Galen once stated that the best physician is also a philosopher, and a physician without philosophy is like an architect without a plan.
A lot has changed since Galen. Science took over in many fields. But especially in the field of psychotherapy a lot of approaches are sill based on philosophical assumptions (e.g. psychoanalysis, humanistic therapy, cognitive therapy, also behavioral therapy). Slife (2004) stated that psychotherapy contains a lot of such philosophical assumptions (e.g. objectivism, materialism, atomism, objectivism, hedonism, universalism). On the other hand study / training programs of psychotherapy rarely integrate philosophy. This probably leads to a false naturalistic or scientistic attitude. Additionally epistemology seems to be rare in psychotherapy training programs. So the graduates often seem to have severe problems in drawing clinical conclusions from theories or evidences.
What do you think? How relevant is philosophy in psychotherapy and philosophical training for students? What do you think about the current relevance of philosophy in the field of psychotherapy?
Slife B.D. (2004): Theoretical Challenges to Therapy Practice and Research: The Constraint of Naturalism. In Lambert M.J. (ed.): Bergin and Garfield‘s Handbook of Psychotherapy and Behavior Change. 5th edition. John Wiley & Sons, New York. pp 44-83.
Thomas,
have a look at "Deutsche Zeitschrift fuer Philosophie" vol. 60, nr. 6 (2012) - Schwerpunkt: Philosophie der Psychiatrie.
Especially the essay by Somory Varga (pp.937-970) is a rather interesting view upon the fact how a certain (analytical) philosophy in the form of the pre-dominant representationalist cognitive sciences can become more of a hinderance to the therapeutic effort.
Best
Thomas
Science has informed the psycho-therapeutic field, but science will always need to be guided by an authority of moral practice. Many dimension of interaction construct our lives; it is not just one field that informs, guides or controls, but rather the way those fields of thought and practice interact with one another. Psychotherapy balances these various dimensions in a co-created synergy with the client. There are no canned answers to change in a person's life, otherwise we would only need to follow the script. Instead, we make choices everyday about many matters that have varying outcome each time we make them. So how we make the choices becomes more critical. Choices are guided not only by facts but also moral principal that has socially sustaining benefit.
This is such an important question. Any reading of Michel Foucault's work immediately draws our attention to the genealogy of some of the ideas underpinning medical practice and psychiatric/psychological/psychotherapeutic practices. Without awareness of at least the paradigms which shape our practice (post-structuralist, social constructionist, modernist, positivist etc), we are unaware of the practices of power we step into as we position ourselves in relation to our clients, and our clients in relation to ourselves. When philosophy is taught with training, it is possible to have somewhere firm to stand as we practice. Understanding our epistemological orientation allows us to intentionally construct ourselves as ethical subjects as we work.
Sorry to drown you in reading-suggestions, but "Journal of Consciousness Studies", vol. 20 no. 6-7 is a special issue devoted to mental-health issues, phenomenology and the reductive sciences.
As I - so far - have only pointed out reading, but not taken a position, I'll best rectify this as well.
As long as the discussion in the field of psychology and philosophy of the mind goes on about how to account for the mind, whether to opt for a reductive materialist account or for a more idealistic and irreducible, probably even a (property-) dualist position, I guess that it is very important that any practitioner and therapist has at least a sound idea about this debate. And in this respect I do hold the firm belief, that any decent education of therapists should entail some philosophical "slice" to familiarise future mental-health professionals with the current problems and debates.
What do I think?: Philosopher, psychiatrist, and psychologist Karl Jaspers has still said it best: “If anyone thinks he can exclude philosophy and leave it aside as useless, he will eventually be defeated by it in some obscure form or other”. From Jaspers, K. General Psychopathology. Trans. by J. Hoenig and M.W. Hamilton. Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 1963, p 770.
You know how people say “remember where you came from – remember your roots”? Philosophy is the root of psychology and without it there is no context for understanding psychological theories. In this case, there are only a bunch of words like “materialism,” “constructivism,” “realism,” and so on without any actual meaning or understanding behind them. Or worse yet, new psychologists don’t even learn those words at all. Instead they learn “cognitive theory,” “behavioral theory,” “learning theory,” and so on. Learning these theories without an understanding of the underlying principles makes one dependent upon the theory itself. When there is a strong grounding in the “why” behind the “what” then it is possible to apply the same ideas in a different way – to go “off book” so to speak. It is the difference between learning to say a sentence in Latin and learning what that sentence means or how to conjugate the verbs.
