TOAlbert Ellis was one of the most influential therapists in psychology. With his rational emotive therapy (REBT), he revolutionized the field of psychotherapy dominated at the time by psychoanalysis and built the foundations and interventions used by millions of therapists around the world. In this brief biography we cover his life, with little-known data and the most important academic and professional milestones of this revolutionary therapist.
Who was Albert Ellis?
Albert Ellis was born on September 27, 1913 in Pittsburgh, United States, but grew up in the Bronx, New York, and died in the early morning of July 24, 2007, in his apartment located on the sixth floor of the , after suffering a long gastrointestinal illness.
Ellis was the eldest of three siblings, followed by Paul (two years younger) and Janet (4 years apart). According to Leonor Lega (official biographer), Ellis remembered that his father traveled frequently since he was a businessman, so she spent very little time with him and his brothers and did not pay them much attention or affection. He remembers about her mother that she was very focused on herself, going from one emotion to another, she rarely listened to the opinions of others, she was emotionally energetic and distant, sometimes describing her as bipolar. His parents separated when he was 11 years old. Ellis called his parents’ behavior “parental neglect.” For this reason he had to assume some responsibilities with his younger siblings, such as getting them up and dressing them every morning to go to school. He also states that, due to the negligence of his parents, he was able to have greater independence unlike other children (Lega, Sorribes, & Calvo, 2017).
Albert Ellis speaking in 1973 (Image from Albert Ellis Institute)
Since he was little he suffered from two extreme fears: the first was the fear of speaking in public and the second was the fear of confronting young women to ask them out. He experienced these sufferings with such intensity that he categorized them as phobias.
Lega (2017) writes that between the ages of 5 and 7, due to nephritis, he had to remain in the hospital. Presbyterian Hospital from New York for long periods of time (sometimes up to ten months at a time). In total he was hospitalized about eight times, and that place became the center of his “social life.”
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At the university he decided not to postpone his projects: first he had to finish his academic work, even if it was less interesting for him, and then rest and do activities he liked. Years later, he would use these experiences in developing his concepts of long term hedonismand Low tolerance to frustrationfrequently used by REBT, where priority is given to achieving long-term goals (although the short term is more pleasant) and not succumbing no matter how uncomfortable or unpleasant it may be.
During an interview with Lega (2017), Ellis says that at the age of 19 he decided to talk to any woman who was sitting alone on the benches at the Bronx Botanical Garden. Ellis recalled that of one hundred and thirty women, thirty left the room when he tried to start a conversation, but he maintained that he had kept one hundred of them, which he considered a strong sample for a scientific study. He only managed to arrange a later date with one of them, although she did not show up. However, he added that this experience also helped him stop feeling ashamed and overcome his fear of talking to women.
Ellis was married 3 times. His first marriage was to actress Karyl Corper and ended in an annulment in 1938. His second marriage was in 1956, to dancer Rhoda Winter, and ended in divorce. After that, he lived for 37 years (1965 to 2002) with a companion, a psychologist named Janet L. Wolfe, who was also executive director of the institute. Eventually, he married psychologist and former assistant, Debbie Joffe-Ellis (Kaufman, 2007).
Ellis had no children, as he claimed they would interfere with his “other important pursuits”; that is, the time he dedicated to consolidating and disseminating his therapy: publications, customer service, travel and all the responsibilities that he assumed as founder of a therapy school. He justified his decision by stating that it was negligent and unethical to have children, since he would have little intimate and daily contact with them (Ellis, 2005b, 2010). Still, he had 3 unacknowledged children (Philip, Marty and Laurel) with Karyl Corper, his first wife, while she was married to another man, who raised them and was a father to them. Ellis maintains that he agreed to have children with Karyl because he considered it selfish to deprive the world of her genes (Ellis, 2010).
Academic and professional life
Although Ellis became very interested in philosophy and psychology, he first decided to enroll in a business administration program (influenced by his father and brother) to be able to make money “and dedicate himself completely to writing literature at the age of 30.” But the economic crisis that the United States was suffering at that time frustrated his desire. In 1934, at the age of 21, he graduated in Business Administration from the City University of New York (CUNY).
