Master in Philosophical Counselling and Consultancy

The program represents one of the best-known postgraduate HE programs worldwide that feeds at the academic level the emerging composite field of philosophical practice and is the only one taught in English in Europe. Its main purpose is the intense and comprehensive high-quality formation of well-trained professionals in applied/practical philosophy, which includes philosophical counseling and consultancy for individuals and organizations, ethical counseling, and philosophy for children. Employing solid philosophical knowledge and general counseling skills, successful graduates learn to facilitate the thinking of a client or group of people. Mainly driven by social utility, they do not seek to interpret the thoughts of an individual client or group in terms of impersonal philosophy but to link thoughts to actions in day-to-day life. The attainment of philosophical counseling objectives takes place, progressively, through the therapeutic engagement of philosophy via the five methods it generated: critical thinking, conceptual analysis, phenomenology, thought experiments, and creative thinking. The skills and knowledge required by this complex training are taught by some of the best international specialists in various fields of philosophical practice.

• Philosophical foundations of counceling
• Philosophical tools of argumentation, deliberation, and critical reasoning
• Pragmatics and techniques of communication
• Philosophy with children
• Philosophy in prisons
• Theistic philosophical counceling
• Foundations of philosophy of mind
• Philosophy as way of life
• Introduction to Psychopathology and Clinical Semiology
• Counceling skills
• Strategic communication
• Supervised individual and group counceling
• Group counceling techniques
• Foundations of counseling and psychotherapy
• Introduction to bioethics

In order to help them become successful philosophical practitioners, the students are trained primarily in the critical methods of academic philosophy, particularly those developed from the original dialogical logic. But the bulk of the study time is dedicated to the teaching and practicing of applied philosophical-ethical skills. Employing solid philosophical knowledge and specific counseling skills, the students are trained to facilitate the thinking of a client or group of people. Their activity will be essentially philosophical because it focuses on significant, but problematic concepts, the kind of concepts used not only for everyday thinking and communication but also as a basis for actions. As practical philosophers, they will often identify hidden assumptions, theoretical frameworks, and worldviews. These inform the sorts of questions they will learn to ask. They will also use their training and experience to help clients find their own philosophical insights able to ground their future attitudes decisions.

All B.A. graduates who are interested in embracing a counselling profession, or in employing in their profession thinking and counselling skills based on philosophy.

In Romania the profession of philosophical counsellor has been recently included in the official occupations registry, but many graduates of the program have also successfully employed the skills in various professions (in Romanian and in other countries), from psychotherapy to corporate coaching, to teaching, to human resources recruitment, to small business management, to PR, etc.