What is Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy?

Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy or REBT is an approach to therapy started by Albert Ellis. Albert Ellis, born in 1913, published his first book on REBT in 1957 entitled How To Live With a Neurotic. He began his career thinking that he would be a great American novelist and did actually write two manuscripts but was never able to get them published. He first graduated from the City University of New York in business administration. However, he was collecting data for a piece he was writing called "the Case for Sexual Liberty," and he discovered that he really liked the field of counseling as well. So, in 1942 he returned to school at Columbia in the clinical-psychology program and received his Master's in 1943 and a doctorate in 1947. After working and researching he decided that psychoanalysis was what he wanted to do so he found a therapist to work with him and train him. He maintained many prestigious positions, such as a teacher at New York University and Rutgers, a senior clinical psychologist at the Northern New Jersey mental Hygiene Clinic. However, he was beginning to lose faith in the whole idea of psychotherapy.

Basically, he decided that psychotherapy was too passive; he wanted more of an active approach. he began to become more active, doing things like giving his patients advice and offering his interpretations of things that were said. He noticed that his clients seemed to improve more quickly so he began using some of the teachings that had worked for him in solving his own problems, like the philosophies of Marcus Aurelius and Bertrand Russell.

Eventually in 1955, he gave up psychoanalysis to concentrate on this new technique he had developed. He began to confront people about the beliefs they had that were just irrigational and tried to help them develop new beliefs.

So, he published How to Live with a Neurotic in 1957 and founded the Institute for Rational Living in 1959. His first commercially successful book called The Art of Science and Love was published in 1960 and from that point, he has published 54 books and over 600 articles. he is really one of the founders of the whole self help movement as opposed to the Freudian concept of intense psychotherapy.

Theoretical Beliefs

Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy is a therapy very focused on the present and active approach to solving problems. There are some key principles of REBT. First, there is the idea that we are responsible for our own actions and emotions. Secondly, the harmful emotions and behaviors that a person has are because of his/her own irrational thinking. Thirdly, human beings are capable of learning more realistic ideas and practicing them in our lives. Lastly, if we develop a perspective based on reality (as opposed to irrational views), we will have greater satisfaction because of our acceptance of ourselves. (REBT Therapy). There are twelve irrational ideas according to Ellis, but he condenses them to three. These three are discussed in the next paragraph.

To sum up his approach, Ellis himself says,

"REBT assumes that human thinking, emotion, and action

are not really separate or disparate processes but that they \

all significantly overlap and are rarely experienced in

a pure state. Much of what we call emotion is nothing more nor less than a certain kind-a biased, prejudiced, or strongly evaluative kind-of thought. But emotions and behaviors significantly influence and affect thinking, just as thinking. Evaluating is a fundamental characteristic of human organisms and seems to work in a kind of closed circuit with a feedback mechanism: Because perception biases response and then response tends to subsequent perception. Also, prior perceptions appear to bias subsequent perceptions, and prior responses to bias subsequent responses. What we call feelings almost always have a pronounced evaluating or appraisal element." (Ellis 2003).

Or put another way by Ellis himself,

"My psychotherapeutic philosophy holds, in other words, that the vast majority of humans, in every part of the world, are much more disturbed than they have to be because they simply will not accept themselves as fallible, incessantly error-prone humans. They often aspire to be super-humans; and because they cannot be, and because they also have inborn and acquired tendencies to denigrate themselves (and not merely their performances) when they fall short of their unrealistic ideals, they largely think of themselves as subhumans. They then feel anxious, guilty, ashamed, worthless, and self-hating. They also usually have low frustration tolerance for the inescapable foibles of others and for the hassles of living in an inexorably difficult world; and by their asinine commands that these others be utterly kind, considerate, loving and fair, and that the conditions of life be easy, effortless, and untroubled, they enormously escalate their natural and appropriate feelings of sorrow, regret, annoyance and irritation into highly inappropriate feelings of anguish, self-pity, rage and depression." (Ellis, My Philosophy)

He retrains people or helps them retrain themselves in how to think differently about these situations.

Techniques and Practices

One practice involved in REBT is that people take responsibility for their actions. This comes from the philosopher Epictetus who basically said that events could not upset you, but your reaction to events can upset you. The essential idea here is that we create our own reality by the way we react to the events in our lives. Another practice involved in REBT is identifying how you affect your own welfare; these are called musts. These can be broken down into a basic three. The first is a demand on yourself such as "I must do well in my marriage or I am worthless." The second is a demand on others, such as "You must treat me with respect or you are no good." The third is a demand on situations, such as "Life must be fair or it isn't worth living." (REBT Therapy) The idea here is that a we can only solve our bad feelings by figuring out which one of these irrational beliefs we are using to make ourselves unhappy. We then must disprove our musts. We need to realize that they are indeed irrational beliefs. The next practice is to rephrase our musts to contain love and acceptance. For example, the first one would be "I would like to do well in my marriage, but if I fail, I will love myself anyway. These things would also be called self-defeating beliefs or self-defeating self talk. Ellis tries to lead us to that idea of unconditional acceptance-No matter what we have done or experienced, we must learn to accept ourselves for who we are, not what he have or have not accomplished in life. he challenges his patients to a process called "disputing" or "forceful disrupting," which means eliminating the irrational beliefs that we have. Examples include worksheets or conversations about the ABC's which involve a very simple way to get people to think about their behaviors. A stands for activating event. B stands for irrational belief. C stands for consequences of having that belief. D stands for disputing the rational thinking. And finally, E stands for the effective new thinking. Again, this is a simple acrostic to get people thinking and talking.

