The Orange County Register
Monday, August 30, 1999
COUNSELING: Movement helps people
sove problems
Valerie Takahama
Some people see philosophical
counseling as an alternative to psychotherapy, psychiatry
or marriage counseling.
Upstairs at Mothers Market
and Kitchen in Costa Mesa, a plaque by an office door
reads "The Academy of Philosophical Midwifery".
Inside, people who say they are "pregnant with
ideas" find seats at tables pushed into a U facing
a white-haired man at the blackboard.
"Who's got some work?"
asks Pierre Grimes, a philosophy teacher at Golden West
College who students call him "a modern-day Socrates."
At 75, he certainly looks the part, with a full white
beard, bushy white eyebrows and gaunt, leathery cheeks.
He even wears sandals.
If a health-food store seems
an unlikely setting for philosophical discourse, think
again. These days, philosophers like Grimes are coming
down from the Ivory Tower in growing numbers. Some are
even hanging out shingles and setting up practices.
Called philosophical counseling,
the movement aims to use reason and the ideas of great
thinkers to help people solve everyday problems and
live their lives to the fullest.
It is also known as "therapy
for the sane," and its motto could be "Plato
Not Prozac!" - which is the title of a new guide
to the movement by Lou Marinoff, one of its leading
practitioners and a professor of philosophy at City
College of New York.
Like many things philosophical,
it first took root in Europe. Last year, a group of
philosophers formed the American Philosophical Practitioners
Association, and this year, they began to conduct training
sessions and oversee the certification of practitioners.
There are about 50 members in the United States and
Canada who are licensed to counsel clients.
So why are people turning
to the wisdom of the ancients as the new millennium
approaches?
"I think that people
have exhausted certain facets of science and technology
and have realized that notwithstanding America's affluence
and its great advances in science and technology, there
are still basic human problems that deal with values
and ethics," says Marinoff, president of the APPA.
"People still have issues
about morals and meaning, and these other issues of
life and those are philosophical issues, he says. "And
it doesn't matter that we fly around in jet planes and
we've got those questions, and you're not going to get
answers to them out of a pill bottle."
Some people see philosophical
counseling as an alternative to psychotherapy, psychiatry
or marriage counseling and others go to philosophical
practitioners to discuss issues that they might have
taken to ministers or other spiritual advisers.
But Marinoff says philosophical
counseling differs from traditional therapy in several
important ways. First, philosophical counseling tends
to focus on the present and future. Rather than on the
past, and it tends to be short term - a single session
is enough for many clients.
Of course, it's not for everyone.
"Many people's problems
are psychological in fact," he says. "People
have severe emotional problems from childhood, people
need to do Freudian things, or Jungian things. Psychotherapy
is absolutely appropriate for people who need to know
themselves psychologically."
In his book, he offers examples
of problems and issues that can be dealt with using
philosophy: "A young woman confronts her mother's
terminal breast cancer. A man contemplates a midlife
career change. A Protestant woman whose daughter is
engaged to a Jewish man and whose son is married to
a Muslim woman fears potential religious conflicts.
A woman is happily living with her partner, but only
one of them wants children. An engineer and single father
supporting four children is afraid that blowing the
whistle on a design flaw in a high-pressure project
could cost him his job. A woman who has everything she
thought she wanted - loving husband and children, beautiful
house, high-paying career - struggles with meaninglessness:
When she looks at her life, she thinks, 'Is this all
there is?'"
Marinoff developed a five
step "PEACE" process that shows people how
to identify the problem (P); recognize, identify and
express the emotions it calls up (E); analyze the options
(A); contemplate and adopt a philosophical way of looking
at the situation in order to be reconciled to it and
move on (C), and regain equilibrium (E).
Marinoff says his PEACE process
is just one of the many methods in use by philosophical
practitioners. In fact, he admits there are probably
as many permutations as there are practitioners. (And
their hourly fees vary widely, as well, from no fee
to $100 an hour.)
Take, for example, Pierre
Grimes, an APPA member whose eclectic background includes
the study of the Hellenic tradition and Platonic philosophy
at St. John's College in Annapolis, Md., in the '40s,
work with chronic alcoholic patients in the '50s, a
friendship with Alan Watts in the '60s and experiences
with Zen meditation and other Eastern philosophies in
the '70s.
In 1972, he and students
at Golden West College formed the Noetic Society to
study Plato. The group continues to meet on Friday nights.
In 1977, as outgrowth of that group, he began leading
sessions in philosophical midwifery and continues to
do so on Thursdays at Mothers Market.
Grimes, who does not charge
for his work, likes to say that if psychotherapy moves
patients from illness to nonillness, his philosophical
midwifery takes people from wellness to excellence.
At the heart of his method
is the notion that "People suffer the consequences
of false beliefs that they have learned in their youth."
His students use their dreams to identify their false
beliefs, trace them to their roots in childhood and
decide whether they want to discard them. It is these
false beliefs, he says, that can stop people from attaining
their most meaningful goals.
Julie Grabel, who has studied
with Grimes for 12 years and is a philosophical midwife
herself, says the goals can vary widely.
"Say you have been trying
to get a certain job and failed to do so," she
explains. "Or, you've been trying to make your
relationship better for a long time but feel blocked.
You are blocked in your meditation, you are noticing
the same state of mind showing up over and over again."
Grabel, of Huntington Beach,
says philosophical midwifery has helped her attain her
philosophical midwifery has helped her attain her professional
and personal goals.
"It's helped me survive
in my own business," she says. "Every time
I've had blocks in my business, wanting to quit or run
away, philosophical midwifery has been here to challenge
me."
"I struggle to see that
not only am I capable but I'm doing one hell of a lot.
And not just in the area of business. I'm a successful
single parent of a beautiful 17-year-old girl."
On a recent Thursday night,
Grimes led the group - a college instructor, a substitute
teacher, a clinical psychologist and 10 others in their
20s and older - in a session to decode dreams, dreams
that included surreal touches such as an iguana in a
cage on a schoolbus; a grandmother who rises from the
dead and wants to watch Spanish-language TV, and a dangerous
she-wolf - or is it only a big dog?
Socrates, who referred to
himself as a philosophical "midwife," called
dreams a key to unlocking the past, the present and
the future. And as the group concentrated on members'
detailed narratives of their dreams, asked questions
and focused on the patterns that surfaced in them, the
21/2-hour meeting passes like a dream.
"We're interested in
themes," Grabel explains. "You're interested
in seeing what's really there - not how does this make
me feel? It does require a level of attention to the
work."
Josh Bean, a substitute teacher
from Huntington Beach, invariably finds that it is.
He's attended sessions on Thursdays and Fridays regularly
since January.
"Sometimes I can't believe
I hang out with people who are 50 years old," says
Bean, 23. "Sometimes I think, should I be out going
dancing on Friday night instead of reading philosophy?"
But he says, the effort is
worth it: "I want to understand life. I have questions.
Philosophy teaches me how to answer those questions.
It's really awesome. It teaches me to use my mind."
