Perell asks MacCulloch what metaphors he uses for the historian's role. The conversation has already produced guide and friend and entertainer. Perell wants more. MacCulloch thinks for a moment and offers one Perell explicitly says he wasn't expecting: non-directive counselor.1
The metaphor doesn't sound like a metaphor at first. It sounds like a category error. A counselor works with a living patient sitting in a chair; a historian works with documents about dead people. Where's the connection?
MacCulloch's explanation, when asked, is precise enough to make the metaphor click. "Because you're helping people look at a subject which is always going to be a a look at themselves. And so, you're providing a story which again always trying to avoid, never succeeding, but trying to avoid bias, direction, the sort of things a a non-directive counselor does."1
Stop on the first clause. The subject is always going to be a look at themselves. That's the move. When a reader engages with a historical figure — Cromwell, Bede, Henry VIII, the Sinclair Earl — they aren't just learning about that figure. They are, partly and almost involuntarily, examining themselves through the figure. The historical subject becomes a mirror. What the reader recognizes, identifies with, recoils from, gets curious about — all of that is information about the reader, not just about the historical figure. The historian who knows this is operating not as an information-transmitter but as someone holding up the mirror.
The "non-directive" qualifier carries the methodological discipline. Non-directive counseling (Carl Rogers' tradition is the canonical reference) is therapy that doesn't tell the patient what to do or what to conclude. The counselor reflects, holds space, asks questions, but doesn't direct. The patient does her own work; the counselor's job is to create the conditions in which the work happens.
MacCulloch's claim is that the disciplined historian operates the same way at the cultural-textual level. She presents the historical subject; she does not direct the reader toward a particular conclusion about themselves. She tells the story; she does not draw the lesson. The reader will do whatever self-examination they're going to do, and what they do is their work, not the historian's project. The historian's only responsibility is to present the material disciplined enough that the reader can actually use it for their own examination.
The qualifier "always trying to avoid, never succeeding" is doing essential work. MacCulloch is not claiming the historian can fully escape direction; she has biases, frames, emphases, omissions, all of which direct the reader's attention. What she can do is try to avoid the direction — declare the biases, mark the inferences, give the reader the apparatus to discount the historian's tilts. That ongoing failed-but-discipline-shaping effort is what distinguishes the non-directive historian from one who is openly telling the reader what to think.
Why does historical material reflect the reader at all? MacCulloch doesn't go into it directly, but the structure is recoverable.
Historical figures are humans operating in unusual circumstances. The reader is also human, operating in their own circumstances. The reader's identification with or recoil from the historical figure is information about how the reader's own structure of identification is constituted. Who do you find sympathetic and why? Who do you instinctively distrust? Whose choices make sense to you and whose seem inexplicable? These reactions are diagnostic of your own values, fears, defenses, blind spots.
Depth psychology has been working with this insight for over a century. Jung's work on projection (the patient unconsciously projects her own unintegrated material onto external figures, including mythological and historical ones) is the most explicit theoretical formulation. Greene's work on the unconscious in The Laws of Human Nature extends the principle: we constantly project our own shadow onto historical and contemporary figures, and the projection tells us what we ourselves cannot directly face. When you read about Henry VIII and feel revulsion, the revulsion is information about what you cannot tolerate in yourself. When you read about Cromwell and admire his discipline, the admiration is information about what you long for in your own life.
The historian, on this reading, is providing a mirror-cluster. Many figures, many situations, many possible identifications and recoilings. The reader who works through the historical material at any depth is doing self-examination by proxy. The historian who recognizes this is non-directive precisely so that the self-examination can run from the reader's own material, not from the historian's projections about what the reader ought to recognize.
What does this actually look like? Several moves:
Present the figure as fully as the evidence supports, without prescriptive framing. The historian who writes "Henry VIII was a monster" is directing the reader. The historian who writes a Henry-VIII who is, in different moments, brilliant, vicious, generous, paranoid, perceptive, deluded, charming, terrifying — and lets the reader integrate the contradictions — is operating the mirror. The reader's own ratio of brilliance-recognition to viciousness-recoil will be diagnostic of their own structure.
Resist the temptation to draw lessons. The historian who concludes the Cromwell biography with "what we can learn from Cromwell's life is..." is being directive. The non-directive version is to present Cromwell richly enough that the reader draws whatever lessons the reader's own structure will draw. The lessons are not the historian's job.
Use Open questions rather than declared conclusions. Where the evidence supports multiple readings, present the readings. Where the actor's motives are ambiguous, leave them ambiguous. The reader who wants closure can construct it; the reader who wants to sit with the ambiguity can do that. Both are doing self-examination through the choice they make about how to read the material.
