Talk:Rational emotive behavior therapy

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1 Controversy and Criticisms
2 The ABCs of RET
3 Limitations section
4 Low standards
5 Further development
6 redirect from Rational Emotive Therapy

[edit] Controversy and Criticisms

Are there any major criticisms of REBT? It usually seems that most psychology-related articles have a major section for controversies. GoodSirJava 19:34, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

hmmmm Not so many. REBT has a lot of scientific research behind it... but I will dig some. Sethie 01:11, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

Ah, how refreshing. GoodSirJava 02:55, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

Ellis was originally a sex therapist and his Sex Without Guilt was what initially put him on the map. Ellis was criticized for decades about his stance on "fixed" homosexuality. He later changes his views on that subject and published the reasons why.

RET has been subject to numerous criticisms in the field of psychology and Ellis has a long history of publishing and addressing those concerns. Ellis' openess to criticism is one of the things that makes him stand out amongst many of his peers. I think Ellis was also voted the second most influential psychologist of the 20th century. As soon as I can dig up some citations I'll add some of this to the article. Mr Christopher 23:16, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] The ABCs of RET

I don't think the ABCs in RET are a personality theory (as the article suggests), or a theory at all. The ABCs are a method of identifying irrational ideas and beliefs about events and the emotional and behavioural consequences of those beliefs. The ABCs are a means or a methodology of teaching one how to objectively evaluate their emotional state and make meaningful changes that improve their emotional well being.

It has been years since I studied RET so I'll break out a few of my books and see if I can contribute to and also clarify some of the article.

I did change the word solely to primarily because RET (Ellis) does not suggest all human emotional disturbance is the result of thoughts and beliefs. Mr Christopher 23:16, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

I spent many hours in the 1970's attending Albert Ellis' presentations at APA conventions, medical school seminars and "Weekend of Rational Encounter". I am a certified REBT therapist. In the 1970's I published in the Journal of Rational Living. Last year I wrote an article on Buddhism and REBT with Terry London which was published in the "Newsletter of the Albert Ellis Institute" Here is a comment on the ABC's. Ellis was trained in psychoanalysis. He underwent psychoanalysis with a follower of Karen Horney. In the early years of his therapy practice he used the psychoanalytic method with his clients. After several years he became convinced that his clients were not getting better and many were getting worse. He saw that his clients were maintaining a dependency on him which he did not see as growth. Ellis enjoyed reading philosophy and decided that ideas from stoicism, existentialism, Buddhism, empiricism and general semantics offered useful material for him to help is clients grow. The ABC's of REBT is very close in meaning to Buddhism's "Four Noble Truths" and is a neumonic device he developed to use in teaching his clients how they can learn to help themselves. When Ellis is doing therapy he can quickly identify and then confront a client with their own irrational thinking. He will even use the clients own words when doing this. Ellis then begins teaching the client how they can learn to identify and confront their own irrational thoughts using the ABC's. When you see Ellis do this it all appears clear and most ( the more intelligent) clients are able to grasp what he is teaching them in less than one hour. However, having the assistance of Albert Ellis in identifying your own irrational thoughts and being able to identify and dispute them yourself is very difficult. This is where the ABC "teaching tool" is beneficial. Ellis has the client use an ABC form to describe a painful situation, their thoughts about the situation and the feelings caused by their thoughts about the situation as homework outside of the therapy session. He then asks them to bring the form back to the next session. If they are willing to work and do the form Ellis moves on to helping the client dispute the irrational ideas identified and brought in by the client. He often would assign pamphlets he had written on their type of problem as homework. Once the client is catching on to the identifying and disputing his own irrational thinking Ellis moves on to assigning en vivo changes in behavior or risk taking. A the next session the client hopefully brings another completed ABC form that describes the results generated by the risk taking behavior. Ellis claims that if the (intelligent)client works hard in the manner described they will get better in seven 20-30 minute sessions.

[edit] Limitations section

The article states "A further limitation, at a theoretical level, is that Ellis specified what the different irrational beliefs are. Cognitive therapy, on the other hand, allows the client and therapist to identify and operationally define the "irrational" beliefs themselves, thus making the therapy more tailored to that specific client."

I think we need a citation for this or simply some clarification. In just about every book he's written Ellis outlines some of the more common irrational beliefs but he in no way restricts and individual from interpreting their own moods and beliefs.

And therapy between a client and RET practitioner is very much a collaborative effort so the whole paragraph could use some fine tuning. The differences in a Cognitive therapy session and an RET therapy session would be subtle. The article suggests those distinctions are significant. Again, an RET practitioner does not tell their client how they feel or what their beliefs are, they help their client discover those for themselves. So the comparison of the RET session and the CT sessions is not very accurate. Mr Christopher 23:16, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

I have asked for citatations, if not, I will take the paragraph out Sethie 04:11, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Low standards

I have done quite a few corrections to this articles, due to what I see as incomplete over-simplified approach in explaning REBT. Especially the general logic on the relations between affect, cognition and behavior, whith Albert Ellis has explaned in a lot of articles throughout the years, better be better explaned. I recommend to do quite a bit of work on this article in the future to clean up the article to that it reflects REBT in a better bay. - 16.6.2005 - User: 152.94.23.64/81.191.24.1

great!!! Welcome aboard. Sethie 16:40, 16 June 2006 (UTC) 81.191.24.1

Sorry that I have re-wrote most of the article, but I felt that it was utmost nesessary due to the very weak standard it was in. It must probably be cleaned up even more, and I am sure that there is a few more things that must be sorted out. - 16.6.2005 - User: 152.94.23.64/81.191.24.1

I've restored the above section of talk which had been deleted, in the interests of preserving the history of development of the page. See "archive rather than delete" in WP:TPG#When there is too much text. -- JimR 11:23, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Further development

I think the article has reached a higher professional level in the last couple of months, but it is important that the article now get the critical attention by a REBT expert who can make sure that the article reaches an even higher professional standard. In the 'External links'-section I would suggest to only list sites that objectivily try to explain the principles and practises of REBT, and NOT pages that have political or only commercial agendas.

81.191.56.161 11:10, 9 July 2006 (UTC)