Albert Ellis Information

A Guide To Rational Living
Albert Ellis is the grand-daddy of modern psychology, and this book is the classic. While many psychologists and authors focus on one or several "pet techniques," Ellis and this book show you how to adapt an integrated set of rational (cognitive), emotive, and behavioral tools to your personal situations. And Ellis writes this and many of his other books for us non-psychologists...not just for "professionals."

The book starts by briefly summarizing the results of Ellis' ground-breaking work on what we do that causes us to feel and behave differently than we want. The author then teaches his general cognitive system...which includes very specific instructions...on how to change these feelings, behaviors, and thoughts. Ellis terms this system the "A, B, C, D" method of "disputing" irrational thoughts that are "irrational" because they (i) are not true and (ii) produce results that we don't want. The book then moves beyond this general system and shows you how to easily use cognitive, emotive, and behavioral tools to effectively stop your unwanted patterns. While the methods are extremely user-friendly, they do require work...beyond the reading.

Because this book shows how to effectively tackle a wide variety of patterns...the following is a partial list of chapters:
1. Overcoming the influences of your past
2. Refusing to be desperately unhappy
3. Tackling dire needs for approval
4. Eradicating dire fears of failure
5. How to feel undepressed though frustrated
6. Conquering anxiety
7. Acquiring self-discipline
...and others.

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Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy: It Works for Me - It Can Work for You
Albert Ellis, the renowned creator of one of the most successful forms of psychotherapy - Rational Emotive Therapy (REBT) - offers this candid self-assessment, which reveals how he overcame his own emotional and physical challenges using the techniques of REBT. Part memoir and part self-help guide, this very personal story traces the struggles that Ellis faced from early childhood to well into his adult life. Whether you are already familiar with Ellis's many best-selling psychology books or are discovering his work for the first time, you will gain many insights into how to deal with your problems by seeing how Ellis learned to cope with his own serious challenges.

In his early life, Ellis was faced with a major physical disability, chronic nephritis, or inflammation of his kidneys, which plagued him and led to hospitalization. This experience helped him to develop ways to overcome anxiety. He also suffered from severe migrainelike headaches, which persisted into his forties. Active and energetic by nature, he gradually learned that the best way to cope with any problem, physical or emotional, was to stop "catastrophizing" and to do something to correct it.

As Ellis points out in all of his work, when faced with adversity, we had better realize that we have a real choice, either to think rationally or irrationally about the problem. The first option leads to healthy consequences - healthy emotions such as sorrow, regret, frustration, or annoyance, which are justifiable reactions to troubling situations. The second option leads to unhealthy emotions, such as anxiety, depression, rage, and low self-acceptance. When we recognize irrational beliefs as such, we can then use our reason to dispute their inaccuracy. Ellis goes on to describe how these techniques helped him to cope with many other adult emotional problems, including failure in love affairs, shame, anger, distress over his parents' divorce, stress from others' reactions to his atheistic conversations, and upset due to his attitudes about academic and professional setbacks. When he was close to ninety years of age, his rational philosophy helped him cope with a near-fatal illness.

Honest and unflinching yet always realistic and forward-looking, Ellis demonstrates how to gain and grow from life's challenges through rational thinking.

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The Myth of Self Esteem
Many psychologists preach the importance of self-esteem, but on closer analysis the meaning of self-esteem often amounts to little more than basing our sense of self-worth on the success of our achievements or relationships. In this insightful exploration of true self-acceptance, Albert Ellis criticizes the traditional definition of self-esteem, calling it conditional self-acceptance-i.e., we feel good about ourselves only on condition that we fulfill certain ambitions and personal desires. Ellis proposes instead Unconditional Self-Acceptance (U.S.A.)-learning to appreciate our unique personalities no matter what good or bad actions we do or how successful our relationships turn out to be. This more realistic approach, Ellis points out, helps us to avoid the common pitfall of failing to live up to our (often unrealistic) expectations and the consequent feelings of self-denigration, low esteem, and depression, which impede our ability to tackle life's challenges.

Ellis provides a historical review of the concepts of self-esteem and self-acceptance, examining the thinking of great religious teachers, philosophers, and psychologists-including Lao Tsu, Jesus, Spinoza, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Buber, Heidegger, Sartre, Tillich, D.T. Suzuki, the Dalai Lama, Carl Rogers, and Nathaniel Branden, among others. He then provides exercises for training oneself to change self-defeating habits to the healthy, positive approach of self-acceptance. These include specific thinking techniques as well as emotive and behavioral exercises. He concludes by stressing that unconditional self-acceptance is the basis for establishing healthy relationships with others, through Unconditional Other-Acceptance (UOA) and a total philosophy of life anchored in Unconditional Life-Acceptance (ULA).

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The Road to Tolerance
In this overview of one of the most successful forms of psychotherapy-Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT)-its creator and chief advocate, Albert Ellis, explains the principles underlying this therapeutic approach and shows how beneficial it can be. REBT promotes an attitude of tolerance-an open-minded willingness to accept the frailties, less-than-ideal behaviors, and unique characteristics of both others and ourselves. Ellis persuasively demonstrates that lack of tolerance of others, which fails to account for the great diversity of human personalities and behaviors, can become a serious disruptive force in today's multicultural global society.

In emphasizing how easy it is for all of us to think, feel, and act narrow-mindedly, Ellis brilliantly shows that tolerance is a deliberate, rational choice that we can all make, both for the good of ourselves and the world.

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