Foundational Philosophy of School-based Counseling: Personalism

Backdrop

What philosophy or worldview undergirds helping professionals' (e.g., counselors, therapists, psychologists, psychiatrists) orientation to their clients?  The research on this question is equivocal.  One assumes that orientations and resulting behaviors and beliefs vary substantially and in nuanced ways.  However, from clients' perspectives, it appears that they view their caregivers as largely good people, humane, altruistic, compassionate, ethical, and focused on their welfare.  By and large, I think this supposition is accurate. Caring professionals, I contend, generally approach their work in a positive, hopeful, and healthy manner, but there are exceptions.  When the counseling experience is (becomes) toxic, nonproductive, and feels uncaring, does this reflect a change in the philosophical orientation of the mental health professional? 

Before entering the profession, have these professionals genuinely reflected on their underlying philosophy and asked themselves why they believe and act the way they do?  What orientation drives their decision-making, actions, and counseling values? Can they name their worldview and philosophical approach?  Knowing your underlying orientation truly matters; it affects how you treat your clients and their families.  For example, psychiatrists often adopt the medical model or a bio-social-psychological orientation they learned in medical school, seeing clients on a spectrum of mental disorders; loosely stated, their patients' health and symptomology are rooted fundamentally within the person's biology.  Thus, medications coupled with therapy are often the prescribed treatment.

In my experience, counseling professionals do not fully consider their underlying philosophies (notwithstanding constructivist approaches).  They tend to gravitate to a few theories/therapies that resonate with their worldview, "make sense", and are "effective" at some level with clients. Orbiting around theoretical (therapeutic) models taught in graduate school is a "shortcut" to meaningful reflection and processing of "who I am as a person, as a helper". Sharply put, deeper philosophical insightfulness and analysis of the approaches they "adopt" may not fully resonate with one's "theories of counseling" coursework.  Once professionals enter their practica and internships, time for such in-depth contemplation is at a premium.  

Personalism as an Option

I suggest that counselors must situate their counseling methods on a philosophical/worldview that is consonant with their values and life orientation.  One alternative, personalism, is strengths-based (assets-focused) and steeped in compassion and love.  Specifically, personalism is a life orientation, a worldview that focuses on the ultimate value and dignity of human persons. Personalism has many strands that vary from more faith-based to humanistic perspectives. It is believed that Friedrich Schleiermacher first used the term personalism (German: Personalismus) in 1799. 

Furthermore, advocates of personalism suggest that persons are communal by nature, open to, cooperating with, and respecting the viewpoints of others. Proponents generally downplay any reduction of human beings to merely impersonal, deterministic laws. Thus, they are opposed to Social Darwinism, strict materialistic principles, naturalistic reductionism, and so on.  We are far more than biological organisms, rather we are "spiritual beings" with a higher nature and core.  Several therapies are consonant, in part, with personalism (e.g., humanistic, existential, person-centered psychology, constructivist, positive counseling), while many others appear to be aligned with bio-social-psychological mindset, where human functioning is reduced to its various physical and ecological components (e.g., genetic, micro-macrosystems, neurophysical, etc.).  Humans as holistic beings tend to be scrapped as they are subjected to deeper scientific analysis. 

Advances in positive psychology and existential/humanistic psychology align with personalism. For example, three primary intrinsic psychological needs related to self-determination theory (SDT), an offshoot of positive psychology, are competence, relatedness, and autonomy.  Similar to the aims of personalism, SDT and research indicate that meeting these human needs is essential for facilitating psychological growth and integration, social development, and psychological well-being.  Should these needs remain unsatisfied, human functioning is likely to be far less than ideal.  As mentioned above, several counseling approaches reflect personalist ideals and goals (e.g., Logotherapy/Existential/humanistic), Person-Centered Therapy, and Motivational Interviewing). These methods emphasize client dignity, autonomy, choice, and respect. Most counseling theories speak to deep caring, compassion, cultural sensitivity, maximizing humanity, interpersonal relationships, etc.

Examples of noted personalists:  John MacMurray (Scottish philosopher), Borden Bowne (US philosopher), Emmanuel Mounier (French philosopher), Pope John Paul II, Martin Luther King Jr., Jacques Maritain (French philosopher), Gabriel Marcel (France), Jacques Ellul (French author, thinker), Dorothy Day (Catholic Worker movement),  William Stern (US psychologist), Edith Stein (German philosopher and saint), Ngo Dinh Diem (Vietnamese leader), Václav Havel (first president of the Czech Republic, writer, etc.), among many others (e.g., Dietrich von Hildebrand, Karol Wojtyla, Max Schele) .

Resources

• Patterson, T. G., & Joseph, S. (2007). Person-centered personality theory: Support from self-determination theory and positive psychology. Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 47(1), 117-139. 

• Williams, T. D.  & Jan Olof Bengtsson, J. O. (2020). "Personalism", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.  https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2020/entries/personalism/ 

• Personalism:  https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Personalism

• Personalism: The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (IEP) (ISSN 2161-0002)  https://iep.utm.edu/personal/#:~:text=These%20included%20Max%20Scheler%20(1874,(1874%2D1948)%20thought

• Video: Personalism, Psychology, and Counseling (Hildebrand ...) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOMEKdVP2pI