Philosophical Practice

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PHILOSOPHICAL PRACTICE
Journal of the APPA
Volume 9 Number 2 July 2014
Editor Articles
Lou Marinoff
David H. Brendel
Insight and Action: The Relation between Professional Coaching
Reviews Editor
and Philosophical Counseling
Nancy Matchett
Michael Noah Weiss
Associate Editor Daimonion: Guided Imagery as a Tool for Philosophical Practice
Dena Hurst
Constantinos Athanasopoulos
Technical Consultant The Shield of Achilles: A Use for Philosophical Practice
Greg Goode
Matthew Allen Butkus
Legal Consultant Compassionate Deception: Lying to Patients with Dementia
Thomas Griffith Reviews
Doing Philosophy
Lydia Amir
Who’s in Charge? Free Will and the Science of the Brain

Troy Camplin
Time and the Shared World

Leslie C. Miller
Landscapes of the Mind: The Faces of Reality

Michael Grosso
Biographies of Contributors
www.appa.edu Nemo Veritatem Regit

ISSN 1742-8181 Nobody Governs Truth
Philosophical Practice 1361
Journal of the APPA
Editor: Lou Marinoff
The City College of New York
Reviews Editor: Nancy Matchett Associate Editor: Dena Hurst
University of Northern Colorado Florida State University
Legal Consultant: Thomas Griffith Technical Consultant: Greg Goode

Thomson West, Cleveland Davis, Polk & Wardell, New York
National Editorial Board

Kevin Boileau Seamus Carey
Seattle, WA Manhattan College, Bronx, NY
Antonio de Nicolas Peter Dlugos
Biocultural Research Institute, Gainesville, FL Bergen Community College, Paramus NJ
Vaughana Feary Andrew Fitz-Gibbon
Excalibur Center for Applied Ethics, Stockton, NJ SUNY Cortland, NY
Carol Gould Pierre Grimes
Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, FL Opening Mind Academy, Los Angles, CA
Michael Grosso George Hole
University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA SUNY Buffalo State College, NY
Chris Johns Ruth Kastner
Saint Xavier University, Chicago, IL University of Maryland, College Park, MD
Andrew Light Kate Mehuron
University of Washington, Seattle, WA Eastern Michigan University
Marianne Patinelli-Dubay Christian Perring
SUNY College of Environmental Science, NY Dowling College, Long Island, NY
J. Michael Russell Peter Simpson
Cal State Fullerton, CA CUNY Graduate Center, New York, NY
Lauren Tillinghast James Tuedio
New York University, NY Cal State Stanislaus, CA
Wilfried Ver Eecke
Georgetown University, Washington DC
International Editorial Board
Lydia Amir David Berman

The College of Management, Tel-Aviv, Israel Trinity College Dublin, Eire
Paola Grassi Ora Gruengard

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Henning Herrestad Alex Howard

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Giselle Monges Michael Picard

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José Barrientos Rastrojo Thomas Schramme

University of Sevilla, Spain University of Wales, Swansea, UK
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Aims and Scope: Philosophical Practice is a scholarly, peer-reviewed journal dedicated to the growing
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Referencing Books:
Feary, V. (2002). Medicine for the soul: Philosophical counselling with cancer patients. In H. Herrestad, A.
Holt, H. Svare (Eds.), Philosophy in Society. Oslo: Unipub Forlag.
Grimes, P., Uliana, R. (1998). Philosophical midwifery: A new paradigm for understanding human prob-
lems. Coast Mesa, CA: Hyparxis Press.
Referencing Articles:
Koch, A. (2000). Absolutism and relativism: Practical implications for philosophical counseling. Journal of
Philosophy in the Contemporary World, 7, 25-31.
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Philosophical Practice
Journal of the APPA
Table of Contents
Articles
David H. Brendel 1365

Insight and Action: The Relation Between Professional Coaching and Philosophical Counseling
Michael Noah Weiss 1372

Daimonion: Guided Imagery as a Tool for Philosophical Practice
Constantinos Athanasopoulos 1381

The Shield of Achilles: A Use for Philosophical Practice
Matthew Allen Butkus 1388

Compassionate Deception: Lying to Patients with Dementia
Book Reviews
Doing Philosophy
Lydia Amir 1397
Who’s In Charge: Free Will and the Science of the Brain

Troy Camplin 1399
Time and the Shared World

Leslie C. Miller 1402
Landscapes of the Mind: The Faces of Reality

Michael Grosso 1405
Biographies of Contributors 1409

Philosophical Practice, July 2014, 9.2: 1365-71 1365
Insight and Action:

The Relation Between Professional Coaching and Philosophical Counseling
DAVID H. BRENDEL
LEADING MINDS EXECUTIVE & PERSONAL COACHING, BELMONT, MA
Abstract
Professional coaching and philosophical counseling are useful antidotes to mainstream psychiatry. The
psychiatric profession focuses on pathological human experience, diagnosis of mental illness, and treat-
ment with medications and/or psychotherapy. Professional coaching and philosophical counseling, on the
other hand, focus on people’s strengths, character virtues, and opportunities to grow in the face of chal-
lenges, obstacles, and life transitions. Coaches tend to emphasize the value of behavioral changes that can
propel clients toward peak performance, while philosophical counselors highlight the centrality of self-
reflection, clarification of values, and delineation of a coherent world-view. Despite their distinctive em-
phases on action versus insight, professional coaching and philosophical counseling can be complementary
and synergistic. Coaches and philosophical counselors increasingly can collaborate to help clients to en-
hance self-awareness and implement strong action plans. In special cases, a dually certified coach and
philosophical counselor can use a hybrid approach—“philosophical coaching”—which integrates both
modalities within a single professional engagement.
Keywords: coaching, executive coaching, philosophical coaching, philosophical counseling, posi-

tive psychology, psychiatry, psychology
Introduction
The “helping professions” in the twenty-first century are moving beyond psychiatry, psychopathology,
and other mental illness models. Those models have long rooted themselves in the notion that people
confronting emotional and personal distress have pathologies that ought to be corrected or eliminated via
treatment. Psychoanalysis, which for decades was the predominant explanatory model in the West, as-
sumed that the pathologies stemmed from early childhood trauma and from problematic psychosexual
drives and fantasies. Psychoanalytic treatment involved exploration, interpretation, and “working through”
of these pathology-inducing experiences. In his book Basic Freud: Psychoanalytic Thought for the
21st Century, Michael Kahn noted that many therapists still embrace Freud’s conceptualization of psy-
chosexual stages in early childhood (oral, anal, phallic, and Oedipal) and that they “understand psychologi-
cal difficulties as residues of problems at a particular maturational phase” (Kahn, 2002, p. 38).
As psychoanalysis began to recede as the predominant model by the 1980s, biological psychiatry
replaced it with a presumption that human suffering resulted from neurobiological aberrations that could be
identified via new scientific technologies, such as brain imaging and genetic testing. In a chapter entitled
“From Freud to Prozac” (in his book A History of Psychiatry), Edward Shorter wrote that “mainline
psychiatry and psychology lost interest in psychoanalysis….and pressed on in the study of thinking, memory,
perception, and dysfunction as processes driven by a genetic program” (Shorter, 1997, p. 313). With this
paradigm change, the core psychiatric treatment model shifted from psychotherapy to medication manage-
ment. Shorter argued that this transformation positioned psychiatry as a branch of medicine, but also
created “a popular culture of pharmacological hedonism” with new drugs that “lightened the burden of self-
ISSN 17428181 online © 2014 APPA

