pavel sebastian's List: PC

Philosophical counseling is psychotherapy because it (i) constitutes a professional relationship

whereby a recognized expert is consulted to render services, (ii) receives clients for a fee, (iii) aims 7

toward personal growth, adjustment, autonomy, wellness, increased mental health, or self-insight,

(iv) professes treatment efficacy, (v) is pedagogical, preparatory, and constructive, and (vi) models

generalizable skills that can be applied to everyday life.

Because a plurality of theoretical assumptions

underlie and inform the goals and range of philosophical interventions, the question of method

becomes especially significant when establishing: (i) which philosophical assumptions will be

stressed in counseling and why, (ii) the exact procedure on how they will be communicated and

carried out, (iii) the purpose, justification, structure, intention, delivery, and process of the

therapeutic encounter, (iv) the parameters of appropriate intervening techniques, (v) when assessing

specific interactions, and (vi) when determining the selection criterion of clientele.

No matter what method philosophical counselors employ, it should

ideally be (i) rationally and theoretically justified, (ii) internally coherent, (iii) sensitive to the

efficacy of treatment outcome, (iv) subject to duplication, procedural experimentation, and empirical

research, (v) open to verification, falsification, and modification, (vi) flexible with respect to content,

context, and form, and (vii) generalizable as a training device.

Because philosophical 

counseling may be seen as an insight oriented psychotherapy conducted through a guided and 

systematic dialectical exchange that analyzes the philo-conceptual and psycho-philosophical 

meanings of a client’s subjective lived experience, meaning analysis, or what might not be 

inappropriately called philoanalysis, must be open to exploring the psychodynamic processes that 

constitute philosophical beliefs and attitudes, personality or character structure, and the interpersonal 

and intersubjective pressures, perceptions, and tensions that permeate the counselor-client 

relationship.