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Description
Within the academic bureaucracy, counseling and philosophy are considered separate disciplines, each with its own department and faculty. It would be a mistake, however, to interpret this disciplinary division to mean that philosophy has nothing to offer the counseling profession. Indeed, the foundational issues that drive counseling practice, such as what it means to help someone, how the mind and body are related, and whether it is reasonable to assume that one person can come to know another, are topics that fall squarely within the realm of philosophy (Chessick, 1987; Stolorow, Atwood, & Orange, 2002). Ongoing philosophical reflection, therefore, is vitally important to ensure the continued evolution of the counseling profession.
With this in mind, it is essential for counselors to consider the revolutionary developments in philosophy that have occurred over the past century. Specifically, contemporary philosophers (e.g., Rorty, 1979, 1999) have challenged the traditional goal of philosophy as a quest for absolute truth. This line of reasoning has enormous implications for counseling theory and practice. However, the discourse of professional philosophers is often tedious, jargon-laden, and hopelessly obscure to counselors and other nonphilosophers. Therefore, the purpose of this article is twofold: (a) to provide a clear update and summary of these philosophical developments for counselors and (b) to argue that neopragmatism, an important movement within contemporary philosophy, has particular relevance and applicability to the counseling profession. I shall communicate these ideas within the following organizational structure: (a) Truth as the Guide, (b) The Problems With Truth, (c) Counseling Without Truth, (d) Implications of Neopragrnatism for Contemporary Mental Health Culture, and (e) Discussion and Conclusions.
Truth as the Guide
Historically, Western thought has been dominated by a search for absolute and universal conclusions about reality that are completely independent of history, culture, language, and human constructions (Anderson, 1990; Rorty, 1999). The general assumption underlying this quest has been that knowledge of these final truths will guide humanity to a superior existence (Anderson, 1990). Plato (trans. 1968), for example, used the analogy of shadows on a cave wall to describe ordinary human knowing. The goal of philosophy, he posited, is to determine the essence (i.e., true nature) of the things that are casting the shadows. By discovering essences, philosophers could serve as guides to a more fulfilled life that is governed by truth. Likewise, Western religious traditions posit that truth can be known through divine revelation. Accordingly, this divinely revealed truth would serve as the guide to actualized living. Similarly, since the Enlightenment, the scientific method has been posited as the route to truth (Anderson, 1990). The implicit promise of science has been that the human race can advance through the discovery of objective truth, which is only made possible through use of the scientific method.
The search for truth has also been a key component of the counseling profession. That is, the conceptual foundation of traditional counseling theories is that helping people with psychological problems is dependent upon true knowledge of the causes of those problems (Hansen, 2002). For example, psychodynamic theories presume that unconscious motivation is the true cause of psychological problems (Hansen, 2000). Cognitive theories, alternatively, posit that distorted cognitions are the fundamental determinants of mental difficulties (Mahoney, 1991). According to humanistic theories, the true cause of psychological suffering is a developmental arrest of the drive toward actualization (Hansen, 1999, 2000, 2005b).
The methods of each of these theoretical orientations are derived from their foundational truths (Hansen, 2002). That is, psychodynamic theories dictate that counselors provide a therapeutic environment wherein unconscious determinants of problems are made obvious (Hansen, 2000). Also in keeping with the fundamental truths of their theories, cognitively oriented counselors detect and correct distorted cognitions (Mahoney, 1991), and humanists provide a treatment environment in which natural psychological growth can resume (Rogers, 1957). Thus, traditional counseling theories have used the same epistemological strategy as the rest of Western culture: First, discover the truth and then you will know what to do.
This strategy is so ingrained in Western thought that it may strike some as absurd to question it. However, over the last century, philosophers have raised cogent challenges to the most basic assumptions about truth.
The Problems With Truth
As mentioned previously, most of the history of philosophy has been dominated by a search for transcendent truth. However, the postmodernist movement in intellectual culture has challenged this basic philosophical goal. Postmodernism has been broadly influential, so that "nowadays philosophers widely acknowledge that a search for absolute truth is in vain" (Widdershoven, 1992, p. 1). Although postmodernism is a complex movement and, in some ways, defies description (Rosen, 1996), the basic challenges of postmodernism to traditional conceptualizations of truth can be organized in terms of meaning construction and the centrality of language. A discussion of each conceptualization follows.
Meaning Construction
If the basic ontological assumption that something exists outside of human minds is taken for granted (incidentally, not all [e.g., Berkeley; see Armstrong, 1965] would endorse this assumption), how is it that the stuff of the universe becomes represented psychologically? Consider, for example, a tree. Although a tree is something that exists outside of the mind, it is relatively easy to call up a mental image of a tree even when one is not in view. What are the characteristics of this mental tree? How did it find a home in individual minds?
There are at least two answers to these questions. One response is that the mind mirrors what is outside of it. With regard to the tree example, the tree exists in human psyches because the mind passively receives and represents stimuli in a fairly accurate way. The contents of the mind mirror the things outside of it, because passive perception and mental imprinting are the fundamental characteristics of human knowing.
However, there is another answer to these basic questions. The second, postmodernist response is that human knowing is not a passive process, but rather always involves the active construction of meaning (Mahoney, 1991; White & Epston, 1990). The postmodernist school that emphasizes individual meaning construction is called constructivism (Rosen, 1996), and the ideological position that group construction of meaning is fundamental to human knowing is called social constructionism (Gergen, 1999). Each school has its own implications for the process of human knowing (Hansen, 2004).
In terms of the individual construction of meaning, the constructivist position is that the meaning system of the perceiver must serve as an intermediary between initial perception and psychological representation (Gill, 1994; Hansen, 2004; Neimeyer & Mahoney, 1995). Again, using the mental tree as an... |
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