consciousness” (Shorter, 1997, p. 324). At the same time, the efficacy and safety of many of those medi-
cations have been called into question. Antidepressant medications, for example, appear to be ineffective
for treating mild to moderate depression (Fournier et al., 2010) and they carry a “black box” warning from
the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) that they can destabilize behavior and increase the risk of
suicidal thoughts (Reeves & Ladner, 2010).
Whether rooting itself in the psychoanalytic or the medical model, psychiatry has consistently placed
the patient in a passive role, victimized by psychological trauma or by neurotransmitter abnormalities over
which he or she has little or no control. Psychiatric treatment tends to keep the patient in a relatively
disempowered position, dependent on psychotropic drugs or on interventions of psychotherapists with
potentially biased clinical orientations. There have been attempts to ameliorate this problem by empower-
ing patients as decision makers and active driving forces in their own treatment. For example, in my book
Healing Psychiatry: Bridging the Science/Humanism Divide, I delineated a model of psychiatry char-
acterized by significant patient/doctor collaboration and a vigorous focus on practical results consistent
with the patient’s values and choices (Brendel, 2006). Rooted in American pragmatism, my “4 p” model
incorporates the practical (rather than theoretical) exigencies of psychiatry, the pluralistic set of concepts it
requires (spanning the sciences and the humanities), the participatory role of the patient in diagnosis and
treatment, and the provisional nature of psychiatric explanations in light of new findings and evolving soci-
etal values.
This “clinical pragmatism” is one example of how the tide has been turning in the “helping professions”
toward a renewed focus on human choice and self-efficacy. Another noteworthy manifestation of this trend
is the rise of cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), which has demonstrated that depressed and anxious
people can improve how they feel by willfully changing how they think and act (Beck, 2011). In this
context, positive psychology has also emerged as a fresh research program and clinical approach (Seligman
& Czikszentmihalyi, 2000). It presumes that people’s personal strengths and character virtues are robust
—and that these assets can empower people to effectively address their challenges and reach their goals.
Rather than focus exclusively on clinical problems (whether psychological traumas, neurobiological abnor-
malities, or otherwise), positive psychology urges people to focus and build on their core strengths and
resiliency. Intriguing positive psychology research shows that a “solutions based” approach often works
better than a “problems based” approach in professional coaching (Grant & O’Connor, 2010). With
accumulating research support (Kauffman, 2006), positive psychology can serve as a sound underpinning
for coaching and philosophical counseling, as both professions help basically healthy individuals to succeed
by drawing on their human strengths and capabilities.
Similarities of Coaching and Philosophical Counseling
Most coaches and philosophical counselors share the world-view that people possess a strong capac-
ity for self-awareness, insight, choice, and responsibility. In contrast to the assumptions of mainstream
psychiatrists, they tend to view people as fundamentally healthy and capable of self-understanding and
effective action in the world. In his book Philosophical Practice, Lou Marinoff argued that most people’s
everyday problems “are best addressed by examining neither one’s brain chemistry nor one’s childhood
traumas,” but instead “by examining one’s present intentions, volitions, desires, attachments, beliefs, and
aspirations” (2002, p. xix). Expressing the same basic world-view in the book Co-Active Coaching,
Henry Kimsey-House and colleagues (2011) delineated a philosophy of coaching that is deeply rooted in
the notion that clients, who are are essentially rational and resourceful, should be the driving forces in
Insight and Action 1367
shaping and implementing their own agendas for personal growth. “We believe that coaching is chiefly
about discovery, awareness, and choice,” they wrote (2011, p. xvi). “It is a way of effectively empowering
people to find their own answers, encouraging and supporting them on the path as they continue to make
important life-giving and life-changing choices.”
This basic theoretical and practical orientation underlies the multifarious types of professional coaching
and philosophical counseling that have arisen in recent years. Professional coaching, loosely held together
by its major umbrella organization (the International Coach Federation), encompasses executive coaching,
business coaching, career coaching, life coaching, and an endless array of other forms of coaching rooted
in positive psychology and a deeply held belief in human self-determination. Philosophical counseling,
which has been professionalized by international organizations (including the American Philosophical Prac-
titioners Association), also roots itself in the conviction that clients have the capacity to grow via self-
reflection, dialogue, and proactive decision making with an eye toward self-understanding, virtue, and
basic goodness. Both organizations have rigorous certification programs that train practitioners on these
core values and that set appropriate professional standards.
Professional coaching and philosophical counseling share some other essential characteristics. Both
utilize one-to-one conversation and dialogue as their primary “clinical” tool. Sessions are scheduled on a
regular basis, though the length of a professional engagement may vary from just a few sessions to many
sessions occurring over months or years (depending on the challenges and goals chosen by the client).
Coaches and philosophical counselors empower the client to set the agenda and guide the discussion for
the most part. The professional asks powerful, thought provoking, and galvanizing questions to propel the
client’s self-reflection, personal growth, and decision-making. In some cases, the professional actively and
respectfully confronts the client about problematic thoughts, statements, or actions. If the professional
observes that the client is making choices that are irrational, unethical, or otherwise contrary to his or her
self-interest (or to the interests of key stakeholders), then thoughtful confrontation and further dialogue are
warranted. Coaches and philosophical counselors are active participants in sessions, supporting the client’s
personal goals but also gently guiding the client in accordance with the practitioner’s own values and
world-view. In successful cases, clients “internalize” the functions of the professional and thereby develop
a stronger capacity to manage themselves.
Differences between Coaching and Philosophical Counseling
There are also some remarkable distinctions between coaching and philosophical counseling. Most
notable is the divergent emphasis on insight versus action. Philosophical counseling prioritizes internal self-
reflection and clarification of personal values. It helps clients to acknowledge the presuppositions that
shape their experiences, reasoning processes, and decisions about important matters in their lives. It pro-
vides clients with tools to reflect upon moral dilemmas and make thoughtful decisions about how to navi-
gate them. By helping clients to identify and refine their basic assumptions and values, the philosophical
counselor helps to give birth to a more mature and evolved individual. Along these lines and drawing on
Plato’s dialogue Thaetetus, Pierre Grimes (1998) has developed the idea that philosophical counseling
serves as a kind of “philosophical midwifery” for the client. Grimes (1998), Marinoff (2002), and other
leading philosophical counselors respect the client as the driving force in his or her own development, and
they position the philosophical counselor as a catalyst and facilitator (or “midwife”) for that maturation. The
accent here is placed on self-understanding, internal growth, and development of virtue. Self-exploration
and human complexity are prioritized over clear decisions to take definitive action.
The emphasis in coaching is quite different. Here we find much less attention to internal self-reflection,
clarification of values, and development of theoretical belief systems as an end in itself. On the contrary,
coaches tend to emphasize the importance of measurable behavior change, outwardly observable growth,
and attainment of peak performance—whether at work or in one’s personal life. The coach serves as a
trusted mentor, advisor, and counselor whose role is to promote the client’s overall success. A fruitful
coaching engagement might involve very little philosophical introspection and focus almost exclusively on
behavior patterns. Examples of beneficial behavioral changes that might occur with executive coaching, for
example, include stress reduction, delegation of tasks, effective communication strategies, and enhance-
ment of leadership and interpersonal skills in the workplace. There is usually little need for theoretical
clarification of complex world-views in this setting. “Because the notion of action that moves the client
forward is so central to the purposes of coaching,” Kimsey-House and the other authors of Co-Active
Coaching write (2011, p. 13), “we often make ‘forward’ a verb and say that one of the purposes of
coaching is to ‘forward the action’ of the client.”
A related difference between coaching and philosophical counseling arises from the question about the
basis for making decisions. In the former, decisions tend to be driven by pragmatic considerations about
how best to achieve concrete goals most efficiently. Decisions in coaching are generally justified by the
likelihood of accomplishing empirically measurable behavioral changes that can lead to success at work
and/or at home. But more theoretical forms of reasoning tend to guide (or at least inform) the consider-
ations and decisions of the philosophical counseling client. Is a line of thinking or a decision consistent with
the client’s overall understanding of virtuous action and moral character? Is it thought out rationally, and is
it internally consistent? The focus in philosophical counseling is less on objectively observable behavioral
change, and more on rigorous introspection and intellectual reasoning. These differing emphases on action
versus insight are the core differentiators of professional coaching and philosophical counseling.
Consider coaching versus philosophical counseling with a CEO client who encountered significant
problems with communication and interpersonal skills while working with the executive management team
of her company. This case vignette is fictionalized to protect client privacy, but it is a realistic and instructive
“composite” of numerous clients with whom I have worked in my private practice. The CEO frequently
became irritable and angry when other executive team members disagreed with her. When frustrated in
team meetings, she fidgeted and rolled her eyes in a noticeable way. People thought she was disdainful and
dismissive of their ideas much of the time. This behavior not only limited her enjoyment at work, but also
compromised the team’s capacity to align itself around clear strategic goals. When a thorny ethical chal-
lenge arose for the CEO in her leadership function, she therefore had no trusted executive colleague or
member of the Board of Directors to whom she could turn for guidance or advice. She was alone in having
to make a critical decision that could have a massive impact on both the financial well-being and the
reputation of the firm.
Executive coaching for this CEO could help her to develop self-awareness of her behaviors and the
effects they had on colleagues and employees. It could also help her to develop a broader range of skills to
manage her negative emotional reactions and problematic behaviors. With intensive coaching, she could
eventually stop rolling her eyes and looking sour in team meetings. She could be coached to intentionally
smile more and make better eye contact with others. She could prepare for team meetings and as a result
articulate her viewpoints on strategic goals more effectively. Coaching might result, for example, in her
deciding to hold regular meetings with other team leaders, where she could express her ideas calmly and
productively. It could empower her to build the alliances needed to grapple with the daunting ethical
dilemma that she previously had been contemplating on her own.
Philosophical counseling with this client would look quite a bit different. While it would hopefully result
in some kind of positive behavioral outcomes, the focus, content, and process of the sessions would have
its own distinctive flavor. As a philosophical counselor with strong interests in pragmatism, my conversa-
tions with this client might draw on a range of pragmatist philosophers, such as John Dewey (1929) and
Jürgen Habermas (1998), who believed that only a community of inquirers in robust dialogue with one
another can attain reason and truth. In the face of a daunting decision with major ethical and financial
implications for the firm, this CEO could come to understand that there is a strong philosophical and
pragmatic basis for promoting communication and respect among the executive team members. Ethical
decisions and actions, according to Habermas and other pragmatists, are only possible via “communica-
tive rationality” among key stakeholders (Habermas, 1998). There is no absolute truth that the CEO (or
any isolated inquirer) can reach on her own. Part of the rationale for this CEO’s need for specific behavior
changes in the workplace is conceptual in nature, and the philosophical counselor can help her to under-
stand and clarify these underlying ideas and values.
The Dialectic of Coaching and Philosophical Counseling
Insight and action are ultimately two sides of one coin. We act on the basis of principles, and at the
same time we clarify our principles by reflecting on how we have acted. Both sides of the coin are essential
for development of moral character and virtuous action in the world. When overly caricatured or rigidified,
coaching and philosophical counseling are at risk of narrowly attending to only one of these two relevant
perspectives. In the case vignette described above, philosophical counseling could enhance introspection
and insight about the consensual nature of ethical acts, but this understanding would be empty without
action on the CEO’s part to repair interpersonal relationships on the team, foster useful dialogue, and drive
toward sound decisions. Philosophical counseling is a highly theoretical endeavor that, if applied in a purist
manner, could limit its own efficacy by neglecting its potential to empower meaningful action in the world.
Conversely, coaching on its own might be helpful yet inadequate in a scenario such as this. Behavioral
changes in the CEO certainly could help to foster a more fertile environment for dialogue and collabora-
tion. For so many reasons, that would be beneficial in itself. But a pure coaching approach may lack
sufficient depth in this situation, where a major ethical dilemma is in play. Philosophical reasoning and
discourse among this CEO and the co-leaders of the company are also required to make sound decisions
and move the firm forward in a morally justifiable and sustainable way. Pure coaching and pure philosophi-
cal counseling will only solve parts of the problem. Philosophical counseling without some coaching runs
the risk of becoming an academic exercise prompting no behavioral improvements on the part of the CEO
or the company. At the same time, executive coaching without philosophical counseling runs the risk that
this CEO will misdirect her efforts and take ill-conceived action that lacks a sound ethical or pragmatic
justification.
Blending the approaches can help certain clients by concurrently clarifying values via conceptual rea-
soning and promoting worldly success via cognitive and behavioral changes. Action and insight occur more
in parallel than in series in most cases. This is a dialectical relationship in which conceptual reasoning and
effective behavioral changes continually inform and reinforce one another. With support of the profes-
sional, the client engages in actions that might diverge from previous patterns—and he or she then steps
back to reflect on whether these actions reflect and shape deeply held values. At other times, the client
strives to think and reason in new ways—and then observes whether this new way of thinking prompts
actions that breed desirable outcomes. The professional, who is a mentor and interlocutor in this dialectical
process, supports the client’s personal growth, practical success, and development of virtuous character
traits.
For some clients, coaching and philosophical counseling may usefully be regarded as two moments in
a dialectical process of action and insight that functions in the service of worldly success and character
virtue. Since most professional coaches and philosophical counselors are not dually certified, they may
want to consider doing some training in the approach that falls outside their scope of specialty practice.
Some training and experience in professional coaching could help philosophical counselors to think more
proactively with clients about action steps. Conversely, coaches who are well-informed about philosophi-
cal counseling might be more proactive in asking clients thought provoking questions which encourage
deeper self-reflection on personal values prior to deciding upon pivotal action plans. Some coaches and
philosophical counselors might consider the creative formation of collaborative partnerships that make
both services available in parallel to certain clients. A dually certified coach and philosophical counselor
could incorporate both services into a single professional engagement which I refer to as “philosophical
coaching”—a “one-stop shopping” approach that empowers philosophical insight and action planning at
the same time. The dually certified philosophical coach may be particularly well-suited to a client like the
CEO in our vignette, as she needs to form a trusting relationship with a professional who can support her
development of self-awareness and implementation of changes in interpersonal behavior that could have a
serious impact on many people’s lives.
The hybrid approach demands much of professionals and clients. The latter must be open to thinking
rigorously and acting in ways that may be unfamiliar and uncomfortable at first. Combining major changes
in thought and action requires time and effort, but its payoff may be a major transformation of the self that
leads to inner peace, prosperity, a richer social life, and moral action. Like the client, the professional also
must work hard to challenge clients’ previously held assumptions, beliefs, and patterns of behavior. Coaches
and philosophical counselors who take each other’s perspectives seriously (and perhaps collaborate in
partnerships) are well poised for this task. The philosophical coach, meanwhile, sub-specializes in integrat-
ing professional services traditionally in the domains of the professional coach (where the focus is on
behavioral change) and of the philosophical counselor (where the emphasis is on self-reflection and con-
ceptual clarification). There may be several paths to becoming a successful philosophical coach, but at a
minimum it will require doctoral training in philosophy coupled with extensive experience and certification
in some area of professional coaching. Substantial background in some other “clinical” area—such as
psychology, psychiatry, or organizational leadership—is also highly desirable, as it can broaden the philo-
sophical coach’s understanding of complex situations and capacity to provide credible guidance to high-
level clients.
The CEO in our case vignette is a prime example of a client who could benefit from the dialectical
approach which is the specialty of the philosophical coach. In addition to the benefits that she might enjoy
from the process as an individual, the positive effects of philosophical coaching for this CEO and her
management team could resound across the whole company and ultimately have broader societal benefits,
as the firm makes sound ethical decisions and becomes a better corporate citizen. Kimsey-House and co-
authors of Co-Active Coaching note (2011, p. 14) that the coach can “create the means for transforma-
tive change in clients and, by extension, in families and organizations. The ripples of change in a client’s
higher purpose move out into the world.” Similarly, in a chapter on “The Corporate Philosopher” in Philo-
sophical Practice, Marinoff (2002, p. 158) articulates the view that philosophical practitioners can “help
organizations inculcate virtues that enhance competitive performance as well as virtues that enhance coop-
erative effort.” The philosophical coach of the twenty-first century is uniquely positioned to embolden a
broad range of leaders to reflect upon their values, plan and execute actions consistent with those values,
and engage others in socially responsible dialogue and productive collaborations.
Conclusion
The helping professions of the twenty-first century are moving away from their primary focus on
treating pathology. Increasingly, they are embracing the positive psychology movement, with a profound
emphasis on self-awareness and proactive thinking about how people can use their personal strengths to
reach fulfillment and peak performance. Philosophical counseling and multiple forms of professional coaching
are among the most engaging and beneficial manifestations of this deepening attention to human choice and
responsibility. When integrated dialectically, with insight and behavioral change constantly informing each
other in a dynamic manner, a hybrid approach emerges and draws on key dimensions of these two profes-
sional disciplines. For a subset of clients who need to think carefully and also make substantial changes in
how they act, a blending of professional coaching and philosophical counseling can catalyze major im-
provements in self-awareness and behavior, with momentous implications for individuals, families, organi-
zations, and whole communities. Collaborative partnerships of coaches and philosophical counselors can
make both professional services available in parallel to certain clients. Dually certified philosophical coaches,
with their dialectical approach to helping clients develop both insight and sound action plans concurrently,
are in an especially privileged position to assist those confronting ethical dilemmas, personal quandaries,
interpersonal conflicts, and other vexing human challenges.
References
1. Kahn, M. (2002). Basic Freud: Psychoanalytic thought for the 21st Century. New York: Basic Books.
2. Shorter, E. (1997). A history of psychiatry: From the age of the asylum to the age of Prozac. New York:
John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
3. Fournier, J.C., DeRubeis, R.J., Hollon, S.D., Dimidjian, S., Amsterdam, J.D., Shelton, R.C., Fawcett,
J. (2010). Antidepressant drug effects and depression severity: A patient-level meta-analysis. Journal of
the American Medical Association, 303, 47-53.
4. Reeves, R.R., Ladner, M.E. (2010). Antidepressant-induced suicidality: An update. CNS Neuroscience
& Therapeutics,16, 227-234.
5. Brendel, D.H. (2006). Healing psychiatry: Bridging the science/humanism divide. Cambridge, MA:
MIT Press.
6. Beck, J.S. (2011). Cognitive behavior therapy: Basics and beyond. New York: Guilford.
7. Seligman, M.E., Czikszentmihalyi M. (2000). Positive psychology: An introduction. American Psy-
chologist, 55, 5-14.
8. Grant, A.M., O’Connor, S.A. (2010). The differential effects of solution-focused and problem-fo-
cused coaching questions: A pilot study with implications for practice. Industrial and Commercial Train-
ing, 42, 102-111.
9. Kauffman, C. (2006). Positive psychology: The science at the heart of coaching. In D.R. Stober, A.M.
Grant (Eds.), Evidence based coaching handbook: Putting best practices to work for your clients.
Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
10. Marinoff, L. (2002). Philosophical practice. San Diego: Academic Press.
11. Kimsey-House, H., Kimsey-House, K., Sandahl, P., Whitworth, L. (2011). Co-active coaching: Chang-
ing business, transforming lives. Boston: Nicholas Brealey Publishing..
12. Grimes, P., Uliana, R. (1998). Philosophical midwifery: A new paradigm for understanding human
problems with its validation. Costa Mesa, CA: Hyparxis Press.
13. Dewey, J. (1929). The quest for certainty: A study of the relation of knowledge and action. in J.A.
Boydston J.A. (Ed.), The Later Works. Carbondale, IL, Southern Illinois University Press.
14. Habermas, J. (1998). On the pragmatics of communication. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Correspondence: David@DrDavidBrendel.com
Daimonion
Guided Imagery as a Tool for Philosophical Practice
MICHAEL NOAH WEISS

NORWEGIAN SOCIETY FOR PHILOSOPHICAL PRACTICE
Abstract
Today, guided imagery is mainly used in the field of psychotherapy. This paper intends to investigate
how this technique also might be of use for philosophical practice. For this purpose, a manual of a guided
imagery exercise is presented, which can be used by other philosophical practitioners. Focal points of this
paper are the role of self-knowledge, as well as conscience (referring to Socrates’ daimonion) in settings of
philosophical practice.
Keywords: Socrates, guided imagery, ethics, conscience
1. Preface
For those who are not familiar with guided imagery, let me give a very short introduction. In simple
words, guided imagery means that a person is guided in his or her imagination. To add a very short
example: imagine a blue elephant now. Did it work? Probably it did. Here you can see that I guided you in
your imagination—at least to a certain degree. Of course, this is an almost oversimplified example but it
points out why this technique is called guided imagery.
The interpretation of and the work with images, dreams or even visions can be found in all cultures
throughout human history (see: Oppenheim, 1956). Inspired by these historical approaches several psy-
chologists of the 20th century developed their own techniques—mainly for therapeutic purposes. About
70 years after Sigmund Freud had conceptualized his dream analysis, a psychologist named Hanscarl
Leuner came up with a technique called Guided Affective Imagery (see: Leuner, 1969). Over the years
Leuner’s approach has been further developed, and today guided imageries are to be found not only in the
field of psychotherapy but also in education (see: Day, 1994), in sports (see: Morris, Spittle & Watt, 2005)
and even in cancer treatment (see: Murray, 2004), just to name a few fields of application. There are also
a few philosophical practitioners who are using this technique in their work. I am trained in a guided
imagery technique, which was developed at the Trilogos Institute in Switzerland, and it is referred to as the
Trilogos Method1—a method for practical philosophy and spiritual psychology. It was designed for the
purpose of personality training and consciousness development and one could also understand it as an
approach for existential self-reflection and social skills training. The imagery that I will present now is
derived from this Trilogos Method. However, it also differs from this method in certain respects since the
exercise here is quite short.
In principle, the following imagery is like a short story. And the writing style that I will use from now on
is quite the same style that I would use if I were reading the story to you. There is a simple reason for this:
you can do this exercise autodidactically or use it in a group. If you want to do this imagery in a group or
together with a guest in your philosophical practice, then you can use this paper as a manual and as a script
that you can read to your audience.

