Albert Ellis

From Philosopedia

Ellis, Albert (27 September 1913 - 24 July 2007)

Ellis, a noted clinical psychologist who founded and was the executive director of the Institute of Advanced Study in Rational-Emotive Therapy, was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to a Jewish family. His father, a businessman, Ellis has described as having traveled often, been away from home, and not particularly affectionate toward his three children. Ellis has described his mother as being bipolar and, like the father, emotionally distant. As a child, Ellis reportedly was hospitalized when five with a kidney disease, at another time hospitalized with tonsillitis, and hospitalized several other times, once for nearly a year. Capitalizing upon his home conditions, Ellis said he "took my father's absence and my mother's neglect in stride and even felt good about being allowed so much autonomy and independence."

Earning a B.A. in business from the City University of New York (CCNY), he found business poor during the Great Depression that began in 1929, and he had no success in publishing his fiction. It was when he researched human sexuality and wrote about that he started a successful career in clinical psychology. In 1943 he completed his M.A. in clinical psychology from College, Columbia University, and in 1947 he earned his Ph. D. from Columbia University.

When a teenager, he worked to overcome his shyness and, although he had a fear speaking in public, he eventually became an accomplished public speaker.

His first marriage - to Karyl Cooper, an actress in 1938 - ended in annulment. His second - to Rhoda Winter, a dancer, in 1956 - ended in divorce. For thirty-seven years, from 1966 to 2003, he lived with a companion, Janet L. Wolfe, a psychologist, in his townhouse on East 65th Street in Manhattan. His third marriage was to Debbie Joffe-Ellis, a former assistant of his and a psychologist,

Contents 1 Rational-Emotive Therapy 2 Impact 3 Quotes 4 Works 5 Later Years 6 Correspondence

Rational-Emotive Therapy

Under the supervision of Richard Hulbeck, who had been trained by Hermann Rorschach, he studied about Karen Horney, Alfred Adler, Erich Fromm, and Harry Stack Sullivan. Ellis particularly credits Alfred Korzybski's Science and Sanity for having led him on the philosophic journey to his founding what he called rational-emotive therapy. Breaking with psychoanalysis, in 1955 he developed Rational Therapy (RT), which "focuses on uncovering irrational beliefs that may lead to unhealthy negative emotions, then replacing them with more productive rational alternatives." Finding Freudian orthodoxy "a waste of time" and "therapy doesn't have to take years," he developed a therapy that drew not only on his personal experiences but also on what he learned from Greek, Roman, and modern philosophers.

His institute, in its teachings,

views human beings as "responsibly hedonistic" in the sense that they strive to remain alive and to achieve some degree of happiness. However, it also holds that humans are prone to adopting irrational beliefs and behaviors which stand in the way of their achieving their goals and purposes. Often, these irrational attitudes or philosophies take the form of extreme or dogmatic 'musts', 'shoulds', or 'oughts'; they contrast with rational and flexible desires, wishes, preferences and wants. The presence of extreme philosophies can make all the difference between healthy negative emotions (such as sadness or regret or concern) and unhealthy negative emotions (such as depression or guilt or anxiety). For example, one person's philosophy after experiencing a loss might take the form:

It is unfortunate that this loss has occurred, although there is no actual reason why it should not have occurred. It is sad that it has happened, but it is not awful, and I can continue to function."

Another's might take the form:

"This absolutely should not have happened, and it is horrific that it did. These circumstances are now intolerable, and I cannot continue to function."

The first person's response is apt to lead to sadness, while the second person may be well on their way to depression. Most importantly of all, REBT maintains that individuals have it within their power to change their beliefs and philosophies profoundly, and thereby to change radically their state of psychological health.

Those who insist that things must be, he sarcastically calls "musturbators."

Impact

Ellis complained that Sigmund Freud's therapeutic treatments were too slow-moving. Rather than exploring patients' childhood experiences in detail, Ellis developed a short-term therapy that demanded patients focus on the now, on what was happening in their lives at the moment, and on helping them to immediately change their behavior. "Neurosis" for Ellis was "just a high-class word for whining."

"The trouble with most therapy is that it helps you to feel better. But you don't get better. You have to back it up with action, action, action," he wrote in a 2004 Times article.

