This essay will be focus on the figure of Albert Ellis and his Rational Emotive Therapy, which marked the beginning of cognitivism and similarities with Aaron Beck's Cognitive Therapy.
Ellis was born in Pittsburgh (Pennsylvania) in 1913, in a Jewish family and died in Manhattan in
2007. He spent most of his time writing short stories, plays, novels, comic poetry, essays, and nonfiction books. A part of this facet was dedicated and involved in psychology. Next, I will present the studies and paths that led Albert Ellis to be what he became, an important 20thcentury psychologist. In addition, I will try to explain the idea of this author and parallel my position to it.
He studied at Columbia University (New York), specializing in training professionals…show more content… He was the creator in one of the theories that have revolutionized the fundamentals and the methodology in the treatment of emotional and psychological problems.
Although he was initially convinced that psychoanalysis was the most profound and effective form of therapy, he soon became aware of the limitations of Sigmund Freud's theory and, disappointed by the few results he obtained with his patients, he gradually abandoned Psychoanalytic theory to start working on his own theory. Already in 1953, he breaks with psychoanalysis and begins to develop a type of psychotherapy that would call Emotional Rational Therapy, cognitivebehavioral.
Ellis believes that much of the psychological problems are due to irrational thought patterns. He centers his theory that "People are not altered by facts, but by what they think about the facts," as the Greek Stoic philosopher Epictetus said. His therapeutic method attempts to discover the irrationalities of our thoughts and thereby heal the painful, dramatized and exaggerated emotions that are the consequence of distorted mental schemes. Ellis starts from the hypothesis that it is not events (A) that generate emotional states (C), but rather the way…show more content… According to Ellis,
"Every person has the capacity to change himself."
The human species has the cognitive capacities necessary for the development and functioning of the personality. Thinking rightly we acquire emotional control. To control our emotional states we must be able to clearly interpret what we perceive that leads us to have healthy emotions. There is a wide variety of typical thinking mistakes, in which we become obsessed and lose the ability to see other dimensions of life. We tend to ignore the positive and exaggerate the negative, which in many cases produces us unnecessary or disproportionate suffering with respect to reality, and that often prevent us from achieving our goals.
"The emotions that undermine our primary goals and purposes in life are destructive and irrational. They are fundamentally: depression, excessive anxiety, excessive anger and pronounced guilt. "(Ellis's famous phrases).
After seeing several examples of irrational beliefs that Ellis mentions, and that we share most of the people of Western societies, either by education, biological tendencies, social influences ... and that cause or provoke neurosis, I am particularly struck by two of them, for