Finally, I have to add that there are some important elements included in this imagery—elements that
should help to make the experience of this guided imagery as joyful and safe as possible. You never know
for sure whether one of your participants might be mentally unstable, under the influence of medication or
just not in the right mood to do this exercise. Therefore, people should always feel free to decide whether
they want to participate in this exercise or not. Furthermore, you, as the facilitator of this exercise, have to
take the full responsibility for whatever happens. As merely the author of this script, I cannot and do not
take any responsibility for other practitioners, when working with this manual. So, before doing this exer-
cise with a group, read the script carefully several times, record it on tape and listen to it. Then analyze and
interpret your experiences, which you made during the imagery. The scheme, which is presented in 2.3
Interpretation and Analysis, will help you with that. Only when you feel “safe and firm” with this manual, use
it in a group or together with one of your guests. Never do this imagery when you feel overchallenged,
distracted or insecure, for whatever reason. Doing this imagery under such conditions could lead to quite
negative, unexpected and unwanted effects. Having said this I will present the manual now.
2. Manual
2.1 Introduction
We are going to do a guided imagery now. Maybe some of you are already familiar with guided
imageries, maybe some of you have never heard the term “guided imagery” before. Therefore, to keep
things clear and simple: The guided imagery that we are doing now is like a short story. This means that I
will simply read you a story now. But before I start to tell you the story I would like to make a little
introduction, so that you know a bit more what this exercise is about:
First, there are two ways to listen to this story, to this guided imagery: One way is to listen to it more
passively, that means you leave your eyes open and listen to my words, just as you would normally listen to
a story.
The other way is to listen to the story more actively, that is, you close your eyes and imagine the story
—it is as if you yourself would participate in the story and experience it in your fantasy. Of course, you can
always open your eyes, if you don’t feel comfortable during the imagery.
It is up to you whether you want to listen passively or actively. If you are not so sure, whether to
participate actively or passively, just listen to the story passively now, so you know what you can expect
when you are invited for a guided imagery next time.
Now a few remarks on the content of the story:
a) If you participate actively, this story will bring you into “the world of your imagination”. And there
you’ll meet a so-called inner guide who will guide you through the whole journey in the world of your
imagination. The inner guide is like a mountain guide assisting on a hike. So, whenever you need some help
or if you don’t understand something in the imagery, you can always ask your inner guide for support.
b) If you participate actively in this story it can be that you discover a certain gift or a present in the
landscape of the imagery together with your inner guide. We will have a closer look at this gift after the
imagery. The central question then will be “What has this gift that I received to do with me and my everyday
life?” However, since an important part of this story, this exercise, is to relax—not only physically but also
Daimonion 1374
emotionally and mentally—it could be that you want to do nothing else but just to relax and not to find a
gift. This is possible, and in the end we will all come back to the “here and now” together anyway.
c) Some of you who are participating actively in the story might experience this exercise almost like a
little meditation, like a meditative journey into “the world of your fantasy.” For that reason, and since I am
doing this kind of exercise also with interreligious groups, there will be the explicit option during the exer-
cise to make your ritual, your prayer with God, Allah, Atman, the Great Void—or whatever you call it, so
that you can intensify this meditative state and your relaxation. In this way people from different denomina-
tions, even atheists, have the opportunity to gain deeper trust and relaxation during the imagery, so that all
can feel safe and fine.
d) Now the last point, before I start with the story: I would like you to switch off your mobile phones,
so that we are not interrupted during the exercise. Then I would like you to make yourself comfortable on
your chair. And all those who want to participate actively in the story close their eyes now.
2.2 Guided Imagery Script
Like most stories this one starts with “Once upon a time...”
Once upon a time ... there was an island somewhere in the Caribbean Sea. It had long white sandy
beaches ... and the water on the shore line was crystal clear ... beautiful palm trees were growing on the
island … and it was absolutely quiet on this island …only the sound of little waves that were rolling onto the
shoreline was in the air …
More and more you can imagine this island now, with its sandy beach ... the palm trees ... and the
beautiful water … you can almost sense the salty, refreshing breeze that is in the air here … and the
constant sound of the waves rolling onto the beach … you can almost imagine being there … being at this
beach, with your feet in the warm sand.
It is a warm and beautiful day … and you can make yourself comfortable here at the beach, you can
relax ... relax your body, your emotions, your thoughts ... here at this quiet beach you can more and more
come to a rest ... you can breathe in soothing and refreshing air—and you can breathe out everything that
still reminds you of your everyday life—all sorrows and wishes you can breathe out ... then you breathe in
soothing and refreshing air again.
The sun is shining gently on you here ... you can enjoy being covered by light ... this light almost feels
like a divine light that covers you gently now ... and here in this meditative moment of silence you are now
invited to make your prayer, your meditation, your ritual with God, Allah, Atman, the universal force of
nature, the Great Void, or whatever you call it, so that you feel safe and secure and so that you can relax
even more.
And while you relax here on the beach you sense that a water plane is landing now in the water in front
of you—it is your inner guide—a good force who comes to you in unconditional love and support … he or
she is now out of the plane and joins you at the beach to welcome you friendly … maybe you cannot see
your inner guide but you can feel his or her presence or you just know that he or she is here … you believe
and trust that this good force is with you now and you know that if you don’t feel comfortable with your
inner guide you can always ask for someone else.
Your inner guide tells you now that there is a treasure buried here on the beach—if you are not up for
a treasure hunt now but if you just want to continue to relax then your inner guide brought you a nice
hammock and mounts it between two palm trees, so you can make yourself comfortable there … how-
ever, if you are curious about the treasure hidden on this beach, then you can sense that your inner guide
starts do dig into the sand with a shovel that he or she brought … soon you sense that there really is a
treasure chest hidden under the surface … It doesn’t take long until your inner guide is finished and puts the
chest on the beach.
More and more you can sense what the treasure chest looks like … is it big or small? Is there a lock
on it? If so, your inner guide has the magic key ... your inner guide opens the chest now … and more and
more you can sense now what’s inside this treasure chest … what is it that you discover there? Is it
something big or small—something old or new, something handmade or something organic from nature?
More and more you can focus your inner senses on the content of the treasure chest—and whatever it is
that comes to your mind now you are thankful for it and more and more you can concentrate on it … and
should you need any help or should you have any questions concerning the treasure chest and its content
then your inner guide is there to help you now. (1 minute of silence)
After many interesting ideas and impressions that you have now received about your treasure chest
and its contents, it is about time to leave the island again … that goes also for those who relaxed in the
hammock … you thank your inner guide for the cooperation and say goodbye ... and your inner guide
enters the water plane again, while you leave the beach too … you let go of all impressions that you sensed
now … an important memory remains anyway … you close the gates to your fantasy thoroughly now …
and after you closed the gates to the world of your fantasy, you remember your physical body again, which
almost fell asleep here on the chair … gently you wake up your body … you start to move your fingers, as
well as your toes … you tighten your muscles for a moment and then you relax them again … more and
more your body awakes now … you breathe in deeply and then deeply out … and then when you feel
ready for it, you open your eyes again and awake well again here in the room.
2.3 Interpretation and Analysis
2.3.1 Remarks on the Imagery
Did you come back safely from the journey? Are you well back in the “here and now”?
If you participated actively in the story, then write down what you experienced during this journey—
describe the island, the beach, the “re-connection” with God, Allah or whatever you call it, then your inner
guide, the feelings that you had during the imagery, and, finally, the chest and the treasure in it. For now it
is not important what your experiences could mean—don’t try to interpret them. At the moment, it is only
important that you try to make a short but accurate description of what you sensed and experienced during
this journey. (If you work with a group: While your participants are writing down their experiences, open
a window so that some fresh air comes into the room—after a couple of minutes close the window again
and continue with the following steps.)
The main focus will now be on the treasure chest and its content. However, before having a closer look
at that, I would like to make a few remarks on some earlier steps of this exercise.
1) In the beginning you imagined the island and maybe you even had the impression of being there at
the beach. In case you couldn’t imagine anything here—no island, no beach, nothing—don’t worry! No
Daimonion 1376
one is born a master. Everything takes time. Just like with jogging or climbing, guided imagery needs
regular training, too. So, if you train regularly, you will see that the images and perceptions will come almost
automatically. (Just imagine a red rose now! Did it work? Wonderful! So you see, you have this power of
imagination.)
2) Then there was this point in the imagery where you could make your prayer, your meditation, your
ritual with God, Allah, Atman, the universe, The Great Void or whatever you call it. How did you experi-
ence this? This part is very individual depending on your faith and denomination—atheists can perform this
step, too, of course. However, this step might also require regular training. The divine light that covered
you gently at this point of the journey is just one of many images that can help you perform this step of the
exercise. With regular training you can figure out what kind of “technique” suits you best. The meaning and
purpose of this step is to deepen the relaxation and to gain more spiritual—or you can also say basic—
trust. (Some also call this step “SQ-activation”—“SQ” for spiritual intelligence.)2
3) After this step, an inner guide came with his or her water plane and visited you on the beach. Did you
welcome an inner guide? Could you see him or her, or feel his or her presence, or did you just know that
he or she was with you? In case you couldn’t sense an inner guide, don’t worry—this part, too, takes
regular practice and patience. For the next time, just trust and believe that a good force is with you, even
if you cannot sense your inner guide.3
4) After you welcomed your inner guide, you could decide whether you wanted to continue to relax in
a hammock or whether you wanted to go on a treasure hunt. If you decided to relax in the hammock, then
this was fine. First, because you decided to do what felt good for you. And second, because this exercise
might be of use to you in your everyday life when you are in a challenging situation or stressed out—then
again, you can imagine resting in this hammock in order to calm down and to relax.
2.3.2 Investigating the Gift in the Treasure Chest
After these few remarks the focus will now be on the chest and its treasure. The guiding question here
will be, “What could the gift in the chest have to do with me and my everyday life?” This question is now
investigated in three steps: a. Description, b. Associations, c. Reflections.
a. Description
Describe the treasure chest and what you found in it. What kind of gift did you discover in the chest?
What material was it made of, what colors did it have? Was it something from nature or something hand-
made? Maybe this gift radiated a certain smell or a sound? What kind of feelings came up when you
discovered the gift?
Remarks: In case you did this exercise in a group, then one participant starts to describe what he or she
discovered. (Of course, nobody should be forced to share his or her experiences with the others. Further-
more, as a matter of confidentiality, everything that is said in the group, remains in the group and must not
be shared with any “outsiders”). After one participant finishes his or her description of the treasure in the
chest, you continue with step b. Associations. After that, you continue with the next participant, repeating
step a. Description and step b. Associations.
It can happen that a participant finds nothing in the chest. This is not a problem; in such a case the
participant should just say that he or she found nothing. However, it can easily be that instead of an object
in the treasure chest, it was a certain smell that came out of it, or a certain feeling came up with the
participant when the chest was opened. It is very important that a participant gets the chance to communi-
cate this—because some people just think that a smell or a certain feeling is “nothing” compared to a solid
object. However, as you will see in the course of this reflection process, feelings, smells, sounds or just
ideas can be of high value for this kind of exercise.
b. Associations
In this step you make free associations to the treasure from the chest. Whatever you found in the chest,
what ideas come to your mind concerning this gift? What do you associate with its material, its colors, its
purpose of use, the feeling that you had when discovering it, etc.?4
Remarks: If you do this step in a group, then not only does the person who described his or her gift
start with making associations to it, but also the rest of the group is invited to do so. The person who
received a certain gift might already have a specific idea of what it could mean. However, there might also
be completely different ideas about it. It is harder to communicate these ideas if there is already a fixed
interpretation of the gift “on the table.” In this respect, an important note is that “there are as many interpre-
tations of the truth as individuals.” This phrase means that there are no right or wrong interpretations or
associations. There are only some that may feel more right than others for the person who received the gift.
Furthermore, the facilitator of this exercise has to take care that participants do not communicate associa-
tions and interpretations in a commanding (“The gift means that you have to do this … now!”), righteous
(“It is obvious that the gift means this…”), or prophesying ( “This gift says that you will meet the man of
your dreams soon”) way. What a gift means (and there can be several meanings and interpretations) is up
to the person who received it during the imagery. The rest of the group only helps to extend the spectrum
of associations and ideas.
What if you or a group participant found nothing in the chest? Then you can make associations to
“nothingness” or “emptiness”, etc. In this way you can always make associations to whatever there was in
the chest—even if it was nothing.
c. Reflections
Now relate all the associations and ideas that you gathered in step b. Associations to you and your
everyday life. What could they mean in relation to you? Could there be a connection between the gift and
your everyday life? What are you becoming aware of? What kind of insights do you get? Is it a certain trait
of your character that becomes important to you now—and that you maybe want to transform or develop?
Is it a certain situation that you find yourself in again and again—and that you can see from a new perspec-
tive now? Whatever it is that you are becoming aware of, write it down.
After that ask yourself: “How can I put these insights into practice? What is the next step of action?”
If you work in a group, remember all the associations and ideas that you made about the gifts of other
participants. Ask yourself what they could have to do with you, too—is there something that you became
aware of?
Remarks: To further clarify what this step c. Reflections is about, two concrete examples are given
here. In the first example, a man found a picture in the chest depicting himself when he was a child. The
associations from other group participants were “spontaneity,” “authenticity,” “creativity.” When doing this
Daimonion 1378
third step, he said that he was a very spontaneous, authentic and creative child, but now he realizes that he
rarely makes use of these three abilities today; in a certain way he was actually missing them. Realizing this
motivated him to re-integrate these abilities into his personality again.
The other example is about someone who found nothing in the chest. In the beginning the person was
quite disappointed. However, during the imagery this participant realized that an empty space was actually
something that she was missing in her current life situation. At the time when she was doing this imagery, she
was working very hard. She was stressed out, which sometimes resulted in treating others badly. By means
of this imagery the person could see the benefits of creating more “free and empty space” in her life.
2.3.3. The value of guided imagery for philosophical practice
How and for what purpose can a guided imagery like the one presented here be of use in philosophical
practice? In order to answer these questions, I would like to refer to the two previously mentioned cases
—the man who realized a lack of spontaneity, authenticity and creativity, and the woman who realized the
value of more spare time.
These two cases differ from each other in the sense that the man was becoming aware of certain
character traits, while the woman realized how she could treat herself and others better by improving her
work-life-balance. However, these two cases also have essential elements in common—both participants
had insights about themselves in relation to their current life situation. To be more precise, due to the gift in
the chest, both participants intuited “signs” (in terms of the gift in the chest) that gave them “hints” of what
to do in the context of their everyday lives.
The question now is how these insights can be interpreted in philosophical terms. There seems to be a
reference to virtue ethics as well as to what Socrates meant by the phrase “Know thyself”, which he
derived from an epigraph engraved in one of the pillars of the temple of the Delphic oracle. When having a
dialogue with Euthydemos (see Apology of Xenon), he further specifies this phrase with the words:
Can a man be said, do you think, to know himself who knows his own name and nothing more? Or
must he not rather set to work precisely like the would-be purchaser of a horse, who certainly
does not think that he has got the knowledge he requires until he has discovered whether the beast
is tractable or stubborn, strong or weak, quick or slow, and how it stands with the other points,
serviceable or the reverse, in reference to the use and purpose of a horse? So, I say, must a man
in like manner interrogate his own nature in reference to a man’s requirements, and learn to know
his own capacities, must he not? (Xenophon, Memorabilia IV,2,25)
Today, probably no philosophical counselor would doubt that self-knowledge in the way Socrates
described it in this quote is among the intentions of philosophical practice. And as in the two cases pre-
sented, the technique of guided imagery may be a specific tool to serve this task. One might even go a step
further and say that the self-knowledge gained by means of this imagery is a knowledge about which
virtues (today one would probably rather call it social skills or soft skills) are to be developed in a given
situation. The gift in the chest can make participants not only become aware of certain character traits,
mindsets, skills or weaknesses in regards to how they cope with certain situations in their life. Participants
can also catch intuitions about how they treat others and themselves and make changes accordingly—and
therefore know who they are. However, this change of attitude cannot be expected to be a natural conse-
quence of this exercise. My experience has shown me that, as with any other philosophical intervention
technique, the results are not predictable and sometimes the outcomes seem to be rather poor, while on
other occasions they appear to be more fruitful. Readiness for change is a factor that is solely controlled by
the participants of such guided imageries and should not be forced.
Another feature of this exercise is that the participants can receive “signs” intuitively about what to do
in a certain situation. This often makes participants wonder. The philosophical question resulting from this
wondering then is, whether there is some sort of “inner” knowledge offering direction in everyday life,
referring to the Socratic daimonion. The term daimonion, often translated with the terms inner voice or
conscience (the latter implicating an ethical connotation), literally means “divine sign.” In the Dialogues of
Plato, Socrates received this sign on several occasions (see Crito, 44a; Apology, 31c-d, 33c, 40a; Phaedo,
60e). One of its main characteristics was that the sign revealed itself to Socrates in a spontaneous and
intuitive way and not by means of logical reasoning. Socrates fully trusted in the daimonion, assuming it to
be of divine, spiritual origins, and when he followed the sign, it always led to a good, even virtuous, result.
By means of the previous guided imagery, I absolutely do not intend to say that there in fact is an inner,
or even transpersonal, faculty of spiritual origins inherent in the human being offering direction on the way
towards the good and virtuous life.5 Rather, I see the personal experience resulting from the imagery as a
good starting point to further investigate the role of conscience together with the participants. Feelings of
guilt or anxious thoughts may also present themselves as a “voice within;” however, it mostly starts its trail
with “what if…?”, or some other kind of anxiety-arousing question. However, the “voice” of anxiety
should not be mistaken as the “inner voice” of Socrates, since the first is indicating fear of something, while
the latter is suggesting trust in something. In other words, the previous imagery can be an experienced-
based approach for a philosophical investigation about the resources that might be available in order to
gain trust in life rather than fearing it.
4. Concluding remarks
By pointing out the references to self-knowledge (in terms of the Socratic “Know thyself“), virtue
ethics and the Socratic daimonion, which are implicated in this guided imagery, I intended to show how and
why this technique can to be of value for philosophical practice. However, I am aware that there might be
also other reasons why a practitioner would make use of this imagery, e.g., when a counseling is about the
search for meaning, about happiness, or about finding new inspiration. I can only invite other practitioners
to make use of the manual given here in order to discover further fields of application for guided imagery in
the context of philosophical practice.
References
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Frankl, V. E. (2000): Man’s search for ultimate meaning. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Perseus Publishing.
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Journal of Psychotherapy, Vol. 23, 1, 4–22.
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Notes
1. The Trilogos Method was developed by Linda Vera Roethlisberger for the purposes of personality
training and consciousness development. For more than 20 years Roethlisberger is offering courses and
education programs at the Trilogos Institute in Zürich/Switzerland, which she founded in 1990. In addition to
these programs, there is an autodidactical course (consisting of 3 books and 6 CDs) available in German (see:
Roethlisberger, 2012; 2013a; 2013b). Compared to other practitioners working with the technique of guided
imageries, Roethlisberger’s work is mainly focused on the combination and integration of mental, emotional
and spiritual capacities. This combination Roethlisberger put into the phrase “IQ + EQ + SQ = PsyQ – the
psychospiritual intelligence” (see: Weiss, Roethlisberger, Weiss & Bliemel, 2011).
2. In 2000, when publishing their book “SQ: Spiritual Intelligence – The Ultimate Intelligence“, Dana
Zohar and Ian Marshall coined the term SQ as an abbreviation for the term spiritual intelligence (Zohar &
Marshall, 2000). Followed by many authors, Zohar and Marshall presented academic research as well as
practical exercises and concrete examples about spiritual intelligence. One of their main arguments was that
whether a person is religious or not has nothing to do with his or her spiritual intelligence. An atheist can be a
highly spiritual person.
3. Without the intention of putting too much attention on psychology in this exercise, an interesting
interpretation of the figure of the inner guide can be found in so-called depth psychology: here the inner guide
is often associated with what C.G. Jung called the Self or what Viktor Frankl called conscience (see: Weiss,
Roethlisberger, Weiss & Bliemel, 2011).
4. This step is very similar to so-called dream interpretation. However, instead of suggesting further
literature and theories about dream interpretation, I rather appeal to the reader’s – or the group participants’
– creativity to find interpretations and ideas about what the treasure in the chest could mean. In this way, a
reflection – or, when working with a group, a dialogue – based on associative thinking is fostered, which can
be much more fruitful and inspiring than any book about dream interpretation.
5. Despite the fact that the Socratic daimonion is of almost no interest for philosophy in general and for
philosophical practice in particular today, there is one psychiatrist and philosopher, who put the inner voice or
conscience, as he called it, at the centre of his approach: it was Viktor Frankl, the founder of so-called
Logotherapy. Frankl assumed the inner voice as an essential “navigational aid” on a person’s search for
meaning. He also assumed it to be of transpersonal, spiritual origins and revealing itself in terms of intuitions
about what to do (or not to do) in a given situation. Furthermore, he saw a person’s conscience as the
gateway to a good and virtuous life (see Frankl, 2000).
Correspondence: michaelnoahweiss@gmail.com
The Shield of Achilles: A Use for Philosophical Practice
CONSTANTINOS ATHANASOPOULOS, FHEA

