Hot new trend of the day: Philosophical counselors
Murphy may have a PhD and an intimate knowledge of Aristotle and Descartes, but in her snug Takoma Park bungalow, she’s helping a broken-hearted patient struggle through a divorce.
Instead of offering the wounded wife a prescription for Effexor — which she’s not licensed to do anyway — she instructs her to read Epictetus, the original cognitive therapist, who argued that humans often mistake their feelings for facts and suffer as a result.
Murphy is one of an increasing number of philosophical counselors, practitioners who are putting their esoteric learning to practical use helping people with some of life’s persistent afflictions. Though they help clients cope with many of the same issues that conventional therapists do — divorce, job stress, the economic downturn, parenting woes, chronic illness and matters of the heart — their methods are very different.
They’re like intellectual life coaches. Very intellectual. They have in-depth knowledge of Jean-Paul Sartre’s existentialist theories on the nature of life and can recite passages from Martin Heidegger’s phenomenological explorations of the question of being. And they use them to help clients overcome their mother issues.
(Via: Jordan Ballor)
August 24th, 2011 | 1:40 pm
I am so sick of “helping professionals” who act like they have something to offer people in need – but really they don’t know, this is all a giant experiment, and all they have to offer are their own pet theories.
People pay good money because these untried, untested theories are treated with a seriousness and a legitimacy they have not earned.
Does philosophy “help”? Maybe it does, maybe it doesn’t. If this were a group where people get together and talk about philosophy, I would have no complaint. If it were billed as a hobby instead of as “therapy”, then I would not mind the idea of the professionally qualified leader charging fees. But for “practitioners” to be calling this “counseling” – that is quackery. When is enough enough?
August 24th, 2011 | 2:04 pm
Cognative, RET, RBT, etc are just homoginized (dechristainized) versions of ancient traditions. Please add the Church Fathers and Mothers and the bible and Tradition to sources of ancient wisdom that still apply today. Yes there should be some standards to measure professionalism.
August 24th, 2011 | 2:06 pm
This isn’t new.
It’s called ancient philosophy.
August 25th, 2011 | 2:54 am
One 35-year-old District woman, who sought treatment because she was trapped in a tortured marriage and having an affair, described herself as the perfect patient for Marinoff’s band of philosophers.
“I wasn’t depressed or fighting bipolar disorder. I didn’t need Paxil. I just needed the skills to think clearly about what went wrong,” said the woman, who works in graphic art. “I heard online about these shrink-thinker types who used John Milton, Adam Smith and Socrates, and I called right away. I wanted to know how our greatest minds would see my situation.”
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A “philosophical counselor”! That’s too funny, but I could see how some clients might get some benefit from it. If only we could compare what goes on in their sessions with the regular therapists for “mild” things (like marriage troubles, work stress or boredom). An analysis of how ethical, effective or appropriate traditional marriage counselors are is an interesting related question.
Could these philosophical counselors offer more than an intellectualized version of Dear Abby? I wonder, but I have my doubts about what a client actually could get out of such a therapy regarding “a tortured marriage and having an affair.”
It sounds like “the perfect patient” for such therapists are yuppie or older liberals, who had an intense liberal university education and live reasonably or very comfortably with bags of money to spend on leisure of all kinds.
Having a lot of liberals values, after their life gets messed up in part because of these values, this individual goes to see someone to tell them where it all went wrong. A puzzling question to them, given that they had been told from birth that they and their liberal values were all so right. And now they will pay good money to hear once again that their liberal values were not only great, but validated by Milton! LOL
A million dollars on the table to know just what goes on in these philosophical sessions and compare them to licensed therapists.
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“John Milton, Adam Smith and Socrates, and I called right away. I wanted to know how our greatest minds would see my situation”
Greatest minds? LOL
How Milton, Smith and Socrates would view his/her tortured marriage and affair?
LOL
We all need to make a living, but some people do like the snake oil.
August 25th, 2011 | 9:01 am
[...] What Would Socrates Advise? Thursday, August 25, 2011, 9:00 AM Joseph Knippenberg As Joe noted yesterday, our friend Jordan Ballor called attention to and discussed this article about philosophical [...]
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