What sessions look like will depend partly on your particular needs and interests, what's bringing you, and what you hope to get from each session and from treatment as a whole. This service exists for you.

That said, there are some steady features of my practice. First, I ask questions designed to promote your own understanding and explain key philosophical concepts when that's helpful. Second, I'll note when it seems we are overlooking key questions, defending against certain lines of thought, or making errors in reasoning or judgment. Finally, I'll recommend some reading, some questions to think on, or some philosophical practices to try on during the week – all depending on your interest.

I am also a depth therapist, and many features of depth therapy apply just as well to this practice: attentiveness, care, partnership, confidentiality, and acceptance.

What sessions don't look like is cross-examination or debate. The goal is not to win, but to discover the truth by whatever means are most helpful.

Session by session, we'll meet for ~50 minutes (if you want to meet for longer per session, that's something we can talk about).

As for how many of those sessions we have, I recommend at least three months – a season's worth – of working together. It's part of what it means to be human that any significant, lasting change takes time. This is true even of our bodies, but doubly so of our souls. If you'd like to continue beyond those three months, we can talk about that too.

Clinical philosophy, which also goes by the name philosophical practice or philosophical counseling, has actually received a bit of publicity in the last few years (for instance in Vice and The New Yorker).

It's true, though, that it's much more common to hear someone talk about their therapy/therapist than about their work with a philosophical practitioner. This is largely because, for various historical reasons, philosophy has become mainly an academic, 'thinking-big-thoughts' discipline, rather than a practice that can transform a person's life. (For example, a recent study has shown that moral philosophers – whose job is literally to study the moral life – don't put any more work into being ethical than does anyone else.)

Fortunately, times are changing, and with luck more and more of those trained in philosophy will use their education and effort to transform their own, and others', lives.

Incidentally, the same split has occurred in the field of psychology, where there are "research" (test-running, article-writing) psychologists and "clinical" (meeting with patients week-in, week-out) psychologists. This is a false dichotomy, but one that has affected both psychology and philosophy.

Clinical philosophy and depth therapy are both concerned with relieving human suffering, cultivating self-knowledge, and pushing through defenses that prevent us from discovering the truth.

However, where depth therapy focuses primarily on experiencing, processing, and reflecting on affect and feeling, clinical philosophy focuses on experiencing, processing, and reflecting on our conscious acts questioning, gaining understanding or insight, and judging. This is not to say, of course, that therapy excludes thinking, or philosophy excludes feeling; it's a matter of focus and relative emphasis.

Professionally and legally speaking, the major difference is that therapeutic treatment involves making mental health diagnoses and requires that the practitioner be trained in psychology and licensed by the state. Clinical philosophy is not regulated by the state, but normally its practitioners have a formal education in philosophy and certification in philosophical counseling.

None. Since philosophy is primarily a way of life and secondarily an acquaintance with this or that thinker or system, you don't need to have studied any philosophy prior to (or even during) our sessions.

Philosophy begins with questioning; if you have questions, you are ready to philosophize.

My two most significant philosophical influences have been Plato and the Jesuit philosopher and theologian Bernard Lonergan. I have also put significant time into studying Aristotle, Aquinas, and Michael Polanyi, each of whom has shaped my thought and life.

Two thinkers writing at the frontier between philosophy and psychoanalysis who have deeply influenced me are Jonathan Lear and Erich Fromm.

Yes. Philosophy is the art of living, and for most people in most cultures throughout history, God and religion have played a major role in individual and communal life.

But since philosophy is also the search for truth, it is equally open to questioning, at the deepest level, one's own beliefs about God and religion. A classic formulation of the believer's approach to philosophy is fides quaerens intellectum – faith seeking understanding.

Practicing philosophy, however does not require belief in God, so it makes no distinction between believers and non-believers – all are welcome at the table of authentic inquiry.

Clinical philosophy will help you live a life that is truly yours. This is something many people do not achieve, and reading many books, thinking many thoughts, and earning many degrees (present company included!) does not guarantee that it will ever occur. Immanuel Kant says it well:

[H]e who has properly learned a system of philosophy, although he has in his head all of the principles, explanations, and proofs together with the division of the entire theoretical edifice, and can count everything off on his fingers, still knows and judges only what has been given to him. If you dispute one of his definitions, he has no idea where to get another one… He has formed himself according to an alien reason…and is a plaster cast of a man.

Do not be a plaster cast of a person; be the genuine article. Do not borrow other peoples' answers, and do not ask their questions; ask your questions, and pursue your own answers.

If you're looking for empirical research on the efficacy of philosophical counseling, it's slim (unlike the evidence for depth psychotherapy).

If you are relying on journal studies for your decision about philosophical therapy, though, you may be putting your weight on the wrong foot. Since genuine philosophy is about coming into your own rather than relying on what others have said or how they have lived, articles – which report what others say and how they live – will not solve your fundamental problem: discovering for yourself what it means to live an authentic life.