RESEARCH AFFILIATE, DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY, OPEN UNIVERSITY, UK
Abstract
The therapeutic use of images in the control of the passions, the creation of a wonder or awe and
inspiration of men in battle is a frequent theme in ancient Greek literature. I will propose a reading of the
Shield of Achilles along similar lines as a pictorial narrative for inspiration and control of passions. I will
assert that with the help of imagery the Ancient Greeks managed to control the strong passions during war,
so that the protagonists could focus their mind and soul to the broader context of human existence and
thus, gain a deeper understanding of what is to be a human, what is to fight as a human and not as a beast.
The therapeutic use of such imagery for gaining a deeper human existential meaning will be highlighted and
a method of using such images will be proposed.
Keywords: Achilles’ Shield, Homer, pictorial representation, images, awe, wonder, passions, Klein
The Background
The almost mythical figure of Homer (most probably lived around the 8th c. BCE, in the islands of the
eastern part of the Aegean Sea, most probably Samos or Chios) can be compared to none other in human
history. During his time, commerce between mainland Greece and the eastern Aegean islands and Asia
Minor city states was strong and stories about this blind man who travelled and sung about the heroic epic
deeds of Achilles (in the 15963 verses of Iliad) and Odysseus (in the 12000 verses of Odyssey) soon
made him known through out the Hellenic speaking world (which covered at that time not only mainland
Greece, Asia Minor and Sicily, but also most trade ports of the Mediterranean Sea). His narrations were
not only a means to entertain and teach the young Hellenes, but had also a more important role in uniting the
Hellenes, who till then were dispersed in various city states of the Mediterranean world, in a common
cultural framework. Indeed, it was standard practice in the 5th c. BCE (and long after) to teach the Hellenic
children both of the major Homeric Epics (Iliad and Odyssey) in the original, and indeed this was the goal
of the systematic transcription in the 6th c. BCE of the oral (till then) tradition of the Homeric Epics by the
tyrant of Athens Peisistratos (who disliked the democratic reforms of Solon, even though elected through
them, and pursued a more autocratic rule). Leaving the cultural politics of the Epics’ transcription process
aside, the Homeric Epics present a formidable dictionary of ancient Greek culture and civilisation and
through it a handbook for the therapy of the human psyche (for more on the content and influence of the
Homeric Epics one could consult Jaeger’s Paideia 1986, esp. Book 1, Jones 2003 and Kirk 1985-
1993).
What is of particular interest in our investigation is the use of pictorial narrative in the Homeric Epics
and the characteristic way that Homer is using pictures via the use of poetry to provide important intuitions
into the human existence, and in particular, the way mortals should live and strive to excel (note in this
regard the advice that Peleus gave to his son Achilles, when he was leaving his homeland for Troy: Ever to
Excel—aien aristeuein; see Book XI of the Iliad).

According to Snodgrass (1998), the cultural narrative achieved by the pictorial representation of
Homeric world-view on Achilles’ Shield in Book XVIII of the Iliad is no small deed: it represents what the
best of the artists in Homer’s time could achieve in terms of the abstract Geometric Art with which people
of that time were familiar. One of the major creativity problems within pictorial geometric representation of
the time was how to canvass on the same plane events that occur simultaneously with events in temporal
succession; the solution achieved at the time was to divide the pictorial time-space continuum in areas
depicting different time genealogies; this liberated the mind of the ancient Greek artists and their audience
and enabled them to create on the same plane different cosmological, cultural and time depended epochs
within which multiple metaphorical narratives unfolded. The complexities of the possibilities of lived human
experience in this way were transformed skilfully into the complexities of abstraction in representation.
Indeed, it is remarkable that such an amount of information and cultural interpretation could be fitted onto
the canvass of a single Shield, and many interpretations for such a move in Homeric narrative have been
noted over the centuries: some have distinguished the “poietic” from the “mimetic” interpretation, others
the iconographically over-deterministic from the abstractive liberalistic (see for some of this in Stanley
2000).
Homer’s use of the Shield and its pictorial representations is indeed ainigmatic; some may even claim
that the Shield is almost mythical itself: the graphic details of some of these pictorial representations, such
as the one with two lions that tear apart the belly of a bull and gulp down its blood and guts as dogs nip at
them to no avail, cut in very thin slices the gore and brutality of real life, and are intertwined with the
cosmological and divine abstraction at the centre of the shield which seems to reach the very limits of
philosophical imagination and religious cosmological symbolism of his time. How is it possible for gore and
brutality to co-exist on the same plane and in the same encompassing narrative with the most sublime, the
most philosophical, divine and abstract? But then again, isn’t this what human life is all about? It is indeed
that only wonder and awe can such a representation create in the souls of Homeric heroes. The creation of
the Shield by Hephaestus, the Ancient Greek god of metallurgy, the holding of the Shield from the mythical
hero Achilles, whom gods feared, add to the wonder of the Shield and make it a most remarkable piece of
art indeed. In what follows, I will attempt a short description of what the Shield tried to capture and its
significance for contemporary Philosophical Practice.
The Shield
Achilles’ Shield is described in the 18th book of Iliad, in verses 468-607. In this passage, Homer
describes the making of the shield of Achilles (Thetis his mother asked god Hephaestus to make a new
armour for Achilles after his armour was worn by his friend Patroklos and lost in battle), and, in particular,
an elaborate picture of it engraved on it by the god of metallurgy and fire Hephaestus. It is important to note
that Achilles, at this stage in the narrative, is already insulted by Agamemnon, (who took his war prizes in
a most humiliating way) and suffers psychologically and spiritually because the son of the King of Troy,
Hector, has killed his dear friend and relative Patroklos and has stolen the armour that Patroklos wore to
disguise himself as Achilles. One could describe the scenes in the Shield grouping them into two categories:
on the one hand we have the cosmological ones (sun, moon, constellations at the center, Ocean at the rim);
and then we have the human life ones both at the city and at the countryside, which are placed between the
two major cosmological scenes (Ocean at the outer rim; sun, moon and constellations at the center). The
symbolic significance of the scenes is the issue of major debate from antiquity (see more on this in Hardie
1985); cosmological scenes have both an indication to the power of the owner and a divinity connotation
(that the owner is related or favoured by the gods), while the human related ones, arranged in superim-
The Shield of Achilles 1383
posed bands towards the centre of the shield, indicate early philosophical views about the nature of the
human world (as the product of friendship and war), and outline significant human activities during peace
and war (including judicial adjudication, marriage, a joyful king looking at a harvest festival, farming,
ferocious battle, hunting).
An important problem in relation to the making and the using of the Shield in the Homeric narrative has
been discussed by Scully 2003. He indicates that while, when he made the Shield, Hephaistus claimed that
any mortal “will wonder when he sees it” (18.466-467), there is no actual discussion in the Homeric
narrative of particular instances, where heroes (either friends or foes) expressed their wonder upon look-
ing at a particular scene from the Shield. One would have thought that such a wonderful Shield would have
been discussed at length (at least its effect on people) in other places at the Iliad (at least where there is
discussion about Achilles fighting with it). What is the purpose of the description of the Shield, then, if it has
no further use in the narrative? Most critics and commentators agree that the scenes on the Shield are there
for us, the readers (or audience that listened to the poet reciting the verses of the Iliad). The scenes
provide the ambience that is necessary to put into perspective the brutality of the war described in the rest
of the narrative. It provides a cultural and philosophical explanation of the war, within which cultural
parameters it takes place, and makes a wider statement on what is human life and human existence in all its
complexities and cosmological-divinity connections (see Scully 2003, pp.29-32). Actually, some com-
mentators indicate that the fact that the Shield is described before it is used by Achilles makes the descrip-
tion itself both ironic and informative about the hero’s psychological state of mind: ironic, because as
Hephaistus recognizes, even if the Shield is of divine craft, it will not protect Achilles from a warrior’s
death, and informative about Achilles state of mind, because Achilles will achieve a recognition of the truth
contained in the Shield about human existence, only after he decides to give the body of the dead Hector
to his father Priam, King of Troy. Scully notes that the peculiar use of terror related words to describe the
Shield (deinos, smerdaleos), which are only used again in the Homeric narrative to describe the head of the
terrifying severed head of Gorgon as it appears on the shield of Athena, the goddess of Wisdom, is another
indication of the specific role the Shield has in the narrative (ibid). Terror, Strife, Strength, and Onslaught
surround the severed head of Gorgon, and it is the combination of all these symbolic representations of the
strongest human emotions that produces the feelings that are related to deinos and smerdaleos. When the
arms were presented to Achilles by his mother Thetis, the Myrmidons (ferocious men of Achilles hardened
by the long war) were overcome by fear and Achilles looked upon them with fiery eyes and the more he
looked upon his arms his heart was strengthened and anger filled his heart (19.12-23).
Commentators insist that this anger (cholos) was related to the cholos word that is used to describe
Achilles’ anger towards Agamemnon, who took through political force his prizes (ibid), and it allowed
Achilles’ soul to recover from the intense sorrow and grief for the death of his beloved friend Patroklos and
the anger against Hector who killed his friend. It also allowed Achilles to put his intense feelings into the
wider perspective of human existence and enabled him to identify correctly what he needs to do from now
on: put aside his troubles and launch into battle to gain glory and achieve through it the excellence his father
wished for him (Scully 2003, pp.32-36). For many, the act of Thetis (goddess of Justice) of giving him the
divine gifts is an act of social integration and the return of Achilles back into human society: as he was
withdrawn into his own sorrow and anger for the loss of his friend, he had to put all aside and re-integrate
himself back into human society, and achieve thus his role into the pursuit of excellence. But the divinely
crafted arms make Achilles’ re-entry into human society achieve a new meaning and significance. Scully
notes that after the arms were given to Achilles, he gains new strength and new determination for battle: he
refuses to eat before the battle and forces the gods to provide ambrosia and nectar directly to his chest;
And when Hector decides to confront him in battle, he is looking upon him with awe as if he (Achilles) was
god himself (Scully 2003, pp.36-47).
So, with this discussion we can conclude that the Shield had an important therapeutic role to play both
for the audience of the Homeric epic and for the heroes themselves who took part in it. Homer’s thinking
seems to be that the strong emotions that were created in the soul of Achilles after the killing of his beloved
friend made him an outcast in his society and led him to a state that resembles less of a human being and
more of a raging beast. The intervention of the gods (chiefly among them Thetis) returned him to his human
state and granted him a demi-god status that was caused primarily through a greater awareness of his
existential condition by the complex narratives of the scenes on the Shield presented to him. The Shield
itself led all others that looked upon it to different paths in their therapeutic redemption in the Homeric
narrative: Achilles ferocious companions achieved a greater understanding of the combat between the
divine and the human through it and were filled with temporary fear in relation to their limited role in this
battle; Hector came to terms with his own death and realised that indeed his path is within the cultural
context of the Shield, a path that was decided not by himself, but still it came to him to decide to confront
valiantly the semi-god Achilles and play his part in this cosmological battle with rigour and valour: as a true
hero who has come to terms with his own mortality. That there is no detailed mention of this role of the
Shield in the Homeric narrative seems to be the result of the ambient way with which symbolic art like this
was used in the time of Homer (note in this context the symbolic nature of much of the early Greek art, for
example the abstract Cycladic sculptures of 3000-2000 BCE in the island of Thera). It was part of the
culture of the time to use similar pieces of art in both the civic and ceremonial life of Ancient Greece for
symbolic therapeutic interventions and a description of this role of the Shield needed no specific mention.
But perhaps now we can embark in the charting of how the Shield (or a similar pictorial representation) can
be used in Philosophical Practice.
The Importance of the Shield for Philosophical Practice
With the above discussion it is obvious that the Shield played an important therapeutic role in the
Homeric narrative and I will now try to summarise this role in the following key points:
1. The Shield had an important therapeutic role to play in the Homeric narrative: for the people who
looked upon it, for the audience reading or listening to the Homeric epic, and for the hero who had to die
with it (note in this regard the widespread cultural understanding of the time that the shield is as important
to a hero as his life; see on this Anderson 2008).
2. The therapeutic aim of the Shield is achieved through the intervention of divine powers (who made
the Shield, who presented the Shield to the hero, who are described in the Shield in terms of their cosmo-
logical character and action, i.e., interacting with and containing all things, both at the center and at the
outer rim).
3. There is an implicit recognition from the person receiving the Shield that he is in a psychological
dead-end: he has fallen from the state of socially integrated and interacting human-hood to the state of a
despondent, depressed or raging beast.
4. The Shield brings about the necessary wider and culturally and socially integrated awareness that is
necessary for the next step in the therapeutic process: a more effective embrace of his self-assumed fate
and task to excel above all others.
5. Even though the effect of the sight of the Shield on others is producing in them emotions or passions
(fear, awe) on a short term basis, the long term effect is enabling them to think about their role in the
cosmological battle between the human and the divine and thus to acquire themselves a greater cultural and
cosmological awareness of their respective roles which are different in each case.
6. Perhaps the most important significance of the Shield, both in the Homeric narrative but also for its
use in Philosophical Practice, is that it can produce an intense feeling and intellectual state of awe or
amazement, an intense philosophical and religious pondering and admiration which is essential for the
person undergoing an intellectual and emotional dead-end to overcome the numbness of senses and rea-
son that he/she experiences and find a way to his/her personal development. Note that this awe is impor-
tant in all philosophical systems of the Ancient Greeks: in Plato’s Theaetetus (155d) it is the start of
philosophy (aporein kai thaumazein); in Aristotle’s Mechanics (847a) aporein is what pushes us to
create new devices so that we can solve problems effectively. Frequent references to this start of philoso-
phy and creativity is made through out antiquity and in many philosophical and religious systems over the
centuries.
7. Uses of images and even guided imagery in Philosophical Practice and in general Counselling and
Psychotherapy has been discussed previously (see in relation to this Hall et al. 2006, and Michael Noah
Weiss’ contribution to the 12th International Conference on Philosophical Practice in Athens, August 2013,
and his preceeding article in this volume: Damonion: Guided Imagery as a Tool for Philosophical
Practice, pages 1372-80); however, the importance of the use of the Achilles’ Shield here is significant
due to the exceptional complexity and cultural significance of it. Here I follow the views of Gabrielle Aruta
and Morten Fastvold who in a relevant paper in APPA’s Journal have maintained that we can use art in
philosophical counselling in the conceptual framework provided by John Dewey in his Art as Experience
(Aruta and Fastvold, 2012). I would like to highlight however, that the state of awe and amazement I am
discussing above can only be produced by an item such as Achilles’ Shield: only this is as complex in
pictorial and symbolic narrative and as significantly embedded in the cultural ambience of its time that can
produce the intensity of this state that is necessary for the achievement of a solution to the problem at hand.
With the above established key points in our interpretation on the use of the Shield for Philosophical
Practice we can sketch an example of how this can be used in a philosophical practice.
Sketch for a use of the Shield in Philosophical Practice
On the basis of the above discussion, we can discuss how one may use the Shield in a Philosophical
Practice Session either as an enlarged (blown-up) version of the image of the Shield in its entirety or
partially as a series of images from the different scenes depicted on it. The process can be outlined in a
series of three stages (each stage representing a series of therapeutic sessions and arranged in terms of time
sequence):
a) The person who is going to receive the image has to realise the impasse and dead-end stage in his/
her personal development. A realised state of despondency or depression, anxiety or intense anger may be
examples of this impasse. The first stages in the therapy sessions should be focused on enabling the one
who is going to receive the image to think through the complexities of this impasse, through a series of
guided questions from the person who is going to provide the image of the Shield.
b) The Shield is presented either partially, segmented in scenes (and then, after the presentation of all
the scenes, in its entirety) or in its entirety as an enlarged image, but directing the attention of the receiver of
the image to each one of its scenes (perhaps in a series of sessions) and then to the entirety of the Shield
itself. The receiver of the images is asked to think and express freely views (as in a brainstorming way) on
how the scenes relate to his/her life and problem at hand.
c) The receiver of the images is asked to think and express freely his/her views then on how the Shield
can be applied to his/her life and personal development and specifically the Shield as a tool to excel and
overcome the problem at hand. Here, the deeper human condition and existential details of the Shield are
explored and applied with the aim of overcoming the problem at hand. Depending on the religious commit-
ments of the receiver of the image, a more cosmological-religious use of the Shield is recommended. If the
receiver of the image is an atheist, an emphasis on the philosophical implications for his/her life (perhaps
issues related to freedom and determinism) with scenes as an impetus in terms of what is depicted on the
Shield could be discussed.
d) Plenary sessions in which the whole process is evaluated by both the receiver of the image and the
giver of the image.
Conclusions
From the above discussion of Achilles’Shield, it became obvious that the Shield had an important
therapeutic role both at the time of Homer and much after. It can also be used therapeutically in our age
with the important crises facing contemporary life scenarios. Perhaps it can even be used as a replacement
or alternative methods of treatment for the numbing shock inflicted by the Shock Doctrine that is so
eloquently described by Naomi Klein (2007). As Klein describes in her book, the intended outcome in the
application of the Shock Doctrine is to make the people despondent and depressed, numb and obedient,
in the dehumanising dictates of neo-liberal disaster capitalism. A widespread application of the Achilles’
Shield may help in the de-numbification of people who experience the Shock and may enable them to find
effective means to fight against its dehumanising dictates. Perhaps now more than ever what is needed by
the Shock-inflicted people of the world (especially in Greece with the increasing number of suicides in-
duced by the financial crisis) is a Philosophical Practice oriented application of Achilles’Shield. Only the
future can only say whether the Shield will outlive its holders in our contemporary narratives, and whether
it will be used in the same way as the Homeric narrative that led and inspired the imagination and creativity
of peoples past.
References
Anderson, Carl A. (2008). Archilochus, his lost shield, and the heroic ideal, Phoenix, Vol. 62, No. 3/4
(Fall-Winter 2008), 255-260.
Aruta, Gabrielle, and Morten Fastvold. How Dewey’s View on Aesthetics is Relevant to Philosophical
Counseling, Philosophical Practice, July 2012, 7.2: 972-81.
Hall, Eric, Hall, Carol, Stradling, Pamela, Young, Diane (2006) Guided Imagery: Creative Interventions in
Counselling & Psychotherapy: Creative Interventions in Counselling and Psychotherapy, Sage Publ.
Hardie, P. R. (1985). Imago Mundi: Cosmological and Ideological Aspects of the Shield of Achilles, The
Journal of Hellenic Studies, Vol. 105 (1985), 11-31.
Jaeger, Werner, (1986). Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture, transl. by Gilbert Highet, 2nd ed., Oxford:
OUP.
Jones, P.V., ed. (2003). Homer’s Iliad. A Commentary on Three Translations, London.
Klein, Naomi (2007). The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, Knopf-Canada.
Kirk, G. S., ed. (1985–1993). The Iliad: A Commentary (6 volumes), Cambridge: CUP.
Scully, Stephen (2003). Reading the Shield of Achilles: Terror, Anger, Delight, Harvard Studies in Classi-
cal Philology, Vol. 101 (2003), 29-47.
Snodgrass, Anthony (1998). Homer and the Artists: Text and Picture in Early Greek Art, Cambridge:
CUP.
Stanley, Keith (2000). Review of Anthony Snodgrass, Homer and the Artists: Text and Picture in Early
Greek Art, American Journal of Archaeology, Vol. 104, No. 2 (Apr., 2000), 391-393.
The Shield of Achilles
Correspondence: c.athanasopoulos@open.ac.uk
Compassionate Deception: Lying to Patients with Dementia
MATTHEW ALLEN BUTKUS

