These clients consented to public distribution and discussion of their case studies under the condition that their real names or persons or organizations would not appear in any of these studies. Some of these case studies are the result of my two-year research project, “Philosophical Counseling Case Studies: Implications for Philosophical Practice,” approved by my university Institutional Review Board in 2004. My success in gaining the IRB approval of this project is indebted in no small way to the advice provided (...) in Philosophical Practice. (shrink)

This paper articulates a dilemma posed by philosophical counseling literature that presupposes diagnostic recognition. In addition, guests often bring self-ascribed mental health diagnoses from their previous experience, and requests the philosophical counselor to de-diagnose or otherwise reinterpret their problems. Although philosophical counselors can do this, we cannot skirt philosophical diagnosis. The paper’s thesis is that it behooves philosophical counselors to differentiate these types of diagnosis and to know when we are doing one or the other, including the utilization of diagnostic (...) recognition. Anecdotes from the author’s philosophical counseling sessions are included to illustrate the discussion. The paper concludes that the space of philosophical diagnosis is neither incommensurate with, nor incompatible with clinical diagnosis. On the contrary, the space of philosophical diagnosis ought to harbor the possibility of clinical diagnostic recognition. The philosophical counselor’s repertoire of diagnostic intuitions should cultivate the intuitive recognition of clinical prototypes. (shrink)

What is the significance of diverse writing styles in contemporary Continental thought? I take Maurice Merleau-Ponty's latest texts and Friedrich Nietzsche's philosophical autobiography as exemplary, demonstrating the primacy of stylistic linguistic expression for their philosophically self-reflective tasks. I situate this primacy historically, by discussing in successive chapters the Aristotelian and Husserlian presuppositional legacies that are strategically countered by their writing styles. I draw on the contemporary dialogue of literary theory and literary hermeneutics to develop an interpretive understanding of the critical (...) place of reading in its relation to the kind of philosophical prose discussed. I apply these insights to an interpretive reading of Luce Irigaray's feminist texts. (shrink)

This paper recounts experience from the author’s philosophical counseling supervision experience. The paper then gives an overview of the narrative turn in bioethics, showing how the bioethical narrative turn disputes the assumption that client case notes can provide reliable empirical information about what happens in philosophical counseling sessions. The paper concludes that interpretation by philosophical peer reviewers is an in-eliminable aspect of peer review. Accountability for our counseling practices and improvement in them requires that we avoid a solipsistic stance and (...) submit in some way to the interpretive interventions of other philosophical counselors. (shrink)

Philosophical counseling offers a depathologizing practice that can benefit both the practitioner and the client. Philosopher Michel Foucault’s account of biopower is a useful analytic of the psychopathologization of everyday life, and can show the social signif­icance of philosophical practice. This essay critiques the conflation, by some philosophical practitioners, of the medical disease model and all psychotherapeutic methods. Foucault’s conflation of human normativity and normalization is also critiqued. Historian of science Georges Canguilhem’s alternative account of human normativity within the medical (...) disease model is offered as an antidote to the conflations by these philosophical practitioners and Foucault. Philosophical practitioners ought to give up objectivist claims to value neutrality and acknowledge that the interventions of philosophical counseling in clinical diagnostic discourses are normative, theory-laden, and politically significant. (shrink)