Denver Post
Tuesday, May 7, 2000
Philosopher Touts Power as Counseling
Tool
Cate Terwilliger, Denver Post Staff Writer
Plato for the people
Lou Marinoff resembles a
stereotypical Freudian analyst: probing eyes, thinning
hair, a long beard that's beginning to gray.
But Marinoff doesn't give
a whit about your childhood, and you can leave your
Id and Ego at home. This therapist wants your Kant and
your Kierkegaard, your Aristotle and Hegel.
The New Jersey philosopher
is the father of a new movement that has barely trickled
into the heartland's consciousness: philosophical counseling.
For details, check out Marinoff's Plato, not Prozac!
(HarperCollins, $23.95 hardcover). But the subtitle
-applying philosophy to everyday problems" - tells
you most of what you need to know.
The book provides a road
map for truth-seekers who can't get comfortable with
conventional religion but want an ethical, moral framework
for life.
"People can always find
solace in religion and can also find moral instruction,"
says Marinoff, founding president of the nascent American
Philosophical Practitioners Association. "All of
this is easier if you subscribe to a religion that lays
out good and evil for you, on the authority of God.
... If that works for you, you are ahead of the game."
But that doesn't work for everyone, notes the author,
who has trained 60 philosophers in 17 or 18 states to
offer client counseling. Folks who pursue a philosophical
resolution to life's tough questions must be willing
to listen to a variety of answers, and sometimes no
satisfying answer at all.
QUESTIONS ENLIGHTEN
"People who are devout
live by faith; philosophers live by doubt," says
Marinoff, a philosophy professor at the City College
of New York. "They're opposite sides of the same
coin... Philosophy will generally give you questions
and not answers." But the ability to thoughtfully
explore those questions is in itself empowering, says
Alberto Hernandez, a professor of philosophy and comparative
literature at Colorado College in Colorado Springs.
Trained in philosophical counseling last year, he remains
the state's only APPA-sanctioned practitioner.
"Philosophy will in
the end have a soothing effect, because people learn
that they, too, can formulate their thoughts; that it's
not just (about) emotion," Hernandez says. "We're
not dismissing the emotional side; we are just not choosing
to focus on that emotional side." That difference
between conventional counseling and philosophical counseling
is clear in Marinoff's book, which includes a chapter
on dealing with loss. While grieving is necessary, it's
not in itself sufficient to help people get on with
life after a loved one dies, Marinoff says.
"Day after day, week
after week, "How do you feel today, and how do
you feel about how you feel?' is wallowing in a quagmire,
and you never get out," he says. "You do need
to feel and express the emotions. But after that, you
need to have a philosophical understanding of what life
is, and that death comes to everyone." Buddhism,
for instance, teaches that suffering is born of attachment.
"That's a philosophical root," Marinoff says.
"It's attachment that causes suffering, and to
cease suffering you have to cease attachment."
He concedes that's not easy, but understanding the beginning
of suffering can hasten its end.
THERAPUTIC WISDOM
After the death of a loved
one - after the funeral, after far-flung family members
have returned home - the bereaved need such notions
on which to meditate, Marinoff says: "These ideas
will serve them very well when there's nobody else around
to pay attention to them. We call it philosophical self-sufficiency.
"What people really
want is wisdom, being in touch with these very old philosophical
traditions, East and West." But Americans aren't
accustomed to therapy that lacks the touchy-feely dimension
of clinical psychology. Hernandez concedes he's had
little success attracting clients; though philosophical
counseling is well-established in other countries and
is gaining momentum on America's coasts, it's an alien
concept to heartlanders.
"I guess people don't
know this thing exists," Hernandez says. "And
people become kind of intimidated by certain disciplines.
Philosophy, for better or worse, is associated with
heavy ... books, something completely inaccessible unless
you receive training." As a counselor, Hernandez
hopes to "bridge philosophy with some kind of practical
application." Practitioners, he says, help clients
understand what philosophies already undergird their
lives and how others might be helpful as they struggle
with moral and ethical dilemmas.
For instance, a widow who
is living on an inheritance from her husband might struggle
with whether to become romantically involved with a
new man. The situation raises within her numerous issues
about fidelity and betrayal, guilt and selfishness -
fundamentally moral questions that don't involve a particular
crisis.
COUNSELING HAS LIMITS
"Philosophical counseling
is limited in its scope," Hernandez says. "We're
trying to see if by consciously talking about the kind
of belief systems that inform a decision, one can help
the client come to a resolution of those issues. ...
I try to empower them to devise their own cognitive
tools by which to strengthen themselves and overcome
the particular stress of a predicament they may be facing."
In short, it's the miracle of the mortal mind - not
of some divine providence - that powers the process.
"We very modestly, in the capacity of our limited
tools, try to understand what the good life is, what
the good life would be," Hernandez says. "It's
kind of a self-reflective process."
For more information on philosophical
counseling, contact Alberto Hernandez at 719-448-0337.
1-719-229-1320.