MCNEESE STATE UNIVERSITY, LAKE CHARLES, LA
Abstract
Trust is essential in an effective clinician-patient relationship, and the default assumption is that clini-
cians have an obligation to be truthful with their patients. This assumption is tested in cases when patients
are incapable of engaging in autonomous action due to a cognitive impairment. A case study is explored
which illustrates when engaging in deception may be acting in the patient’s best interest. The decision
flowchart in Sokol (2007) is explored as a means of justifying deception.
Keywords: dementia, lying, deception, ethics, autonomy, compassion
Trust is an intrinsic element of a healthy doctor-patient relationship; thus, there is a presumption that it
is wrong to lie to a patient (Johnston & Holt, 2006; Tuckett, 2004). Clinicians depend on truthful accounts
of a patient’s health practices—accurate information about medication, nutritional supplements, allergies,
recreational drug use, and sexual practices is essential if we want to provide an accurate diagnosis and
avoid adverse reactions to treatment. They are asking people to disclose information that may be person-
ally embarrassing or shameful, baring their bodies and souls, which creates a number of bonds and rela-
tional duties within that relationship—bonds of confidentiality, honesty and beneficence. Patients expect
clinicians to be honest with them, and take breaches of these relational duties quite seriously (Ryan, de
Moore, & Patfield, 1995).
Trust and honesty are essential elements of medical ethics—breaches of these risk devaluing the pa-
tient (a violation of respect) as well as undermine her ability to be self-directing (a violation of personal
autonomy; Beauchamp & Childress, 2012; Bostick, Sade, McMahon, & Benjamin, 2006; Hodkinson,
2013; Jaworska, 1999; Ryan, de Moore, & Patfield, 1995). This does not mean, however, that trust and
honesty are absolutes. Medical ethicists recognize that there are circumstances when clinicians have an
obligation not to respect a patient’s autonomy—for instance, when patients are dangers to themselves or
others and require hospitalization. But even within these circumstances we require minimally restrictive
environments to avoid violating patient rights and autonomy. In short, if a clinician is going to violate the
trust and autonomy of a competent patient, she must make sure that she has very compelling reasons for
doing so. This obligation to be truthful with patients is a prima facie duty—in general, clinicians ought to tell
the truth, but it is possible to imagine circumstances when it is not an absolute duty (Brown, 2008).
All of the above necessarily makes the assumption that we are dealing with a competent patient – our
duty to respect someone’s ability to be self-directing necessarily assumes a genuine capacity to engage in
self-reflection, deliberation, and the weighing of options, which is why we tend not to speak of autonomy
as it relates to toddlers, patients experiencing delusions, or other individuals with cognitive dysfunction.
Rather, we tend to focus on other principles of medical ethics like beneficence, nonmaleficence, and
compassion. We may find circumstances when revealing the truth ends up dealing the patient a heavy
psychological blow, potentially compromising the clinician’s ability to care for him or her. It is entirely
possible for the truth to produce both positive and negative outcomes— clinicians might cause genuine
harm to their patients by being truthful with them. This has produced a discussion within the philosophical

