The Difference Between Philosophy and Psychotherapy

From a distance, the disciplines of philosophy and psychotherapy look very similar. Both are interested in large topics of the mind, both seem concerned with helping people to find meaning, both are oriented towards generating happiness.

But there is a central difference. Philosophy believes that people will see the light and change as soon as the truth is presented to them. Psychotherapy, far more wisely and interestingly, knows they almost never do. The discipline is, above anything else, interested in the exploration and overcoming of ‘defence mechanisms’, the extraordinary barriers we put up to shield ourselves from the kind of bold but terrifying insights that could – if only we could brave them – change our lives for the better.

The Philosophical Faith in Truth

When philosophy began in Ancient Athens, it was assumed that the truth alone would be sufficient to unlock people’s ethical and spiritual development. In the dialogues of Plato, Socrates is pictured in discussion with a number of his fellow Athenians, whose muddled thinking he clears up with extraordinary bravado and brusqueness – in very short order and with near-magical results. After twenty minutes of dialectical thinking, a tyrant realises he should be good to his people; a wealthy merchant decides – on a brief walk from the market square down to the harbour – to reorient his life towards philosophy.

Psychotherapy chuckles quietly at the hubris on display. It knows only too well that one can have an utterly sound picture of what is wrong with someone and yet not, thereby, be able to affect any change in them. The most common result of telling a person about the errors in their conduct is protest, denial and rage. We are masters at finding ways to push away good ideas: we decide that the person delivering an insight is trying to do us in; we conclude that we’re being attacked rather than helped; we listen and then immediately forget what we have heard; we get addicted to alcohol or sport or the news to make sure we can never properly think or feel. Our minds are not – it seems – set up principally to let in insights and grow; they are chiefly designed to maintain the settled order for the sake of sterile short-term peace.

Philosophy vs Psychotherapy

An average psychotherapist will be able to tell, normally, at the end of the first fifty-five-minute session, what is ‘wrong’ with a client. They will be able to see clearly enough that they are a people pleaser, or can’t separate from their mother, or are seeking punishment through sex after an abusive childhood. But to come out and say this directly will be next to hopeless. The truth has to be cut into very small pieces and offered across months and years if it is ever to be digestible.

What psychotherapy has understood is that people change when, and only when, they feel extremely safe. Anything too loud, too bold or too urgent terrifies our fragile minds. We wait to explore our flaws and hang-ups until we feel that someone is entirely on our side. Psychotherapy itself took a while to properly absorb the idea. Early practitioners were forbidding and silent (to maintain a quasi-medical model of decorum). They rarely smiled; they looked blank and almost cross – until it was discovered that this kind of dispassion, far from helping clients to look at their lives with courage, was more likely to terrify them into silence and shame.

The Conditions Under Which We Change

Nowadays, the average therapist proceeds with uncommon warmth. Their smile is indulgent, their manner peaceable and compassionate. They take things very gently. They listen with tenderness, all in the hope of lending us the energy to accept (eighteen months in) that, perhaps, yes, we do always seem to pick partners who will torment us as our father once did – or do have a pattern of jealousy towards women that relates back to a dynamic with our mother.

We may not be therapists, but we can borrow some of the discipline’s patience and humility in our conduct with others. It may be tempting, at family get-togethers or in relationships, to simply tell people ‘what is wrong with them’. We will, next time we see her, tell our mother what her problem truly is; we will – over dinner – tell our partner why they keep sabotaging their chances at work. Psychotherapy bids us to stand down. We may be in possession of the truth; everything depends on our forbearance and patience in getting it across. We’ll have to make our ‘pupil’ feel very safe indeed, we’ll have to assure them of our love over an implausibly long time, we may need a year or two to broach the simplest-sounding idea.

In the long-running contest of philosophy vs psychotherapy, the lesson is a humbling one. Philosophy thought that truth alone might save us. Psychotherapy has understood, with far more canniness, that insight will only reach us through love.