Therapy using REBT would start with the client identifying a problem and what he/she feels about the problem. Then, the client must be guided to come up with the irrational belief about the problems and understanding why it is irrational. The client would then "dispute" the irrational belief. In other words, the client would discover the reasons why it is irrational. The client must come up with a more acceptable and accepting belief and identify roadblocks to progress in changing beliefs and how to prevent relapse. Since the therapist takes a more active role than other approaches, he/she may "dispute" with the client, assign homework, or "push" the client to challenge himself/herself (counsellingresource.com)

REBT uses visual imagery as well to get clients to visualize the times in their lives when they felt a certain way, to remember what it is like to feel that way so that they can "dispute" that irrational belief. This imagery then becomes a tool that the client can use himself/herself in order to retrain his/her thinking about various events that take place in life.

Very unique to this approach is that the therapist is not really there to be warm and nurturing to the client. He/she is there to help the client identify these musts or irrational beliefs. Logic would be far emphasized over warm environment.

Ellis also believes that constantly evaluating our lives will lead to unhappiness so he approaches therapy to stop us from doing this. He leads patients toward simple acceptance. Really to sum up this approach is an aphorism we have all heard before. This one originated from Reinhold Neibuhr and sums of REBT. "Grant me the courage to change the things I can, the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, and the wisdom to know the difference."

Strengths and Weaknesses

because REBT is a very active approach, people need to be willing to take responsibility for their beliefs and actions and be willing to "do the work." it can be a long and difficult process to uncover the musts that we tell ourselves, and then to go about disproving them. Some people are just not drawn to a philosophy of unconditional love, either for themselves or others. Some people cannot move past the traumas in their own lives to arrive at unconditional love whereas intelligent, self-reflective people will arrive at conclusions much more quickly. Another criticism is that this technique would be easy to practice poorly and since the approach is loose, it would be easy to get off track. Some people would even say that all the talking and "disputing" could be better spent "doing" something about the problems. For people who don't like to talk, this would probably not be the best approach. if the client does not want to be an active participant in changing the way he/she thinks, this method would not be a good fit. Or even if a client is already very skilled in self-reflection, this might be a less useful approach.

As for advantages or strengths, REBT is a drug-free approach for people looking for solutions in changing the way they think, not using drug therapy. The results are seen relatively quickly because of the emphasis on the present. The therapist does not need to delve into every bad thing that ever happened. He/she needs to look at a few activating situations and do exercises about how to change your thinking about these events. another advantage is that once a person becomes well-versed in the technique, he/she can use it anytime if the negative or irrational beliefs appear. When a person is skilled at the technique, there may not be a need to go to a therapist every time. but hard work is the only way to feel better and continue to feel better about yourself. So, we must do the work on a daily basis to help us understand our behavior.

Choice

I chose this theory because it had great appeal to me in the idea that we are in charge of our own lives. We cannot control what happens to us, but we can control the reactions we have to those experiences. We can choose in other words. I would agree with Ellis in that many other approaches to therapy are too passive. Patients need to feel at least that they can exercise control over their own lives. And the idea of acceptance of oneself and others, including unconditional love, is very appealing to me as well. The idea that self-defeating thoughts are connected with emotional problems such as jealousy, guilt, or depression makes absolute sense. Our self talk is so important, and I believe that if we can learn to use the "right" self talk, we can change our lives. Many of us defeat ourselves so badly by telling ourselves that we can't do something or that we're stupid. This approach can help us learn to control our negative thoughts and react more positively, no matter what crisis we have to deal with. Also this therapy does not dig into the past intensively and talk about every wrong every committed it focuses on the now and trying to change things from here on out. The theory recognizes that no matter how much we talk about the past, we cannot change it.

Use of Theory

I would certainly use this theory, not across the board, but very widely in order to help people help themselves. There are definite advantages to learning these skills and then being able to apply them to another problem the next time one arises. this kind of therapy can be used for all kinds of problems ranging from relationship problems to substance abuse to anything else in the client's life because of the retraining of thoughts. so the ABC method will work for any problem in life based on the idea that in order to change the problem, we need to think about the way we have reacted to the problem and how we can change our thoughts in order to more positively react to the problem. This seems like a method that almost anyone could benefit from in order to obtain a happier and more fulfilled life. As a therapist, one's job is to heal or help heal the client. Instead of dredging up every painful thing that ever happened, I can use this approach to help my client better understand himself/herself. Hence, if we practice these techniques enough, this client will be able to use the techniques on himself/herself. To me, this would be the ultimate satisfaction as a therapist.

WORKS CITED

The ABC's of REBT. Accessed March 26, 2007 at http://www.stressgroup.com/abcscrashcourse.html

Bouree, George. (2000) . Personality Theories. Accessed March 27, 2007 at http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/ellis.html

De Pietro, Mario. What is Rational Emotive Education. Accessed March 27, 2007 at http://web.tiscali.it/rebt_m_di_pietro/what.htm

Edelstein, Michael. Accessed March 27, 2007 at

http://www.threeminutetherapy.com/rebt.html

Ellis, Albert (2003). Early theories and practices of rational emotive behavior theory and how they have been augmented and revised during the last three decades. Journal of Rational-Emotive & Cognitive-Behavior Therapy, 21(3/4)

Albert, Ellis. My Philosophy of Psychotherapy. Accessed March 27 2007 at http://web.archive.org/web/19981206111932/rebt.org/essays/july98essay.html

How Can I Cope With Major Career Changes. (2002). Eron Publishing Limited. Accessed March 27, 2007 at

http://www.pathfinder-one.com/Pages/articles/mar02attit.htm

An Introduction to Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy. Accessed March 26, 2007 at http://counsellingresource.com/types/rational-emotive/index.html

What is REBT? The Albert Ellis Institute. Accessed March 26, 3007 at http://www.rebt.org/WhatisREBT.htm