Interview with London psychotherapist and life coach Tim LeBon by Simone Lee (published in the Hermeneutic Circular)

Last week I managed to catch up with Tim LeBon, whose first book Wise Therapy: Philosophy for Counsellors has just been published by Continuum as one of the first three books in Regent's College School of Psychotherapy and Counselling Series.  

Tim, Congratulations on writing and publishing your first book. What prompted you to write it?
It's a book I'd like to have read myself when I started my own training as a counsellor. I was amazed that there wasn't   a book which married philosophical insights, methods and ideas with the counselling process. I greatly admired Yalom's Existential Psychotherapy, but it has always seemed to me that existential philosophy was but one part of the great treasure chest of philosophy.

You sound positively envangelical about the benefit of philosophy for the counsellor. Can you briefly remind me what you think these are? I think that philosophy can help the counsellor in three ways. First there are theoretical insights that can help therapists assess their theoretical assumptions. For example, autonomy is often mentioned as one of the benefits of therapy, but what exactly is autonomy, and how does it contribute to client well-being ? Secondly, there are methods and ideas which can help the therapist with problems they face in their work. The classic example is the ethical dilemmas that therapists frequently face - over confidentiality, dual roles, suicide, for example. Codes of Ethics and Practice can be helpful, but they often fudge the issue just when you need them most. Therapists need a  way of resolving ethical dilemmas and philosophy can be a great help. Finally - and in my view most neglected, yet most important of all - philosophy provides insights and methods that can be used at the coal face itself, as it were; actually in the counselling room. Existential counsellors will of course be familiar with phenomenology as one such method, but in fact there are a lot more such methods in the philosopher's toolbox waiting to be mined, and used by counsellors. And in Wise Therapy, you cover all of these ways that philosophy can help? Well, not quite ! The focus is on the last use for philosophy I mentioned, providing methods and insights for use in counselling sessions. Having said that, I do actually talk about autonomy and the benefits of counselling as a whole, and give a method that counsellors can use to deal with their own ethical dilemmas.

The idea that philosophy rather than psychology can be used as the foundations of counselling will I imagine appeal to many readers. Others, however, may point to the endless disagreement and contradictions amongst philosophers, and be sceptical about how you can arrive at anything like universally agreed or sound conclusions. How would you answer this?
One of the bugbears I have against psychoanalysis is that it is based on psychological premises which are without sufficient foundations, so it would be quite wrong to base an approach to counselling on equally inadequate philosophical premises. It's therefore a very important part of my project that the methods and insights I propose are based on philosophical theories that are acceptable. The way I deal with contradictory theories is to follow the philosopher R.M. Hare's advice when he says: "the best way of constructing a viable (theory) is to pick out the true elements in each and build them into one's own theory" (Hare, 1997). So in the first part of each chapter the most plausible theories about well-being, right and wrong, reason and the emotions and the meaning of life are surveyed, with a view to extracting the true elements of each. The practical ideas that can be used by counsellors in the second part of each chapter flow directly from the acceptable theories justified in the first part. These methods are then pulled together in the final chapter, 'The Counsellor's Philosophical Toolbox'.

Can you give us an example?
Well, take the case of well-being. Counsellors are, in a sense, in the business of enhance client well-being, and to be able to do they need to know what well-being really is. Two theories abouit well-being that are often put forwarded are hedonism - that happiness is the only thing that matters - and objectivism - that well-being is something over and above individual feelings, perhaps decided by God or some other authority. If you think about these theories for any length of time, you can quite quickly see that they contain serious flaws. Yet  both theories also contain important insights. Hedonism's insight is  that well-being is somehow connected with what you want; objectivism's  is that just getting what you want, or experience as pleasant, is not enough in itself to guarantee well-being. I argue for a form of the informed preference-satisfaction theory, which states that well-being is getting what you would want if you were fully rational and fully-informed. The informed preference-satisfaction theory captures the insights of both of the other theories. Having arrived at a good theory of well-being, we are now in a position to say how the counsellor can enhance well-being. So in the second part of the chapter on well-being I present RSVP, a way of helping clients develop enlightened values. Values are simply preferences about what makes life goes well in general, so you can enhance well-being by asking questions which will help people's values be  more well-informed and rational -  based on their own experience, imagination, abilities and life situation.

Isn't that what counsellors already do - for example when logotherapists ask people about what will give their life meaning, or when existential therapists enquire into the four dimensions of personal worldview?
Yes indeed, some counsellors already do some of  this. What I've tried to do is integrate the best insights from therapies with other ideas  into a coherent method compatible with an acceptable philosophical theory about well-being

Do you think your approach is methodological? (and if so, what hope is there  for those who reject a methodology?)
There certainly are a lot of practical methods contained in Wise Therapy. But I make it very clear that these should be applied in whatever way suits the interaction between a particular client and counsellor best, and indeed the client's own style. Methods can be an invaluable template for counsellor and client alike. But you need to make sure that you are using the methods, and not the other way round....

I've noticed you seem to use 'counselling' and 'therapy' interchangeably. To be clear, what distinction do you make between psychotherapy  and counselling?
I've heard it said that the only distinction between the two is about £20000 a year i.e. psychotherapists charge more. I  don't make a distinction between them, and don't think it's very helpful to do so.



It's interesting that the title of your book is Wise Therapy ? A more usual title might be something like Effective Therapy or Good Therapy ? In what way is wisdom related to therapy ?

I think that many of the issues that take clients to therapy have an underlying ethical or more broadly philosophical dimension. Unless these are addressed, therapy cannot do all it can to help. In the book I give the example of Brian, who is sad and depressed but most of all wonders how he has come to lose touch with all that he used to think was important. Now a merely effective therapist may be able to 'cure' Brian's depression, for example by cognitive therapy or medication. A wise therapist would not forget the importance of alleviating emotional distress, but would also see Brian's depression as a message to tell himself  to re-explore his life in terms of his values. Work on the emotions could take place in tandem with work on values.

