This paper was first presented at the University of British Columbia on May 3, 2013. This essay is the basis of what eventually became Chapter 7 “Preventive (Prophylactic) Philosophy” in my latest book Philosophy’s Role in Counseling and Psychotherapy Published by Jason Aronson. (All rights reserved).

Résumé :

It’s only since the 1980’s that philosophy has been actively used to treat ‘mental illnesses.’ The idea that philosophy can be used as therapy is not new; it goes back to ancient Greece. But the idea that an individual’s distress is a mental illness caused by the brain is relatively new. And it is also very misleading. I propose that if people are taught good reasoning early in life they’ll be less likely to be led into the kind of mental distress that can be diagnosed as ‘mental illness.’ To put it more succinctly, if the knowledge and discursive skills of philosophy are taught before university there is likely to be far less ‘mental illness’ in our society. The term ‘mental illnesses’ is completely misleading. First of all, mental suffering and distress are not illnesses because they’re not biological brain disorders. There is a noticeable equivocation in the literature that presents the mind and the brain as though they were one and the same thing and treats them medically as though they were both biological organs. Of course, the brain is such an organ, but the mind is not. The brain is the biological container; the mind is the non-biological content.

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