In my very first paper on what we now call REBT, I outlined 11 common irrational beliefs. Later I added 30 or 40 more common irrational ideas. Beginning in the 1960s, many studies showed that people who hold what we call irrational beliefs are significantly more disturbed than when they don't hold them, and the more strongly they hold them, the more disturbed they tend to be. We started doing outcome studies, and then later Aaron Beck and Donald Meichenbaum began to do them, and now there are probably 2,000 or more studies on the effectiveness of cognitive behavior therapy, which I originated. The studies tend to show that when people change their irrational beliefs to undogmatic flexible preferences, they become less disturbed.
Are there any particular populations that are more resistant to this technique?
The psychotics, naturally. They don't think straight. And severe personality disorders take much longer to treat than people who are neurotic.
Does your technique work better with men than with women?
There's no evidence whatsoever that men are more rational than women or that men are more willing to surrender their irrational beliefs. Both sexes seem to be equally irrational and equally benefit from REBT and cognitive behavior therapy.
A classic joke goes as follows: A client tells Carl Rogers, the quintessential nondirective therapist, that she feels like committing suicide. Rogers replies, "You're feeling suicidal." She says, "Yes, I feel like jumping out the window," and Rogers replies, "You feel like jumping out the window." She walks over to the window, and Rogers follows. She jumps, and Rogers leans out the window and says, "Plop." Could this happen with your own therapeutic approach?
No, because we'd immediately say, "What are you telling yourself to make yourself suicidal? You largely constructed your depression. It wasn't given to you. Therefore, you can deconstruct it. What do you think you're telling yourself to make yourself this way?" We'd get the client to admit things like, "I don't like my life," and then we'd say, "Yeah, but that wouldn't induce you to commit suicide. What else are you telling yourself?" And that's when clients say things like, "It shouldn't be the way it is. It's terrible that I failed. I'm no good." That's when we hear the shoulds, the oughts and the musts, and then we convince the client to abandon these irrational demands. Our slogan is, "I will not should on myself today."
Rogers' approach and your approach seem to be miles apart.
But they're also similar in one respect. We both had the idea—which I think we each got from Paul Tillich's book The Courage To Be—that humans can always accept themselves unconditionally. But Rogers thought that he could get people to accept themselves just by listening to them and being nice to them, and I don't think that's enough. I think nine out of 10 people who go through Rogerian therapy conclude wrongly that "I'm okay because my therapist approves of me." But that's conditional love. I get people to truly accept themselves unconditionally, whether or not their therapist or anyone loves them. Self-esteem is the greatest sickness known to man or woman because it's conditional. "When I do well and am loved by significant others, then I'm okay." Rogers would have been opposed to that as an endpoint of therapy, but he didn't have a good technique for showing people how to get beyond it. In REBT, we give clients unconditional acceptance but we also teach them how to give it to themselves.
Several professional organizations are now cautioning therapists that by being too directive they might inadvertently be implanting false memories in their clients. Do you worry about this?
With all directive techniques—including classroom teaching—the teacher or therapist might indoctrinate the pupils or the clients with wrong ideas which could be harmful to them. That's a liability.
Let's get more concrete about this. A man comes in and says "I've been feeling horrible lately, and I think it's because I may have been abused as a child." How do you react?
We'd assume the worst, usually as a hypothesis. 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. Given that you're still upset about the abuse, you probably told yourself two things about it. First, you said things like: "I don't like it. I wish to hell it weren't so. How unfair." That made you feel sorry and regretful, which is okay. But you also in all probability told yourself that the abuse should not exist. You were disturbed as a child because of both the adversity you experienced and what you told yourself about that adversity. If adversity alone caused disturbance, then everybody who experienced such adversity would turn out the same, but we know they don't. So we teach people that they upset themselves then and that they're still doing it now. We can't change the past, so we change how people are thinking, feeling and behaving today.
By assuming that the abuse really occurred, isn't there a danger here that you might inadvertently implant a memory?
No, because after we show people that they are partly responsible for their upsetness, then we say: Now that you' re not very disturbed about it, what were the details? Did it really occur?
So you're basically helping people to protect themselves from the worst case.
Tags:
Albert Ellis,
arrogance,
behavior,
behavioral therapy,
bravado,
colorful language,
depression,
disagreements,
emotional problems,
famous philosophers,
getting over a breakup,
irrational beliefs,
irrational thoughts,
keeping a diary,
mid 1950s,
robert epstein,
slobs,
steady stream,
strong opinions,
therapy,
unusual person