and medical communities on the nature and scope of the duty to disclose information to patients—there are
times when a clinician or caregiver might be morally permitted to withhold information from patients or
engage in deception (Alzheimer’s Society, 2007; Brown, 2008; Day, James, Meyer, & Lee, 2011; Faden
& Beauchamp, 1980; Hodkinson, 2013; Ryan, de Moore, & Patfield, 1995; Sirotin & Lo, 2006; Sokol,
2007; Tuckett, 2012). This is not to say that clinicians no longer have an obligation or duty to be truthful,
but the nature of that obligation becomes less clear. Rather, it may be justifiable to engage in deception if
a greater harm than benefit occurs as a result of telling the truth to a patient.
Case Example
The patient in question (“Stephen”) was a 70 year-old man with advanced non-Alzheimer’s dementia
seen in a geriatric psychiatry unit. Stephen was admitted for evaluation and introduction of pharmaco-
therapy to reduce his anxiety. His medical history was also significant for an aggressive and treatment
refractory bladder cancer of which he was unaware and which produced abdominal pressure that made
the patient constantly feel as if he had to urinate. He was fitted with a Texas catheter and encouraged to
void whenever he could. However, this constant pressure caused him concern (and likely exacerbated his
anxiety), so he would constantly announce from his room that “I can’t pee!” or ask the nursing staff why he
couldn’t urinate.
The case was complicated by several factors—for instance, Stephen had significant difficulty remem-
bering information and as a consequence needed constant reminders to orient himself to his place, time,
and condition (every few minutes, and at some points during his hospitalization, every minute). The biggest
ethical complication was Stephen’s family request that the nursing staff not disclose the cancer to the
patient, as they believed that this would further increase his anxiety. These two factors could combine to
create a pernicious and circular problem: if the nursing staff were to be truthful with him, they would need
to remind him constantly of his cancer, which could easily maintain or amplify his existing anxiety. Simply
put, he would need to be reminded that he had a terminal cancer again and again and again. The nursing
staff was conflicted about whether to disclose Stephen’s diagnosis to him.
No case consultation was called—rather, the treatment team acquiesced to the family’s request and
did not tell Stephen about his condition while he was in the hospital. Instead, he was told that if he felt the
need to urinate, he should try, and that sometimes people “just had a hard time going.” During his stay,
Stephen’s anxiety was treated pharmacologically, and he was discharged once he was stabilized on an
anxiolytic.
Philosophical and Ethical Issues
There are a number of ethical issues raised by the case, but the primary conflict seems to be especially
important—was it ethically appropriate not to disclose the cancer diagnosis to Stephen? There are a
number of related ethical issues. Most explicitly, does the presence of a cognitive impairment change the
nature of our obligation to our patients in terms of truth-telling and respect for their autonomy? If so, in
what contexts and capacities might this occur?
Truth-telling covers a wide range of potential issues in medicine and philosophy in general. Broadly
speaking, most philosophies strongly advocate telling the truth to others. Truth can be challenging and
complicated, however, whether it is understood as a philosophical or plain language concept. A full dis-
course on the philosophical challenges posed by “truth” is well-outside the purview of this article, but
Compassionate Deception 1390
paraphrasing a recurring question is germane: in a clinical context, what is truth? There are a number of
subjective and probabilistic elements involved in diagnosing a patient and offering a prognosis (in both
psychiatry and house medicine). Diagnostic standards change, new evidence emerges, new therapies
become available, and clinicians adopt particular diagnostic and treatment paradigms. In short, the chang-
ing nature and scope of clinical evidence and clinical practice makes “truth” about a diagnosis and progno-
sis a plastic concept (Richard, Lajeunesse, & Lussier, 2010). As such, a discussion about telling the truth
with one’s patient is necessarily going to recognize uncertainty. However, recognizing and accounting for
this uncertainty is not going to change the essential nature of making a good faith estimation of the patient’s
current and future state of health.
What constitutes a lie also requires some clarification—is it intentionally passing on false information?
Is it withholding information from a patient? Is it diverting a patient’s attention elsewhere? All of these can
be considered lying; a deceptive practice (even a benevolent deceptive practice or a “little white lie”) still
prevents a patient from getting the information that she is seeking (Day, James, Meyer, & Lee, 2011;
Elvish, James, & Milne, 2010; Ryan, de Moore, & Patfield, 1995). Patient perceptions of dishonesty
matter; while the clinician may attempt to categorize his practice as something other than lying, the effort to
deceive or distract can be personally offensive and damaging to a relationship. Characterizing an act of
deception or distraction as something other than lying seems to be a semantic dodge rather than an ex-
cuse—the end result is the same in both contexts (Ryan, de Moore, & Patfield, 1995).
There are reasons, however, to ask whether telling lies are an a priori or prima facie wrong. For
instance, consider a patient who presents to an emergency department following a motor vehicle accident
which killed his family and who requires stabilization. The physician’s efforts to stabilize him are hampered
by his frantically asking about his family’s welfare. At least three possible courses of action are suggested:
telling the truth (“Your family is dead”), lying (“Your family is fine”), and omitting information (“I haven’t
heard anything—let me stabilize you and I’ll go check”).1 Options two and three certainly both involve not
telling the truth (or the complete truth), but it is reasonable if a moral agent were to avoid calling them
identical or morally equivalent. While some patients consider any deception wrong (Day, James, Meyer,
& Lee, 2011), a compelling case could be made that truth-telling is a prima facie obligation—in this
circumstance, it might be better to delay telling the patient the truth until he is in a better state to hear the
information.
Naturally, this leads to concerns about paternalism—we can see a potential framework for withholding
information from patients “for their own good,” which is very difficult ethical territory, as it undermines the
patient’s decision-making ability. Caregivers are especially prone to rationalize deceptive practices in an
effort to ameliorate distress and improve compliance with care (Blum, 1994; James, Wood-Mitchell,
Waterworth, Mackenzie, & Cunningham, 2006; Tuckett, 2012). Withholding information or distracting
the patient out of concerns for his or her well-being would seem to put acting beneficently directly at odds
with respecting the patient’s autonomy.
Patient autonomy is generally understood to involve a capacity for setting personal goals, the ability to
establish personal moral principles and values, and to act upon them (Beauchamp & Childress, 2012).
Proper exercise of personal autonomy involves taking in information, analyzing it in terms of personal
meaning and interpretation, and acting upon the resultant conclusion. We expect clinicians to act with a
healthy respect for an individual’s autonomous decisions. However, we also understand that patient au-
tonomy is not absolute—we recognize exceptions like the ability to refuse to provide medically inappropri-
ate treatments (like dialysis for a head cold), the ability to hospitalize patients against their will when they
present a danger to themselves or others, and the decisional incapacity brought on by delirium. The ques-
tion that arises, therefore, is whether a particular instance of paternalism is justified, and quite reasonably
we set that standard high.
Does dementia lower this standard? There are some obligations we owe to people qua people—
cognitive challenges do not fundamentally change our human nature. But the rights we enjoy within a
medical context are not as inviolable or innate—some rights arise only in particular circumstances or when
particular standards are met. We do not, for instance, ask an infant about its treatment preferences, and
we have created an entire ethical and legal framework for proxy decision-making. At issue here is when
the agency shift occurs—when does the patient stop being the primary decision-maker for his or her care?
We accept that when someone is severely demented, another needs to step in to make important medical
decisions, but where is the threshold point?
In the context of informed consent, respect for personal autonomy and truth-telling generally revolves
around disclosing what a reasonable competent patient would want to know or what a reasonable clinician
ought to disclose to a patient (Faden & Beauchamp, 1980). Even patients who are facing personal
challenges like cancer or the onset of dementia have expressed a desire to know what is happening to them
– their anxiety and worry is not ameliorated by withholding information (Downs, 1999; Fallowfield, Jenkins,
& Beveridge, 2002; Shahidi, 2010; Tuckett, 2004). The only circumstances when it might potentially be
acceptable to lie to a competent and autonomous patient are in situations of life and death, i.e., times when
the truth would compromise the ability to care for the patient or the patient’s ability to make decisions
(Ryan, de Moore, & Patfield, 1995). The experience of autonomy for individuals with more profound
cognitive issues, however, can be very different. In fact, in cases of psychosis, delusion, or advanced
dementia, the patient’s autonomy has already been compromised by the underlying disease process—her
autonomy has been derailed (Hertogh, The, Miesen, & Eefsting, 2004; Ryan, de Moore, & Patfield,
1995; Tuckett, 2012). This creates a new duty for clinicians and caregivers— treating the patient with
dementia or cognitive impairment with respect as she attempts to engage with her world without necessar-
ily upholding her decisions or personal autonomy (Blum, 1994; Jaworska, 1999). In essence, there is a
point when our duty to respect a person means a duty not to do what the person tells us to do (Conly,
2013). This is, in essence, a justifiable form of paternalism, and one that opens the door to the permissi-
bility of deceptive practices done in the patient’s best interests.
It is important to note that deception can be not only compatible with respect for a patient, but also be
endorsed by the patient herself. Tuckett (2012) suggests that caregivers considering deception apply the
Golden Rule and ask themselves whether they would want to be lied to. A number of studies have
answered this in the affirmative—both caregivers and patients have endorsed lying and deception when
they are clearly done for the patient’s best or therapeutic interests (e.g., reducing distress; Elvish, James, &
Milne, 2010), when they occurred after the patient was no longer aware of the lie or the severity of the lie
was minor (a “little white lie”; Culley, Barber, Hope, & James, 2013; Day, James, Meyer, & Lee, 2011).
How might a clinician decide whether a particular lie or act of deception is morally permissible? Rely-
ing on personal intuition alone is not sufficient – while the clinician does possess specialized knowledge and
training, that alone does not allow the him to substitute his own judgment, as the subjective patient experi-
ence is relevant to treatment decisions (Brown, 2008; Johnston & Holt, 2006). Instead, it is necessary to
consider guidelines for acceptable deception. Brown (2008) argues that a clinician should withhold medi-
cally relevant information when “she reasonably expects both that (a) full disclosure would seriously com-
promise her patient’s permissible ends and that (b) her nondisclosure will not compromise other morally
important interests” (pp. 333-334). This serves as a formal norm—a broad guide that orients the clinician
towards ethical conduct in deception. Complementing this formal norm, Sokol (2007) proposes a specific
system evaluating the deception, including examining the justifications for the action, efforts to avoid unnec-
essary deception, the likelihood of the deception being successful, objections to the lie, and the willingness
of the lying agent to undergo formal inquiry by a professional body or court of law and whether the patient
consent to the lie if aware of the facts. This algorithm is not quick or easy—it requires the clinician to
engage in significant reflection and examination of her actions and motivations, necessarily producing a
small set of circumstances in which lying becomes morally permissible.
Applying Sokol’s Model
In order to clarify Sokol’s proposal, we turn back to the case of Stephen and the questions asked of
the clinicians considering deception.
Is the act deceptive?
Clearly we are withholding his cancer diagnosis from him and encouraging him to believe his bladder
pressure is due to something else, and as such, the practice is deceptive.
What justifications exist for engaging in deception?
Both the family and treatment staff believed that Stephen’s dementia would prevent him from being
able to cope with the diagnosis—the forgetfulness produced by his dementia would require constant
reminders that he had an aggressive disease which would undermine the effectiveness of his anxiolytic.
While the staff was conflicted, the family believed that his interests were better served by validating his
concern about his bladder pressure and providing the catheter to encourage voiding rather than disclose
his full diagnosis. This justification would likely fail in a patient who was not experiencing dementia. As
noted above, the obligation to disclose diagnostic information to competent individuals is part of a very
powerful concern about individual autonomy in making treatment decisions. However, the nature of
Stephen’s dementia undermines his ability to make these decisions, shifting the responsibility to treating him
with respect and helping him to make sense of the world around him in a compassionate manner. Sokol
includes a number of relevant factors that would allow us to proceed through the deception flowchart,
including the “prevention of great physical or psychological harm to the patient,” “compassionate decep-
tion to reduce great stress or anxiety,” and a patient who “is not emotionally or cognitively equipped to
decide or cope with the truth” (2007, p. 985). Had the treatment staff disclosed his inoperable cancer
diagnosis (and reoriented him to it every few minutes), his anxiety would have worsened, potentially to the
point that his care would have been compromised, as anxiety impacts morbidity, mortality, hostility and
combativeness (Moser, et al., 2011; Olafiranye, Jean-Louis, Zizi, Nunes, & Vincent, 2011; Watkins, et al.,
2013; von Kanel, Dimsdale, Adler, Patterson, Mills, & Grant, 2004), and the risks of simply increasing his
anxiolytic medication are well-documented (Bulat, Castle, Rutledge, & Quigley, 2008; Carlsten, Waern,
Holmgren, & Allebeck, 2003; Chan & Lin, 2010; Grad, 1995; Kirby, Denihan, Bruce, Radic, Coakley, &
Lawlor, 1999; Muscatello, Spina, Bandelow, & Baldwin, 2012; Neutel, Skurtveit, & Berg, 2012; Tamblyn,
Abrahamowicz, du Berger, McLeod, & Bartlett, 2005; van der Hooft, et al., 2008; Wang, Bohn, Glynn,
Mogun, & Avorn, 2001; Wu, Wang, Chang, & Lin, 2009). Very clearly, the decision to withhold the truth
from Stephen meets Sokol’s criteria.
Is the deception likely to succeed in light of the patient’s mental state, and is it possible for us to
meet our objectives without the deception?
Clearly, the cognitive challenges Stephen is experiencing make the deception likely to succeed –
Stephen’s need for constant reorientation places him in a position that would not allow him to discover the
information being withheld from him, nor would he be able to reflect upon it or integrate it into his experi-
ence of the world around him. Further, the alternative to the deception is revealing the truth to him about
his cancer diagnosis, and constantly reminding him of that aggressive illness would likely exacerbate the
anxiety that brought him to the hospital in the first place. As such, it would seem that the decision to
withhold the diagnosis meets these two requirements, allowing us to continue to possible objections.
Do the justifications for deception outweigh the objections that can be raised?
Sokol raises a number of important challenges, including our general orientation towards honesty (as a
prima facie concern), existing codes of ethics, the impact on relationships and the emotional distress if the
lie is disclosed, patient autonomy concerns, and personal biases and difficulty weighing harms and benefits.
Each of these is a salient concern when a clinician is considering deception with a patient who is not
experiencing a cognitive challenge. Stephen, however, is, meaning that his autonomy concerns and our
obligations towards him are less clearly defined. We can help orient him to his world and help him make
sense of his experiences – a key goal when considering patients with dementia (Day, James, Meyer, &
Lee, 2011; Hertogh, The, Miesen, & Eefsting, 2004; Jaworska, 1999) – but we would not assign him the
same cognitive status and capability as we would a cancer patient without dementia. Because his au-
tonomy is already compromised by his illness, a different set of principles becomes relevant, including
respect and compassion. The very nature of prima facie principles entails that certain contexts and circum-
stances may allow us to substitute a stronger duty over our default orientation – in this context, our orien-
tation towards the truth is superceded by our orientation to provide compassionate care. We care for
Stephen and his well-being, and we recognize that we must treat him with respect, which in this context
transforms the duty to disclose truthful diagnostic information into the duty to address his concerns in a way
that doesn’t exacerbate his anxiety. The duty to disclose becomes the duty to withhold, as the benefit of
the deception outweighs the harm.
Can we defend this decision to a professional board or court of law?
This is a significant concern, and Sokol includes this step in order to debias professionals and to remind
them of the severity of their actions. Failure to disclose medically relevant information would violate the
principle of informed consent if we were dealing with a patient who was capable of making his own
medical decisions. In this context, however, we are not dealing with such a moral agent – patients who are
incapable of making their own medical decisions rely upon proxy decision-makers (normally family mem-
bers or appointed proxy agents). As the family strongly endorsed the non-disclosure, there does not
appear to be any real conflict. Since the principle of informed consent also entails the ability to waive it
(i.e., situations where a patient may say “I don’t want to know, just fix me”), and it is entirely ethically
sound to waive informed consent to hearing bad news (Rudnick, 2002), it is entirely defensible not to
disclose the cancer diagnosis to Stephen.
Would the patient consent to the lie in advance?
As noted above, while cancer patients would generally want to know their diagnosis when they were
capable of processing the information (Shahidi, 2010), caregivers and patients with dementia have noted
that they would prefer not to hear information that would only cause them distress (Culley, Barber, Hope,
& James, 2013; Day, James, Meyer, & Lee, 2011; Elvish, James, & Milne, 2010). As such, the decision
not to disclose his cancer to diagnosis would seem to meet Sokol’s criteria and be a justifiable instance of
deception.
Conclusion
The above case and analysis should reinforce the severity of the decision to deceive patients. There
are very few circumstances when it is morally permissible to violate our general obligation to be truthful
with patients, and rightfully so. Any violation of that basic trust must have strong justification, and it is
important to follow a rigorous evaluation process when moving forward with deception. But it is important
to remember that there are times when the best thing we can do for our patient is provide him with comfort
—sometimes the truth is harsh and harmful. Sometimes the best thing we can do is not to tell him news that
will make things worse. Sometimes the best way for us to show respect is to show compassion.
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Beauchamp, T. L., & Childress, J. F. (2012). Principles of Biomedical Ethics (7th ed.). New York: Oxford
University Press.
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Bostick, N. A., Sade, R., McMahon, J. W., & Benjamin, R. (2006). Report of the American Medical
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Brown, C. (2008). Kant and Therapeutic Privilege. Journal of Medicine and Philosophy , 33, 321-336.
Bulat, T., Castle, S. C., Rutledge, M., & Quigley, P. (2008). Clinical practice algorithms: Medication
management to reduce fall risk in the elderly - Part 3, benzodiazepines, cardiovascular agents, and
antidepressants. Journal of the American Academy of Nurse Practitioners , 20, 55-62.
Carlsten, A., Waern, M., Holmgren, P., & Allebeck, P. (2003). The role of benzodiazepines in elderly
suicides. Scandanavian Journal of Public Health , 31, 224-228.
Chan, A. L., & Lin, S.-J. (2010). Trends of benzodiazepine prescribing and the risk of hip fractuce in
elderly patients in Taiwan: A population based study. International Journal of Psychiatry in Clinical
Practice , 14, 47-52.
Conly, S. (2013). Against Autonomy: Justifying Coercive Paternalism. New York: Cambridge University
Press.
Culley, H., Barber, R., Hope, A., & James, I. (2013). Therapeutic lying in dementia care. Nursing Stan-
dard , 28 (1), 35-39.
Day, A. M., James, I. A., Meyer, T. D., & Lee, D. R. (2011). Do people with dementia find lies and
deception in dementia care acceptable? Aging & Mental Health , 15 (7), 822-829.
Downs, M. G. (1999). How to tell? Disclosing a diagnosis of dementia. Generations , 23 (3), 30-33.
Elvish, R., James, I., & Milne, D. (2010). Lying in dementia care: An example of a culture that deceives in
people’s best interests. Aging & Mental Health , 14 (3), 255-262.
Elvish, R., James, I., & Milne, D. (2010). Lying in dementia care: An example of a culture that deceives in
people’s best interests. Aging & Mental Health , 14 (3), 255-262.
Faden, R. R., & Beauchamp, T. L. (1980). Decision-making and informed consent: a study of the impact
of disclosed information. Social Indicators Research , 7, 313-336.
Fallowfield, L. J., Jenkins, V. A., & Beveridge, H. A. (2002). Truth may hurt but deceit hurts more:
communication in palliative care. Palliative Medicine , 16, 297-303.
Grad, R. (1995). Benzodiazepines for insomnia in community-dwelling elderly: a review of benefit and
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Hertogh, C. M., The, B. A., Miesen, B. M., & Eefsting, J. A. (2004). Truth telling and truthfulness in the
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Hertogh, C. M., The, B. A., Miesen, B. M., & Eefsting, J. A. (2004). Truth telling and truthfulness in the
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Hodkinson, K. (2013). The need to know - therapeutic privilege: a way forward. Health Care Analysis ,
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James, I. A., Wood-Mitchell, A. J., Waterworth, A. M., Mackenzie, L. E., & Cunningham, J. (2006).
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Note
1. For the sake of argumentation, I am not including statements like “We can discuss that later”— it is
difficult to predict how effective such statements would be with a patient who is agitated.
Correspondence: mbutkus@mcneese.edu
Book Review
Gerald Rochelle. Doing Philosophy. Dunedin Academic Press, Edinburgh, Scotland, 2012. ISBN: 978-
1-78046-004-8. pp. 262.
REVIEWED BY LYDIA AMIR

COLLEGE OF MANAGEMENT ACADEMIC STUDIES, RISHON LEZION, ISRAEL
Gerald Rochelle, the last editor of the discontinued journal Practical Philosophy: Journal of Philo-
sophical Practitioners, is a British philosophical practitioner with a determination to make thinking a
productive, practical and meaningful undertaking for everyone. He has written, accordingly, a book on
practical philosophy that enables those who may not have done any philosophy in an organized way to
have a go at doing philosophy.
Written in an informative, easy and approachable style, Rochelle’s book attempts to make philosophy
accessible, to show that it is exciting and that it has meaning in our everyday lives. It does this by introduc-
ing a very broad range of topics (broader than is usual in introductory books in philosophy) that have
relevance to most areas of human concern: moral, scientific, social, theological, medical, and personal, as
well as more purely philosophical.
Rochelle begins with an explanation of what philosophy is and what doing philosophy means. Philoso-
phy is an activity that involves us in abstract thought and ideas. Though not historical in itself, philosophical
thinking is improved by understanding what philosophers have already thought, so that we do not waste
time trying to think over the same ground. We do philosophy in its weakest sense all the time, because we
are continually taking in information, thinking about it and coming up with conclusions. To do philosophy in
its strongest sense, however, is to argue effectively in defense of new ideas we come up with or to chal-
lenge existing ideas by providing rational arguments against them. Rochelle then defines some philosophical
terms and addresses first issues in logic (“Argument and Logic,” “Possibility”), epistemology (“What Do
We Know?” “Perceiving the World”), and philosophy of mind (“Mind”), before proceeding to moral
philosophy (“Right and Wrong”) and applied moral philosophy (“Abortion,” “Euthanasia,” “Animal Rights”),
political philosophy (“Equality,” “Politics, Political Equality, and the State of the World,” “War”), Philoso-
phy of law (“Punishment”), philosophy of religion (“God”), philosophy of science (“Science,” “Genetics,”
”Evolution,” “Cosmology”), and metaphysics (“Time,” “Life, Death, Immortality and Reincarnation”). This
remarkable tour of subjects closes with a look at more personal questions such as “The Meaning of Life.”
Each chapter begins with a main question, and throughout the chapter challenging and thought provok-
ing questions are being asked. Rochelle does not provide answers in the text; to the contrary, each chapter
finishes with at least one impressive list of further questions that somehow manage to make you feel unable
to ignore them.
As important background, philosophical figures of importance in all the areas discussed are identified.
A short bibliography awaits the reader at the end of each chapter, drawn primarily from various chapters in
Roger Scruton’s Modern Philosophy: An Introduction and Survey (2004), Peter Singer’s Ethics (1994),
Hugh LaFollette (ed.), Ethics in Practice: An Anthology (2002), and Thomas Nagel’s writings (1979,
1986), though supplemented by more specific books when necessary. An extensive reading list as well as

Lydia Amir 1398
internet resources point the way at the end of the book for those who wish to take any of these areas
further.
Rochelle’s preciseness and clarity of expression is impressive; at times, however, the discussion is
sketchy, as is fitting, however, an introductory book that manages to cover so many topics. As far as
Philosophical Counseling is concerned it would prove a very useful resource of important considerations
across a broad range of topics any of which could be brought to the philosophical counselor by a client.
In order to test that practicability of Rochelle’s new book, I gave it to a well-educated PhD in Chemi-
cal engineering, encouraging him to read a few entries of subjects that are close to his field of expertise and
a few that are not, as well as to answer the questions Rochelle asks in the text. This was not too hard or too
easy for him. When asked, however, if he would further use this book, he answered in the negative: he
would rather prefer to buy a book that tells him what philosophers have said. Yet we know through
Shaftesbury and Montaigne—two well-known though deceased practical philosophers, whose thoughts
we can read in histories of philosophy—that only by practicing our reason can we become rational and that
only through the exercise of our judgment can we learn to judge. But this is also why Rochelle’s book is
important to both those who do know the history of philosophy and those who do not. Reading histories of
philosophy won’t make us better thinkers. It may be unfortunate that this is so, but reading others’ thoughts
is too passive a practice to exercise our own thought process. Some more difficult mental gymnastics are
required in order to begin thinking at all, let alone to begin thinking effectively. But we all live under the
illusion that we think in the same way we breathe—naturally. This may be true to a degree, but to think well
or at least to think better, requires a training of the sort Socrates sought to provide in Athens. Rochelle’s
book fulfills this task: we can take it to bed, read a little till we get to a question and go to sleep with our
thought of the day, or we can keep it in our car and read it in a traffic jam, or … you get the picture. This
book becomes your best friend as you learn to become a more thoughtful companion to yourself.
N. B. Doing Philosophy is dedicated to Pauline, Gerald’s recently deceased wife, and I guess that it
is her picture that adorns the front of the book. Hence I would like to mention another of Rochelle’s books,
Goodbye: Grief from Beginning to End (2013); it too is excellent reading for anyone who may have
recently grieved or who is looking after someone who is ill, and all proceeds from sales of the book are
going to a charity.
References
LaFollette, Hugh (ed.). 2002. Ethics in Practice: An Anthology. Oxford: Blackwell.
Nagel, Thomas. 1979. Mortal Questions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Nagel, Thomas. 1986. The View from Nowhere. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Rochelle, Gerald. 2013. Goodbye: Grief from Beginning to End. Cambridge: Cambridge House Publish-
ing Limited.
Scruton, Roger. 2004. Modern Philosophy: An Introduction and Survey. London: Pimlico.
Singer, Peter. 1994. Ethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Correspondence: lydamir@colman.ac.il
Book Review
Michael S. Gazzaniga, Who’s In Charge: Free Will and the Science of the Brain. NY: HarperCollins
Publishers. 2011. ISBN: 978-0-06-190610-7. 222 pgs.
REVIEWED BY TROY CAMPLIN