Mark the historian's own reactions explicitly. When the historian feels admiration or revulsion, she notes it, with the appropriate "this is my reaction, your reaction may differ" framing. This is the declared-biases ethic applied to emotional response, not just to political position. It lets the reader use the historian's reaction as information without absorbing it as instruction.
Trust the reader's self-examination work. The non-directive counselor trusts the patient to do their own work; the non-directive historian trusts the reader. This is the philosophical commitment underneath the discipline. Readers are not children to be guided; they are adults capable of self-examination, who simply need the material in front of them well enough to do the examination if they want to.
The metaphor lands as surprising — Perell explicitly notes this — because the cultural picture of the historian leans toward the authoritative voice. The historian as expert, as judge, as voice of established knowledge. That historian directs by virtue of being the authority. She tells the reader what happened, what it meant, what to conclude.
MacCulloch's non-directive counselor is the inverse picture. The historian as resource for the reader's own work, not as authority over the reader's conclusions. The shift is real and consequential. It changes how the historian writes (less concluding, more presenting), how she relates to the reader (less directing, more trusting), and what she takes herself to be doing (less informing, more enabling).
The shift also clarifies what the discipline is for. The authoritative-historian frame implies that the discipline produces a settled version of the past that readers absorb. The non-directive-counselor frame implies that the discipline produces material readers can use — material disciplined enough to be trustworthy but open enough to support the reader's own engagement. The second frame is harder to operate and harder to credentialize, but it is more consistent with the rest of MacCulloch's apparatus (the "yes, but" framework, the "may have" syntax, the declared biases). The whole discipline coheres around making the reader's own work possible rather than around producing settled conclusions for the reader to receive.
The strongest argument for the metaphor is internal coherence. The rest of MacCulloch's framework (skepticism-then-sympathy, "yes but," "may have," declared biases) is structurally non-directive. The reader is given the apparatus to make her own assessments, not handed the conclusions. The counselor metaphor names what the whole discipline is implicitly doing.
Tension: not all reading is self-examination. Some readers come to history for entertainment, for information, for contextual background to current events. The non-directive frame may be over-claiming if it implies all historical reading is mirror-work. MacCulloch's "always going to be a look at themselves" is strong; the more defensible version might be "can be a look at themselves, when the reader is engaging at depth and the historian has done the disciplinary work to support that engagement."
A second tension: the metaphor places enormous trust in the reader's capacity for self-examination. Many readers don't have that capacity. They want to be told. They want clear lessons, clear villains, clear heroes. The non-directive historian's prose may simply not work for them; it asks for a kind of engagement they aren't equipped to give. The discipline is calibrated for the disciplined reader, and the gap between the disciplined-historian frame and the average-reader market is real.
A third tension: the non-directive stance can shade into evasion. A historian who refuses to draw any conclusions can be hiding behind disciplinary discipline from positions she ought to take. The MacCulloch frame distinguishes between directing the reader's conclusions (which the discipline avoids) and taking positions where the evidence demands them (which the discipline requires). The line is real but easy to blur. A historian who never takes positions is not running the discipline; she's avoiding intellectual commitment.
Open questions:
Step into a Rogers session and the structure becomes obvious. The therapist isn't telling you what to think. She's reflecting what you say back to you. She's holding space. She's trusting that you'll do your own work if the conditions are right. Step out of the session and into MacCulloch's history book — the structure transfers. MacCulloch isn't telling you what to conclude about Cromwell. He's presenting Cromwell richly enough that you do the conclusion-work. Different medium — real-time dialogue versus written history — but the same posture toward the person on the other side. The stance generalizes. Education, writing, certain forms of leadership all share it: practices where the practitioner's effect on the subject is partly constituted by what the subject does with the material.
Jung tells you why this works at all. Sit with one of Jung's case studies and you watch a patient project unintegrated material onto external figures — mythological, fictional, historical. The projection runs harder when the figures are distant (so they can't push back) and real enough (so the unconscious can fasten on something specific). Historical figures are perfectly calibrated for projection. They're real but inaccessible. Greene then explains what readers are doing with the projection — the engagement is diagnostic of the reader's own structure. Greene treats this exploitatively (learn the patterns so you can use them on people). MacCulloch uses the same mechanism non-exploitatively as the medium through which his work reaches the reader. The reader who recoils from Henry VIII is telling you something about herself. The historian's job isn't to direct that revelation; it's to provide the figure rich enough to support it.
