Overcoming Destructive Beliefs, Feelings, and Behaviors: New Directions for Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy

2001·3.83 MB·English

by  Albert Ellis

Published 2001 by Prometheus Books Overcoming, Destructive Beliefs, Feelings, and Behaviors: New
Directions for Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy. Copyright © 2001 by Albert Ellis Institute. All rights
reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Ellis, Albert.
Overcoming destructive beliefs, feelings, and behaviors : new directions for rational emotive behavior
therapy / Albert Ellis.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978–1–57392–879–3 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN 978–1–61592–015–0 (ebook) 1. Rational-emotive
psychotherapy. I. Title.
RC489.R3 E455 2001
616'.89'14—dc21 00–068333
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

Acknowledgments
Introduction
PART I: NEW DIRECTIONS FOR RATIONAL EMOTIVE BEHAVIOR THERAPY
1.Profound Therapy: Helping People to Feel Better and Get Better
2.Using Postmodernism and Constructivism in Psychotherapy
3.Issues in Counseling in the Postmodern Era
4.Why Rational Emotive Therapy to Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy?
5.REBT Diminishes Much of the Human Ego
6.Special Features of Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy
7.The Humanism of Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy
8.General Semantics and Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy
9.The Main Change Agent in Effective Psychotherapy is Specific Technique
and Skill
10.Brief Therapy: The Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy Method
11.Vigorous REBT Disputing and the Technique of Rational Emotive Imagery:
Handouts for Clients
12.REBT and Marriage and Family Therapy
13.REBT and Its Application to Group Therapy
14.The Use of Hypnosis and REBT
15.REBT as an Internal Control Psychotherapy
16.The Importance of Cognitive Processing in Facilitating Accepting in
Psychotherapy
17.The Rise of Cognitive Behavior Therapy
18.The Future of Cognitive Behavior Therapy and Rational Emotive Behavior
Therapy
PART II: TREATING SPECIFIC EMOTIONAL AND BEHAVIORAL PROBLEMS AND
SEVERE PERSONALITY DISORDERS WITH RATIONAL EMOTIVE BEHAVIOR
THERAPY
19.Some Main Treatment Practices of Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy
20.Treating Individuals with Depressive Disorders
21.Treating Individuals with Anxiety Disorders
22.Treating Individuals with Low Frustration Tolerance
23.Treating Elderly People with Emotional and Behavioral Disturbances
24.Treating Individuals with Severe Perfectionism
25.Treating Individuals with Morbid Jealousy
26.Treating Individuals with Addictive Behaviors
27.Treating Individuals with Borderline Personality Disorders
28.Treating Individuals with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorders
29.Treating Individuals with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorders
30.Tentative Conclusion
Selected References
Index
About the Author
My main acknowledgments for helping me learn the psychotherapy methods
included in this book go, of course, to my individual and group therapy clients.
They have incessantly collaborated with me in tentatively accepting my theories
and practices and have experimentally used them in their own lives. Their
valuable feedback on how Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT) has
worked—and sometimes not worked—for them has been very important to me
in formulating and revising its principles and techniques. I wish to thank them
for courageously trying to implement my therapeutic suggestions and thereby
aiding me in improving and adding to them.
Many of my colleagues at the Albert Ellis Institute in New York have
discussed with me the theories described in this book and have helped me to
develop them. These colleagues especially include Janet Wolfe, Catharine
MacLaren, Kristene Doyle, and Michler Bishop, all of whom I gratefully thank.
Patrice Ward and Tim Runion have been of enormous help in word-processing
and editing the various revisions of this manuscript. Finally, Kevin Everett
FitzMaurice, Shawn Blau, and Emmett Velten have read and critiqued sizeable
portions of my manuscript and made most helpful suggestions on it.
Although Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT) basically upholds the
same theory and practice that I originated in 1955, it has also changed
considerably since that time. I have presented its important revisions in a series
of articles published in psychological journals in the last several years, and it is
about time that I summarized these articles and brought REBT fully into the
twenty-first century. This is what I have done in this book.
Not only have I somewhat rewritten the articles in this book, but I have done
so in the kind of writing that William James recommended a century ago and
that has more recently been encouraged by Robert Zettle and William Glasser.
This form of language, which can be called active language, favors verbs instead
of nouns. As Zettle notes, we misuse many nouns in psychology instead of verbs
and thereby create semifictional entities that Kevin Everett FitzMaurice (1997)
calls “thought things.” Thus we say, “My feelings upset me when panic
overwhelms me when I am in closed spaces” instead of, “I upset myself by
panicking when I am in closed spaces.”