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Abstract

In this paper we attempt to understand the intellectual origins of Albert Ellis' Rational Psychotherapy (now known as Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy). In his therapeutic practice Ellis used a 'lumper' argument to replace the focus of change in psychoanalysis: not the lengthy uncovering and reworking of the individual's personal history, but the demands in self-talk through which the client is currently dis turbed. In constructing around this the persuasive (rhetorical) package that became his therapy, Ellis drew on a number of popular intellectual movements, operationalism, General Semantics, the holistic theory of emotion, cognitive psychology, and psychoanalysis itself.

Keywords

Albert Ellis general semantics operationalism psycho analysis psychotherapy Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy

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The intellectual origins of Rational Psychotherapy

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