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30 - Professional Wisdom

Functions and Processes of Psychotherapeutic and Judicial Wisdom

from Part VII - Wisdom in Action

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 March 2019

By
Heidi M. Levitt  and
Lauren M. Grabowski
Edited by
Robert J. Sternberg  and
Judith Glück
Robert J. Sternberg
Affiliation:
Cornell University, New York
Judith Glück
Affiliation:
Universität Klagenfurt, Austria
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Summary

This chapter describes and explores research that has focused on the professionalization of wisdom in modern society. Instead of pre-modern models of wisdom in which norms for behavior, values for personal development, and relational counsel are delivered by the same source – typically religious or community leaders – this chapter examines the ways many of these functions have been taken up by the judicial and psychotherapeutic professions. We examine the meaning and function of both judicial wisdom and psychotherapeutic wisdom as described within these separate literatures. Within the psychotherapy literature, we review the research on master therapists as well as research focused on therapists who have been nominated for their clinical wisdom. Within the judicial literature, we review the debates about whether wisdom has a place in decision-making as well as research focused on judges who have been nominated for their judicial wisdom. We integrate these understandings to contribute an empirically based definition of professional wisdom, which might be recruited in future examinations of other professions that provide similar forms of guidance. This understanding can also inform contemporary understandings of wisdom on the whole.
Type
Chapter
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The Cambridge Handbook of Wisdom , pp. 676 - 697
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2019

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