 forward. So welcome, Andre. I don't know. I was fascinated in perhaps in the wrong saying, but that voice. But here we are to discuss philosophical health, philosophical counseling. And you are yourself practicing philosophical counseling, if I'm correct. And I think the first thing I'd like to know is how, how you came to philosophy and then how you came to philosophical counseling? Well, I, I started studying philosophy when I was young, 19 years old, 20 years old. At the time, I wanted to enroll in some arts program. But not so much. I also had the passion for theory. So philosophy was my choice. And that took me to a PhD program, eventually, a PhD program in philosophy, and phenomenology, especially. Right. But after that, the PhD program, I felt the need for something practical as well. So when I found out about Oscar Brené Fier and I enrolled in his school, Paris, right, the training in philosophical counseling. Okay. And four years ago, four years. Okay. And then you started practicing in Romania. Yes. Okay. How is it working for you? And how what kind of situations in general, what is your general impression after? So you've been practicing in the last three years or? Yes. Yes. Yes. And well, I now I teach at a couple of universities, especially at the Polytechnic University in Bucharest. And besides the teaching job, I have some students for a philosophical counseling, philosophical practice and critical thinking. The situation is developing here. So we're still in the stage of promoting this idea of philosophy counseling, why they should do it, what they can get out of it. Right. So this is still, we're still in an early stage in Romania. Right. I mean, I think we are in early stages, more or less everywhere. Although we know that in Germany, the US, Norway, then Israel, they have been practicing for now maybe two decades or so, or maybe even a bit more with ups and downs. For example, Norway, I think that they were very strong, they even had a training in philosophical counseling that was connected to a university. And that sort of dissolved and there's no no much not much happening there. So what I find, we started more or less at the same time. I started also three and a half years ago in Sweden. Firstly, in real life, and now more, more, more sessions online. But I do, I do think that I mean, I was I was surprised that there is really a need people are, there seems to be at least a part of society that finds it extremely relevant. And this leads me to my other question. And of course, you can always you can also ask questions, right? She's not I'm not a journalist. So I'm not I'm only partly interviewing you. But yeah, I think that sometimes I think what kind of people come to me and they might be from different backgrounds in terms of perception of well being, right? So you might have people that live with a diagnosis, even that might be have a treatment, psychiatric treatment for depression or what have you and on the other hand, you might have people who actually are successful but want or experienced themselves as successful, the one to have some sense of more meaning purpose in life. And but I find that there is something in common. It is people who like to process information, let's say by intellectual means, as opposed to emotional means. Right. Yeah. Do you have the same impression? Yes. Most of my students from the philosophical practice come from a, let's say a non pathological background. So they they didn't have psychotherapy or if they had psychotherapy, it was not psychiatric. Well, they're rather well. Right. They're well, they have just have some curiosities regarding reflection regarding philosophy, some of them are passionate of going to different courses. And after trying this and that, they stumble upon philosophical practice, and they enjoy it. For instance, I have a group. I've been working with them for about one year and a half, and we're still going. We're, we're even discovering different philosophies together, working on them. And they, I think they stick around. Right. For the exploration part. So you mean that you are doing group sessions, or are you also doing individual sessions? Both individual and and group session, mostly individual sessions. But now, for instance, I'm starting a group session with my frequent collaborator, Ankati Urem, who is a psychotherapist. So I'm doing both. Right. And so I know that you are particularly fond of phenomenology. You just published a phenomenology of elegance, which is a beautiful phrase. Can you tell us more about both actually both? I'm curious about both. How do you, why do you see phenomenology as being an important tool for philosophical health? And, and what about elegance? Phenomenology has some very nice epistemological tools, which the counselor can use. The most famous tool from Husserlian phenomenology is the apohe or bracket. You suspend your judgment, and in short, you stop projecting. This is very useful for the counselor, because you as a counselor, you stop projecting your ideas onto the client and well, give the client some space to express himself or to think and to well, not have his or her thoughts disrupted by the counselor. The phenomenology of elegance, well, it was an experiment of mine. I initially was very passionate about the phenomenology of body and movement. This is a very fashionable subject in the cognitive sciences, embodiment activism. And