Forgiveness in Counseling: A Philosophical Perspective

There is, in the contemporary world of counseling, an increasingly visible movement called “philosophical counseling”—a movement that seeks to make the discipline of philosophy more central to counseling than the discipline of psychology. Although this movement has just started to gain attention in America, it has already attained some prominence in other countries—e.g. Israel, Germany and Holland.1 It seems that the influence of philosophy on the practice of counseling is currently of sufficient weight that even some who would not identify themselves as philosophical counselors now impose philosophical constraints on their psychological research and practice. For example: A recent essay by psychologist Robert D. Enright on forgiveness in counseling, an essay to be discussed in more detail later, explicitly makes “philosophical rationality” a condition of appropriateness in counseling.