RATIONAL BEHAVIOURAL THERAPY (REBT) - ALBERT ELLIS

Ellis first practices as a psychoanalyst but later one found the model as relatively superficial and
unscientific form of treatment. He combined it with humanistic, philosophy and behavioral
model to form RATIONAL EMOTIVE BEHAVIORAL THERAPY. He is referred to as the
GRANDFATHER of REBT.

- Somehow, he developed this approach as a method of dealing with his problems during
his youth. At youth, he had exaggerated fears of speaking in public and he was also
extremely shy when around young women. At 19 years, he forced himself to talk to 100
women for over a period of one month. This way he desensitized himself from fear of
rejection by women. Later on in life he enjoyed public speaking and attending to
activities in which he was anxious about.
- His listeners comment about him being abrasive, humorous and flamboyant in public
speaking.

Basic Assumptions

Our emotions are as a result of our beliefs, evaluations, interpretations and reactions to life
situations.

View of Personality

- People are not disturbed by things, but by the way they view them in their social context.
- People disturb themselves by the things that happen to them, how they view them, how
they feel about them, and how they behave about them.
- People are disturbed by the rule of shoulds.

Key Concepts

View of Human Nature

 People have an in-born potential for both rational (straight) thinking and irrational
(crooked) thinking.

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  This means that a person has a tendency to preserve self and actualize by positively
thinking, talking, and communicating with others in his/her environment.
 The same person has a tendency for self-destruction whereby he/she can think negatively,
procrastinate, endlessly repeat mistakes, become intolerant, perfectionism, self blame,
and avoid all growth potentials available in his/her context.
 The person has potential to live either at peace with self or peaceless with self and others.
 A human being have an in-born tendency to move towards actualization but sabotage self
with leant self-defeating patterns.

View of Emotional Disturbance

People reinforce irrational beliefs learnt early in life by repeatedly thinking over them as if they
are useful. This causes a person to keep dysfunctional attitudes alive and operative within self.

- Mostly these believes are in connection to the need to be loved, and acceptance by the
significant others.
- REBT therapists teach clients to be self accepting and operate from internal locus of
control.

Therapeutic Process

- Clients learn skills that help them to identify and dispute irrational beliefs. These beliefs
are found to have been acquired and maintained by self-indoctrination.
- Therapy focuses on helping the client to learn to replace ineffective ways of thinking with
rational thoughts which will eventually change the emotional reactions to the situations
resulting to positive behaviors.

Therapeutic Goals

- Help the client to identify and dispute irrational thoughts and beliefs.
- Help the client to learn to replace ineffective ways of thinking with an aim to change the
feelings associated with negative thoughts.
- Main goal is to teach the clients to separate the evaluation of their behaviors from the
evaluation of self i.e. accept themselves in-spite of their imperfections.