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edited by Paul Gordon and Rosalind Mayo. (London, Whurr, 2004). 180 pp. £19.50
Bertrand Russell (1946: 14), in the introduction to his History of Western Philosophy writes: ‘To teach how to live without certainty, and yet without being paralysed by hesitation, is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy, in our age, can still do for those who study it’. I think that something similar might be said of psychotherapy.
The title of this book, Between Psychotherapy and Philosophy is intriguing, raising immediate questions about the audience for whom it is written and the location of the territory to be described.
The editors provide some answers in their introduction. They explain that it is a testament to the survival of the Philadelphia Association and a celebration of its breadth of thought and engagement with philosophy. They offer a brief history of the Philadelphia Association since its foundation by Laing and others amidst the radical culture of the 1960s.
They express vexation at their continuing experience of being misunderstood or misrepresented. The editors explain that they choose to define themselves by what they are not. They highlight their involvement with philosophical thinkers, especially those from ‘the phenomenological tradition’, listing among others, Heidegger, Wittgenstein and Sartre. They note with, I think, further asperity, that the Philadelphia Association has always advocated the importance of engagement with philosophy while this has only been taken up with recent enthusiasm by other psychotherapists. They describe offering a thoughtful approach that questions pre-existing assumptions rather than adhering to a specific model or ‘dogma’.
Robin Cooper's opening chapter was first given as a paper in 1995 at the Philadelphia Association's thirtieth anniversary conference. In ‘What we take for granted’, he recounts the Philadelphia Association's sceptical philosophical stance