Albert Ellis Revisited

Jon Carlson, William Knaus, Jon Carlson, William Knaus

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781134662920
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psicologia
• Subtopic: Psicoterapia

Albert Ellis was one of the most influential psychotherapists of all time, revolutionizing the field through his writings, teachings, research, and supervision for more than half a century. He was a pioneer whose ideas, known as Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT), formed the basis of what has now become known as Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT), the most widely accepted psychotherapeutic approach in the world. This book contains some of Ellis' most influential writings on a variety of subjects, including human sexuality, personality disorders, and religion, with introductions by some of today's contemporary experts in the psychotherapy field. The 20 articles included capture Ellis' wit, humor, and breadth of knowledge and will be a valuable resource for any mental health professional for understanding the key ingredients needed to help others solve problems and live life fully.

Part I

Theoretical Foundations

1 Rational Psychotherapy

INTRODUCTION

Janet L. Wolfe and William Knaus

Both because of his interests in philosophy and his early experiences as a “self-changer,” Albert Ellis found his neo-analytic training too limiting. He was set to try a different way. He experimented with an educationally oriented, philosophically based, practical cognitive psychotherapy that he called rational therapy (RT).

Rational Psychotherapy (Ellis, 1958) was the first of hundreds of articles Ellis published on his new system of psychotherapy. In this 14-page work, he set the foundation for what would later become REBT. He sounded the trumpet for the cognitive revolution in psychotherapy. But this was not his first publication on this new rational system.

You can find the genesis of Ellis’ brand of cognitive, emotive, behavioral therapy in the first of many psychology self-help books that he wrote. Pick any page in How to Live with a Neurotic (Ellis, 1957), and we are confident you’ll find a rational gem. For example, Albert Ellis described the human tendency to magnify and catastrophize. In reference to neurotic-thinking individuals, Ellis commented, “what they believe to be true, they usually make true; what they think is changeless, becomes so. But if humans believe they can change, they inevitably put this belief into action” (1957, pp. 17 & 18).

In this seminal article, Ellis identified distinctive features of rational therapy. He argued that, regardless of their causes, when clients stick to harmful belief systems, they overburden themselves with irrational demands about how they, others, and the world ought to be. He postulated that, once free of burdensome irrational demands, clients would suffer no more than the normal human emotional stresses that come about from losses, disappointments, and barriers that interfered with their healthy human strivings. They would be free to act productively and enjoy their lives.

Albert Ellis viewed dysfunctional irrational beliefs as coming from different sources, such as social indoctrination. He listed 12 irrational ideas that he asserted were at the root of much human misery. He asserted that it would take effortful practice to dislodge them.

The role of the rational therapist was to identify clients’ harmful irrational beliefs and to forcefully show them how to uproot and replace them with functional belief systems. The rational therapist would figuratively “pound away” at the “nonsense” until the client developed realistic ways to construe or to reconstruct reality.

Ellis focused on how people think their way into feeling disturbed. He advocated for empirically testing his system, and identified two hypotheses. He later added psychological homework assignments and his now famous ABC model to the system. He shared a vision for how future mental health practitioners would practice RT.

Ellis Challenged Establishment Thinking

In the system he initially called Rational Therapy, Ellis threw down the gauntlet. He challenged the therapeutic establishment, which, at the time, was largely monopolized by psychoanalysis and neo-analytic practitioners.

Threaten someone’s system, and they are likely to react. Some analytic adherents attempted to marginalize Ellis and RT. However, Albert Ellis was trained in psychoanalysis and had undergone his own analysis. It could not realistically be said that he did not understand the system he challenged. Ellis had a honed and sharp intellect and quickly showed he could persuasively advance his positions. He enjoyed the debate. He was formidable.

Ellis’ sharp wit and pen are obvious in the article. He showed how he would argue his points for years to come. He used case examples. He applied his scientific training as a psychologist in formulating his views. He applied logic and reason to an issue. This combined approach may have been sufficient to give RT traction. However, the field was ripe for a paradigm shift.

Albert Ellis developed RT when Freudian, neo-Freudian, behaviorist, and Rogerian systems were dominant. However, this was a time when the prevailing winds in psychotherapy were changing. A few analysts expressed concern with therapeutic outcomes (Knight, 1941; Oberndorf, 1942). Psychoanalysts saw relatively few people relative to the resources devoted to this pursuit, and the results were unimpressive (Low, 1950). The behaviorists were increasingly viewed as too mechanical. Research on Rogerian therapy suggested that the non-directive approach was better suited for reasonably well-adjusted college students than for people with serious emotional disturbances.

As rumblings of discontent with the existing systems spread across the therapeutic world, Ellis and his colleagues founded the not-for-profit Institute for Rational Emotive Therapy, which provided programs for the community and postgraduate training for mental health professionals. Ellis and his growing number of adherents presented RT widely, both to professional and public audiences. This system opened the opportunity for practically anyone to have access to a relatively quick and efficient psychotherapy. Knight’s (op. cit.) criteria for change could be more readily achieved through RT: (1) disappearance of presenting symptoms, (2) real improvement in mental functioning, and (3) improved reality adjustment.

The 1949 Boulder Conference resulted in a scientist practitioner model for clinical psychology that later led to research-guided practice and to today’s evidence-based practices. The Boulder Conference established the requirement that, for a psychotherapy system to earn acceptability, it had to (1) show utility, (2) present testable hypotheses, and (3) show potential for achieving evidence-based status. RT met that test. At the same time, the research/practitioner model challenged the monopolistic psychoanalytic and neopsychoanalytic system. Analytic proponents typically argued that only members of this group were qualified to evaluate analytic outcome. This “insider club” approach to outcome research left many scientific practitioners rolling their eyes. The argument didn’t fly.

