Abstract
In a paradigm shifting presentation at the American Psychological Association’s conference in Chicago in 1956, Albert Ellis argued for addressing the important role cognition plays in the creation and maintenance of emotional and behavioral disturbance. This presentation then appeared in a 1958 article in the Journal of General Psychology titled “Rational Therapy”. This marked his official departure from psychoanalysis and earned Ellis the distinction of being the field’s first cognitive behavior therapist. His work welded ancient and modern philosophy, especially Stoicism, with clinical strategies and techniques from behavior therapy. Ellis proposed that attitudes, beliefs, and philosophical ideas, what we now commonly refer to as cognitions, were at the core of emotional and behavioral disturbance. Over the next 60 years, Ellis developed, refined, and disseminated the theory and practice of Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT: Ellis, 1962, 1994). Subsequent to and independent of Ellis’s work, Aaron T. Beck published “Thinking and Depression” in the Archives of General Psychiatry in 1963. By this time, he also had come to appreciate the important role thinking played in clinical depression. Due to Ellis’s pioneering work and Beck’s subsequent empirical research, it is fair to consider Ellis and Beck the founding fathers of cognitive behavior therapy (CBT).
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsReferences
Beck, A. T. (1976). Cognitive therapy and the emotional disorders. New York, NY: International University Press.
Beck, A. T., Emery, G., & Greenberg, R. L. (1985). Anxiety disorders and phobias: A cognitive perspective. New York, NY: Basic Books.
Beck, A. T., & Haigh, E. A. P. (2014). Advances in cognitive theory and therapy: The generic cognitive model. Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, 10, 1–24.
Beck, A. T., Rector, N. A., Stolar, N., & Grant, P. (2008). Schizophrenia: Cognitive theory. Research, and therapy. New York, NY: Guilford.
Beck, A. T., Wright, F., Newman, C., & Liese, B. (1993). Cognitive therapy of substance abuse. New York, NY: Guilford.
Bernard, M. E. (2011). Rationality and the pursuit of happiness: The legacy of Albert Ellis. Chichester, UK: Wiley-Blackwell.
Dimeff, L., & Linehan, M. M. (2001). Dialectical behavior therapy in a nutshell. The California Psychologist, 34(3), 10–13.
Disner, S. G., Beevers, C. G., Haigh, E. A. P., & Beck, A. T. (2011). Neural mechanisms of the cognitive model of depression. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 12, 467–477.
Dryden, W. (2016). Attitudes in rational emotive behaviour therapy: Components, characteristics and adversity related consequences. London, UK: Rationality Publications.
Ellis, A. (1957). How to live with a neurotic. New York, NY: Crown Publishers.
Ellis, A. (1958). Rational psychotherapy. Journal of General Psychology, 59, 35–49.
Ellis, A. (1962). Reason and emotion in psychotherapy. New York, NY: Lyle Stuart.
Ellis, A. (1976). The biological basis of human irrationality. Journal of Individual Psychology, 32, 145–168.
Ellis, A. (1979a). Discomfort anxiety: A new cognitive-behavioral construct (Part 1). Rational Living, 14, 3–8.
Ellis, A. (1979b). The issue of force and energy in behavioral change. Journal of Contemporary Psychotherapy, 10(2), 83–97.
Ellis, A. (1993). Changing rational-emotive therapy (RET) to rational emotive behavior therapy (REBT). Behavior Therapist, 16, 257–258.
Ellis, A. (1994). Reason and emotion in psychotherapy, revised and updated. Secaucus, NJ: Carol Publishing Group.
Ellis, A. (2002). Overcoming resistance – A rational emotive behavior therapy integrated approach (2nd ed.). New York: Springer.
Ellis, A. (2004). The road to tolerance. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.
Ellis, A. (2005). The myth of self-esteem: How REBT can change your life forever. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.
Ellis, A., & Becker, I. (1982). A guide to personal happiness. North Hollywood, CA: Wilshire.
Ellis, A., & Dryden, W. (1987). The practice of rational-emotive behavior therapy. New York, NY: Springer.
Ellis, A., Young, J., & Lockwood, G. (1987). Cognitive therapy and rational-emotive therapy: A dialogue. Journal of Cognitive Psychotherapy, 1(4), 137–187.
Ellis, A., & Dryden, W. (1997). The practice of rational emotive behavior therapy (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Springer.
Feldman-Barret, L. (2017). How emotions are made. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Feldman Barrett, L., Lewis, M., & Haviland-Jones, J. M. (2018). Handbook of emotions (4th ed.). New York, NY: Guilford.