At the age of 26 (1939) he began to write various articles about sex, love and marriage in an objective and open manner, because they sold very well and he wanted to promote the “sexual and family revolution.” As many of his friends began asking him for advice, Ellis discovered that he loved consulting as much as writing and created the LAMP Institute (Love and Marriage Problems Institute), dedicated to research and help in love and marriage problems.
Years later, he receives golden advice, given by the lawyer who carried out the divorce with his first wife: get a degree to practice the profession of psychologist. He attended three courses during the summer that allowed him to enter the training program of the Teachers College from Columbia University, in 1942. He graduated in 1943, at the age of 30, and began his doctoral studies and worked as a professional psychologist.
Ellis tried to become a psychology professor, but no university, including Columbia, accepted him because he was very controversial (Ellis, 2010). So in 1947, at the age of 34, he continued his training in psychoanalysis, applying it for approximately six years.
During this time he also underwent a “personal analysis and supervision program” with , for approximately 3 years. But in 1953 he broke with this because he perceived a slow recovery of his patients (Froggatt, 2005): “my patients frequently got worse instead of better. For this reason, in 1953 I stopped calling myself a psychoanalyst and investigated which therapeutic techniques were most popular, in order to take the best of each one.” In 1954 Ellis began teaching his new technique, giving it the name “rational therapy” in 1955. And on August 31, 1956 he gave a presentation of his theory at the American Psychological Association (APA) titled (Ellis, 1998).
Albert Ellis in the late 40s
Subsequently, in 1961 Ellis changed the name of his proposal to rational emotive therapy (RET) and in 1993 RET became REBT: rational emotive behavioral therapy, in order to make it more complete and including the importance of the behavioral component in its effectiveness. of the treatment.
His new psychotherapeutic approach was not well received and, according to Ellis himself, all mental health professionals hated him as they considered the method superficial and stupid (Kaufman, 2007).
Ellis also strongly criticized those who evaluate personality, considering that its evaluation should be done with methods that were not susceptible to and that predicted behavior better than chance (Ellis & Abrams, 2009).
One of the achievements that Ellis values most, after the creation of the TREC, is the founding of the Albert Ellis Institute to which he dedicated his life and efforts. Founded in 1959 thanks to income from his books and consultations, it was first known as the Institute for Rational Living, located in a building in Manhattan, which it managed to purchase in 1965.
In 2005, Ellis sued the institute that bears his name after they decided to remove him from the board of directors and canceled his Friday seminars. The psychologist and the people who supported him alleged that the institution had been taken over by individuals who were distancing it from its revolutionary therapeutic techniques (Kaufman, 2007).
The board of directors, for its part, said it was acting for economic reasons since Ellis’ medical expenses jeopardized the company’s tax-exempt status. By then Dr. Ellis was barely hearing and had the daily care of a nurse. Some people also said they were uncomfortable with Ellis’ eccentric and confrontational style and saw him as a burden (Kaufman, 2007).
In 2006, the court ruled in favor of Ellis, finding that the board of directors had been wrong to fire him without proper notice and he had to be reinstated to the institute, although his relationship with the board of directors remained strained. That year he was hospitalized several times due to pneumonia. Ellis treated patients up to four or five months before they died; He received them even lying in bed and with headphones (Kaufman, 2007).
Ellis’ greatest contribution to psychology: Rational emotive behavioral therapy
Rational emotive behavioral therapy (REBT) has its roots in the personal life of Albert Ellis, especially in the experiences lived in his youth, between 1920-1930, when he began to face his own psychological and emotional problems (Bernard, 2011 ).
The development of REBT was heavily influenced by Greek, Roman, and modern philosophy (Kaufman, 2007). The main therapeutic foundation of this model of therapy is taken from Epictetus with his maxim: “What disturbs men are not things, but the opinions that are made about them”; as well as Horney with his “tyranny of the shoulds”, since, like Ellis, he maintains that the person must become aware that it is they themselves who create their own disturbances and who have the ability to correct their thinking and behavior to face their problems (Ellis, 2005). In that sense, the underlying idea of Ellis’ therapy is that our emotions depend mainly on our belief system (Ellis, 2006).
Rational emotive behavioral therapy works on the basis of events (A), beliefs (B) and consequences (C) that can be emotional or behavioral and are chained to govern our behavior. This model is called ABC.
Ellis (2006) distinguishes irrational ideas from rational ones in that the former obstruct the achievement of our goals and preferences and that they are absolutist, while…