ABSTRACT
It is somewhat surprising that philosophy and psychotherapy do not have a more distinguished history of co-operation. Both disciplines are concerned with human well being and human living, the one in a theoretical manner, the other in a much more pragmatic way. One would expect psychotherapists to have noted the central importance of philosophy to the practice of their own profession and to draw on philosophy as a source for understanding their clients’ predicaments. Unfortunately this has not been the case. Psychotherapists have on the whole neglected the study of philosophy, which they have frequently dismissed as irrelevant, and they have turned to medicine and psychology as the disciplines of theoretical reference for their domain. This may well be because of the aridity and high level of abstraction of much of Western philosophy. This is rather ironic, as Hellenistic philosophy several millennia ago set out as a disciplined search for the well lived human life, or eudaimonia. Philosophy then proposed a form of dialectical debate where individuals were encouraged to seek to clarify their beliefs about the world in order to come to a better understanding of their conflicts and the objectives of their everyday existence (Nussbaum 1994, Vlastos 1991).
