bring in the first place is a drastic improvement of one's system of belief, or frame of mind. Different frame of mind or belief leads to different individual decisions, whether emotional problems have been solved or not.
It is, in the end, not so much important how the client sees things or how he feels about things, but rather what lines of reasoning or statements he uses when making decisions.
It is possible that cognitive-behavioral therapy uses similar means as philosophical counseling. Unlike CBT, philosophical counseling has much wider applications. In fact, there's not a single human living who could be sure that his thought does not contain a serious flaw. Philosophical counseling can therefore be applied to emotionally healthy people to improve the overall way in which they make substantial decisions. Speaking in software development terms, it can be viewed as mental debugging.
Furthermore, I don't see any evidence that psychoterapists are trained in logic or logical analysis so crutial to rational philosophy. Instead, they are often trained in stuff created by Freud, Jung or Fromm, which lacks both scientific and philosophical standard. I am not sure if I would trust those people that they'll help me to improve the quality of my thinking.
The article here discussed is exceptional. I can hardly think of a better articulation of the topic. --Daniel Polansky
[edit] Headings
This article needs to be split up using headings. Ben Finn 00:33, 2 January 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Is this the place to give buyers' advice?
I'm not entirely convinced that the final paragraph, starting with "For anyone interested..." would belong in a Wikipedia article. It's advice. Maybe it's even good advice, but it seems odd to have a statement like that in an encyclopedia. Perhaps it should be rewritten to describe, not express, the concern, felt by some, about qualifications for philosophical counsellers?
In any case, I removed the dashed border around that paragraph, as it was attracting too much attention, regardless of the question whether it should be there at all.
[edit] Overgeneralizes Psychotherapy
I'm a therapist trained in a graduate program that was existentially, psychodynamically and humanistically oriented. I thought your article was very interesting, but I found myself bristling against what seems to be an overgeneralization of psychotherapy. In several places you compare philosophical counseling to psychotherapy as though the latter is one uniform practice. In contrast, it seems to me that what you are comparing philosophical counseling to are antiquated and/or unreflective forms of therapy.
A few specific places where your article overgeneralizes psychotherapy (in a pejorative way)...
- (Philosophical counselors) will be experienced in discussing existential and ethical issues for which many psychotherapists have little or no training.
- All psychotherapists are trained in ethics and many are trained in existential issues, at least to some degree.
- The philosophical counselor, unlike their psychotherapeutic counterpart, does not diagnose their clients according to normative ideals about normalcy, mental health, self-understanding, or psychic well-being, such as the DSM-IV or the ICD-10.
- Although insurance companies require DSM diagnoses, there are therapists do not work within the insurance system. Many (who I have encountered) who do use insurance companies see diagnosis as a necessary evil, rather than as a reflection of who their clients are and/or who they ought to be.
- Neither do (philosophical counselors) offer the sort of therapy that expects the client to passively receive treatment.
- Only a bad therapist expects the client to passively receive treatment.
A few things you imply (rather than state directly) about psychotherapy are also derogatory and overgeneralized...
- Therapists try to simply to resolve a client's immediate problem and then send them on their way.
- Therapists do not try to cultivate awareness of hidden biases, unspoken assumptions, and conflicting values.
Overall, I think the article would be taken more seriously by psychotherapists if you retain the interesting information about what philosophical counseling has to offer, without contrasting it with a seemingly unified practice called "psychotherapy" that is unreflective and theoretically/philosophically unsophisticated. Alternatively, you could be more specific about which approaches to psychotherapy you are contrasting with various aspects of philosophical counseling - as long as you make sure your characterizations of these approaches are accurate and not stereotypes/caricatures. --Mandy Schleifer
