REBT Books and Tapes
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Books By Albert Ellis
Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy
The eagerly awaited book: Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy by Albert Ellis and Debbie Joffe Ellis, is now available. This new volume is part of the "Theories of Psychotherapy" series published by APA (American Psychological Association).
Click here to read the review (PDF) by Robin Thorburn
All Out!: An Autobiography
This candid autobiography, the last work by renowned psychologist Albert Ellis, is a tour de force of stimulating ideas, colorful descriptions of memorable people and events, and straightforward, no-nonsense talk. Ellis, the creator of one of the most successful forms of psychotherapy—Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT)—recounts the memorable episodes of his life; discusses how he coped with emotional problems at different stages of life; describes his love life; and subjects his own self-description to a ruthlessly honest critique.
The heart of Ellis’s book is his analysis of the psychological leitmotifs that have appeared again and again throughout his life. He describes the aim of this autobiography as follows:
“As far as I can, I shall present my bad and good, stupid and intelligent, weak and strong points. Why? Because, following H. G. Wells’s recommendation, I want to go as all-out as I can. I want to acknowledge my idiocies—and use REBT to feel sorry about but unashamed of them. I want to make the point—again a central tenet of REBT—that all humans are fabulously fallible—including, of course, me. We have no real choice about this, but we can unconditionally accept ourselves—our so-called essence or being—with our fallibility. That will momentously help us, probably encourage us to acquire unconditional self-acceptance (USA) and possibly inspire other people to give it to themselves, too.”
With a concluding chapter by Ellis’s wife, Debbie Joffe-Ellis, describing the final years of his life, All Out! is the definitive summation of the life and work of one of psychology’s most successful thinkers and practitioners.
Click here to read the review (PDF) by Robin Thorburn
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A Guide To Personal Happiness
With Irving M. Becker
In the first chapter of this amazing book, Drs. Ellis and Becker state that if you don't search for personal happiness, no one else is going to do it for you. Their approach is tough and straightforward, though cantankerously likeable all the way.
It is these authors' contention that you have a right to personal happiness, and you have a right to fight, if necessary (and it usually is), to get it!—even if it means putting yourself first, before significant others. (Putting self before family members has long been considered immoral by many, but not Drs. Ellis and Becker.)
Morality consists of two rules which form the basis of rational-emotive therapy (RET): (1) Be kind to yourself and (2) don't hurt others. But beyond that, the authors have a brilliant unorthodoxy in their approach to the world. They make it jarringly clear how many of our accepted beliefs and rules of life actually go against us.
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A Guide To Rational Living
With Robert A. Harper
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:
- Overcoming the influences of your past
- Refusing to be desperately unhappy
- Tackling dire needs for approval
- Eradicating dire fears of failure
- How to feel undepressed though frustrated
- Conquering anxiety
- Acquiring self-discipline
...and others.
Albert Ellis Live!
With Windy Dryden
Albert Ellis Live! is a collection of five transcripts of therapy sessions conducted by Albert Ellis, the founding father of Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy (REBT). With commentary by Windy Dryden, bestselling author and expert on REBT, Albert Ellis Live! provides a unique opportunity to `listen in' on a master therapist carrying out the therapy which he originated.
Each of the five transcripts presents a counselling session conducted by Ellis himself with a volunteer client. Each transcript is accompanied by a commentary, in which Windy Dryden explains what Ellis is doing and why.
Published in celebration of Ellis' 90th birthday, Albert Ellis Live! will be invaluable to students and practitioners of this approach, offering them a unique insight into the theory and practice of REBT.
Anger: How To Live With And Without It
Anger is one of the most damaging and fruitless of all human emotions. Everyone is beset by the problems of how to cope with it, how to live with it, and how to understand it. Here is a solution to the problem of anger; a solution that years of clinical testing and research have proved effective. The breakthrough technique of this book will enable you to challenge and eliminate the anger that can frustrate and stand in the way of your success and daily happiness in business, in home life - anywhere you are -without losing your assertiveness.
In this entirely new approach to coping with anger, world-famous psychologist Dr Albert Ellis, founder of the Institute for Rational-Emotive Therapy which now has branches throughout the world, presents an easily mastered, step-by-step technique that is designed for you to perform on your own. It will help you to systematically explore and, for the first time, understand the roots and the nature of your own anger.
