Making Sense on the Boundaries: On Moving Between Philosophy and Psychotherapy

Summary

The philosopher is the man who has to cure himself of many sicknesses of the understanding before he can arrive at the notions of the sound human understanding.

(Wittgenstein, 1967, no.302)

The work of a philosopher consists in assembling reminders for a particular purpose.

(Wittgenstein, 1953, no. 127).

A new word is like a new seed sown on the ground of discussion.

(Wittgenstein, 1980, p. 2e).

The aim of the series of lectures, from which this article derives, was (to quote the invitation I received): ‘to enhance the effectiveness of [among others] mental health practitioners … by illuminating the philosophical in these activities: and to advance philosophical theory by making the phenomena of psychiatry and clinical psychology more accessible to philosophers’. And I have done my best to fulfil this aim. There is, however, a word within the statement above that bothers me: it is the word ‘theory’. In the past, we have been very used to both distinguishing between, and valuing, theory over practice, with philosophers (and pure scientists) supposedly finding correct theories, and practitioners, as like shopfloor workers, supposedly applying the theories handed down to them. Thus, in these more financially stringent times (the invitation seemed to suggest), philosophy really ought to pay its way a little more by orienting its ‘theories’ to, perhaps, more practical issues.