Can you give a brief description of a wise counsellor? (do you have a long white beard? does your sagacity make people gasp?)
I say towards the end of Wise Therapy that the wise counsellor has the theoretical wisdom of Socrates, the practical wisdom of Aristotle and the empathy of Carl Rogers. Two of three of these had a beard (quite possibly white ...), but I think that's purely coincidental !

Why those three people and those three qualities?
Socrates  is chosen because his theoretical wisdom involves him not preaching to people, but in using a method- the elenchus - that involves a dialogue between two people. Likewise the wise counsellor should be equipped with methods which can act as a midwife to the well-being, emotional wisdom and good decision-making abilities of the client. Aristotle reminds us of the limitations of the intellect. We know that counsellors who are emotionally immature, lack a good character, or are technically unskilled are likely to do more harm than good. So we need to take the emotions, dispositions of character and technical skills of the counsellor  into account as well as their theoretical knowledge. Finally, dealing with other people is so central to counselling, that genuine empathy and interest in others is a third requirement - hence the wise counsellor will also have a sprinkling of Carl Rogers about them. I should add that Socrates was also well aware of the limits of his own knowledge, and that humility is likewise part of being a wise counsellor.

I notice that two of these three role models are philosophers. Does one have to read a lot or to study philosophical ideas to be a wise  counsellor?
I think it's more about focus and quality than quantity. I think there are key areas in philosophy that one should focus on - these include well-being, right and wrong, rationality, the emotions and the meaning of life.  I  am concerned that many trainee counsellors do not study all of these topics. More important still, one needs to know how to apply the insights from acceptable theories - and this is why I think that understanding the methods that can be developed from philosophical theories is the most vital aspect of all.

Does existential psychotherapy lend itself to wise counselling and why do you think so or not?
Well I've never been at all sure exactly what existential therapy is (which is a bit of a shame, considering I write  about it and teach it...). Seriously, though, many people speak about it as if it was one, unified discipline when there are probably as manner ways of doing existential therapy as there are existential therapists.



That sounds like a bit of a cop-out....
 Well,  at the risk of oversimplifying, if pressed for an answer (which I am), I would draw a distinction between existential and phenomenological forms of counselling. Both  are an important element of wise counselling. As a purely existential counsellor, one would be interested in the existential questions and their implications. This  could make one close to practising like an existentially-inspired philosophical counsellor - having a philosophical dialogue with clients about the existential issues. Or it could lead one to posit the existence of defence mechanisms resulting from the human condition - such as death anxiety and existential guilt- and work with these in therapy - this, I think, is close to  Yalom's position (at least in Existential Psychotherapy). Finally the (purely) existential therapist could urge people that they have free will, and to take more responsibility - this is part of what logotherapists do. On the other hand, purely phenomenological counsellors operate by bracketing everything (including the existential givens and existential theory) and trying to be fully present to the client's experience and meanings. This, I take it, is more the line taken by existential counsellors trained in the UK, of which Ernesto Spinelli would perhaps be representative. Obviously one can have an intermediate position combining these four extremes, and no doubt other positions are possible too, but I think it is helpful to separate the four because each have their own strengths and weaknesses. A philosophical dialogue about the human condition may be really helpful in some cases, but runs the risk of avoiding the specific situation of a particular client, which may actually be more complex than appears at first sight. Questions about the meaning of life might arise because of emotional problems, for example. Positing the existence of death anxiety etc., and interpreting people as a result is a fascinating idea, but one which I would like a lot more empirical proof of before using it (I have much the same reservations about psychoanalytic theory).  Focussing on free will and responsibility as logotherapists do is a very simple and sometimes effective way of changing someone's attitude, which can make a huge difference; but runs the risk of being oversimplistic.  Finally, staying with the client's experience as phenomenologists urge is a marvellous way of helping them achieve greater self-understanding, and can do wonders for the therapeutic relationship. My reservations concern its underestimate of what the counsellor can achieve in a more active role. An example is in dealing with the emotions. Providing support for a self-examination of the emotions is great, as far as it goes. Although I have some reservations about cognitive-behavioural therapy, I think that the cognitive therapist's more active stance in educating clients about the emotions, and providing specific instructions to keep logs of moods, and teaching them ways of challenging destructive thought patterns is a powerful way of supplementing a purely phenomenological stance.
 

Who in particular do you think will benefit and/or find interest from your  book? All counsellors who want to find out more about philosophy will I hope find something of interest, including existential counsellors who want to find out more about other sorts of philosophy. In particular, those who want to read about methods and ideas to help with values clarification, decision-making, working with the emotions and issues surrounding the meaning of life will, I hope, find the book of real practical value. Wise Therapy is trying to do three things. First, it aims to survey and critique (in a language we can all understand) the philosophical theories most relevant to counsellors and therapists – these being well-being, right and wrong, reason and the emotions and the meaning of life. Next it attempts to show how the acceptable theories that arise from this discussion can be used to critique counselling as a whole and some philosophically-based approaches – i.e. existential/phenomenological counselling, logotherapy, cognitive therapy and philosophical counselling. Finally it makes a start at the ambitious, difficult – yet important - task of synthesising the acceptable ideas from both philosophy and philosophically-based therapies, into methods and insights that counsellors of all persuasions can integrate into their work. The end result is the ‘Counsellors Philosophical Toolbox’, including well-established (for philosophers) methods like conceptual analysis and critical thinking, and also more innovative ideas like CDM, Progress and RSVP.

                                                                            More about Wise Therapy and Tim LeBon at http://www.timlebon.com