“Philosophy is not a body of doctrine, but an activity”

 – Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

You are facing choices and unsure which you think are the best ones. You find yourself rethinking your priorities and values. Other people tell you what they think, but you don’t just want other opinions. You want to explore the issues and come to reasoned conclusions.

Hi! I’m Dr. Sara Ellenbogen, and I am a certified philosophical counselor. For more than fifteen years, I have guided people in exploring their vision of a good life and creating a life consistent with that vision. I specialize in helping people transition from a life that they had or expected to a new one.

Philosophical counseling is an alternative to psychotherapy where you and a philosophical guide explore your reasoning about the problems that trouble you. Often we live by unexamined assumptions that we are unaware of making. These assumptions can keep us stuck by preventing inquiry into alternative perspectives. Philosophical dialogue can help uncover these assumptions. Recognizing and critically examining them can help you choose more consciously and live more confidently.

I subscribe to the philosophy that a counselor is not a critic, not even a constructive one, but rather a guide who awakens in the client the capacity to philosophize for him or herself. I respect your views, am forthcoming about my own, and will assist you in pursuing the goals that you set for yourself.

I am certified in client counseling by the American Philosophical Practitioners Association and I meet with clients virtually. 

Email me at philosophicalpractice@gmail.com to schedule a consultation.

ABOUT ME

MY CREDENTIALS

PhD in philosophy from the University of Toronto (1998)

BA in philosophy and psychology from the University of Massachusetts/Boston (1989)

Certification in client counseling from the American Philosophical Practitioners Association (2004)

MY APPROACH

Above all, my role is to listen attentively and compassionately. I’ll also try to get a sense of how you understand the situation that troubles you. We may look into the assumptions that underlie your thinking and see if you are committed to these.

I’m influenced by the analytic philosopher, Ludwig Wittgenstein. One thing Wittgenstein said was that we sometimes see ourselves as facing dilemmas only because we’ve made an assumption that is actually unfounded. 

Sometimes in philosophical counseling a client will discover that a problem that seems unsolvable is only unsolvable if we assume what she has assumed. Another analytic philosophical counselor, Ran Lahav, has described how that happened when he counseled an “eternal student” unable to choose a career and feeling pressured to make a decision. Lahav suspected and confirmed from her that she assumed there was an objectively correct choice and was afraid of making a mistake. When she questioned that assumption and stopped seeing the task before her as one of discovering a pre-existing truth, she was able to make a choice based on her own preferences. 

Questioning the assumption that there was an objective truth about what she should do enabled the client to resolve her problem. That’s the kind of problem that requires philosophical dialogue to resolve.

Thinking philosophically is helpful in all sorts of situations. It can help you to forgive yourself and others for mistakes. It can help you find ways of responding to injustices that feel right. It can help you to come to terms with what you can’t control, and to choose confidently. Besides, it’s fun!

People seek philosophical counseling for all sorts of reasons: because they’re suffering from low self-esteem, because they’re facing difficult choices and are feeling indecisive and confused, because they’re struggling to deal with loss, grief and resentment, and because they simply want to explore a philosophical issue of interest to them with a trained philosopher.

Email me at philosophicalpractice@gmail.com.