Flaxman, P. E., Blackledge, J. T., & Bond, F. W. (2011). Acceptance and commitment therapy: The CBT distinctive features series. Oxon, UK: Routledge.
Follette, V. M., & Hazlett-Stevens, H. (2016). Mindfulness and acceptance therapies (pp. 273–302). In J. C. Norcross, G. R. VandenBos, & D. F. Freedheim (Eds.), The handbook of clinical psychology. II of V: Theory and research. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. The Associate Editor for this volume II is Bunmi O. Olatunji.
Hayes, S. (Ed.). (1989). Rule governed behavior. New York, NY: Plenum.
Hayes, S.C., Strosahl, K. D., Wilson, K. G. (1999). Acceptance and commitment therapy: An experiential approach to behavior change. New York, NY: Guilford Press.
Hayes, S. C., Barnes-Holmes, D., & Roche, B. (Eds.). (2001). Relational frame theory: A post-Skinnerian account of language and cognition. New York, NY: Plenum.
Hofmann, S., Asnaani, A., Vonk, I., Sawyer, A., & Fang, A. (2012). The efficacy of cognitive behavioral therapy: A review of meta-analyses. Cognitive Therapy & Research, 36(5), 427–440. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10608-012-9476-1
Hofmann, S. G., Asmundson, G. J., & Beck, A. T. (2013). The science of cognitive therapy. Behavior Therapy, 44(2), 199–212. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.beth.2009.01.007
Hyland, P., & Boduszek, D. (2012). Resolving a difference between cognitive therapy and rational emotive behaviour therapy: Towards the development of an integrated CBT model of psychopathology. Mental Health Review Journal, 17(2), 104–116.
Korzybski, A. (1958). Science and sanity: An introduction to non-Aristotelian systems and general semantics (4th ed.). Lakeville, CT: The International Non-Aristotelian Library Publishing Co. (now part of the I. G. S., Englewood, NJ).
Korzybski, A. (1933). Science and sanity. San Francisco, CA: the International Society of General Semantics.
Linehan, M. M. (1993). Cognitive–behavioral therapy of borderline personality disorders. New York, NY: Guilford Press.
Linehan, M. M., & Schmidt, H. (1995). The dialectics of effective treatment of borderline personality disorder. In W. T. O’Donohue & L. Krasner (Eds.), Theories of behavior therapy: Exploring behavior change (pp. 553–584). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
Morris, W. E., & Brown, C. R. (2017, Spring). David Hume, In E. N. Zalta (Ed.), The Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy (Spring 2017 Edition). https://plato.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/encyclopedia/archinfo.cgi?entry=hume
Padesky, C. (1994). Schema change processes in cognitive therapy. Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy, 1(5), 267–278.
Pepper, S. C. (1942). World hypotheses: A study in evidence. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Popper, K. (1959). The logic of scientific discovery. New York, NY: Harper & Bros.
Popper, K. (1972). Objective knowledge; an evolutionary approach. Oxford, UK. Clarendon Press.
Ruggiero, G. M., Spada, M. M., Caselli, G., & Sassaroli, S. (2018). A historical and theoretical review of cognitive behavioral therapies: From structural self-knowledge to functional processes. Journal of rational Emotive and Cognitive Behavior Therapies, 36, 378–403.
Skinner, B. F. (1957). Verbal behavior. New York, NY: Prentice Hall.
Swales, M. A., & Heard, H. L. (2017). Dialectical behavior therapy (The CBT distinctive features series) (2nd ed.). Oxon, UK: Routledge.
Vîslă, A., Flückiger, C., Grosse Holtforth, M., & David, D. (2016). Irrational beliefs and psychological distress: A meta-analysis. Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, 85(1), 8–15. https://doi.org/10.1159/000441231
Wampold, B. E., & Imel, Z. E. (2015). The great psychotherapy debate: The evidence for what makes psychotherapy work, 2nd ed. New York, NY: Routledge/Taylor & Francis Group.
Wegner, D. M., & Schneider, D. J. (2003). The white bear story. Psychological Inquiry, 14, 326–329. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327965pli1403&4_24
Wolpe, J. (1958). Psychotherapy by reciprocal inhibition. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University.
Zettle, R., & Hayes, S. (1980). Conceptual and empirical status of rational emotive therapy. Progress in Behavior Modification, 9, 125–166.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Matweychuk, W., DiGiuseppe, R., Gulyayeva, O. (2019). A Comparison of REBT with Other Cognitive Behavior Therapies. In: Bernard, M.E., Dryden, W. (eds) Advances in REBT. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93118-0_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93118-0_3
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-93117-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-93118-0
eBook Packages: Behavioral Science and PsychologyBehavioral Science and Psychology (R0)