Dr Ellis does not merely present his own theory and approach to anger. He compares his technique to other, differing points of view. He gives you the first comprehensive critical analysis of the various - and often incompatible - approaches to the age-old problem of anger, how to solve it and how to live better.
Ask Albert Ellis: Straight Answers And Sound Advice From America's Best-Known Psychologist
The most well-known and highly respected psychotherapist of our time responds to reader questions submitted to the "Ask Dr. Ellis" website. The answers present the most concise, "reader-friendly" description yet of the author's Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT) method. Fifty years of psychotherapy experience and wisdom are distilled in this practical guide for the rest of us. Healthy thinking, healthy emotions, and healthy behavior are explained, with detailed examples and procedures for building lasting emotional well-being.
Better, Deeper, And More Enduring Brief Therapy
In Better, Deeper, and More Enduring Brief Therapy Albert Ellis, the founder of Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy, describes how REBT can help clients significantly improve in a short period of time and effect a profound philosophical-emotional-behavioral change-more often that can be achieved with other popular forms of therapy. In a comprehensive, accessible format, Dr. Ellis offers his theories, practices, verbatim sessions, and other materials that help describe how REBT can be a valuable asset in psychotherapeutic treatment.
Case Studies in Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy with Children and Adolescents
With Jerry Wilde
Preeminent psychologist Dr. Albert Ellis combines forces with other renowned therapists to create this rare and inclusive book that captures the realities of counseling with children. Rather than using a traditional case study approach, this work features verbatim transcripts that convey real issues ranging from anger management and self-esteem to peer pressure and bed-wetting. For child therapists and counselors.
Counseling and Psychotherapy With Religious Persons: A Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy Approach
With Stevan L. Nielsen & W. Brad Johnson
Practitioners are increasingly aware that religious persons present unique problems and challenges in therapy. Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT) is among the most widely practiced, highly structured and active directive approaches to treating emotional and behavioral problems. Introduced by Albert Ellis in the early 1950s, REBT is the original cognitive-behavioral psychotherapy and its efficacy has been supported by hundreds of treatment outcome studies.
A uniquely belief-focused therapy, REBT is usually quite appealing to clients from Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, and other religious traditions, who respond favorably to REBT's focus on right belief, active engagement in the work of therapy, and reading/practice focused homework.
In this practical and user-friendly guide, the authors outline the congruence between the therapeutic approach of REBT and the presenting problems and concerns of religious persons. They describe an approach to reconciling the sacred traditions and beliefs of religious clients with the no nonsense techniques of REBT. They review the essential components of practice with religious clients — including assessment, diagnosis and problem formulation, disputation of irrational beliefs, and other REBT techniques, highlight the primary obstacles facing the therapist when treating religious clients, and offer many case examples from work with this important client population.
Mental health professionals from all backgrounds will benefit from the detailed yet manual-focused approach to helping religious clients overcome all forms of emotional distress.
Creative Marriage
With Robert A. Harper
Creative Marriage will show you how to solve the most common of marital problems: petty upsets, irrational prejudices, child-rearing, in-law clashes and the just plain old inability of individuals to communicate effectively with each other.
You will learn the world-renowned methods of rational emotive behavior therapy as taught by the two founders and developers of this psychotherapy.
This may be the most enlightening book you have ever ready on the subject of creating a happy and successful marriage.
Note: Also published as A Guide to Successful Marriage AND The Marriage Bed. Image and link are to A Guide to Successful Marriage
Dating, Mating, And Relating: How to Build a Healthy Relationship
With Robert A. Harper
Many people habitually destroy relationships with people they love and just don't know how to stop. Dating, Mating, and Relating provides the help and proven techniques that will enable readers, whether male or female, single or married, gay or straight to relate lovingly, intimately, and lastingly. With an even-handed and nonjudgmental approach, here is help for bettering relationships with friends, children, and even in-laws as well as "significant others."Using the REBT principles defined with wisdom and good humor by Dr. Albert Ellis, who has helped millions modify and control their behavior, readers will learn a sensible, simple way to master long-term enjoyment and satisfaction with the ones they love.
Executive Leadership: A Rational Approach
What makes a successful executive ? What qualities contribute to effective management? How can business leaders develop their managerial skills?