I think the trend away from careful philosophical thought in psychological practice is very sad. When I studied psychology and sociology a long time back, we had to take seriously such thinkers as Marx, Darwin, and Freud. And whether we like them or not – I’m thinking especially of Freud here – these people really knew how to think about things. For me, Freud was one of the most beautiful thinkers, and I say this even though I do not agree with the range of psychoanalytic views on people and how they ‘work’. There is something beautiful and elegant about careful thought and philosophising – Freud, Foucault, Bateson - but it seems to me that this aesthetic and depth is at risk of being lost in (at least some parts of) the world of therapeutic work. We don’t care too much about the elegance, beauty, or depth of thought nowadays, as the emphasis falls on ‘doing’ rather than thinking too hard about what, how, why, and in whose/ what name we do as we do. Of course, I don’t mean it’s all about aesthetics, but it’s one of the things that struck me when reading Bateson – he spoke about elegant ideas. I like that very much. But in many places therapy has become so pragmatic, at the expense of careful thought. There is so much emphasis on ‘effectiveness’, and one of the problems I have with this is the unstated assumption this seems to carry that all the philosophical questions have been resolved (or, perhaps, that they are irrelevant). We have clever technologies and approved therapies for ‘depression’, ‘anxiety’, and so on, which requires us to simply accept these as natural categories that exist in the world, and which require ‘treatment’. In the process I think we lose touch with the complexity of life, the multiplicity and messiness of being human, the ways our words shape how we live, the ways we are interlinked, the effects of our 'therapeutic' actions, and so on. In my view, careful thinking – around epistemology, philosophy, theoretical assumptions, and so on – can help remind us of complexity, and can sometimes even invite us to experience a kind of awe in our work, especially when we are engaged in an activity that might otherwise seem like a technical, manualised operation on some damaged product. That's not what this work should be about. I think you raise a very good question.
This answer will be self-promotional, but I hope useful nonetheless. I have written two books expressly on this subject: "Philosophy, Psychoanalysis, and the A-Rational Mind" (LAW Brakel, Oxford U Press, 2009) and "Unconscious Knowing and Other Essays in Psycho-Philosophical Analysis" (LAW Brakel, Oxford U Press, 2010). Forthcoming are two volumes Karnac Press is putting out co-edited by Boag, Brakel and Talvitie. One is scheduled for late 2014 and is titled "Philosophy, Science, and Psychoanalysis" (a rather immodest title I'm afraid), and the other is "Psychoanalysis and Philosophy of Mind" coming out in2015. Finally chapter 3 in a volume titled "The Ontology of Psychology" (LAW Brakel, Routledge, 2013) is about the mind/body problem. It is related to psychoanalysis, but is admittedly a dense read.
Philosophy &psychotherapy go hand in hand .We can not separate from each other .Philosophy in our regular practice makes a model of our worthy living .Psychotherapy also relates to our mind & offers us a direction for our way of our life..
I would personally like to see a new subject area such as the ‘‘philosophy of psychological therapy’ . I feel this is long overdue and just as philosophy has started to focus upon the underlying epistemological and ontological assumptions of psychology ; a similar aporoach is warranted in psychotherapy . It seems that the world of therapy is in crisis particularly in the uk’s post IAPT.... the over emphasis upon Clinical Psychology and naturalism I think are largely responsible for this . So yes ... philosophy is very relevant .
Psychoanalysis was born out of Philosophy. Gödde, G. (2009) has shown a quite important existing triangulation between Schopenhauer-Nietzsche-Freud in his book about tradition lines of the unconscious ("Traditionslinien des Unbewußten"). So philosophy is constitutive to and for any therapeutic process.
What about the Epicureans, Skeptics and Stoics? Each of these ancient greek schools had a relatively clear therapeutic recommendation how to face the challenges of life...philosophy is always immanent in therapy and in the form of philosophically inspired metaphors, for example, a true revaluation of the therapy.
Unfortunately, the philosophy in the education of psychotherapists has fallen into the background.
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