Albert Ellis: Father of cognitive therapy
View(s):Breaking away from Freud’s teaching in the 50’s, the American psychologist’s new approach, now known as Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy, is used to treat numerous psychiatric disorders
By Prof. Raveen Hanwella
“There are three musts that hold us back: I must do well. You must treat me well. And the world must be easy.”
-Albert Ellis
Albert Ellis, the American psychologist died in 2007 at the age of 93. He is recognised as the father of cognitive therapy, now one of the main therapies for the treatment of a number of psychiatric disorders ranging from depression, anxiety, obsessive disorder and eating disorders to post-traumatic disorder.
When Ellis qualified as a psychologist in 1943 the prevailing psychotherapy was psychoanalysis based on Freud’s teaching. He qualified as a psychoanalyst but was disappointed by the slowness of the approach. By the 50’s he had broken away from psychoanalysis and was advocating a new more directive form of psychotherapy. He called his new approach rational therapy or RT. The name underwent changes over the years as he developed his method and was later called rational emotive therapy (RET) and finally rational emotive behaviour therapy (REBT).
His thinking was influenced by the stoic philosopher Epictetus whose quote, “Men are disturbed not by the things that happen, but by their opinion of the things that happen” became the foundation for his therapy. Psychoanalysis focuses on ego defence mechanisms, early childhood experiences, dream interpretation, or a patient’s relationship with family and parents whereas REBT directly addresses problematic beliefs that lead to self-defeating behaviours.
In REBT there are three steps to understand and overcome disturbance. First, irrational beliefs should be identified and how they cause and maintain unhappiness and disturbance analysed. Second, these irrational beliefs are disputed and third, these beliefs are transformed into rational, self-helping and life-enhancing forms. In his bestselling book ‘A Guide to Rational Living’ he identifies the following twelve kinds of irrational beliefs that predominate in the minds of people. (It might be a good idea to print these and hang it on a wall of your house.)
It is a dire necessity for adults to be loved by significant others for almost anything they do.
Certain acts are awful or wicked, and people who perform such acts should be severely damned.
It is horrible when things are not the way we like them.
Human misery is invariably, externally caused and is forced on us by outside people and events.
If something is or may be dangerous or fearsome we should be terribly upset and endlessly obsess about it.
It is easier to avoid than to face life’s difficulties and self-responsibilities.
We absolutely need something either stronger or greater than ourselves on which to rely.
We should be thoroughly competent, intelligent, and achieving in all possible respects.
Because something once strongly affected our life, it should indefinitely affect it.
We must be certain and have perfect control over things.
Human happiness can be achieved by inertia and inaction.
We have virtually no control over our emotions and we cannot help feeling disturbed about things.
Ellis called these irrational ideas the tyranny of shoulds and musts.
Ellis used the ABC model to explain his model for therapy. In this model A represents an actual event or experience. B stands for the evaluative beliefs that follow this experience or event and C the emotions and behaviours that follow.
Here is an example of how this model might work in a person prone to depression. The activating event A is a friend passing by and appearing not to notice. The inference of the person is that the friend is deliberately ignoring the person and no longer likes him. The belief B follows “I am unacceptable as a friend therefore I must be worthless as a person". This leads to consequence C and the person gets emotionally depressed and avoids people which in turn reinforces his irrational belief that people in general do not like him.
If one were to do REBT with this person we would start by disputing the belief that a friend not acknowledging you on the street necessarily means the friend is deliberately avoiding you. The person is asked to think of other options such as perhaps the friend is short-sighted, distracted or in a hurry and did not notice you. But one might say, ‘what if the friend was really angry with the person would you not be deceiving yourself?’ Ellis might answer, ‘It is not necessary for you to be loved by significant others to feel good or happy about yourself. Rather one must unconditionally accept one’s self.’
Ellis had a difficult childhood with a mostly absent father, an indifferent mother and a neurotic sister. Here is what Ellis wrote about his mother in his book ‘Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy: It Works for Me – It Can Work for You’:‘As for my …. Mother, a hell of a lot of help she was...she was much more immersed in her own pleasures than in taking care of her children. She arose around eight forty-five, after her son Albert, had already awakened himself with the alarm clock, dressed, made his own breakfast, and proceeded to walk to school after crossing three of the most busiest and most dangerous streets in the Bronx.’ Even in the evening she came home late long after Albert Ellis has returned made a meal for himself and his younger brother and sister.
But Ellis was never bitter or angry with his mother. It was not a happy situation but not the end of the world and there were many things he could be happy about. Even at the age of seven years Ellis was using the techniques of REBT to be happy and satisfied with what life had served him.
I will leave you with another Ellis quote that epitomises his philosophy of living and therapy. ‘The best years of your life are the ones in which you decide your problems are your own. You do not blame them on your mother, the ecology or the president. You realise that you control your own destiny’.