Philosophical Counseling, Not Marinoff
A person whose intellectual taste and judgments I trust told me that she started reading ‘Plato, Not Prozac’ but then she had to quit. I was not surprised: I discarded Lou Marinoff both as a philosopher and as a counselor many years ago back in Germany. I didn’t even have to open his over-advertised book, it was enough to browse a few articles and reviews like Tudor B. Munteanu’s review http://www.friesian.com/munteanu.htm or Alessandro Volpone’s ‘Plato, Not Viagra’ : http://win.filosofare.org/Pf/marginalia/RecMarinoff/Plato_not%20_Viagra.htm
Now I opened the book randomly and the first thing I saw was that he mentioned the Cynics and the early Stoics as ‘Pre-Socratics’ (page 53). This is like saying that the H-bomb was a pre-A-bomb or World War II was pre-World War I while his book’s cover proudly states that ‘Lou Marinoff, Ph.D., is a philosophy professor at the City College of New York, a pioneer of the philosophical counseling movement in North America, and president of the American Philosophical Practitioners Association.”
Shlomit Schuster said that Marinoff’s book and activities caused a “worldwide embarrassment for the profession” . I should say that it caused a worldwide embarrassment for two professions: both for philosophers and for philosophical counselors.
I was curious to see what Marinoff is doing 20 years after having started causing the worldwide embarrassment and was surprised to see that he is still churning out his ‘certifications’ to anyone willing to pay $800-1200 for a 3 day session.
I don’t seem to have grasped yet that this is the land of boundless possibilities.
Maybe because I am sort of “pre-Marinoff”?
I am proud of my friends
I don’t believe pride is an emotion anybody should be proud of experiencing if
“pride is an inward directed emotion that exemplifies either a high sense of one’s personal status or ego (i.e., leading to judgments of personality and character) or the specific mostly positive emotion that is a product of praise or independent self-reflection.” (Wikipedia)
Especially Epicureans should be ashamed of it and work hard at getting rid of it as soon as possible since its ugly head indicates an over-inflated ego or a dangerous vulnerability to praise. If independent self-reflection should lead to pride one ought to improve one’s self-reflective skills. Urgently.
I can’t help feeling proud of my friends, though.
It took me over forty years to understand that I don’t understand the correlation between my needs, my desires and the way I satisfy those desires, resulting in stressing myself, my friends and family, my coworkers and supervisors, clients and suppliers. It took me another five years to read all the relevant books on Epicurean life techniques and happiness studies to work my way out of the jungle and another five years to hone my tools by using them to set people free of their self-defeating beliefs and unhealthy habits and help them dismantle the walls they build between themselves and their pathway to happiness through congruence and stress-FREEDOM. It took me another year and the invaluable support of my wife to write a wise AND funny book for those who are interested in spending the rest of their lives walking toward their own happiness instead of working for their own or someone else’s greed.
My friends, however, must have been born wise and don’t seem to need the distilled fruits of hard-earned practical wisdom packed in nicely wrapped palatable pieces of advice. They must be champions in analyzing their desires, in satisfying their natural needs through synergistic satisfiers, in keeping their lifestyle and behavior patterns in line with their values and attitudes, serenely threading down their own proven pathways from pain to pleasure, producing their own happiness though congruence and stress-FREEDOM.
I must assume they do all this judging from the absence of their comments on the excerpts of my book that I have been publishing in sequels in my blog. The only topic they mildly reacted to was sequel 15: “How Is It Possible To Find Romantic Love? “
Complete strangers ask me when will my book be available in print and on kindl, when will I start training and coaching sessions on the Galenian Epicurean Conduct of Life, or at least publicly speak about it. (Which I don’t’ know yet. I still have to take care of my health and the happiness of my family.)
But it’s a relief that my friends are doing well, confidently threading their own pathways toward happiness.( Or what they believe is happiness?)
It’s a shame to feel proud but who could help not being proud of them? (Maybe Epicurus?)
Russell ignores Epicurus?
Bertrand Russell shows deep understanding of Epicuranism and Epicurus as a philosopher in his “History of Western Philosophy”.
Yet in “The Conquest of Happiness” – a wonderful litlle book of Epicurean inspiration – he ignores Epicurus almost totally. (He does NOT disparage him, though, as Epicurus did Nausiphanes.)
Does anybody have a clue why the basically Epicurean Russell ignored Epicurus in this work?
This is the question I have just ported on Facebook:
Computation of Time from Down Under
My aunt sent us from Melbourne a clock that has the shape of Australia. My daughter was very happy because she could tell me the time without having to refer to boring digits: “it’s long Darwin short Sydney”
I must admit that it took me some time (and a walk to the map) until I grasped the deeper meaning of this announcement. (Yes, it was 5 p.m.)
identifying a nightly visitor
Yesterday evening I came with my son home from the library and we wanted to move the garbage containers onto the street for the weekly collection. As I opened one of the containers to dump a trash bag into it, a pair of glittering eyes were fixed at me. I thought our cat might have gotten somehow out of the house and into the container. I wanted to call her name, but it jumped out and I saw that it was no cat at all. First I thought it was a squirrel but it did not end so fast: It was something much bigger and longer and grayish and it scuttled on and then off the railing and disappeared under the porch stairs. I told my son that it must have been a badger. “Why a badger?” he wanted to know. “We are in Wisconsin and this is the “Badger-State”. “I’d rather think it was a coon. I have seen something like this already.” “Back in Germany?” I inquired. “Yes, back in Germany on TV in SpongeBob”.
He thought I would prize the scientific benefits of his addiction, and I almost did. But then I remembered that I am his homeschooling teacher so I gave him the assignment to write a report on raccoons and how to keep them out of garbage cans.
saving the daylight ruins hearts
In many states they will start saving the daylight tonight: they will rob one hour of sleep and increase heart attacks by 5%, admitted Brian Williams in the NBC news.
Who are the winners – excepting the cardio-vascular and the watch-maker industries?
FREE Report about stress
Download instantly your copy!