Personal Development through Thinking

If you are interested in email counselling please go to the bottom of this page.

We seem to live in an age where more and more people are searching for meaning in their lives, or a meaning to their lives. In their search they reject psychiatry and the medicalizing of their lives. Rightly, they don’t believe they have a mental disorder and are averse to the pathologizing of human experiences such as grief. In hope or despair - perhaps the same thing - some people will turn to Clairvoyants, Psychics, Mediums, and a number of others professing to have psychic abilities.

Many psychic practices are quite obscure and others give a sense of orthodoxy (from a historical perspective). In the weakest sense of the term psychic practices have sometimes been referred to as Metaphysics; a term taken from Aristotle’s treatise (not a term Aristotle used but one which was added to a collection of his selected works). The idea behind this - I believe - is to give it a sense of mystery, wisdom, and validity; validity suggests truth.

I am not so bold as to state categorically that I ‘know’ all psychics are fakes, con-artists, or delusional. However, so many of them seem to do no more than abuse those people who are feeling vulnerable, confused, and lost. Abuse may seem like too strong a word but I feel that what they offer is quite contrived. It is usually referred to as ‘cold reading.’

I have listened to so many Psychics floundering around trying to hook a member of the audience. They move from name and event with ease until someone in the audience responds. This is a hit and they conveniently forget the endless misses. A vulnerable sceptic in the audience then clarifies the details and is unaware that they are doing so.

The most striking part of all this for me is that people are so lost that they cannot find solace in this world. There seems to be nothing to help them change their perspective on life. Pain is something to avoid at all costs, and in their avoidance of pain they sometimes use very expensive palliative methods to treat it. Once in that spiral they may find themselves facing the very professional they were avoiding, a psychologist.

I would argue that neither psychology nor psychiatry naturally lends itself to the ‘talking therapies.’ When they discuss life issues with clients they are doing philosophy and it is very hard for psychologists to acknowledge this; they work so hard at being a science. The unfounded, professional negativity towards philosophy as a practical aid to living is evident throughout the West, and most definitely here in the UK. The NHS, one of the largest health employers in the UK, is happy to provide a groundless service of homeopathic remedies, but does not acknowledge the value of 3000 years of philosophy whose original aim was to help people live more worthwhile lives, and through philosophical counselling does once again.

The NHS is also quite happy to leave the validation of counsellors to self appointed groups whose costs are prohibitive and requirements arbitrary.

Of course, the client’s rights must be respected, and confidentiality maintained. However, whether a counsellor has worked for 5 or 5000 hours with clients does not guarantee a good counsellor. Life experience is required for training and yet ignored in employment. The costs for training are high and the employment possibilities low. More importantly, the type of counselling offered by government run community mental health teams is inexorably linked to economics, not individuals.

——————————————
Philosophical Counselling

I am a counsellor that uses philosophy. I see new clients as friendships in dialogue. Each of us learns as we focus on the problems or issues. It is not based on belief or superstition but a real effort to discover the truth. And even if the truth resists discovery the journey is intellectually, and emotionally satisfying in itself. I offer no answers but I can perhaps help with some of the questions that need to be explored.

Philosophical counselling is unlike therapy in the usual sense. As one practitioner says:

[P]hilosophical counselors are hesitant to call philosophical counselling “therapy.” This is because the philosophical counselor, unlike his psychotherapeutic counterpart, does not diagnose his clients according to some ready-made normative ideals about normalcy, mental health, self-understanding, or psychic well-being. Neither does he offer the sort of therapy that expects the client to passively receive treatment. But this does not mean that philosophical counselling is not therapeutic in its effect. Wittgenstein saw philosophy as having a practical use in “untying the knots in our thinking,” or what he considered the treatment of “intellectual disease.” The philosophical methods required for untying these troublesome knots he called “therapies.” Therapy in the philosophical sense comes from the client’s increased understanding, self-awareness, and feeling of well-being …
Peter B Rabbe, Ph.D

If you would like email counselling/telephone counselling, or just more information please email me at :
counselling@stephenrchristie.com

I charge £25 and the equivalent in any currency for email and telephone counselling (plus the cost of the call).