Albert Ellis (Psychologist) – Biography

By:  Kimberly Swanson, MS-Psy, CNA

Albert Ellis (Psychologist)

Albert Ellis was a renowned psychologist who launched and created Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT); which started the movement towards cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) (Good Therapy, 2015).

Dr. Ellis was born in 1913 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.  He was  not  emotionally close to his parents; he mentioned that his mother struggled with bipolar disorder (Good Therapy, 2015).  Even though Ellis had to face some health issues, he assisted in raising his younger siblings until he had the opportunity to attend City University of New York.  He earned  a bachelor’s degree in business and later attended  Teachers College at Columbia University where he earned his doctorate in clinical psychology

He later taught at  Rutgers and  New York University. He questioned the reliability of many psychological theories especially Sigmund Freud’s theories of psychoanalysis.    He decided to follow a different path and call  his therapeutic technique Rational Therapy.  Ellis later changed the name to  Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy (REBT). His therapy technique was not popular at first but now it began to gain more  ground within the field of psychology.  Dr. Ellis  founded the Institute of Rational Living in 1959.

Ellis’s REBT is what lead to the development of CBT.  Instead of looking at early childhood experiences, psychoanalysis, interpreting dreams, or family relationships, REBT targets and focuses in on troubled belief systems which lead to self-destructive behaviors (Good Therapy, 2015). An intricate part of  cognitive therapy is  Ellis’s ABC Technique of Irrational Beliefs (Albert Ellis, 1957).

References

Ellis, A. (1957). Rational Psychotherapy and Individual Psychology. Journal of Individual Psychology, 13: 38-44.

Good Therapy.  (2015).  Albert Ellis (1913-2007).  Retrieved from http://www.goodtherapy.org/famous-psychologists/albert-ellis.html.

 Copyright in 2016 by ©Messenger Publishing, Inc.

How to cite this article:

Swanson, K.  (2016).  Albert Ellis (Psychologist) – Biography   Psychology Essence (Messenger Publishing, Inc.).  Retrieved from http://psychologyessence.blogspot.com/2016/09/albert-ellis-psychologist-biography.html.