Albert Ellis
Albert Ellis
Albert Elliswas an American psychologist who in 1955 developed rational emotive behavior therapy. He held M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in clinical psychology from Columbia University and American Board of Professional Psychology. He also founded and was the President of the New York City-based Albert Ellis Institute for decades. He is generally considered to be one of the originators of the cognitive revolutionary paradigm shift in psychotherapy and the founder of cognitive-behavioral therapies. Based on a 1982 professional survey of USA...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionScientist
Date of Birth27 September 1913
CountryUnited States of America
If I had been a member of the academic establishment, I could have done other experiments.
The art of love is largely the art of persistence.
I think it's unfair, but they have the right as fallible, screwed-up humans to be unfair; that's the human condition.
Let's suppose somebody abused you sexually. You still had a choice, though not a good one, about what to tell yourself about the abuse.
Most things worth having require some sacrifice, usually more than you expect.
For that again, is what all manner of religion essentially is: childish dependency.
Religious fanaticism has clearly produced, and in all probability will continue to produce, enormous amounts of bickering, fighting, violence, bloodshed, homicide, feuds, wars, and genocide.
So I'd better stop my whining and help myself cope better with even the worst Adversities.
Attempts to help humans eliminate all self-ratings and views self-esteem as a self-defeating concept that encourages them to make conditional evaluations of self. Instead, it teaches people unconditional self-acceptance.
I started to call myself a rational therapist in 1955; later I used the term rational emotive. Now I call myself a rational emotive behavior therapist.
Many psychoanalysts refused to let me speak at their meetings. They were exceptionally vigorous because I had previously been an analyst and they were very angry at my flying the coop.
Is self-esteem a sickness? That's according to the way you define it. In the usual way it is defined by people and by psychologists, I'd say that it is probably the greatest emotional disturbance known to man and woman.
This, perhaps, goes to show that conditional self-esteem, as I have said for many years, is an insidious, real sickness, so much so that even Buddhists carelessly sneak it in and sometimes encourage their clients to achieve it.
People don't just get upset. They contribute to their upsetness. They always have the power to think, and to think about their thinking, and to think about thinking about their thinking, which the goddamn dolphin, as far as we know, can't do. Therefore they have much greater ability to change themselves than any other animal has, and I hope that REBT teaches them how to do it.