I got into this phenomenology of movement. And then the question was, well, what should I do with this phenomenology of movement? And at the time, I was also into fashion and clothes and beauty. Okay. So I said, okay, let's let's try to do this. And that became my initial PhD program. I went to Italy to study with a very good philosopher, Roberto de Monticelli. And he actually she gave me this, this idea of elegance. Because at the time, I was wandering around with phenomenology of movement, volition. I was not very sure. And she she told me about this, this thing, what about elegance? interested in both phenomenology, the body, the experience of the body and the clothes, the body, dressed up body. And then, well, she suggested it. And some years after the PhD, the book came out. Great. Have the book finally finished. The experiment finished. It reminds me when you speak about elegance. I think about Kleist's book, the theater of puppets, right? Yeah, you probably mentioned it in your book. This beautiful idea, I think it's Deleuze who brings it in his as a philosophical character. And there is this idea of there is two friends and one of them is tying his shoelace, putting his feet on the chair and starts tying the shoelace. And the other friend says, Wow, this was the most elegant gesture I've seen. And of course, then the frame tries to reproduce that but it, it, it fails. It's totally unnatural. And, and it's, and so then there's this idea that the puppets are the marionettes are the most elegant beings because in fact, they are just being acted by, by a flow that they, they don't try to control. What is, is elegance, where is elegance in that? I mean, it's a field that I don't know. So I'm just improvising here. But in this continuum between, let's say control and, and, and naturality, right? That seems to be a, an important dialectic. Yeah, that's a, that's a nice example, but marionette being flooded by control from, from the outside and does making it elegant. Well, a big theory about elegance comes from Castiglione, from the Renaissance. And in between this control on the, on the one hand, and lack of control or flexibility on the other, elegance would go more towards the flexibility towards an idea that when, when you're flexible, I mean, when you get rid of your own rigidity of your own resistance to, to the world, you get this elegant appearance. And besides this, elegance also appears when you learn something. But you do not appear to have put great effort into learning. It seems natural, even though there was some resistance there, there was some, some effort right going on. Is this the idea of spread that to the right, the idea that we're making actually something very sophisticated and that took a lot of training, but after a certain point, it looks virtuoso or natural. Yes, you've trained so much, it doesn't seem that you've trained at all. Right. This is the Yeah, I think that that's, I like, I relate very much to this idea of freedom, being the result of experience and training and work. And this is something that I think that a lot of people today would benefit from, right, because we have this capitalist idea of freedom as being this sort of a inert capacity to choose and basically spontaneous disorder of or But what about style then? Because isn't so this is a bit where we're talking about, right? It's so style would be the result is sort of the emergent results of a long work. Or I mean, yeah, a long, a long attention to a constellation of ideas, which relates for me very much with the kind of work I do as a philosophical counselor. And the way we met is that you commented on on what you thought was was a bit intriguing when I speak about philosophical conviction, right? Yes. And I may I may clarify vaguely quickly. But I do believe that there are two times in my approach, at least I use at least two important moments of the philosophical healing process or is like the first one is a sort of a deconstruction where we indeed analyze certain rigidity that might actually contain contradictions, etc. And we sort of reconnect with what I call the Creole, which is the singularity of the cosmos, the sort of a creative flow that is shared by many other process philosophers. But at the same time, and this can imply a lot of critique, on one hand, and the other hand, where you were saying about the epoch, the and the pause of projection, which I call deep listening, right? Okay. And and but there is another moment where I try to help people construct a coherent and yo dynamic conceptual constellation, this is what I call the philosophical conviction is something that is, of course, plastic and and and that that contains a certain flexibility. But that is not a pure, let's say, floating acceptance of where there is without a a sort of a structure, let's say a conceptual structure, which is not based on ideally, of course, a dogmatism, but based on, again, a the idea of a conceptual integrity, the idea that there might be for some people, and I do believe there is an explicit way of organizing our life around a set of ideas, values, notions that might be between four and eight, that's what I call the that's why I call it a constellation. But that constellation itself. And that's actually engineers know I work a lot with engineers to in in consulting and I find I'm actually very open to this idea. So in engineering, you have this idea