Health and Well-being: ‘Positive’ autonomy and the non-directiveness of secular humanist moral counselling in Flanders, Belgium

Flanders (Belgium) is a region that is historically Catholic as reflected, even today, in the predominance of religious care institutions. Since the 1950’s secular humanist organizations have offered free counselling for those seeking help or struggling with life or existential questions.
Western counselling, committed to respect the autonomy of individuals, seeks not to steer or even influence those seeking help towards the values and norms of the caregivers/counsellors, conform the ideal of non-directiveness. One could conclude that this is difficult to achieve in humanistic moral guidance, as it’s a practice with an outspoken philosophical background, a value-loaded self-identity and with an institutional anchoring. Our concept of non-directivity is founded in a positive concept of respect for the clients’ autonomy: enhancing the autonomy and self-direction of the client to enable him/her in giving meaning to one's own life. We ‘ll argue that humanistic practice can explicitly articulate its identity and philosophical background while counselling clients non-directive. In doing so we we’ll make use of i.a. J. Katz concept of psychological autonomy.