SOUTHERN METHODIST UNIVERSITY, DALLAS, TX
Do human beings have free will, or is the world deterministic, meaning human beings do not have any
real choice in their behaviors? As we have learned more and more about how the brain works, the overall
consensus among neurobiologists is that we are determined beings and that free will is an illusion. This idea
has even been picked up by philosophers like Daniel Dennett who, in Freedom Evolves, argues that
freedom is actually an illusion and that we are really determined by the actions of our neurons, which in fact
act before we become aware of those actions. If our neurons are acting before awareness of our intention
to act occurs, how can we be understood as doing anything but following deterministic laws? Michael
Gazzaniga disagrees with this assessment, and he argues that neuroscientists are terribly behind the times in
their acceptance of determinism, given the rise of the idea of emergence.
Gazzaniga does acknowledge that we need to make sense of the fact that there are neurons active
before consciousness of that action takes place. More, the brain is made up of a variety of modules whose
actions and interactions need to make sense and be integrated into a whole. Gazzaniga argues that humans
have in their brains an “interpreter module”:
The psychological unity we experience emerges out of the specialized system called “the interpreter”
that generalizes explanations about our perceptions, memories, and actions and the relationships among
them. This leads to a personal narrative, the story that ties together all the disparate aspects of our con-
scious experience into a coherent whole: order from chaos. The interpreter module appears to be uniquely
human and specialized to the left hemisphere. Its drive to generate hypotheses is the trigger for human
beliefs, which, in turn, constrain our brain (102).
However, this interpreter processes what already happened in “a post hoc rationalization process. The
interpreter that weaves our story only weaves what makes it into consciousness” (103). In other words,
we are the stories we tell to ourselves about ourselves. Now, this may all sound depressingly deterministic
—and more, it seems to give us the mechanism for how we delude ourselves. However, the story is more
complex than this, as we shall soon see. The interpreter is only step one on our way toward the emergence
of free will and the reality of our being responsible agents.
The idea of emergence lies behind Gazzaniga’s argument that human beings do in fact have a kind of
free will. The idea of emergence itself is not mysterious. Molecules of water are not wet – the attribute of
wetness is a property that emerges when you have enough water molecules interacting together. Equally, if
you have enough neurons interacting together with enough complexity, you get consciousness, the emer-
gence of a mind capable of making choices (130). For Gazzaniga, free will is the freedom to choose among
actual options. Those choices emerge at the interface between the brain and the mind.
This mind, however, cannot emerge in isolation. The mind is necessarily social in nature. A human
raised in isolation would react according to the drives in the brain and would thus not have free will. When
human beings interact, there are social orders which emerge and rules governing how one should act in
Troy Camplin 1400
those situations. The rules do not emerge in the human brain, but in our social interactions. Yet, at the same
time, “we are wired from birth for social interactions” (144), meaning we are the kind of species that does
not have a choice except to be social and to thus have social rules emerge. Indeed, humans are full of
instincts—or human universals, if you prefer—that constrain our actions and interactions. In turn, the social
orders which emerge from those interactions constrain each of our brains and behaviors, letting us know
what actions we ought to take if we want to accomplish some goal.
The result is that we may have a drive to do something, but we can then override that drive in order to
abide by the social rules. For example, each person has an instinct to mate and, in the case of men, to seek
maximum diversity. Does that mean that men should have sex with every woman who will let him have sex
with her? Even men who cheat on their wives don’t actually have sex with every woman who comes along.
The drive for maximizing sexual diversity is constrained first by social rules against rape; second, it is
constrained, for many men, by the social rules against cheating on your spouse. Among many groups there
are social rules against extramarital sex, which can act as a further constraint. And this is beside the fact we
have rules against incest, which are really social reinforcements of yet another instinct, the Westermarck
effect. In this case, one instinct can act as a constraint on another instinct, with social rules reinforcing that
instinct.
The emergence of social rules in fact gives us a variety of choices. We can choose to give in to one
instinct rather than another; we can choose among social rules; we can choose between an instinct and a
social rule. It is this ability to choose that we call free will, and it is the ability to follow rules that we call
responsibility. Indeed, without free will, how can we be considered responsible agents? We must be able
to choose whether or not to follow social rules if we are to be responsible for our actions. But what this
means is that if you demonstrate the ability to follow rules—to make a plan and achieve a goal—then you
demonstrate your responsibility in all aspects of life as well. The ability to follow rules doesn’t vary based
on the kinds of rules. Even a sociopath can follow rules, no matter that a sociopath does not have empathy
toward others. The sociopath may not know in the same way as a non-sociopathic person that it is wrong
to murder, rape, or steal, but the sociopath does know what the social rules are and the consequences of
not following those rules. Thus, even though the sociopath does not naturally feel empathy, the sociopath is
responsible for his actions. In fact, the sociopath may have to more actively reason his way through life than
does the non-sociopath, whose instincts are intact. Might this mean we ought to consider the sociopath
more responsible for his actions, given that the non-sociopath might in fact be less capable of violating
social norms?
However, Gazzaniga throws an interesting wrench into the machine. It turns out that in order to have
free will, you might in fact have to believe you have free will. Gazzaniga presents studies that demonstrated
that belief you have free will makes you try harder at being good, while it seems that “disbelief in free will
produces a subtle cue that exerting effort is futile, thus granting permission not to bother” (115). More than
that, if you don’t believe you have free will, you are more likely “to act aggressively and to be less helpful
toward others.” But if you believe you have free will, you act as though you have free will, meaning you act
better. This suggests to me, at least, that one has free will if one believes one has free will. It is a mental state
that affects our behaviors. Thus “[i]t seems that not only do we believe we control our actions, but it is
good for everyone to believe it” (115). This has very important implications for philosophical practice.
While it may be comforting for clients to believe their actions are determined, if one were to get a client to
believe this, it is likely that the client will then go out feeling he or she has permission to “not bother” with
Review of Who’s in Charge 1401
trying to act good. Here we have a case of a literal social construction of reality, where the belief in free will
has real effects on the nature of the mind and on society.
What this suggests is that beliefs have an effect on social order. A culture in which belief in free will
dominates will be one in which people are less aggressive, more helpful, and have more self-control. More,
we can combine the work Gazzaniga discusses with that of Douglas Kenrick et al (2002; 2003), whose
work demonstrates that small variations in behaviors can blossom into quite different cultural expressions,
to arrive at the conclusions of Ruth Benedict in Patterns of Culture that our cultures can be understood as
“individuals” having “personalities” as they are expressions of some set of dominant traits. The result of this
is that a person may find himself or herself feeling right at home in one culture or subculture, but deeply out
of place in another. More, the majority of people in one culture may find you normal, while in another they
may think you insane. Thus, people may need to find their own culture or subculture more than they need
to fit into the one they are in at present. For some, this may be impossible. Immigration is often difficult.
And, more practically, different businesses have their own cultures, created by the personalities of those
who are there—and you may not be able to just drop the job, or even be sure you’ll find the business
culture you need to succeed.
What Gazzaniga is proposing, then, is that the human mind is in fact a social mind. The human mind
emerges in our social interactions. Without our social interactions, there would be no human mind to speak
of. There would be no responsibility and no free will, either. The interactions of our neurons give rise to
sensations and actions, which are interpreted by the interpreter, which unifies everything into higher-level
consciousness. We are the stories we tell ourselves—a concept familiar to those who know Alexander
Nehamas’ Nietzsche: Life as Literature. And given that we are the stories we tell ourselves, we can, as
our own authors, edit our stories. We have the ability to choose, within reasonable limits, who we want to
be and how we will interact with others. Our interactions with others gives rise to our social orders—to our
socially-constructed rules of interactions, to the economy, to science, to the artistic and literary orders, etc.
— which in turn both give us choices and constrain our actions. Thus, we can choose who we are, we can
choose how we present ourselves, we can choose whether to give in to our drives or abide by the rules of
the society in which we live. If we have choices, and we can decide among those choices, then we do in
fact have free will.
References
Benedict, Ruth. (1934/2006). Patterns of Culture. New York, NY: Mariner Books.
Dennett, Daniel C. (2003). Freedom Evolves. New York, NY: Viking Press.
Kenrick, Douglas, Jon K. Manner, Jon Butner, Norman P. Li, D. Vaughn Becker, and Mark Schaller.
(2002) “Dynamical Evolutionary Psychology: Mapping the Domains of the New Interactionist Para-
digm” Personality and Social Psychology Review. Vol. 6, no. 4, 247-356.
Kenrick, Douglas, Norman P. Li and Jonathan Butner. (2003) “Dynamical Evolutionary Psychology: Indi-
vidual Decision Rules and Emergent Social Norms” Psychological Review. Vol. 110, no. 1, 3-28.
Nehamas, Alexander. (1985). Nietzsche: Life as Literature. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Correspondence: troycamplin@gmail.com
Book Review
Irene McMullin, Time and the Shared World, Northwestern University Press, Evanston, Illinois, 2013.
ISBN: 9780810129023. 298pp.
REVIEWED BY LESLIE C. MILLER

COLORADO MESA UNIVERSITY, GRAND JUNCTION, CO
When I first began examining this text to determine whether or not it might prove helpful for philosophi-
cal practitioners, I was concerned by the author’s level of scholarship and detail—not that the levels are
too low, but precisely because they are so high. McMullin knows her Heidegger very well and clearly lays
out the issues, bringing in from the literature the major objections to her interpretation, and then handily
dealing with them. Admittedly there is much here which might only be of interest to Heideggerian scholars,
but that will not prevent practitioners from taking many beneficial practical ideas from this work.
Although McMullin does considerable textual explication in Time and the Shared World, the book’s
focus is primarily on analyzing and clarifying those aspects of Heidegger’s thought that relate to intersubjectivity
and how humans share the world. As if that were not enough, she also extends her analysis beyond the
texts she investigates to explore the implications of the relevant concepts to which she has brought clarity.
Her stated intent with this work is to demonstrate how we can “benefit from Heidegger’s radically new
characterization of human selfhood …” (3). In this work of bringing to light, interpreting, and defending her
understanding of certain aspects of Dasein that have been contested, neglected or ignored, the author
conveys the social nature of Dasein in a way that makes it much easier for those philosophical practitioners
who may not be Heideggerian experts to use Heidegger’s framework in their own work with clients.
Because McMullin’s book is so obviously first-tier exegetical scholarship that doesn’t look like a
promising source of ideas and materials to enhance our practice with clients, this review will deviate slightly
from the expected format. I will begin with an overview of the book itself, evaluating it for merit and
readability, and then give a brief outline of the contents and means of presentation. Finally, I will provide a
few examples of useful concepts and how (and why) one might use them with clients.
Time and the Shared World is organized quite nicely, perhaps because McMullin writes as well as she
thinks. As every Heideggerian scholar knows, explaining Heidegger to others is even more difficult than
reading him and coming to an understanding for oneself. Heidegger’s thought is notoriously difficult to
grasp because of his complex sentence construction, the use of technical jargon and his many neologisms,
his unorthodox phenomenological method, and the sheer density of important terms. But even when one
gets a handle on those hurdles, there remains the problem of the way most of his important concepts are
interwoven—as if one had to understand it all in order to understand its parts. This situation is what causes
writing about Heidegger to be so troublesome: in unraveling a concept, one often needs to discuss several
others, but those other concepts cannot themselves be understood without first deciphering a number of
other concepts, one of which is usually the very concept one was trying to explicate in the first place.
McMullin succeeds at navigating those treacherous waters so well that the reader never gets lost. In fact,
the very way she has organized her book makes clear to the reader some of the structure of the web of the
interwoven concepts she elucidates, with each chapter bringing more development to the ideas discussed
in previous ones, and hence more understanding to the reader.

In Chapter 1 (“The ‘Subject’ of Inquiry”), McMullin begins her journey towards a Heideggerian
understanding of intersubjectivity with Heidegger’s famous rejection of the standard Cartesian view of
subjectivity, including its attendant subject/object distinction. Her initial explanation of those aspects of
Dasein relevant to the rest of the work is wonderfully lucid. The balance of this first chapter is taken up
with a discussion wherein McMullin exposes clearly how a Dasein’s structures are closely bound up with
Heidegger’s understanding of intersubjectivity.
For those not interested in the minutiae of Heideggerian scholarship, perhaps the most difficult chap-
ters of this book would be Chapter 2 (“Mineness and the Practical First-Person”) and Chapter 3 (“Being
and Otherness: Sartre’s Critique”), containing as they do long passages of close reading, extensive discus-
sion, and rigorous responses to those in the secondary literature who do (or will) disagree with her inter-
pretations. Nevertheless, these two chapters do well laying out for the reader some of the more difficult
and contentious concepts in Heidegger’s thought in highly understandable language. Working from her
now-defended interpretations and clarifications, McMullin moves on to Chapter 4 (“Heideggerian Aprioricity
and the Categories of Being”), bringing along a fuller picture of the self and authenticity.
In this fourth chapter the author delves deeper into Dasein’s structures, showing the reader how she
understands the a priori categories of Dasein’s being as not only helping to create Dasein’s world and the
things in it, but also as being responsive to those things the Dasein finds therein. As this is a long-standing
and highly contentious issue in Heideggerian scholarship—one which was debated by Heidegger himself
and others during his lifetime—McMullin spends quite a lot of time addressing contrary interpretations and
handling of objections. The upshot of all this painstaking detail work is a workable outline of how Dasein’s
way of being in the world requires it to recognize and respond to other Daseins.
The outline given in Chapter 4 is flushed out clearly in the next chapter (“The Temporality of Care”),
where McMullin gives us a clear view of just how the various aspects of Dasein’s structure work to make
intersubjectivity possible—and more specifically, how temporality plays its role in allowing one to meet
another in the world. This latter project requires the author to provide her own original interpretation of
Dasein’s temporality, the implications and functioning of which become the topics for the following chapter.
Chapter 6 (“Fürsorge: Acknowledging the Other Dasein”) provides the reader with a complex but
easy-to-follow map of how temporality, on McMullin’s interpretation, allows for the temporal recognition
of other Dasein in the world. Her discussion ranges over many of the ways this can happen, with respect
to such things as responsibility, solicitude, authenticity, the acknowledgment of others, and, finally, dis-
course. Discourse receives an important treatment here since it helps illuminate the ways communication
essentially produces our shared orientation to the world.
McMullin’s final chapter, titled “Authenticity, Inauthenticity, and the Extremes of Fürsorge,” brings the
book full-circle. Her now fully developed position on intersubjectivity shows us how even negligent or
abusive ways of being towards others presupposes our recognition of them. McMullin gives us a clear
analysis of how temporality is involved in being-with, and why this is so whether or not we are being
ethical. She ends the chapter with a discussion of some of the ethical implications of the view she has been
expounding, focusing on such things as the call of conscience, authenticity and discourse, and our respon-
sibility to ourselves and others.
For those not closely acquainted with Heidegger’s thought, the above outline of this work may provide
no clue as to what resources McMullin is providing us, nor how we might go about using those resources
Review of Time and the Shared World 1404
in sessions with clients. In the balance of this review I shall examine a few of the more interesting and easy-
to-use concepts laid out in this work, attempt to provide some simple examples of how one might apply the
information, and briefly explain why one might wish to do so. Perhaps the most fundamental and yet far-
reaching places to begin would be with the Heideggerian rejection of the subject/object distinction and the
resulting conception of the self, as discussed by McMullin in the first few chapters.
It is not uncommon for a defense of the “self” to be at the root of a client’s problems, in one way or
another. One possible way of dealing with this issue would be to help such clients understand that the “self”
they think they are protecting (the Cartesian self), does not even exist. One could simply go to Heidegger,
find the relevant passages, and put all that information together oneself, although, depending on how much
background in Heidegger one had, that might take quite a bit of time. The benefit of this book for practi-
tioners with little to no exposure to Heidegger is here quite evident. Even the way McMullin expresses
things already known by Heideggerians is helpful. For example, here is a simple sentence on page 15
summarizing a few points she has made: “To be a self is to occupy a way of being characterized by
relationality and responsiveness to the world and others.” This relationality and responsiveness of our way
of being is at the heart of Heideggerian ethics, and is the focal point for all of McMullin’s clear exposition
and insightful extrapolations. Were this information conveyed to clients, those clients would have another
way of understanding their “self” in such a way as might help alleviate their fear of perceived attacks on it,
and thus they might become less defensive in their interactions with others.
One common mind-set with which clients can come to us is a resistance to the idea of needing any sort
of work or change. We, as philosophers, are interested in using thought and philosophical concepts to help
our clients. Our clients, on the other hand, often just want some simple solution to a particular problem
they are experiencing. “Life is supposed to be easy,” they might say. “We aren’t supposed to have to work
at it.” As a means of educating clients on this point, McMullin gives us, in the first chapter, a wonderfully
clear discussion of das Man. This concept could be explored with a client as a means of bringing to view
how Being-in-the-world by default seduces us into giving up our individuality and presses us to surrender
the responsibility we have to create and define ourselves. To go even further with this, naturally following
from the discussion of das Man could be an examination of authenticity itself. The mineness of our exist-
ence and the explicit awareness of our responsibility in authenticity is made wonderfully clear in Chapter 2,
beginning on page 53. The careful and accessible explication of these concepts and how they interrelate
can give the practitioner new material to use in orienting clients to the whole process of philosophical
practice. The discussion of authenticity as a responsibility we have by our very nature that McMullin
weaves throughout the book is clear enough for even non-Heideggerian practitioners to understand and
use as a means of helping clients feel more at home in the world.
For those of us who teach mindfulness in our practice, McMullin’s elucidation of Heidegger’s notori-
ously complex and confusing conception of temporality provides yet another useful way to introduce
mindfulness to clients. For example, with the past experienced as thrownness and the future experienced
as the projection of possibilities, we are allowed to see the present as a meeting of the past and future,
while remaining aware that into neither can we go. Neither the future nor the past may be experienced
other than in our minds, and that means we get to place our own interpretations on them. One beneficial
way of doing so would be to intentionally relate “good” or positive pasts to positive futures, instead of
thinking we are reading the negativity of the past or future that are not really there other than in the present;
evaluations would have to be made-up by us. Neither the past nor the future are inherently “bad.” Yet
again McMullin has provided us with a means of helping clients release unhelpful and maladaptive views of
reality.
Heidegger’s Dasein analytic is complex. His exposition of it is at times confusing because of vagueness
or even outright contradiction. McMullin does an excellent job of not only sorting out this complexity and
defending her original interpretations, but also of refining that which she and others find vague in, or even
absent from, Heidegger’s work. The resulting exposition of the relational and intersubjective nature of
Dasein provides an easy to understand introduction to the existentially and ethically important aspects of
our nature—aspects that can be used in different ways with individual clients who may have varied prob-
lems.
While the book is not the perfect introduction to Heidegger’s thought, McMullin’s exegesis is clear, her
insights perceptive, her writing trenchant, and her analyses precise. Simply by following her thinking, the
reader will come to an understanding of some important aspects of Heidegger’s thought. What is best
about this work is that those aspects of Heidegger she chooses to analyze, and the concepts she extrapo-
lates from those ideas, are precisely the ones most helpful for practitioners’ use in helping clients orient
themselves in the world thoughtfully as responsible and connected participants. Ethics, intersubjectivity,
interrelatedness, even one’s rejection of the claims of others presupposes those claims—not just because
someone said so, but ontologically and ontically. That one is (or exists) socially and ethically—and how—
is very important for clients who feel alienated or lack an understanding of the claims we have on others
and the claims they have on us.
Correspondence: lesliecmiller@gmail.com
Book Review
Lawrence LeShan, Landscapes of the Mind: The Faces of Reality, Eirini Press, Guilford, CT: 2012.
ISBN: 978-0-9799989-8-0. 216 pages.
REVIEWED BY MICHAEL GROSSO