In his Friday evening seminars that occurred for decades, Ellis was part advisor and part entertainer, not above saying "Get real. Get over it! You're talking bullshit!" First, his clients had to unconditionally accept their behavior. Then they had to re-train their behavior, working to stop the destructive emotions they had developed: you can then work to "establish new ways of being and behaving."

Instead of Freud's slow-moving "talking cure," Ellis utilized a pragmatic, stop-complaining-and-get-on-with your life" approach.

His approach was belittled by many in 1955, Freudians complaining that Ellis was mistaken in saying that the "Oedipus complex" idea was "foolish," and that Freud knew little about sex. Ellis collaborated with Dr. Alfred C. Kinsey in his controversial study of sexual behavior. Both were criticized by the American Psychological Association. In 1985, however, he received that association's award for "distinguished professional contributions."

Quotes

Following are some examples of what Ellis wrote.

From Is Objectivism A Religion?

Objectivism ceaselessly talks about the necessity of our accepting the facts of reality - that because A is A and existence exists, we'd better face these facts and live according to empirically observable happenings. In regard to life in general . . . and to capitalism in particular, objectivism is just about as unrealistic and antiempirical as it can be. It remains in a world of "rational" fictions and it invents innumerable fantasies about capitalism and refuses to admit its fantasizing.

From The Albert Ellis Reader:

From the age of 16 onward (in 1929), I read many books by Freud and his followers, but I could see that Sigmund was especially obsessed with the sexual "origins" of disturbance, especially with the ubiquitousness of the Oedipus complex. I could also see that he was an overgeneralizer and a dogmatist, and therefore a poor scientist. But psychoanalytic details about sex helped to loosen me up; I came to consider practically all forms of noncoercive sex permissible. In fact, at the age of 15, I had my first and only homosexual episode - with my 13-year-old brother no less!

Works

Dr. Ellis wrote more than 75 books. Following is a sampling.

1965 "Sex and the Single Man"

1965 Homosexuality: Its Causes and Cures"

1966 Sex Without Guilt

1975 A Guide to Rational Living

1979 How to Live With a Neurotic

1980 "The Case Against Religiosity

1983 Overcoming Procrastination: Or How to Think and Act Rationally in Spite of Life's Inevitable Hassles, with William J. Knaus

1988 How to Stubbornly Refuse to Make Yourself Miserable About Anything - Yes, Anything

1989 Why Some Therapies Don’t Work, the Dangers of Transpersonal Psychology, with Raymond J. Yeager

1992 When AA Doesn't Work For You : Rational Steps to Quitting Alcohol

1992 Art and Science of Rational Eating]], with Mike Abrams and Lidia Abrams

1994 How to Cope with a Fatal Illness, with Mike Abrams

1995 How to Keep People from Pushing Your Buttons, with Arthur Lange.

1996 Alcohol : How to Give It Up and Be Glad You Did, with Philip Tate

1998 How to Control Your Anger Before It Controls You, with Raymond Chip Tafrate.

1999 "How to Make Yourself Happy and Remarkably Less Disturbable

2000 The Secret of Overcoming Verbal Abuse: Getting Off the Emotional Roller Coaster and Regaining Control of Your Life, with Marcia Grad Powers.

2001 "Overcoming Destructive Beliefs, Feelings, and Behaviors: New Directions for Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy

2001 Feeling Better, Getting Better, Staying Better : Profound Self-Help Therapy For Your Emotions

2004 The Road to Tolerance: The Philosophy of Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy

2004 Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy: It Works for Me - It Can Work for You

2005 The Myth of Self-Esteem

Ellis has written that,

• If devout religiosity, therefore, is often masochism, it is even more often dependency. For humans to be true believers and to also be strong and independent is well nigh impossible. Religiosity and self-sufficiency are contradictory terms. . . . According to orthodox religious shalts and shalt nots, you become not only a wrong-doer, but an arrant sinner when you commit ethical and religious misdeeds; and, as a sinner, you become worthless, undeserving of any human happiness, and deserving of being forever damned (excommunicated) on earth and perhaps roasted eternally in hell.