Noted psychotherapist Dr Albert Ellis provides answers to these and many other questions in Executive Leadership: A Rational Approach . Dr. Ellis has treated numerous executives in his psychotherapy practice, and he has found that business leaders often think and act in self-defeating ways which lead to increased stress, reduced effectiveness, and decreased satisfaction. Combining these insights with the principles of Rational-Emotive Therapy, Dr. Ellis has developed Rational Sensitivity, a system which trains executives in both greater sensitivity and less vulnerability to their own and others weaknesses.
Whatever the problem faced by the executive — from disciplining and firing subordinates, to handling criticism, to defining personal goals — Dr. Ellis offers practical, useful advice for solving the problem and for changing the underlying irrational beliefs which produce self-doubt, inertia, and inefficiency. Every executive or future executive who wishes to put his or her brains, talents, and knowledge to maximum use can profit from the wealth of valuable information contained in this book.
Feeling Better, Getting Better, Staying Better : Profound Self-Help Therapy For Your Emotions
"Feeling better," says Dr. Ellis, "is crucial to successful therapy. Getting better is even more important." The most well-known and highly respected psychotherapist of our time offers a "three-pronged" system for maintaining — or regaining — emotional health. Feeling Better, Getting Better, Staying Better presents the author's 50 years of psychotherapy experience and wisdom in a practical guide for the rest of us. Healthy thinking, healthy emotions, and healthy behavior are explained, with detailed examples and procedures for building lasting emotional well-being.
Growth Through Reason: Verbatim Cases in Rational-Emotive Therapy
Listening in on the actual dialogue between a patient and his psychotherapist is a fascinating experience — and an instructive one, both for other therapists and for the layman interested in personal growth. In this book the well-known psychologist Albert Ellis "plays back" actual therapy sessions conducted by six different therapists, including himself. The patients present such widely varying problems as a couple who have never had intercourse in thirteen years of marriage, a young man who is afraid he is becoming a homosexual, and a young woman who feels guilty about not following her parents' rules.
At frequent intervals Dr. Ellis stops the tape, so to speak, to explain what is happening — what techniques of rational-emotive therapy (RET) the therapist is using and what growth is taking place in the patient as a result.
As originator of the rational-emotive approach, Dr, Ellis speaks with authority and experience. He points frankly to those instances where the therapist has departed from "classical" RET methods or where he himself might handle a situation differently today than when the case was recorded. The Introduction offers an excellent short explanation of what RET is all about and how it differs from other approaches such as psychoanalysis (which Dr. Ellis practiced earlier in his career).
Throughout the book the writing is frank and forceful, with a minimum of psychological jargon — a highly readable style already familiar to readers of Dr Ellis's many other books.
How To Control Your Anger Before It Controls You
With Raymond Chip Tafrate Ph.D.
In their new approach to coping with anger, world famous psychologist Dr. Albert Ellis and Dr. Raymond Chip Tafrate present their thoroughly researched and proven technique designed to help understand the roots and nature of anger. Using simple instructions and exercises, readers can learn to reduce angry reactions to an often difficult and unfair world.
How To Control Your Anxiety Before It Controls You
Are you aware that anxiety is in many ways a blessing? It wards off dangers, preserves life, and makes you aware of negative things that you can change — when it is healthy anxiety, that is, involving feelings of concern, caution, and vigilance. Unhealthy anxiety is quite different. It leads to paralyzing panic, obsessive worry, and phobias that prevent you from doing things that you conceive of as dangerous but really are not. Unhealthy anxiety inhibits you from enjoying everyday activities and relationships and makes you see them as too risky. It causes you to perform poorly, preoccupies you wastefully, and stops your creativity.
Fortunately, by following the rules of Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT) set forth in this book, you can control your anxiety before it controls you. You can stop it in its tracks, if you allow yourself to admit one important fact: Things and people alone don't make you anxious. You do. Your unrealistic expectations produce your needless anxiety.
How do you do this? By letting the must factor steer your course through life. You insist that you must achieve outstandingly — in business, sports, relationships. You demand from yourself that you must get what you want all the time, must be completely safe, must never suffer adversity. And what happens when all your musts do not translate into reality? You panic and become depressed.
How to Control Your Anxiety Before It Controls You provides you with scores of thinking, feeling, and action methods for controlling anxiety. This book describes many real cases of anxiety that Dr. Ellis has treated successfully, including those that deal with performance anxiety, as well as social, job hunting, love, sex, and other forms of anxiety. Employing the precepts of REBT, the book includes over 200 rational maxims that you can use to decrease your present anxiety and, in the process, increase your prospects for success and happiness at home and in the workplace.
