ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines the commonalities and differences of traditional and philosophical counseling. Philosophy, since antiquity, has included aspects of psychotherapy. Both philosophical counseling and traditional counseling can be practiced as individual or group therapy. The "counseling" delivered naturally by parents, family, and acquaintances to the youngest members of society has, in modernity, also evolved into the optional practice of counseling by professionals. The sweeping changes in modernity has pushed more traditional therapists into filling roles as moral agents, thus further blurring the lines between traditional and philosophical counseling. Counseling is intended to improve the client's analytical skills while examining a particular set of cognitive/emotional problems. Philosophical counseling fuses the basic theories and processes of contemporary counseling with the moral imperatives and logic derived from philosophy. Philosophical counseling is eclectic because it relies on both directive and nondirective traditional therapy methods.