of structural integrity, right, of a bridge or construction. And you know that if you build things too rigid, they break, right? So you need to have actually a structure that that has some flexibility, such that it holds. So that's what that's what I mean by philosophical conviction, because I do believe that we most people are implicitly traversed in French, they are implicitly moved by ideologies by by convictions that might not be theirs. And so that was, yeah, so that's the kind of approach I associate to the idea of philosophical belief. But I also have noticed that it is something that might not be for everyone, let's say, like, some people are more or less in demand or need of a a structuration that allows for regularity. And I'll finish here because I'm being a bit long. But I do think that I wrote in the book that you mentioned being a nearness, I have the sort of minimal cosmology. And between this sort of dual phenomenon or dual ontology around the creel and the one, the multiple and the one, or we could say regularity and singularity, or the creel and the real. And I do believe that on the side of the real, in order to make worlds or life worlds, you need regularities. Right? Yeah, right. And that's the that's only one side of and you also need singularities, you also need this flow, you also need this this connection with freedom in otherwise it becomes too rigid. So I think that in order to, to help people have a good life, you need to work on both on both sides, the singularity side, co creation, and the regularity side, some sort of, yeah, philosophical constellation. Okay, so basically, you propose this conviction as a discovery of one's own concepts, this constellation that you name it that such. And sometimes you encourage them also to have a moment of let's say, innovation, or daring to to get out of their scheme that they discovered reflection. Yeah, we can say it's like that. Right? Well, yeah, it makes sense. Right. And so, coming back to your training, so you had a training with Oscar Bonafie, right? Am I pronouncing his name correctly? I don't know his work very well, but I heard a little bit about him. And I it seems that he favors more the Socratic approach, right? He focuses a lot on shaking people's dogmatism. How would you define that? Yes, the Socratic method is very provocative. And because of that, some people need to have a philosophical organ of some kind to enjoy the process more than the initial encounter with Socratic figure. The Socratic figure in Plato dialogues as well. The Socratic figure was a bit violent for them. This is why the weeks. This is why they killed him. He was he was annoying to them, right? Staring up their beliefs and proving to them that the world every belief can have a reverse side. The idea has its limits. So this is true for for Oscar Bonafie's method, which I which I apply practically. So this means that, by the way, what do you mean by philosophical organ? An openness to discussing ideas without trying to settle passion very fast. So sort of openness or passion towards never ending discussions. Okay. And it's interesting that you use a biological metaphor for that. Yes, yes. Maybe this comes from Romanian, we have this expression, an organ for mathematics. Okay, interesting for theology. All right. I think that's beautiful. I think that also connects with your interest in the phenomenology of the body, right? I do tend to I often say that for me, thinking is as important as breathing for a human being. So it sort of connects with that, the physiology, which is a very Nietzschean theme also, right? And I think that for the listeners, I think that it's clear in the genealogy of the idea of philosophical health, I think that Nietzsche is a very important figure, as you know, he had this idea that indeed, the separation, the dualism between body and mind is an illusion. And therefore, philosophy and physiology are perhaps the two sides of the same coin in Nietzsche's approach. Coming back to the provocative. Okay, let's say that I mean, I more and more, I tend to think that there is a book actually that was published by Cambridge University Press, which is called Intellectual Sheimans. And I think it's a great title. The book is perhaps not so fascinating, in fact, but the title is fantastic. Because the more I practice the more I see myself, perhaps without enough modesty, as someone who is a healer of the souls or helps people. Doctor of the soul. Yeah, but the term healer is is more important because we know that if we say doctor, today, the biomedical model is so important that we start thinking about measuring and and and a healer is precisely a person that is very suspicious about measuring and statistics and norms. A healer is a person who sees your singularity. And so in that sense, in the sense of what I've called with the loser, the sorcerer with the source being right with you, like a source, but also so if we are just provocative, if we are just socratic, and I understand the political importance of that, but isn't it too violent for some people who need a little bit of care? You know, it's like, it's like the things that handle with with care, you know, when we have a porcelain or something, fragile people. Yeah, I mean, they're not fragile by necessarily by nature, they might have a fragile moment in their life. And my practice is that I see that some people, at some moments, they