Albert Ellis (born September 27, 1913) is an American psychologist whose Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT), is the foundation of all cognitive and cognitive behavior therapies.
Biography
Ellis was born of Jewish parents in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He was the eldest of three children; he had a brother was two years younger, and his sister who was four years younger. Ellis's father was a businessman who experienced minimal success at a succession of business ventures; he showed only a modicum of affection to his children and was often away from home on business trips during their early childhood. In his autobiography, Ellis characterized his mother as a self-absorbed woman with a Bipolar disorder affect. At times, according to Ellis, she was a “bustling chatterbox who never listened." She would expound on her strong opinions on most subjects but rarely provided a factual basis for these views. Like his father, Ellis' mother was emotionally distant from her children. Ellis recounted that she typically was sleeping when he left for school and was usually not at home when he returned. Instead of reporting feeling bitter, he took on the responsibility of caring for his siblings. He purchased an alarm clock with his own money and woke and dressed the his younger brother and sister. Despite the emotional paucity, his family had very little privation until the depression. It necessitated all three children seeking work to assist the family. Young Albert was a frail young man and suffered numerous health problems through his youth. At the age of five he was hospitalized with a kidney ailment. He was also hospitalized with tonsillitis, which led to a severe strep requiring emergency surgery. He reported that he had eight hospitalizations between the ages of five and seven. One of these lasted nearly a year. His parents provided little or no emotional support for him during these years, rarely visiting or consoling him. Ellis stated that he learned to confront his adversities as he had “developed a growing indifference to that dereliction.”
He entered the field of clinical psychology after first earning a degree in business from the City University of New York. He commenced a brief career in business, followed by one as a writer. However, these endeavors took place during the depression that began in 1929, making business a refractory enterprise. He also found that writing fiction was not his calling, but did find that he had a talent for non-fiction. This talent led him to write about the field of human sexuality, a field he had developed a noted expertise in. The dearth of experts in this area led to his being sought out for advice on the subject leading him to counsel many in this area. His lay counseling led him to discovery of his calling which convinced him to seek a new career in clinical psychology. In 1942 he began his studies for a Ph.D. in clinical psychology at Columbia University which trained psychologists in the psychoanalytic tradition. Upon the completion of his M.A. in clinical psychology from Teachers College, Columbia, in June, 1943, Ellis started a part-time private practice while still working on his PhD degree. This was possible because there was no licensing of psychologists in New York at that time. Ellis began publishing innovative articles even before receiving his PhD. For example in 1946 he wrote a critique of many widely used pencil-and-paper personality tests that were not sufficiently validated. He concluded that only the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory met the standards of a research based instrument (Ellis, 1946.)
After the completion of his doctorate, Ellis sought additional training in psychoanalysis. Like most psychologists of that time he had been taken by the mystique and complexity of Freudian theories. So shortly after receiving his PhD degree in 1947 Ellis began a personal analysis and program of supervision with Richard Hulbeck (whose own analyst had been Herman Rorschach) who was a leading training analyst at the Karen Horney Institute. Horney would be the single greatest influence in his thinking, although the writings of Alfred Adler, Erich Fromm and Harry Stack Sullivan also played a role in shaping his psychological models.
Deeply influenced by his experience, reading, and unscientific nature of psychoanalysis by January of 1953 his break with psychoanalysis was complete and he commenced calling himself a rational therapist. Ellis was now advocating a new more active and directive type of psychotherapy. By 1955 he dubbed his new approach Rational-Emotive Therapy and it required that the therapist help the client understand and act on the understanding that his personal philosophy contains beliefs that lead to his own emotional pain. This new approach stressed actively working to change his client’s self-defeating beliefs and behaviors by illuminating by demonstrating their irrationality or rigidity. The next year Ellis began teaching his new technique to other therapists and by 1957 he formally set forth the first cognitive behavioral psychotherapy by proposing that therapists help people adjust their thinking and behavior as the treatment for neuroses. Two years later Ellis published the book How to Live with a Neurotic which elaborated on his new method. The next year Ellis presented a paper on his new approach at the American Psychological Association convention in Chicago. There was mild interest, but few recognized that the paradigm that in a generation would become the zeitgeist had been set forth. Recall, that at that time the prevailing interest in experimental psychological was behaviorism and in clinical psychology it was the psychoanalytic schools of notables such as Freud, Jung, Adler, and Perls. Despite the fact that Ellis’ approach emphasized cognitive, emotive, and behavioral methods, his strong cognitive emphasis provoked almost everyone with the possible exception of the followers of Alfred Adler. Consequently, he was often received with hostility at professional conferences and in print. Interestingly, on several occasions, at symposia at APA conventions, Fritz Perls the founder of Gestalt therapy would refer sarcastically to Ellis’ "rationality," while completely ignoring the experiential and behavioral components of RET.
Despite the slow adoption of his approach, Ellis founded his own institute. The Institute for Rational-Emotive Therapy was founded a not-for-profit organization in 1959. By 1968 it was chartered by the New York State Board of Regents as a training institute and psychological clinic. This was no trivial feat as New York State had a Mental Hygiene Act which mandated psychiatric management of mental health clinics. Ellis had broken ground by founding an institute that was purely based on psychological control and principles. Currently, Ellis is trying to remain active at his institute at age 92, he continues to write and is completing his first college text book with co-authors Drs. Mike Abrams and Lidia Abrams.
Published works
- (Dr. Ellis is the author and co-author of numerous books; this is just a partial list.)
- A Guide to Rational Living; Wilshire Book Company. 1975 - ISBN: 0879800429
- How to Live With a Neurotic; Wilshire Book Company. 1979 - ISBN: 0879804041
- How to Stubbornly Refuse to Make Yourself Miserable About Anything--Yes, Anything; Carol Publishing Corporation. 1988 - ISBN: 0818404566
- When AA Doesn't Work For You : Rational Steps to Quitting Alcohol; Barricade Books. 1992 - ISBN: 0942637534
- How to Keep People from Pushing Your Buttons; with Arthur Lange. Citadel Press. 1995 - ISBN: 0806516704
- Alcohol : How to Give It Up and Be Glad You Did; with Philip Tate Ph.D. See Sharp Press. 1996 - ISBN: 1884365108
- How to Control Your Anger Before It Controls You; with Raymond Chip Tafrate. Citadel Press. 1998 - ISBN: 0806520108
- The Secret of Overcoming Verbal Abuse: Getting Off the Emotional Roller Coaster and Regaining Control of Your Life; with Marcia Grad Powers. Wilshire Book Company. 2000 - ISBN: 0879804459
- Overcoming Destructive Beliefs, Feelings, and Behaviors: New Directions for Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy; Prometheus Books. 2001 - ISBN: 1573928798
About REBT
REBT is a comprehensive theory of personality and psychotherapy which holds that one's personal beliefs, evaluations, and personal philosophy control one's feelings. Thus, it is not external events that causes emotional disturbance, rather it is a person's own beliefs about events or adversity that produce it. Ellis proposed that the way to improve well being is to change ones thoughts, beliefs, and behavior. It was this principle that he first formally expressed in the early 1950's that became the basis of all cognitive psychotherapies.
Reference
- Ellis, Dr. Albert, Dr. Mike Abrams, and Dr. Lidia Abrams. Theories of Personality. New York: Sage Press, 2006 (in press).