Daryl, thank you for this post. I much appreciate you raising the topic of character & its intimate connection to ethics, morality & excellence. This is so important in our development as sound humans, which is essential to our development as excellent therapists, supervisors & coaches. It would be wonderful if character development & ethics training were more central in the training & supervision of therapists.
My Stoic teacher, Massimo Pigliucci, has thought much about character development & written about it in "Five insights about character" (https://figsinwinter.substack.com/p/five-insights-about-character) which summarises the key points in his book "The Quest for Character"(https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/60021170-the-quest-for-character). He argues that character (ethics, morality & excellence as you say) can & must be trained & underpins the development of any craft. I think what he says in the following quote applies equally to therapists: “According to the Greco-Romans, virtue understood as human excellence is a skill (techne) and therefore can be taught, just like any other skill. Imagine you wished to learn a musical instrument, or maybe a new language. How do you go about it? You will learn some basic musical theory or grammar; you will get a good teacher who can guide you; and then you’ll practice, practice, practice. The same goes for virtue: you become a better person by learning a bit about ethics, by following a good teacher like Socrates, and by doing a lot of practice.” Sounds pretty much like Deliberate Practice to me & much like your writing.
You may be aware that the Stoics, one of three lineages inspired by Socrates, influenced the founding fathers of Christianity & were reciprocally influenced by the major world religions & philosophies due to trade in the Mediterranean basin. Perhaps it is the lack of education & guidance in developing a clear, individual philosophy of life which contributes to the ills in our world today - clients, therapists, supervisors, educators & coaches included? That’s why coach John Wooden was such an inspiring role model.
Fabulous article, Daryl. For lack of better wording, I feel you’ve captured both the worldly and divine elements of our profession. I’m currently writing my master’s thesis on therapist expertise and I think your framework is utterly brilliant - would you permit me to reference it?
Some thoughts I had that I’d like to contribute to the conversation:
- you reminded me of Norcros & Karpiak’s (2017) response to Hill et al. (2017), who themselves were commenting on Tracey et al. (2014, 2015), when they wrote:
“The person of the therapist will probably prove the elemental quality, the sine qua non, of the psychotherapy expert: that is for expertise in doing psychotherapy, not as an expert about psychotherapy. We probably grow the best therapists by selecting and then growing the best people…. Mind you, that is not the perfect person or the one with the ideal life, on one hand, or the seriously wounded healers, on the other. Much like Maslow’s self-actualizers, our best selves have weathered adversities, confronted life, and struggled with its vicissitudes. They have likely benefitted from several courses of their own personal treatment and personal development activities. Our best selves emerge, in the words of George Eliot/Mary Ann Evans in The Mill on the Floss (1860), “from a life vivid and intense enough to have created a wide fellow-feeling with all that is human” (p. 527).
- the same authors discuss therapist responsiveness, and it made me think of Alan Schore’s (2014) work on psychotherapy as a right-brained process. I’m personally quite keen to investigate the relationship between responsiveness in therapists and the awareness of “the implicit, nonverbal, intuitive, holistic processing of emotional information and social interactions” (p. 366). I could easily see expert + caring therapists as those who can keenly marry cognitive/declarative knowledge with procedural/affective awareness in-session, relative to the unique needs of each client.
- finally, this whole discussion makes me think of the relevance of my liberal arts education to my psychotherapy practice. I honestly feel like one of my greatest assets in session is my wide breadth of knowledge, my insatiable curiosity, and my ability to investigate/research/dialogue about nearly any topic. As a mentor in the field of movement and strength training once said to me “you can’t look for inspiration on the peaks of your own field. You need to climb other mountains and immerse yourself in different terrains in order to advance your practice”. I’m sure that this is far less eloquent than he originally said, but it’s a sentiment that I feel like I *really* see in your work (I.e identifying the “lead story” in your book The First Kiss comes to mind as one of the most salient examples for me). As the saying goes, “the secret of the person who is universally interesting is that they are universally interested” (William Dean Howells - don’t have the citation right now).
Forgive the formatting, this was all done on mobile over my morning coffee!
Norcross, J. C., & Karpiak, C. P. (2017). Our best selves: Defining and actualizing expertise in psychotherapy. The Counseling Psychologist, 45(1), 66–75. https://doi.org/10.1177/0011000016655603
Schore, A. N. (2014). The right brain is dominant in psychotherapy. Psychotherapy, 51(3), 388–397. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0037083
Daryl, thank you for this post. I much appreciate you raising the topic of character & its intimate connection to ethics, morality & excellence. This is so important in our development as sound humans, which is essential to our development as excellent therapists, supervisors & coaches. It would be wonderful if character development & ethics training were more central in the training & supervision of therapists.