DIVISION OF PERCEPTUAL STUDIES, UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA
One way to approach philosophical counseling is through the concept of worldviews. Each of us lives
as it were through the lens of a general picture of reality we carry around with us. In the vast majority of
cases that picture is mostly unconscious, crude and unanalyzed. However rough and uncritical one’s
general picture or worldview, it shapes our perception of things as well as our feelings and our actions. In
that sense, all experience is mediated through the imagination.
A prolific and lively writer, Lawrence LeShan is a psychologist with a strong interest in philosophy.
Indeed, Landscapes of the Mind is dedicated to a philosopher, Giambattista Vico, “who first articulated
the concepts that led to this book”. One Vichian concept related to the landscapes of the mind that we
inhabit and therefore to worldview-making hinges on the relationship between imagination and reason. In
childhood, and during the primitive stages of a culture, imagination is strongest and most creative, accord-
ing to Vico in his New Science of 1744. In the more mature stages of a culture, “the age of men,” as
opposed to the ages of gods and of heroes, reason enters the composition of the dominant worldview. In
Vico’s view, the more advanced and mature a culture, the more reason dominates and tends to undermine
the achievements of imagination—art, religion, and mythology.
A culture or a personal worldview may reach a stage in which rationality becomes so invasive as to
disintegrate the cohesiveness of consciousness. An indication of this would be the loss of the sensus com-
munis and the subsequent lapse into a selfish incivility that Vico enshrined with the phrase “barbarism of
reflection.” In short, the different worldviews that we inhabit determine the character of our culture as well
as that of our individual lives. What is possible in one worldview becomes impossible or thwarted in
another. The expression or degradation of human potential is a direct function of one’s truly operative
worldview. I say “truly operative” because we have to distinguish between functional and merely affected
worldviews.
To offer an idea of how worldviews may be experimentally explored, let me recall a healing workshop
I took years ago with Dr. LeShan. It was based on one of his early books, The Medium, the Mystic and
the Physicist (Viking, 1974). LeShan argued that these three apparently divergent disciplines complement
each other and converge toward producing a potentially new and profoundly transformative worldview.
The idea has grown legs today. A good reference here is Rosenblum’s and Kuttner’s The Quantum
Enigma (2006), which elucidates the connection between the mystery of consciousness and the quantum
domain of physical reality.
The mystical element of this worldview (described in LeShan’s 1974 book) provided the hypothetical
source or life-enhancing ground, the oneness of spirit that pervades all being and experience. In this realm
lay the creative power of the healing imagination. The psychology of mediumship points toward the skills of
a special receptivity, without which contact with the One is gravely impaired. And all this is buttressed by
the relevant concepts of the new physics. It was a worldview consistent with new realms of healing expe-
rience, and LeShan was concerned with mobilizing the power of imagination for therapeutic purposes.
Michael Grosso 1407
A worldview is a picture, a mental landscape that we inhabit. Is it possible to inhabit a view that differs
from the one we’re normally entrenched in? LeShan set up workshops to prove we can. The experiment
he arranged was as follows: A group of about eight of us would meditate upon a target person. The target
person was ill, in some kind of pain or distress, but we were not to think about the nature of the specific
illness.
Our sole meditative task was to dwell upon and unite with the target person, but in a way not limited by
any extraneous thought or feeling or even healing intention. The strict aim was to generate a unified con-
sciousness. LeShan would mention St. Teresa in one breath and in the next bring in Shroedinger and his
Upanishadic-inspired idea of there being numerically one mind. The experiment was about our forging a
group consciousness in which we might access the subliminal healing source or agency.
Positive effects for the targeted person as well as for the meditators were amply noted and recorded.
For my part, the exercise in “knowing with” or “identifying with” the Other was invaluable learning experi-
ence. LeShan’s experiment had powerful effects, mental and physical, on all who got involved, and I came
away from the experience confident there might be healing benefits in group meditation centered on unified
consciousness.
LeShan has discussed these ideas in many of his books since then, for example, in his classic How to
Meditate (1975) and Cancer as a Turning Point (Penguin, 1990). In Landscapes of the Mind (2012),
the author returns more explicitly to the theme of worldview making. I use the gerund here because nobody’s
worldview is a static thing. Our picture of the world is constantly changing because the context of our
experience is constantly changing. On the other hand, the way we experience the world and each other
depends on our assumptions at a given moment of how the world looks, feels, and works. Each of us, in
fact, lives in a world inevitably conditioned by the dominant reality-pictures whose spell we labor under at
any given time. LeShan’s experimentation showed how groups of people might break the spell of the
prevailing worldview.
I was in my study and heard a boom of thunder. I thought, ‘Better take my umbrella when I step out.’
Vico reminds us that the same sound of thunder, heard by a person in a pre-scientific culture, might be
taken as the voice of a god, a portent, an occasion for sacred terror. Worldviews mediated by mythic
imagination generate totally different kinds of experience than worldviews mediated by modern science.
The range and quality of our experience is always mediated by a particular worldview, and LeShan
would have us reflect on how our experience—our troubles at any given moment—are very much the
result of the prevailing world picture acting upon and molding our consciousness. This seems the vital and
challenging premise of LeShan’s most recent book. The author begins with a chapter on “You and Your
World Pictures,” and takes us through the various experiences of a kind of Everyman he calls “John
Psmith,” a “consulting engineer.” He shows us Psmith in changing situations and explains how the different
situations evoke different world pictures and their corresponding values, attitudes, and emotions. While on
the job in his world as engineer Psmith is cool and analytic; but when he learns that his daughter may be in
mortal danger he’s afraid, drops the analytic façade, and switches into a mode of prayer. “This is a far cry
from how Psmith perceived the world and reacted to it during his day at the office” (p. 20), LeShan
remarks.
Later, after realizing it was a false alarm, Psmith is off and dancing with his wife (where his picture of
things regains a rosy hue), and later still, he retires and has a beautiful dream, thus encountering yet another
Review of Landscapes of the Mind 1408
reality with still other working assumptions and reality-defining properties. The author sketches a few more
pairs of world pictures, i.e., ways of constructing reality, for example, by people during peacetime and
people at war, or from the perspective of childhood and adulthood. In short, we are all forced to be
continually going through different phases of life, in different contexts and situations, all of which force us to
adopt, more or less appropriately, different personas and styles of existential response. Much of the world’s
woe is due to the inability to inhabit the view of the Other.
Life for LeShan appears then rather like an improvisational art form; some of us negotiate the twists
and turns of existence more effectively than others. Being graceful in negotiating the stages of life may have
something to do with the degree of elasticity in how we wear our worldviews. To explore this necessary
and practical art form more effectively, LeShan suggests we need to elaborate a more detailed taxonomy
of worldviews.
His own sketch is fourfold, based on two sets of contrasting ideas: quantitative and non-quantitative;
discrete and continuous. So we have a world picture that is quantitative and full of discrete particulars—
call it unvarnished workaday materialism; its polar opposite, non-quantitative and continuous—i.e., spiri-
tual and unbounded, which is to say, mystical; non-quantitative and discrete—defining the world of fairytales
and mythology (a crucial world for Vico); and lastly the quantitative and continuous, cosmic physicalism,
i.e., relativity theory—in general, the worldview of the modern physicist.
“World pictures are tools,” writes LeShan, “each adapted to specific types of problems and needs and
using different methods” (p. 60). But “new refinements” are sometimes introduced as cultures evolve and
meander. The danger is that we become uncritically absorbed in a world picture and allow ourselves to
become its tool. “The trouble is we have a basic commitment to the idea that there is one true valid concept
of reality (ours, of course) and that all others are primitive, childlike, mythological or pathological” (p. 61).
Many, if not most, of the conflicts of life, personal and global, are based on this committed blindness to the
worldview of others.
Needless to say, it’s no easy matter to break free from one’s cultural and ideological narcissism. Vico
wrote he labored long to enter the mentalities of those whom at first seemed alien, primitive, and different;
he did it by exploring the “modifications” of his own mind. Genuine effort at self-knowledge would there-
fore seem to be a pre-requisite to restoring some measure of sensus communis. Reason and technology
may provide the point of departure for personal and social healing, but will never suffice to experience the
healing oneness of the human spirit. Vico and LeShan invite us to expand our imagination of the Other.
Without that inward receptivity, chances of recognizing the humanity of the Other are drastically and dan-
gerously minimized.
References
LeShan, Lawrence (1990). Cancer as a Turning Point. Penguin Press.
—— (1975). How to Meditate, 7/e. Bantam Books.
—— (1974). The Medium, the Mystic and the Physicist. Viking Press.
Rosenblum, Bruce and Fred Kuttner (2006). The Quantum Enigma. Physics Encounters Consciousness.
NY: Oxford University Press.
Correspondence: grosso.michael@gmail.com
Philosophical Practice, July 2014, 9.2: 1409 1409
Biographies of Contributors
Lydia Amir is a senior lecturer in philosophy, head of Humanistic Studies at the School of Media
Studies, the College of Management Academic Studies, Rishon LeZion, Israel, and an established practi-
cal philosopher, certified by and faculty of APPA. Her book, Humor and the Good Life in Modern
Philosophy: Shaftesbury, Hamann, Kierkegaard, was published by SUNY Press in 2014.
Dr. Constantinos Athanasopoulos has published more than four books in Greece and is the editor
of two books to be published in the UK. The most recent of his more than 25 papers and contributions
include: serving as guest editor for a special APPA journal issue containing a selection of papers from the
12th ICPP, and editing the papers from the Round Table on Wittgenstein and Therapy submitted for the
World Congress of Philosophy (both held in Athens in August 2013). He is an Associate Lecturer for the
Open University (UK), manages the British Wittgenstein Society online Wittgenstein Annotated Bibliogra-
phy, and serves as the BWS Book Reviews Editor. He is President of the Hellenic Society of Philosophical
Practice and has worked as a Philosophical Counsellor for more than four years.
David H. Brendel, M.D., Ph.D. is an executive coach, philosophical counselor, and clinical psychia-
trist. He is founder and director of Leading Minds Executive & Personal Coaching and an associate with
the Camden Consulting Group in Boston. He works with clients from Boston, across the United States,
and around the world.
Matthew Allen Butkus, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor at McNeese State University teaching
courses in theoretical and applied ethics (biomedical, scientific, and organizational ethics). He has pub-
lished work on ethical issues in ADHD diagnosis, critical care medicine, and political philosophy
Troy Camplin has a Ph.D. in the humanities from the University of Texas at Dallas. He is currently a
lecturer at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. He has taught English in middle school, high school,
and college, and is currently taking care of his children at home. He is the author of “Diaphysics,” an
interdisciplinary work on systems philosophy; other projects include the application of F.A. Hayek’s spon-
taneous order theory to ethics, the arts, and literature. His play, “Almost Ithacad,” won the PIA Award
from the Cyberfest at Dallas Hub Theater.
Michael Grosso took his Ph.D. in philosophy, and studied classical Greek, at Columbia University,
taught philosophy in New Jersey, New York, and California, and is now affiliated with the Division of
Perceptual Studies, which is part of the University of Virginia Health System. Michael is an author and a
painter, and interested in psychophysical anomalies. He recently completed The Strange Case of St.
Joseph of Copertino: Ecstasy and the Mind-Body Problem (forthcoming from Oxford University Press),
and co-edited Beyond Physicalism: The Reconciliation of Science and Spirituality, with E. Kelly and
A. Crabtree (forcoming from Rowman & Littlefield).
Leslie C. Miller is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Colorado Mesa University in Grand

Junction, Colorado and a certified philosophical practitioner. He thrives on helping others learn to flourish
and live consciously through mindfulness and lizard brain taming.
Michael Noah Weiss has a Ph.D. in philosophy and is a member of the Norwegian Society for
Philosophical Practice as well as the 2nd vice-president of the Global Ethic Initiative Austria. In addition to
his current work as a philosophical practitioner in Norway, Austria and Switzerland, he is working as a
university lecturer at the Academy of Education of Lower Austria in the field of applied ethics and practical
philosophy.
1410
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Who’s in Charge? Free Will and the Science of the Brain

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Insight and Action:

Keywords: coaching, executive coaching, philosophical coaching, philosophical counseling, posi-

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Similarities of Coaching and Philosophical Counseling

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The Dialectic of Coaching and Philosophical Counseling

MICHAEL NOAH WEISS

Keywords: Socrates, guided imagery, ethics, conscience

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Now a few remarks on the content of the story:

2.2 Guided Imagery Script

2.3 Interpretation and Analysis

2.3.1 Remarks on the Imagery

2.3.2 Investigating the Gift in the Treasure Chest

2.3.3. The value of guided imagery for philosophical practice

The Shield of Achilles: A Use for Philosophical Practice

CONSTANTINOS ATHANASOPOULOS, FHEA

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The Importance of the Shield for Philosophical Practice

Sketch for a use of the Shield in Philosophical Practice

The Shield of Achilles

Compassionate Deception: Lying to Patients with Dementia

MATTHEW ALLEN BUTKUS

Keywords: dementia, lying, deception, ethics, autonomy, compassion

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Philosophical and Ethical Issues

Applying Sokol’s Model

Is the act deceptive?

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Leslie C. Miller is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Colorado Mesa University in Grand

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