How to Cope With a Fatal Illness: The Rational Management of Death and Dying
With Michael Abrams Ph.D.
A helpful key to the rational management of death and dying. This book helps victims of fatal illness to stave off depression and enjoy their remaining days. The authors show how to deal with guilt and anger, and put an end to hysteria.
How To Keep People From Pushing Your Buttons
With Arthur Lange Ed.D.
Hailed as the "grandfather of Cognitive Behavior Therapy, " Albert Ellis has helped millions of people modify their behavior and become happier, healthier individuals. In How to Keep People from Pushing Your Buttons, he provides readers with specific, realistic ways to keep people and events from setting them off or driving them crazy. Now everyone can learn how to react more effectively to antagonistic people and behavior by following Ellis's steps to successfully changing irrational thinking.
Ellis and Lange also focus on the ways people defeat themselves by such negative thinking patterns as "awfulizing, " imposing "shoulds" on themselves and others, being excessively fearful, and overreacting. Readers can alter their own behavior by analyzing the irrational beliefs that people use to let others needlessly push their buttons.
With easy-to-follow instructions and enlightening advice, How to Keep People from Pushing Your Buttons is a classic in the field of stress-management that will enable readers to combat depression, frustration, and ineffective behavior.
How to Live with a "Neurotic" at Home and at Work
In the best of all worlds the people we live and work with — our lovers and spouses, our parents and brothers and sisters and children, our friends and co-workers and bosses — would be thoughtful, caring, stable, reliable, rational human beings who are always a pleasure. But the truth is that in the real world many of us have to deal with difficult people.
This book will show you how to initiate change in those who routinely drain your energy and test your patience with their bothersome, annoying, or destructive behaviors. And you'll get powerful psychological tools to insulate you from their "nutty" ways.
How to Make Yourself Happy and Remarkably Less Disturbable
This user-friendly guide offers simple, straightforward procedures and practical wisdom on a happier, more trouble-free life, from one of the most highly respected psychologists of our time. Dr. Ellis includes dozens of real-life case examples, detailed descriptions of self-help action steps, and a witty, articulate style that you'll find entertaining and enlightening.
How to Raise an Emotionally Healthy, Happy Child
With Sandra Moseley, & Janet L. Wolfe, Ph.D.
Dr. Albert Ellis shows parents how to handle a child's behavior problems, resulting in a happy relationship between parent and child. This book reveals a secret of raising your child to be the best he or she can be in all aspects of their growing childhood years.
How To Stop Destroying Your Relationships: A Guide To Enjoyable Dating, Mating, And Relating
With Robert A. Harper Ph.D.
Many of us destroy relationships over and over again, and just don't know how to stop. Here is a proven solution. Whether you are male or female, single or married, gay or straight, Dr. Ellis's simple and effective REBT techniques can show you how to relate lovingly, intimately, and lastingly. Using an even-handed, nonjudgmental approach, this book is more than just a guide to getting along better with a "significant other": There is help here, too, for bettering relationships with friends, children, even in-laws.
REBT, a proven therapy developed by Dr. Ellis, has led thousands to a more fulfilling emotional life. In this book, with wisdom and good humor, Dr. Ellis fully explains the principles of REBT — and shows how they will provide you with a sensible and practical way to find long-term enjoyment and satisfaction with your loved ones.
How to Stubbornly Refuse to Make Yourself Miserable About Anything: Yes, Anything!
Most emotional misery and psychological disturbances are unnecessary over-reactions and can be significantly reduced — that is the simple message of this book. Not only are anger, anxiety and depression unnecessary, they are unethical, for when you allow yourself to become emotionally disturbed you are being unfair and unjust — to yourself. Dr. Albert Ellis, the originator of Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT), contends that we ourselves create our own feelings and choose to think and feel in self-harming ways. The way to escape this trap we set for ourselves is by application of the principles of REBT.
Given the stress and strain of modern day-to-day living, the last things we need are the inhibiting, crippling problems we bring upon ourselves by the way we think and feel about the world and the people around us. The simple, logical method outlined in this book is the soundest approach yet devised to acquire true mental health and happiness.
Making Intimate Connections: Seven Guidelines for Great Relationships and Better Communication
With Ted Crawford
The seven guidelines for better couple communication offered in this user-friendly guide emphasize non-blaming acceptance, integrity, mutual support, appreciation, replacing irrational ideas and expectations with realistic attitudes. Dozens of real-life couple vignettes show readers how they can readily learn and implement the seven guidelines in their own lives.