“The more sinful and guilty a person tends to feel,” he wrote in his role as a psychotherapist, “the less chance there is that he will be a happy, healthy, law-abiding citizen. . . . He will become a compulsive wrongdoer.”

In Case Against Religiosity (1980), Ellis declared that “devout theists often ignore, deny, and hallucinate about reality; and the more devout they are - as the long history of religion shows - the more delusionary and hallucinatory they seem to be.” Ellis is one of the most outspoken of atheists.

In 1971, he was named Humanist of the Year by the American Humanist Association. In 1980, he signed the Secular Humanist Declaration. Dr. Ellis, who at one time was on the editorial board of The Humanist, is an honorary member of the Secular Humanist Society of New York. He signed Humanist Manifesto II and has been a contributing editor to Free Inquiry.

Later Years

Ellis's New York Times (25 July 2007) obituary by Michael T. Kaufman, reported that the cause of death was kidney and heart failure after an extended illness.

In 2005 Ellis sued the institute he had founded in 1959 after it had removed him from its board and canceled his Friday seminars. It was claimed that he and his actions were jeopardizing the organization's tax-exempt status. The institute, according to its board, could not afford his medical and other expenses involved with his hard of hearing and daily nursing care. Ellis countered that psychologists wanted to move the institution away from his techniques, and he sued. In January 2006, a State Supreme Court judge ruled against the board and reinstated him.

"I'll retire when I'm dead," he said at 90. "While I'm alive, I want to keep doing what I want to do. See people. Give workshops. Write and preach the gospel according to St. Albert."

Stephen Miller, in the New York Sun (25 July 2007), wrote:

Using wisdom derived from the Greek philosopher Epictetus and street smarts born of his days selling substitute suit pants during the Depression, Albert Ellis, who died yesterday t 93, fought Sigmund Freud to at least a draw.

Miller described the to-the-point language that Ellis used:

"Freud was out of his fucking mind," Ellis told the New Yorker in 2003. Asked why he had issued a stream of books and was childless, Ellis told Psychology Today, "I haven't got the time to take the kids to the goddamned ballgame!"

The foul-mouthed guru of cognitive therapy also insisted that short, directed therapy was what most neurotics needed, even while he conceded that "all humans are out of the fucking minds - every single one of them."

Many of his books were published by Lyle Stuart, "the notorious purveyor of all things blue." Stuart published 18 of Ellis's books. Some of the works today appear quaint, dated, or simply wrong, such as Homosexuality: Its Causes and Cures (1965). But more of them seem like the first great blast of a sensible sex and life advice industry that Ellis was instrumental in founding. Despite his 1965 book title, he was an early supporter of gay rights, and where Kinsey wrote of sex, Ellis wrote also of love.

Correspondence

Warren Allen Smith, who was active in humanist and humanities circles, once approached Corliss Lamont about helping to establish "a Humanist House" in a prominent Manhattan site, saying it could like a YMCA or YMHA be a significant meeting place for the various dues-paying humanist groups but also could have rentable space for atheists, chess players, agnostics, a non-believers' library, rationalists, lectures about ethics or philosophic topics, humanities humanists, and other freethinking groups to meet. The elderly Lamont was interested but said organizing such would involve too much, that in his will he planned for funds to be given to the American Humanist Association.

Ellis owned just such a building at 45 East 6th Street in New York City. He lived on the top floor and the other floors were for his psychotherapy institute. Smith made an inquiry in writing and received the following:

Smith asked Ellis if he would be willing to be listed as an honorary member of the Secular Humanist Society of New York (SHSNY), of which he was one of the founders and later the President.

Smith was editor of the SHS of NY's newsletter, Pique, and asked Ellis if the two could meet in order to set up a local chapter that would be an alternative to Alcoholics Anonymous with its 11th and 12th "spiritual awakening" steps.

Smith and Dennis Middlebrooks sounded Ellis out about being an honorary member of their freethought group. Also, for his entry in Who's Who in Hell, he was asked for his correct birthdate.

(See “Why I Am a Secular Humanist, An Interview with Albert Ellis,” Free Inquiry, Summer 1997).

{CA; E; HM2; HNS2; SHD; TYD; WAS, numerous conversations}