Then read Orlean and you see the third stance in the cluster. Her writer is the reader's fellow-traveler — one step ahead on a journey through the material, ferrying back what's interesting. MacCulloch's non-directive counselor is the writer who doesn't pull but instead holds space. The two postures look different but combine well. A writer who is both ahead-of-the-reader (Orlean) and holding-space-for-the-reader (MacCulloch) operates a richer apparatus than either alone. Pull the reader through the material and trust her to do her own integration work once she's there. Most writers do one or neither. The few who do both are running the relational apparatus at its full potential.
The metaphor connects to depth psychology, to counseling theory, to certain spiritual practices, and to the philosophy of education.
Psychology: Identity Architecture & Defense Hub — the depth-psychology literature on projection, shadow material, and unconscious identification provides the mechanism underneath the mirror metaphor. The handshake produces the recognition that historiographic discipline is operating on the same psychological terrain depth psychology has theorized, but through different means (cultural material rather than clinical relationship). What this means is that historians and depth-psychologists are working the same territory from different angles, and that explicit dialogue between the fields would be productive for both.
Psychology: Disowned Self-Projection (or analogous page in the Lieberman / Greene corpus) — the specific mechanism by which readers project disowned material onto historical figures. The handshake produces the methodological insight that the historian's task is to provide figures complex enough to receive multiple projections — figures who can be admired, despised, identified with, and recoiled from by different readers and the same reader at different times. Flat figures don't work as mirrors; they only support one projection direction.
Eastern Spirituality: Sadhana Practice Hub — many contemplative traditions use historical and mythological figures as material for the practitioner's self-examination (sādhana involving lineage masters, deity-yoga, etc.). The structural parallel is direct: the practitioner engages with the figure not to learn about the figure but to use the engagement as material for her own work. The handshake produces the recognition that historiographic non-directive practice and contemplative practice with lineage material are structurally identical — both are using external figures as mirrors for the practitioner's interior work.
Creative Practice: Reader as Proxy / Writer One Step Ahead (Orlean) — the parallel writer-reader relational frame in literary nonfiction. The handshake produces a richer combined apparatus: the historian can be both Orlean's fellow-traveler (pulling the reader through the material) and MacCulloch's non-directive counselor (holding space for the reader's own work). The two frames operate at different levels of the reader's engagement and combine productively.
Behavioral Mechanics: Manipulation & Influence Hub — manipulation works by directing the target toward a specific conclusion the manipulator wants installed. The non-directive counselor stance is the structural opposite — refusing to install conclusions, leaving the integration work to the reader. The handshake produces an operational test: any writer who can be reliably identified as "trying to make me think X" is operating outside the non-directive frame, regardless of whether X is correct. The frame is about method, not content. Honest writers who feel passionately about a conclusion can still operate the discipline by presenting the material rich enough that the reader can reach the conclusion independently — but the writer must accept that some readers will reach different conclusions, and that's the price of the discipline. Writers who can't accept that price are running propaganda dressed as essay, however virtuous their intended conclusions.
Cross-Domain: the broader humanities-as-self-formation tradition (Bildung, Greek paideia, the contemplative apprenticeship model) — across centuries, multiple cultures have developed practices that treat the encounter with high-quality material as itself transformative, without requiring explicit direction. The reader of Plato is changed by the engagement, not by Plato telling her how to be changed. MacCulloch's non-directive counselor metaphor is the modern historiographic version of this older formative-encounter tradition. The handshake produces a long-arc claim: serious history-reading, like serious literature-reading, is itself a formation practice — it shapes the reader through the encounter rather than through instruction, and the disciplines that maintain this orientation are doing cultural work that the more directive forms of education cannot do.
The Sharpest Implication
The metaphor implies a specific writerly virtue that most non-fiction prose does not practice: the writer trusts the reader enough to refuse to do the reader's work for her. Most non-fiction directs. It tells you what to think, what to conclude, what the lesson is, what to take away. The non-directive frame refuses all those moves. The reader has to do the integration herself. The reader has to draw the lessons herself. The reader has to figure out what the material means for her own life, if anything. The third-wire reading is that almost all the writing that wants to "make a difference" actually treats readers as children to be guided, while the writing that respects readers as adults often disappears into the academy or the niche markets where adult-respecting prose can survive. The non-directive historian is one of the few public roles that combines real expertise with refusal to direct — and the role survives in part because the Wolfson Prize and similar institutions specifically reward it. Outside such institutions, the directive frame dominates. What this means is that the kind of reading non-directive history rewards is itself an endangered cultural practice, and that defending it is part of what the historian does.
Generative Questions