Chapters include: The Challenge of Accepting Reality, Challenging Your Shoulds and Musts, Accept Your Partner "As Is," How to Influence and Not Control Each Other, How to Make Honesty Work, How to Give Love, Give Your Partner the Right to Be Wrong, Distinguish Between Fantasy and Reality. A breakthrough relationships guide from the father of rational therapy.
Nymphomania: A Study Of The Oversexed Female
With Edward Sagarin
The real problems of the oversexed woman are seldom discussed and even less understood. She is a popular topic of suggestive conversation and the object of wish-fulfilment fantasies. Often referred to as a nymphomaniac — a word used all too frequently to describe the sexually awakened woman rather than the compulsively promiscuous one — she is a problem both to herself and to the men in her life.
Through the use of actual case-histories, psychologists Dr Ellis and Mr Sagarin explore in depth the causes and conditions of nymphomania, and find the answers to the question: Where do normal sexual patterns end and compulsive sex habits begin?
Optimal Aging: Get Over Getting Older
With Emmett Velten, Ph.D.
America is graying. One in three people will be fifty or older by the end of this decade. Although Baby Boomers have made great strides in changing some of the negative stereotypes associated with aging, ageism is still prevalent throughout society. These deeply ingrained, harmful prejudices can be changed to benefit everybody, argue Drs. Albert Ellis and Emmett Velten. They believe that everyone can — with the right attitudes, tools, and hard work — invent their own lives, not just live out the scripts provided by an ageist society.
Written in a humorous and interactive style, Optimal Aging will help readers recognize and combat harmful attitudes that hold them back and develop more productive attitudes. The authors address everything from finances to health, personal relationships to retirement planning, dating to coping with loss.
Overcoming Destructive Beliefs, Feelings, And Behaviors: New Directions For Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy
First developed in 1955, Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT) is the original form of Cognitive Behavior Therapy and one of the most successful psychotherapeutic techniques in the world. Its founder, world-renowned psychologist Albert Ellis, now offers an up-to-date description of the main principles and practices of this innovative and influential therapy.
REBT emphasizes the importance of cognition in psychological disturbances. Its aim is to help patients recognize their irrational and destructive beliefs, feelings, and behaviors, and to restructure harmful philosophic and behavioral styles to achieve maximal levels of happiness and productivity.
In this book, Ellis points out the most recent revisions of the original therapy and examines the use of REBT in treating specific clinical problems. Among the topics considered are depression, stress management, addiction, marital problems, the use of hypnosis, disposable myths, and many other obstacles to mental health.
This fascinating look at REBT by its internationally recognized creator is of inestimable value to professionals and laypersons alike.
Overcoming Procrastination
With Dr. William J. Knaus
If you keep putting off until tomorrow... Overcoming Procrastination can help you today!
It will open your eyes to just what makes you late in everything from writing a paper to filing a tax return to making a sexual advance.
It will teach you not only to understand your particular problem, but how to definitely do something about it with simple and specific actions. It will give you Dr. Albert Ellis' total strategy for conquering not only procrastination but life's other difficulties.
And above all, it will show you exactly how to take your time and your life out of the power of irrational forces and feelings, and put them where they belong-under your control.
Overcoming Resistance: A Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy Integrated Approach
A look at the underlying causes of resisting cognitive-emotional-behavioral change and the methods used to overcome them. Written in present-action language, Ellis gives an overview of the basic principles of Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy and Cognitive Behavior Therapy. He also includes changes in the field of psychotherapy during the last two decades. The content is expanded to integrate new therapies into REBT, including psychotherapy, solution-focused therapy, and recent findings of experimental psychology.
Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy: A Therapist's Guide
With Catharine MacLaren, M.S.W., CEAP
New updated resource for practicing therapists from the father of rational therapy. Modern cognitive-behavioral therapy has its roots in the rational approach created by Ellis in the 1950s. Now known as Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT), Ellis's systematic integrative approach has grown and matured into a powerful mainstream psychotherapy. Hundreds of thousands of patients have benefited from the active interventions of therapists using REBT.
Includes a thorough description of REBT theory and procedures, case examples, exercises. Major themes include: The Theory of Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy; The Practice of REBT; The Main Cognitive Techniques of REBT; The Main Emotive and Experiential Techniques of REBT; The Main Behavioral Techniques of REBT; The Integration of REBT with Other Psychotherapies; Summary and Conclusions.
