“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.

It’s called ancient philosophy.

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?