Philosophical Counseling for Counselors

One promising form of philosophical practice is to conduct workshops on philosophical counseling for counselors. Since licensed professionals, such as Marriage and Family Counselors and Licensed Clinical Social Workers sometimes confront situations that raise philosophical issues and usually have a philosophical perspective that informs their practice, they could profit from a workshop on philosophical counseling; the workshop also qualifies for continuing education units (CEUs) that are typically required to renew their licenses. This paper describes the principal purposes of a workshop for counselors, the structure of two such workshops, and suggestions for improvement of future workshops. One of the exciting aspects of the emerging field of philosophical practice is the opportunity to fashion different applications of philosophy outside of the academic setting. The completion of the American Philosophical Practitioners Association (APPA) certification workshop left me uncertain about what kind of philosophical practice I wanted to do. Having an undergraduate degree in psychology with an emphasis in counseling, I was initially attracted to the possibility of one-on-one client counseling. However, a conversation with my departmental colleague, Jim Heffernan, who also completed the APPA training, gave us an new direction. Jim’s spouse is a Marriage and Family Therapist (MFT), and she and her therapist friends expressed skepticism about the legitimacy and merits of philosophical counseling. In a gesture of curiosity as well as self-interest, these therapists suggested that we put together a workshop on philosophical counseling so they could more reliably judge its merits as well as receive Continuing Education Units (CEUs) that are required to renew their licenses. We thereby created a workshop on Philosophical Counseling for Counselors and ran it for these therapists through our campus’ Center for Professional and Continuing Education. A month later, we repeated the workshop, with some alterations, for the Human Services Agency in our county. I believe that conducting workshops for counselors is perhaps the best option for