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.
Reason and Emotion in Psychotherapy : A Comprehensive Method of Treating Human Disturbances : Revised and Updated
A comprehensive method of treating human disturbance has been developed by Dr. Albert Ellis. It differs strongly from the Freudian psychoanalytical approach, from nondirective and passive methods of therapy, and from highly emotionalized and indulgent forms of treatment. In contrast, it provides a vigorously active-directive, unpampering, philosophically challenging technique of attacking psychological disorders.
Dr. Ellis' method, known as rational emotive behavior therapy (REBT), has been impressively effective in overcoming a wide range of disturbances in surprisingly few therapeutic sessions. Our civilization tends to encourage neuroses because most people are brought up to believe and then to internalize and to keep reinforcing themselves with arrant nonsense which must inevitably lead them to become ineffective, self-defeating and unhappy. Dr. Ellis aims to get such people to disbelieve their irrational ideas and to change their self-sabotaging attitudes. His method has been remarkably successful.
The Albert Ellis Reader: A Guide to Well-Being Using Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy
Edited by Shawn Blau
In a career spanning more than half a century, Albert Ellis has produced more than a thousand articles and some seventy books, including such ground-breaking titles as A Guide to Rational Living, Sex Without Guilt, and The Art and Science of Love. While there are many anthologies of his articles in the professional press, until now Ellis's most important work has never been collected in one volume for the general reader.
The Albert Ellis Reader brings together writings from Ellis's most popular and critically acclaimed books and articles. Over the years, he and his ideas have often been taken out of context or misinterpreted. Now readers can get the wide scope of Dr. Ellis's controversial writings undiluted, in his own plain-spoken, no-holds-barred style. Each piece is updated by Dr. Ellis especially for this volume. He weighs in on such topics as sex, love, and marriage; anger; rational self-help; and rational living at work and in society.
The Albert Ellis Reader is essential reading for those who want to discover for themselves one of the most original and iconoclastic figures in modern psychology.
Sex and the Liberated Man
The year 1963 saw Dr. Albert Ellis' trail-blazing book Sex and the Single Man published to international acclaim.
Since that time Dr. Ellis has closely watched the changing trends in American sexual mores. Permissiveness in parental control, adolescent sexual relationships, proliferating use of the Pill and the practical obliteration of pre-marital sexual restraints had burgeoned from the mid-sixties until the beginning of the seventies.
The seventies ushered in an even broader conception of sexual freedom. Massage parlors, peep shows and X-rated films became obvious fixtures in cities all over America, showing the high profile once held by the corner cigar store or soda fountain. Slick magazines competed sharply with one another as to which could provide more tantalizing color photographs and most prurient editorial content.
The seventies saw increasing public acceptance of situations formerly considered deviant: homosexual relationships, wife-swapping, bisexual romances, and even masturbatory practices.
Sex and the Liberated Man not only informs the reader of the radical social changes in our society but will enable him (or her) to best adjust to the environment and atmosphere these changes have brought about. Dr. Ellis' wide range of scrutiny covers such topics as the art of sexual persuasion and the arousal of the partner of either sex . . . both psychologically and physiologically. He not only approves of self-gratification as a substitute for a sexual relationship but as a helpful adjunct to it. He deals with the sexual problems of both men and women. And he examines new vistas in the techniques of intercourse.
Dr. Ellis contemplates the contemporary sexual scene with a sardonic wit, but always with sympathetic understanding. For all of his professional life he has fought fraud and hypocrisy in American thinking. He predicted many of the radical current changes in sexual behavior in his earlier published works. Time has proved him an able prophet — and a prophet whose practical manuals have probably enabled more people to help themselves with their sexual and emotional problems than any other contemporary writer.
Sex Without Guilt in the Twenty-First Century
This book combats the current state of censured sexuality through the promotion of self-acceptance. Dr. Albert Ellis has published over eight hundred papers in psychological, psychiatric and sociological journals and has 75 books to his name. He is a Fellow (and past President) of the Society for the Scientific Study of Sex.
Stress Counseling: A Rational Emotive Behavior Approach
With Jack Gordon, Michael Neenan, Stephen Palmer
Stress Counseling is a comprehensive study of the theory and practice of the rational emotive behavior therapy approach to counseling and psychotherapy for patients coping with stress.
