Organized by Dr. Reinhard G. Mueller and Dr. Alessandra Filannino Indelicato
Weekly meetings will take place on Thursdays 9 – 11 a.m. (US Central Time) beginning on November 20, 2025. There will be at least 8 seminar sessions.
Content
Reorientations, in the form of healing, transformation and change, have increasingly become focal points of professional inquiry and practice across diverse approaches to counseling, psychotherapy, and coaching. In orientation-philosophical terms, these approaches constitute models for methodic reorientation: they seek to facilitate profound and lasting transformations concerning one’s routines of thinking, behavior, and physiology. At their core, they aim to enable individuals to orient themselves more successfully – with purpose, harmony, and fulfillment – within the complexities of their personal, social, and professional lives. Each approach, however, is based on different orientational frameworks, methodologies, models and tools that focus on specific aspects of human orientation, such as routines, communication, relationships, thought patterns, feelings and emotions, the sub- or unconscious, meaning and goals. Depending on the situation and the person, some approaches may be more fitting than others.
In this seminar, we will explore and compare major theories of philosophical counseling, psychotherapy, and coaching through the lens of the philosophy of orientation, in order to examine how each of them frames and conceptualizes reorientation differently. At the same time, we inquire into the extent to which the philosophy of orientation itself provides a useful frame for the practice of philosophical counseling and the cultivation of an art of living. We will focus in particular on the following approaches:
- Philosophy as a Way of Life (Pierre Hadot)
- The Socratic Method (James Overhoser)
- Gestalt Therapy (Dave Mann / Fritz Perls)
- Jungian Psychotherapy (Carl Gustav Jung)
- Existential Therapy (Irwin Yalom)
- Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (Judith Beck)
- Contemporary Life Coaching (the Example of Tony Robbins)
This seminar is discussion-based; this means that participants are expected to read the assigned passages before the sessions. The seminar is free, but seats may be limited. Please apply by November 13, 2025, via the application form below by briefly explaining 1.) your affiliation and your professional and/or academic background, 2.) your philosophical interests, and 3.) you motivation for joining the seminar (max. 50 words per field).