need they are very fine. And they actually need a more provocative approach and even with humor. And that's perfect. And at other moments, it's much more it needs to be much more caring and soft. And I would I have a problem with applying a mode. And actually, I have that problem with any form of philosophical counseling, because all the forms are, for example, let's focus on logic. And people have, right? Elliot Dico and who I respect a lot. And I think all these things are good puzzles. And but if we are too much on the logic side, I say, oh, let's look only at the logical fallacies that this person applied. So I think that's the challenge with philosophical counseling is that perhaps it's the discipline since I think philosophy is is the only discipline I mean, is the the discipline by excellence that looks both at the whole and singular. So these two extreme, right? If we apply that in counseling, it might be in fact, incompatible with the two rigid theory, like we can have a meta methodology, right? What do you think about that? Well, Oscar has a very nice concept of mirroring, which is true for the Socratic method and for Socrates as well. Because we know this, this Socrates that provoked people that annoyed some people and got him killed. But also in in the dialogues, we also have Socrates that is very nice to to some students, for instance, in the Republic, Glaucon frequently struggles with himself and with his own thinking. And Glaucon knows it. Socrates knows it. And whenever Glaucon has some trouble, or whenever Ademantos had some some trouble, Socrates supports them and tells them, go on, finish your idea, go on, don't let yourself bogged down because of your emotions on that subject. So he mirrors his interlocutor is in a way in which if the interlocutor becomes violent or becomes pissed off because of what he discovers in reflection, then Socrates as well mirrors this. Okay, hope of making interlocutor aware of himself. But if the interlocutor needs some care, then Socrates also becomes a bit more caring. That sounds fascinating. Yeah, I saw this also in Oscar, for instance, he with some some people, he's very well, a bit rough, because the people have some dilemmas. And he wants to make them aware of their rigidity, of their violence, of their opposing towards themselves. But in other cases, when he works with the children, well, he he's very nice. Okay, so children get a special treatment. And I think it's fascinating, this idea of mirroring good, but I might have a problem with it because so isn't that what Israelis and Palestinians are doing? They're mirroring each other? Isn't that when couple fights? I mean, I don't know you have you are in perhaps in couple or married. If you respond to insult by insult, it's not necessarily always the best approach. Yeah, well, we don't insult. You don't insult. You know, actually, I read that. This was many years ago. And I think it was in Romania. Yeah, there was a psycho, a young psychoanalyst that became very famous, because he actually was extremely rude with his patients. And there was a logical about it, even in France. And I don't know if that rings a bell, but I found that very amusing. I haven't tried it, though, I wouldn't I wouldn't advise people to try it at home. If the client gets violent, starts insulting, then that's a very nice situation in which we try to reflect on how did we get here? Why did you insult me? Why did you say those very harsh things about me? Right. So we're always in a reflective mode. I have to say, I haven't had that experience yet. Have you had that experience of one of your students that started being violent during a counseling session? No, no. Not so. Right. Some of them get a bit annoyed. But I usually deal with the humor. Okay. So instantly, we get out of the dialogue, and try to look at the dialogue with some, some humor, using an analogy or a famous character, funny character from universal literature, something like that. For example, for example, give us an example of that if anonymous example of a situation like that. Well, I have a student who's very enthusiastic about many things. He wants to discover many things. And fast, he's a fond of a newness, new stuff, new stuff. And sometimes he gets frustrated because this makes him be more superficial. He starts something and then he goes to something else and starts reading the third book and then starts seeing a movie and doesn't finish all of these things. He's all right, all of the place. And the analogy here is Don Giovanni, jumps one woman to another. Right. This is kind of a Don Giovanni, intellectually speaking, Giovanni of both, never fully consuming a relation with a relationship with a book or a movie intellectual endeavor. And well, when mentioning this character, well, do you know Don Giovanni? Oh, yes, of course, I know Don Giovanni. Well, does make sense to have something of Don Giovanni in this being passionate about new stuff behavior. Oh, yeah. I guess it makes make some sense. Yeah, what's the connection? Well, then starts thinking about it. And the frustration is replaced by being illuminated by the obvious that he knew he did, but did not conceptualize. Right. Yeah, there is a an interesting book by French psychoanalyst, Lacanian, Jean-Pierre Vinter with the book is called the Lésirant, the errant of flesh, Lésirant de la chair, studies on masculine hysteria. And he speaks a