PHILOSOPHICAL NARRATIVE THERAPY
Train your inner voice to be the guardian of your spirit
Every culture has a wisdom tradition that preserves and passes on collective human insights with regard to living a good life. Philosophical counselors have a special education and training in one or more wisdom traditions and, critically, promote active participation in the unfolding of these traditions by reflecting cogently on lived experiences and by behaving in a manner congruent with deliberately chosen values.
Far from being the application of a dogma to life, ethics comes into play, according to Michel Foucault, “precisely where there is neither obligation nor prohibition.” In this space of uncertainty, there is also opportunity—opportunity to make aesthetic choices about your life. That is to say, we are pondering not only ethical questions (how can I best live?) but aesthetic ones (what is beautiful?). A client of mine recently concluded therapy, and as we discussed all that had happened in our time together, he murmured, “it’s like looking at a painting.”
I believe it is critical to situate this form of higher order thinking about how to use human freedom to live a beautiful life on a firm psychotherapeutic foundation, which involves regulating the nervous system, fostering the experience of emotions (and thought) as embodied, addressing trauma, recognizing the relational/embedded nature of our worldview and beliefs, and verbalizing your experiences in narrative form. As the National Philosophical Counseling Association (NPCA) states on their website, “philosophical and psychological forms of counseling are complementary and mutually supportive avenues for helping people to confront their problems of living.”*
Philosophical counseling encompasses a broad set of practices, including my particular blend of Virtue Ethics and Narrative Therapy, intended to promote client congruence and integration. The notion that well-being has to do with integration goes back, at least, to Aristotle in ancient Greece and to Confucius in ancient China. Both philosophers set forth a kind of Virtue Ethics. While Aristotle emphasized the inner integration of a person's character, Confucius emphasized the harmonious integration of the individual in the community. Achieving intra- and inter-personal integration in Virtue Ethics could be described as “inclusive happiness” (Luo, 2021).
My favorite ancient philosopher Plato wrote:
Just as our eyes see physical objects in the light of the sun, our minds think (a kind of mental seeing) in the light of the Good.
With practice, we can develop the insight and wisdom to recognize a path, even through extremely adverse circumstances, toward a better life.
*Please, note that I am not officially certified by an organization like the NPCA. I completed a Ph.D. in ancient Greek philosophy and literature as well as an M.A. in clinical mental health counseling.
Common Maneuvers
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Analysis
Break a complex problem that we don’t know how to solve into smaller and simpler discreet problems that we can solve. Perhaps you feel overwhelmed by your responsibilities in work, family, and romantic relationship and need help breaking everything (one big overwhelmed feeling) down into manageable chunks.
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Critique
Apply a critical/skeptical attitude to simplistic/reductive, authoritarian, or stereotypical beliefs about ourselves, others, or the world. In other words, we recognize and confront oppressive beliefs and opinions associated with the problem you’re experiencing.
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Definition
Identify specific examples of a kind of experience and create a satisfactory description of what they have in common. We talk about a lot of things without having defined them. What is anxiety really? Is it always negative or sometimes helpful? It may be simplistic (thus warranting a critique!) to believe anxiety is always negative, in which case we would need a definition we can use to understand when feeling anxiety is helpful and when it is not.
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Dialectical processing
Challenge one-sided thinking with contrasting viewpoints or foster constructive dialogue among fragmented parts of yourself. Perhaps, sometimes you are unrealistically ambitious and fantasize about future happiness, while at other times you feel completely defeated and hopeless with no sense of self-worth. By putting these parts of yourself in conversation, we can temper each and train them to work together complementarily so that you might aspire toward realistic goals with full awareness of the challenges ahead and your own limitations.
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Identifying values
Consider what values you hold and how well your behaviors align with them. It can be helpful to think about values in the three categories mentioned by Viktor Frankl: (1) Creative values are productivity oriented and might include creating artwork, achieving career goals, or simply checking things off a to-do list each day; (2) Experiential values are process oriented and might include traveling, spending quality time with friends/family, or riffing on an instrument; and (3) Attitudinal values have to do with the way you interpret and respond to what happens to you, which could be an attitude of patience, curiosity, or compassion even in the face of extreme hardship.
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Understanding emotions
Practice recognizing and listening to each emotion that visits you without immediately acting on the impulse associated with it. Contrary to popular opinion, emotions are not that mysterious—that is, if you know what you value. In very broad brush strokes, anger prompts us to exercise power to protect what we value; fear tells us we might not have the power to confront a threat to that which we value; sadness asks us to accept the loss of something/someone we value; and joy encourages us to accept the gain of something we value.
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Cultivating virtues
According to Aristotle, the virtuous form of a behavior is halfway between the excessive and the deficient form of that behavior. For example, bravery is halfway between the deficiency of cowardice and the excess of recklessness. The good news, then, is that you’re never more than halfway from virtue. You just need practice moderating the extremes!