May 20, 2007 12:26 PM
7406 Views
(Updated Nov 22, 2007 06:24 PM)
The second-most-influential psychotherapist
of the twentieth century, by the reckoning of the American Psychological
Association, turned ninety last month. His name is Albert Ellis, and, in case
you didn’t know, he is the founder of Rational-Emotive Behavior Therapy, or rebt, and the author of more than seventy books,
including “Sex Without Guilt, ” “Sex and the Liberated Man, ” “The Case for
Promiscuity, ” and “How to Stubbornly Refuse to Make Yourself Miserable About
Anything—Yes, Anything!” Ellis started out as a psychoanalyst, in 1947, but
soon decided that exploring his patients’ childhood traumas had “nothing to do
with the price of spinach.” By the mid-fifties, he had devised his own method,
based on the premise, set forth by the Stoic philosopher Epictetus, that people
are disturbed not by what happens to them but by their view of what happens to
them, and also on his personal observation that, as he said the other day, “all
humans are out of their minds—every single one of them.”
The second-most-influential psychotherapist
of the twentieth century, by the reckoning of the American Psychological
Association, turned ninety last month. His name is Albert Ellis, and, in case
you didn’t know, he is the founder of Rational-Emotive Behavior Therapy, or rebt, and the author of more than seventy books,
including “Sex Without Guilt, ” “Sex and the Liberated Man, ” “The Case for
Promiscuity, ” and “How to Stubbornly Refuse to Make Yourself Miserable About
Anything—Yes, Anything!” Ellis started out as a psychoanalyst, in 1947, but
soon decided that exploring his patients’ childhood traumas had “nothing to do
with the price of spinach.” By the mid-fifties, he had devised his own method,
based on the premise, set forth by the Stoic philosopher Epictetus, that people
are disturbed not by what happens to them but by their view of what happens to
them, and also on his personal observation that, as he said the other day, “all
humans are out of their minds—every single one of them.”
