What would you give to hear perhaps the world’s greatest philosopher share his personal recipe for the good life? This is exactly what we get in Plato’s The Philebus, one of his final works, and his ultimate say on the question of how an individual can live a good life. Is knowledge or pleasure more…
Pity is the feeling of sorrow for another person’s suffering or hardship. The word has its origin the ancient Greek word piety, which can be understood to mean a devotion to goodness. Pity was central to ancient Greek thought: it can be seen as the true theme of Homer’s The Iliad, which is often considered…
Ah, Sir John Falstaff. He’s Shakespeare’s low-living, gluttonous, perpetually indebted senior citizen, who steals for a living, meets all outward criteria of alcohol dependency, and is called a coward by his closest friends the first time we meet him. This is charge only amplified when he plays dead in battle and then falsely claims he…
The therapeutic alliance is the working relationship between client and therapist. Friendship is an equality made of harmony. According to a growing body of research, the therapeutic alliance may be the most important factor to a successful therapeutic outcome — more important, even, than the therapist’s theoretical orientation, or approach to therapy. So, what makes…
Online counseling (and online therapy) is the practice of providing outpatient psychotherapy services remotely through the use of an online platform. In this article we will trace key points of the history of online counseling from the founding of the discipline of psychotherapy in the 19th century to the present day. 1890-1910: Origins of psychotherapy…
William Shakespeare is recognized as one of the greatest dramatists in world history, and much of this praise is due to his uncanny understanding of human nature, which he uses to color the personalities throughout his works. While his accomplishments have been lauded for centuries, there is at least one major Shakespearean innovation that may…