Rebt

Paper Summary:

This paper discusses how Albert Ellis falls under the school of thought of cognitivists and how Ellis' rational emotive behavioral therapy (REBT) is a misnomer suggestive of a behaviorist orientation of his therapeutic methods. The paper then examines how, unlike the behavioralists' perspective, Ellis' ideas do not dwell on behaviors per se, but rather on the cognitive processes (i.e. irrational beliefs), which can give rise to these behaviors.

Outline:

School of Thought

Contributions to Personality Psychology

Occurrences During the Individual's Lifetime

Application in the Workplace

From the Paper:

"Ellis' pragmatic perspective on therapy may draw heavily from his experiences growing up and working prior to and during the Great Depression. Growing up, Ellis was a sickly child, suffering from a chronic kidney disease that forced him to be more bedridden than physically active. In spite of this, he was also forced to work, along with his siblings in order to help the rest of his family. In spite of these life circumstances, Ellis did not allow them to negatively influence him (Dobkin, 2005). As he grew up, other seemingly frustrating life circumstances such as his short-lived stint as an entrepreneur and prolific, albeit unpublished fiction writer and the Great Depression failed to deter him from pursuing the latter as an equally prolific non-fiction writer, which would eventually lead to his pursuit of counseling as an interest and training under the psychoanalytic school of thought (Boeree, 2006)."

Paper Summary:

This paper discusses how Albert Ellis falls under the school of thought of cognitivists and how Ellis' rational emotive behavioral therapy (REBT) is a misnomer suggestive of a behaviorist orientation of his therapeutic methods. The paper then examines how, unlike the behavioralists' perspective, Ellis' ideas do not dwell on behaviors per se, but rather on the cognitive processes (i.e. irrational beliefs), which can give rise to...