EDGC 671
Theory Review
Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy
Dean Owen, Ph.D., LPCC
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Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy
Albert Ellis
1913-2007
Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy
Overview: Rational Emotive Behavior
Therapy (REBT)
Key Figure: Founder, Albert Ellis. The
approach grew out of Ellis' disenchantment with
psychoanalytically oriented therapy.
Ellis found that insight and awareness of early
childhood events did not result in reduction of
the client's emotional disturbances.
Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy
A highly didactic, cognitive behavior-oriented
approach, it stresses the role of action and
practice in combating irrational,
self-indoctrinated ideas.
It focuses on the role of thinking and belief
systems as the roots of personal problems.
Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy
Philosophy and Basic Assumptions:
Individuals are born with the potential for rational thinking but
tend to fall victims to the uncritical acceptance of irrational
beliefs that are perpetuated through self-re-indoctrination.
The assumption is that thinking, evaluating, analyzing,
questioning, doing, practicing, and re-deciding are at the base of
behavior change.
It is a didactic-directive model.
Therapy is a process of reeducation.
Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy
Key Concepts: Though emotional disturbance is rooted in
childhood, the individual keeps telling himself or herself
irrational and illogical sentences.
The approach is based on the A-B-C theory of personality:
A=actual event; B=belief system; C=consequence.
Emotional problems are the result of one's beliefs, which need to
be challenged.
The scientific method of logical and rational thought is applied
to irrational beliefs.
Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy
Therapeutic Goals: The goal is to
eliminate a self-defeating outlook on life
and acquire a more rational and tolerant
philosophy of life.
Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy
Therapeutic Relationship: A personal relationship
between the client and therapist is not essential.
The therapist functions as a teacher, and client as a
student.
As clients begin to understand how they continue to
contribute to their problems, they must actively practice
changing their self-defeating behavior and converting it
into rational behavior.
Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy
Techniques and Procedures: The approach tends to use diverse
techniques and borrows many from behavioral approaches.
Techniques are designed to get the client to critically examine his
or her present beliefs and behavior.
Procedures include persuasion, suggestion, confrontation, direct
attack, challenging, teaching, reading, listening to tapes,
contracts, homework assignments. questioning, probing,
interpretations, role playing, desensitization, counterconditioning, behavior rehearsal, modeling, hypnotherapy,
operant conditioning and assertion training.
Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy
Applications: Applications of this model include
individual therapy, ongoing group therapy, marathon
encounter groups, brief therapy, marriage and family
therapy, sex therapy and classroom situations.
The approach is applicable to delinquents and criminals
and to clients with moderate anxiety, neurotic disorders,
character disorders, psychosomatic problems and
sexual dysfunction.
It is most effective with those who can reason well and
who are not seriously disturbed.
Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy
Contributions: Therapy focuses on the importance and value of
thinking.
It has wide applicability.
Therapy is brief and places value on active practice in
experimenting with new behavior so that insight is carried into
doing.
It discourages dependence on the therapist and stresses the
client's capacity to control his or her own destiny.
Basic Irrational Ideas
1. One must be loved and approved of all the time by all people one finds
significant.
2. One must be thoroughly competent, adequate, and fully achieving in all
areas all of the time.
3. Some people are generally bad, wicked, and villainous and should be
blamed and punished.
4. When things do not go as I want them to go, it's a catastrophe.
5. Unhappiness comes from outside pressures and I have no ability to control
my feelings.
6. If something is dangerous I must become terribly preoccupied with it and
upset by it.
Basic Irrational Ideas
7. It is easier to avoid difficulties and responsibilities then to confront and deal
with them.
8. One's past totally and completely determines present and future behavior.
9. There is only one right and correct solution to problems in life.
10. One can achieve happiness by inertia and by doing nothing.
11. One must have a high degree of order and certainty in order to feel happy
or one must have some supernatural power on which to rely.
12. One's self-concept or global rating depends upon the goodness of one's
performances and the degree that people approve of you.