Patricia Arnold, PhD

Patricia Arnold has been a longtime dedicated theorist, practitioner, and teacher. Her PhD Thesis was Reasonable Hope: A Philosophical Counsellor’s Approach to Post-Traumatic Stress. This work reflects many years of research in psychology and philosophy. It also provokes us to consider how hope might be reasonable.

In the academic realm, Patricia specializes in epistemology, metaphysics, and feminist and social philosophy. She is a certified member of the American Philosophical Practitioners Association (APPA) and was the first of four Canadian counsellors to be certified by the APPA. She is a member of the Ontario Association of Mental Health Professionals and the American Psychological Association (APA) - Division 24: Society for Philosophy and Psychology.

Patricia is deeply committed to applying the wisdom and insights of philosophical training to everyday life. Ethics, values, existential issues, personal identity, contribution, human relationships, passions and desires, creative process, self-improvement, evolution, and human motivations can be seen to be at the heart of everyday living. How richly these domains impact us depends on what we choose to bring to them. One thing Patricia advocates is that we, as humans, can bring our own depth and thoughtfulness to everyday life in the levels and kinds of choices we make.

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In her own words…

If I were to summarize myself in one sentence it would be that I am blessed enough, and loved enough, to be able to fulfill myself in aiming to understand human experiences and in genuinely caring for others.

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I am a long time academic and love and appreciate the gifts, challenges, and people that my engagements with that environment have afforded me. I am also an active seeker; I have studied with Native Shamans and Catholic nuns and have sought wisdom in sacred texts, people, and places. So my work is about the mind, spirit, and body. As a Philosophical Counsellor, I believe that philosophy has much to offer the field of psychology and in the coming years I hope to facilitate enhanced dialogue between these distinct academic fields.There are all kinds of neurophysiological, psychological, and philosophical reasons why our contemporary thinking about mental health needs to be reinvigorated and re-oriented. Importantly, the mental health field doesn’t always teach or advocate for patient agency. In Philosophy, agency is about freedom. In applied mental health fields, this means the freedom to know what you can about yourself and your situation and to then make decisions about your life that reflect your authentic values. This means that as a Philosophical Counsellor, I want to give my clients the tools to think reasonably and rationally and deeply and profoundly in ways that inspire them to exercise their own agencies.