The distinguished authors provide case examples and client exercises to assist clinicians in both individual and group therapy. Recognizing that this clearly laid-out program may need to be altered for specific clients, the authors provide further information on occupational stress, crisis intervention, brief psychotherapy situ ations, and difficult clients.
With extensive appendixes, resource lists, and material on techniques such as skills training, relaxation methods, hypnosis and biofeedback, this book is appropriate for practitioners, educators, and trainees in clinical and occupational settings.
The American Sexual Tragedy
A challenge to the sex-bigoted, an open defense of sane sexuality. A frank and detailed analysis of sex-guilt, its sources and its consequences, by one of America's foremost psychologists and marriage counselors.
Dr. Ellis opens his case files and his mind in a startling analysis of the American sexual tragedy, a detailed and unflinching account of the distortions, frustrations, and broken homes that result from our sexually bigoted mores.
In The American Sexual Tragedy, Dr. Ellis has written on these and many other topics with the forthright candor for which he is noted. We believe that this psychological study can be of enormous practical help to every American, man or woman, who is still capable of sexual and marital growth.
The Art and Science of Love
There is a single perfect means of sex fulfillment, says a myth that prevails in America. There are numberless American mores and laws that tell us a more varied approach to sex is gauche, impure, obscene, bawdy, immoral and doubtless even illegal. Sex appeal is deified in America, but sex education is almost non-existent.
These influences combine to prevent a healthy, dynamic approach to sexual activity. The individual arrives at marriage equipped for failure. However fine a facade of sophistication he may have, his culture has left its imprint. Added to this is his typical American over-concern with success. The resulting anxiety is without doubt the greatest single saboteur of healthy sex life in America.
There are many marriage manuals that are quite good in dealing with one or more aspects of sex education. But no previous book has given the reader so complete and practical a background for a good and lasting sex relationship.
Dr. Albert Ellis is a noted psychotherapist and a foremost authority on sex in America. He is known already to millions of American for his lucid, hard-hitting championship of enlightened sex. Now he has turned his extraordinary reservoir of knowledge to this most needed of all books on love-making: a handbook of marriage.
Provided in these easy-to-read pages are the essentials as to physical know-how. Demolished in these pages are a thousand misconceptions about sex. Integrated throughout is the unique and effective psychological approach to good sex that has made Dr. Ellis so exceptional in his field.
Says Dr. Ellis in his introduction: "I have shaped this book ... so that men and women will have the basic knowledge that they need of themselves and of each other."
This book is a priceless guide toward experiencing the creative sex relationships that are the birthright of every human being.
The Art & Science of Rational Eating
With Michael Abrams Ph.D. and Lidia Dengelegi Ph.D.
This is the first book to systematically explore the biological psychological causes of eating disorders and how to control them using the principles of rational emotive therapy (RET) and cognitive-behavior therapy (CBT).
The Art and Science of Rational Eating teaches RET principles of unconditional self- acceptance; how to always accept and endorse oneself--even when some eating or other behaviors are self-defeating. This is the path toward successful self-control and weight control.
Albert Ellis, Ph. D., the originator of RET and CBT, has worked closely with associates Micheal Abrams, Ph. D., and Lidia Dengelegi, Ph. D., to develop this unusual self-help book devoted especially to eating disorders. It is a needed self-help book for those suffering from bulimia and anorexia.
The Case Against Religion: A Psychotherapists View and the Case Against Religiosity
Albert Ellis was featured as the principal speaker at the 10th Annual National American Atheist Convention in Chicago, Illinois. At that time, he delivered a speech which he titled, "The Case Against Religion." Subsequently, with his permission, this was brought out as a booklet by American Atheists. Recently Dr. Ellis updated that treatise and both the old and the new are included in this booklet.
In both articles, Dr. Ellis explores the traits necessary to a minimally anxious and hostile individual, and how religion and a belief in a supernatural being eradicate each of these personality traits. Furthermore, Dr. Ellis gives insight into the irrational beliefs held by most seriously disturbed individuals, and shows how religion supports these detrimental beliefs. His basic premise is, "All true believers in any kind of orthodoxy ... are distinctly disturbed, since they are obviously rigid, fanatic, and dependent individuals. ... Many liberal religionists of various groups are ... emotionally childish. For that ... is what all manner of religion essentially is: childish dependency."