As Albert Ellis worked to advance RT, new psychotherapy systems simultaneously emerged. With his hoary beard and earthy style, Gestalt therapist guru Fritz Perls was a 1960s favorite. Eric Berne came on the scene with Games People Play. Joseph Wolpe propelled behavioral therapy into dominance. The 1960s was the time of the human potential movement. Ellis, dedicated to humanism, was in the middle of it all. When the dust settled, Ellis stood tall. In an often-quoted meta-analysis by Mary Smith and Gene Glass (1977), Ellis’ brand of therapy was the second most effective on the list of 10 therapy methods.

Albert Ellis was a man on a mission. He was a prolific writer. He authored or coauthored over 85 books and over 550 articles and chapters for books of readings. He lectured, conducted workshops, and actively trained therapists in his methods. He saw more psychotherapy clients than any other therapist, living or dead. It is unlikely that many, if any, personally did more than Albert Ellis to advance a psychotherapy system.

What came of Albert Ellis’ tireless efforts? There are more than 4,000 American Psychological Association database listed articles, chapters in books of readings, and dissertations where the words rational and therapy appear. More than 1,000 studies support his main premise that certain kinds of negative thinking were associated with emotional disturbance. Research into his two-stage theory of emotions (emotional effects from rational beliefs differ from emotional effects from irrational beliefs) is supported. Ellis’ system showed efficacy across a broad range of psychological disturbances. He is directly or indirectly responsible for the training of thousands of psychotherapists in his approach.

It is fair to say that Ellis was the grandfather of cognitive behavior therapy, and that his original formulation has strongly influenced therapy research and practice. Ellis saw his work extended through over 24,000 articles, chapters, and dissertations listed under cognitive behavior therapy in the American Psychological Association database. Although some articles are critical of Ellis’ rationally oriented methods, the majority support his original formulations, and a significant majority of psychologists today identify themselves as cognitive behavior therapists or rational emotive behavior therapists.

How Does RT Apply Today?

When we think of rational therapy, we don’t think about how to move from a historically relevant to a contemporarily relevant context for RT. REBT is the evolved extension of Ellis’ original formulation, and this is the system that is practiced today. Thus, revisiting Albert Ellis in this area is like a walk down memory lane, while his influence still clearly illuminates the therapeutic path. The issue is how to expand the framework that Albert Ellis, along with his colleagues, pioneered and advanced.

Research in the basic REBT continues to be a subject of favorable outcome studies. Among the myriad of possible present and future applications of the REBT system, we see two major educational opportunities to apply REBT principles and practices to prevent disturbance and dysfunction, at school and over the Internet.

Prevention continues as a primary aim of REBT, and the school setting is a natural place for children to start to learn and apply rational principles.

A top priority is the effective execution of positive school mental health programs to provide instruction to children and youth on the application of rational life skills they can use in different ways, in different contexts, for decades to come. REBT and the school-oriented rational emotive education curriculum show efficacy (Esposito, 2009; Gonzalez et al., 2004). Knaus has donated a rational emotive education program, and any interested readers can download the program, at no cost, at www.rebtnetwork.org/library/Rational_Emotive_Education.pdf.

The Internet is a platform for efficiently disseminating rational concepts for purposes of both preventing psychological disabilities, and directly helping alleviate stress for millions who suffer from afflictions from their own thinking. Albert Ellis’ rational model gives self-helpers an organized way to identify and clarify what happens when they persistently think themselves into anxieties, depression, and other untoward mental states. In this model, A stands for an activating event, such as a job rejection. B stands for the beliefs about the event. Some beliefs will be sensible, and others irrational or harmful. C stands for the emotional and behavioral extensions of the beliefs. D is a change phase of disputing or challenging harmful beliefs. This is the cognitive restructuring phase of the process. E refers to new effects from the rational thinking obtained through D.

The use of hyperlinks from concepts to exercises to monitoring progress has unparalleled potential. We predict this medium will favor systems, such as REBT, as a light along the therapeutic path.

References

Berne, E. (1964). Games people play: The basic handbook of transactional analysis. New York: Ballantine Books.

Ellis, A. (1957). How to live with a neurotic. New York: Crown.

Esposito, M. A. (2009). REBT with children and adolescents: A meta-analytic review of efficacy studies. Dissertation Abstracts International: Section B: The Sciences and Engineering, 3195.

Gonzalez, J. E., Nelson, J. R., Gutkin, T. B., Saunders, A., Galloway, A., & Shwery, C. S. (2004). Rational emotive therapy with children and adolescents. Journal of Emotional and Behavioral Disorders, 12(4), 222–235.

Knight, R. P. (1941). Evaluation of the results of psychoanalytic treatment. American Journal of Psychiatry, 98, 434–446.

Low, A. (1950). Mental health through will-training. Boston, MA: Christopher Publishing.

Oberndorf, C. P. (1942). Consideration of the results of psychoanalytic therapy. American Journal of Psychiatry, 99, 374–381.

Smith, M. L., & Glass, G. V. (1977). Meta-analysis of psychotherapy outcome studies. American Psychologist, 32(9), 752–760.

RATIONAL PSYCHOTHERAPY

Albert Ellis

The central theme of this paper is that psychotherapists can help their clients to live the most self-fulfilling, creative, and emotionally satisfying lives by teaching these clients to organize and discipline their thinking. Does this mean that all human emotion and creativity can or should be controlled by reason and intellect? Not exactly.

The human being may be said to possess four basic processes—perception, movement, thinking, and emotion—all of which are integrally interrelated. Thus, thinking, aside from consisting of bioelectric changes in the b...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Contributors
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction to Albert Ellis
• Part I Theoretical Foundations
• Part II Applications
• Part III Special Issues
• Index