My Stoic teacher, Massimo Pigliucci, has thought much about character development & written about it in "Five insights about character" (https://figsinwinter.substack.com/p/five-insights-about-character) which summarises the key points in his book "The Quest for Character"(https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/60021170-the-quest-for-character). He argues that character (ethics, morality & excellence as you say) can & must be trained & underpins the development of any craft. I think what he says in the following quote applies equally to therapists: “According to the Greco-Romans, virtue understood as human excellence is a skill (techne) and therefore can be taught, just like any other skill. Imagine you wished to learn a musical instrument, or maybe a new language. How do you go about it? You will learn some basic musical theory or grammar; you will get a good teacher who can guide you; and then you’ll practice, practice, practice. The same goes for virtue: you become a better person by learning a bit about ethics, by following a good teacher like Socrates, and by doing a lot of practice.” Sounds pretty much like Deliberate Practice to me & much like your writing.
You may be aware that the Stoics, one of three lineages inspired by Socrates, influenced the founding fathers of Christianity & were reciprocally influenced by the major world religions & philosophies due to trade in the Mediterranean basin. Perhaps it is the lack of education & guidance in developing a clear, individual philosophy of life which contributes to the ills in our world today - clients, therapists, supervisors, educators & coaches included? That’s why coach John Wooden was such an inspiring role model.
thanks Vivian. much to be said about an inflation of "values" and less about "virtues" in current climate.
Fabulous article, Daryl. For lack of better wording, I feel you’ve captured both the worldly and divine elements of our profession. I’m currently writing my master’s thesis on therapist expertise and I think your framework is utterly brilliant - would you permit me to reference it?
Some thoughts I had that I’d like to contribute to the conversation:
- you reminded me of Norcros & Karpiak’s (2017) response to Hill et al. (2017), who themselves were commenting on Tracey et al. (2014, 2015), when they wrote:
“The person of the therapist will probably prove the elemental quality, the sine qua non, of the psychotherapy expert: that is for expertise in doing psychotherapy, not as an expert about psychotherapy. We probably grow the best therapists by selecting and then growing the best people…. Mind you, that is not the perfect person or the one with the ideal life, on one hand, or the seriously wounded healers, on the other. Much like Maslow’s self-actualizers, our best selves have weathered adversities, confronted life, and struggled with its vicissitudes. They have likely benefitted from several courses of their own personal treatment and personal development activities. Our best selves emerge, in the words of George Eliot/Mary Ann Evans in The Mill on the Floss (1860), “from a life vivid and intense enough to have created a wide fellow-feeling with all that is human” (p. 527).
- the same authors discuss therapist responsiveness, and it made me think of Alan Schore’s (2014) work on psychotherapy as a right-brained process. I’m personally quite keen to investigate the relationship between responsiveness in therapists and the awareness of “the implicit, nonverbal, intuitive, holistic processing of emotional information and social interactions” (p. 366). I could easily see expert + caring therapists as those who can keenly marry cognitive/declarative knowledge with procedural/affective awareness in-session, relative to the unique needs of each client.
- finally, this whole discussion makes me think of the relevance of my liberal arts education to my psychotherapy practice. I honestly feel like one of my greatest assets in session is my wide breadth of knowledge, my insatiable curiosity, and my ability to investigate/research/dialogue about nearly any topic. As a mentor in the field of movement and strength training once said to me “you can’t look for inspiration on the peaks of your own field. You need to climb other mountains and immerse yourself in different terrains in order to advance your practice”. I’m sure that this is far less eloquent than he originally said, but it’s a sentiment that I feel like I *really* see in your work (I.e identifying the “lead story” in your book The First Kiss comes to mind as one of the most salient examples for me). As the saying goes, “the secret of the person who is universally interesting is that they are universally interested” (William Dean Howells - don’t have the citation right now).
Forgive the formatting, this was all done on mobile over my morning coffee!
Norcross, J. C., & Karpiak, C. P. (2017). Our best selves: Defining and actualizing expertise in psychotherapy. The Counseling Psychologist, 45(1), 66–75. https://doi.org/10.1177/0011000016655603
Schore, A. N. (2014). The right brain is dominant in psychotherapy. Psychotherapy, 51(3), 388–397. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0037083
Conlan, really appreciate this. I hadn't made the connections to Alan Schore's work.
i resonate w your mentor's words
>"you can’t look for inspiration on the peaks of your own field.”
btw, love to hear more about what's your thesis is about.