Posted by badhaircut on March 22, 2004, at 10:09:56
Sunday's New York Times Magazine (3/21/04; link below) has an article on Lou Marinoff, a CCNY philosophy professor and one of several people espousing philosophy-based counseling for people with problems in living. Marinoff has no mental health training and seems hostile to it, but he's now trying to get insurance reimbursement for his counseling fees.
The NYT reporter summarized Marinoff's position this way: "Americans are tired of psychologists dwelling on our every painful feeling, we're sick of psychiatrists prescribing a new drug every time we feel confused and many of our most pressing problems aren't even emotional or chemical to begin with — they're philosophical. To wit: You don't have to be clinically depressed or burdened by childhood guilt to want help with the timeless questions of the human condition — the persistence of suffering and the inevitability of death, the need for a reliable ethics."
He was temporarily stopped from providing such counseling by CCNY, which was worried about its own liability if one of his counselees got really bad advice.
Marinoff presided over a split in the philosophical counseling community, creating the American Philosophical Practitioners Association (APPA) because the slightly older American Society for Philosophy Counseling and Psychotherapy (ASPCP) wasn't pushing aggressively enough for things like insurance reimbursement, certification, and expansion.
He's savagely criticized by philosophers and even some other proponents of philosophical counseling. Among their comments: "[Marinoff is] a worldwide embarrassment for the profession," and "[He] is not a scholar, he's not a guy who should be leading a [national movement]." His 3-day certification program is called "ludicrous."
The NYT Magazine article will probably be available for free this week, pay access after that, although most libraries will have back issue hard copies:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/21/magazine/21SHRINK.html
The Socratic Shrink By DANIEL DUANE
Published March 21, 2004Marinoff wrote "The Big Questions: How Philosophy Can Change Your Life" and "Plato, Not Prozac! : Applying Eternal Wisdom to Everyday Problems" .
-bhc
poster:badhaircut
thread:326975
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20040321/msgs/326975.html