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”?
Boy, am I glad I didn’t waste my time on maths
Boy, am I glad I didn’t waste my time on maths:
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?)
what doesn’t kill me, makes me thinner
or: every cancer cure has a silver lining!
I knew, I even signed a paper proving that I was told, that radiation therapy of the abdominal area can cause, among other side effects, also diarrhea.
Which it did. At first only on the treatment free days on weekends giving me a good excuse to skip the mandatory family walks.
The last three treatments were made with higher doses of radiation on smaller surfaces, in order to boost the curative effect. Which I assume they did, but they definitely boosted the side effects as well.
For the last three weeks (two weeks before and one week after finishing the radiation therapy) I have had the worst case of diarrhea in my life. The last three days I have been practically living on crackers, broth and cranberry juice.
However, during the 6 weeks of treatment I lost 12 pounds (5.4 kg) weight, a side effect of the side effect diarrhea, that I don’t mind at all.
The flipside is that the side effects of the therapy should dwindle away in 3-4 weeks after finishing it and I am going to put on weight again, adding to my overweight – if I don’t dwindle away myself in the process. Which would be too much loss of weight, even if my body mass index had turned into ideal.
Which I hope it won’t since my last motto is: better overweight in the bed than ideal weight in the casket.
I am planning on a wild experiment today: to gormandize a whole boiled potato and a whole grated apple today, on top of the beef broth and cranberry juice liberally served by my wife. It will have a win-win outcome: if I can hold them, I will keep, or, maybe even slightly increase my weight while definitely increasing my energy and pleasure levels. If I can’t: I will improve my body mass index.
If this isn’t positive thinking, I don’t know what is.
the happiness of a nation
Finally the happiness of a nation has become the pursuit of its government:
Still part of that strange race?
Are you still “part of that strange race of people aptly described as spending their lives doing things they detest to make money they don’t want to buy things they don’t need to impress people they dislike.” (Emile Gauvreau)
or
do you prefer to satisfy your needs in ways that are congruent with your value system?
Like, for instance, a consequently practicing Christian, Buddhist or Humanist or … Epicurean?
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