lot of Don Giovanni. And we could say just for the anecdote that Don Giovanni is also a little bit obsessive compulsive and a monomaniac, because he stays focused on the same theme, in a way. But I like your idea of humor. That reminds me that Siddhartha, Herman Hesse, who was the author of Siddhartha, for example, had this idea that humor is the the final stage, just before enlightenment. And and it's, it's indeed a, it could be a technique. Although here, I think we're back to the idea of spread the tour or elegance is like probably the real humor is not, you don't think about it, right? It's like you, you even, perhaps you're funny without even trying. Yeah. Yes, humor is very important, both in Socrates and in modern philosophical counseling, because it's a way of abstracting and distancing oneself from the discussion from the initial topic. So when people get to involve some humor detaches them from that emotional game that they started playing and that affects their thinking. I think Livia Amir has some good books on humor. He's a very good philosophical counselor and has this idea that humor is very important for the consultation. Okay. For philosophical practice in general, right? How do you see the future of philosophical health? How do you see things and for both positively and in terms of danger, perhaps, if any, the philosophical health movement should get more popular, because certainly it covers some area of people having this need for clarification and for exploration of their own lives in a reflective way. So there's work to be done. That's for sure. Well, the problem would be that we don't have such a strong community yet. And this is a risky. As in other philosophical schools, people tended to depart from one another and collaboration was not so good. So this would be a great risk for a philosophical health movement as a whole. Right. I like that idea. Actually, I did my PhD on Esprit de Cor, which is precisely the spirit of community, of community, of practice, community of belief, epistemic community. And because, you know, for many years, I avoided academia, I thought this would be the end of my creativity. And I was an independent author. And then at 40, I felt, perhaps that I was strong enough to be an academic without losing my, my, you know, my freedom. Well, those are big words, but you know, and, and, but I did my PhD on what I thought was both a menace and opportunity, because Esprit de Cor can be both this beautiful one mind between people who are looking at the same horizon. But it can also be group thing. Right. And we see a lot of group thing, which is basically a stubborn dogmatism of people who protect each other while excluding others. And we see that too. So, but I do agree. And that is shared by Ellie Kramer, with whom I'm going to have a conversation. He is into philosophy as a way of life, which is very connect a very close to the idea of philosophical health. It focuses on Pierre Hadoe and, and Foucault and, and, and he also has a contribution to the book that we're putting together on philosophical health. And Ellie wants to ease in Poland at the moment, but he really wants to create that sort of community. And I, and I think perhaps we should have a conversation with him, because I think that's fundamental. And that is done also by realizing that despite the many approaches to philosophical counseling, I think it's important that we, we realize that we have the same vision, and therefore that we should respect each other's methods. I've heard I came to the movement of philosophical counseling. Later, let's say that we are the second wave or, but I heard that there's been in the past already some intestine quarrels between, I find this a bit unuseful, especially when we are such a small niche activity, then it's great that there are many approaches. And I think that we need to show to the world, otherwise we're not feels often healthy, right? If we if we cannot learn from each other and be a diverse yet focused group, then we would sort of prove programmatically that we are not that philosophically healthy. So we'll see. I'm not a such a great marketing person. So I'm trying to through the philosophical health page and this conversation, I'm trying to, you know, create a steer a little bit the spirit. And I believe in slow growth, too. Everything is done persistently, but without forcing too much. And but but I agree with you that we do need to have a better awareness that we are in it. That we are a community, actually, of belief and of practice, let's say. Yes, this is very important to be part of a professional community, especially of an international Exactly. And well, it's something we partially lack. In Romania, we have an association. The things are very slow. Being part of a community of practitioners is great. We'll have more conversations about that. And perhaps not so interesting at the moment for the people who are listening to this recording. But off the record, we will plan how to conquer the world. But anything else you would like to add or or ask in the last five minutes? Well, at the moment, I have no idea. Okay, I want to thank you for this this opportunity for this discussion that we have. And can't wait for the next one. Exactly. Well, thank you, Andrei. It was it was lovely to talk. And I will stop the recording. And now the real conversation will start. No, just that was it. That was humor.