Albert Ellis is a force to be reckoned with, both as a person and as a professional. Renowned as much for his colorful language and strong opinions as for his innovations in therapy, Ellis developed what is now called "rational emotive behavior therapy" (REBT) in the mid-1950s. The groundbreaking therapy is based on his main philosophy: that most of our behavioral and emotional problems—from getting over a breakup to handling child abuse—stem from our own irrational beliefs about our situations and how we should be treated. Quickly and powerfully, REBT helps you replace such irrational thoughts with rational ones. Given that these techniques have now become mainstream, it's safe to say that no individual—not even Freud himself—has had a greater impact on modern psychotherapy. At 87, Ellis was still lecturing, writing and seeing 70 or more clients per week—his steady stream of gusto and bravado apparently unstoppable.
Robert Epstein: You are widely known as a very unusual person—as a kind of a character. Do you agree?
Albert Ellis: Yes, compared to most therapists, and probably to the general population, because I usually tell it like it is. And I don't give that much of a damn what people think of me for saying it. That's unusual, since the world consists mainly of love slobs who need other people's approval. Most people don't live their own lives very well.
How long have you spoken your mind?
A long time. I majored in business administration in college, but my hobby was philosophy and I read all the philosophers. When I was 16 I started keeping a diary in which I recorded my disagreements with the famous philosophers.
Could this be interpreted as a kind of arrogance?
Yes, but I didn't insist that they were wrong, that I was right and I had to prevail. I just agreed and disagreed with them. I thought there was a high degree of probability that I was right and some other thinkers were wrong. But I wasn't positive about it.
Has speaking your mind ever gotten you in trouble?
Yes, several times. For example, I once wrote a book with a psychiatrist, and I did practically all the work. It was a study of sex offenders in the New Jersey State system, where I was chief psychologist. I started to get it published and put his name second—it's dubious whether he even deserved that—and he got angry and complained to the famous Sanford Bates, then director of the Department of Human Services. Bates said I had to put the psychiatrist's name first. I held my ground and practically got kicked out of the state of New Jersey. I ended up quitting and going into private practice in 1952.
How did you feel about that?
I felt that I was right and they were wrong, but I wasn't upset, even though the process was very unfair. They trumped up charges, for example, that I lived in New York and shouldn't be allowed to work for the state of New Jersey. I pointed out that half the people working for the state lived in Philadelphia. But I don't recall that I was terribly angry at them. I just noted that they were unfair.
Nevertheless, you paid a price for your boldness. Isn't that the reason most people won't speak their minds?
Yes, and I don't recommend that people speak their minds to their bosses or to somebody who's directly over them. You need to know when to speak your mind and what the penalty will be for doing so. Sometimes it's worth it, and often it's not!
You were trained initially in the Rogerian tradition of therapy, which is entirely non-directive. Then you shifted to Freudian psychoanalysis. How did you end up developing your own very directive technique?
I was trained in Rogerian therapy at Columbia University, but I didn't buy it so I never practiced it. I had used eclectic therapy and behavior therapy on myself at the age of 19 to get over my fear of public speaking and my terror of approaching young women in public. So I'd used other forms of therapy on myself, and I started to use those with clients. But I thought foolishly that Freudian psychoanalysis was deeper and more intensive than other, more directive forms of therapy, so I was trained in it and practiced it. Then I found that it intensively went into every irrelevancy under the sun—and that it didn't work. People got insights into what was bothering them, but they hardly did a damn thing to change. Freud had a gene for inefficiency, and I think I have a gene for efficiency. Had I not been a therapist, I would have been an efficiency expert.
Freudian therapists do a lot of listening and very little persuading.
Right, and that was one of the reasons I eventually gave up being an analyst. You had to be too passive and not speak up, and you couldn't give homework to clients. While I was still an analyst, I wrote several articles criticizing psychoanalysis, but the analysts weren't listening to my objections. So I finally quit psychoanalysis after practicing it for six years.
You made this shift, as I recall, around 1955. Sometime during this transitional period you began to focus on a very critical idea—namely, that many of our problems are rooted in irrational beliefs. How did this idea emerge?
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