The Intelligent Woman's Guide To Dating And Mating
The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Dating and Mating has three principal objectives: to help women find intelligent, strong, reasonably mature men; to show women how to behave in relation to their men; to guide women to the most likely ways to win and keep their men, either in marriage or in a satisfactory sex-love relationship.
Famed marriage counselor Dr. Albert Ellis offers know-how for women interested in men. Dr. Ellis writes as a man who knows what men want from women - as a counselor who has heard the private problems and intimate secrets of hundreds of men and women who have come to him for help - as a therapist whose wisdom comes from years of study and observation — as an author whose courageous writings on sex and marital problems have paced the sexual revolution in the United States.
One of the revolutionary changes in man-woman relationships, Dr. Ellis believes, is that today's woman's interest in men is not based exclusively on finding a suitable marriage partner, but in finding a companion for a mutually satisfying sex-love relationship. The woman of today may or may not have marriage as a goal, but nearly all women want a heterosexual affair, either on a long-term basis or from time to time.
This is an entertaining — sometimes ribald — book, but it is deadly serious about the things that matter most to women. Its case histories are fascinating and instructive. Its sections on neurotic personalities offer guides to improving all human relationships. And its group therapy reports are frank and informative.
No intelligent woman will ever be quite the same after she has read this book, and the men who meet the women who have read it may find it an infinitely better world.
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).
The Practice of Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy
With Windy Dryden
This new edition is a modernizing of the pioneering theories of Albert Ellis and contains a complete updating of references over the past 10 years. The book begins with an explanation of rational emotive behavior therapy as a general treatment model and then addresses different treatment modalities, including individual, couple, family, and sex therapy. The authors have added new material on teaching the principles of unconditional self-acceptance in a structured group setting. With extensive use of actual case examples to illustrate each of the different settings, this volume will appeal to clinical and counseling psychologists as well as any other helping professionals involved in therapy.
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.
The Secret of Overcoming Verbal Abuse: Getting Off the Emotional Roller Coaster and Regaining Control of Your Life
With Marcia Grad Powers
If you are being mistreated by your partner, The Secret of Overcoming Verbal Abuse can dramatically change your life. You will learn an entirely new way of perceiving and coping with your relationship and your feelings.
The time-tested, proven secret contained in this book will wrap itself around you like a thick, warm, protective blanket, insulating you from your pain. And the next time your "Prince Charming" takes aim and tries to pierce your heart with his unkind words, you will be ready. You will feel strong and be in charge of your own reaction.
Now get ready to begin an exciting journey of enlightenment and empowerment that will help you regain control of your life. Your guides will be one of the most famous and influential psychologists in the world, Dr. Albert Ellis, and Marcia Grad Powers, accredited psychological educator and bestselling author.
Theoretical And Empirical Foundations Of Rational Emotive Therapy
Edited by John M. Whiteley
This book represents a comprehensive treatment of rational-emotive therapy (RET) both as a theory of personality and as an approach to therapy. Included are four original articles by Dr. Albert Ellis and the July 1977 issue of The Counseling Psychologist, which was entirely devoted to rational-emotive therapy.
Section 1 deals with the theoretical underpinnings of RET, first as a theory of personality and then as the basis for the theory and practice of psychotherapy, thus providing the reader with the necessary background for approaching the rest of the book. Ellis' article on research data supporting the clinical and personality hypotheses of RET and other modes of cognitive-behavior therapy represents an introductory chapter to Section 2. This article is followed by a series of commentaries by professionals of very different points of view.
These reviews are, in turn, followed by a rejoinder entitled "Elegant and Inelegant RET" by Dr. Ellis, which concludes the book.
This volume is intended for use by undergraduates and graduate students, interested laypersons, practicing professionals, and participants in in-service training programs.
When AA Doesn't Work For You: Rational Steps to Quitting Alcohol
With Emmett Velten
AA's answer for alcohol abusers is a simple form of spiritual healing through the Grace of God, but without the trappings of formal religion and churches. Religious conversion undoubtedly works for many people.
However, many people are unable to buy into the belief system of AA and related twelve-step approaches.
One main advantage of the method taught in this self-help guidebook — Rational Emotive Therapy (RET) — is that it teaches you to be skeptical, to think for yourself, and to guide yourself with evidence and facts, not faith. It helps you solve your problems and reach your goals. It shows you how to test out your ideas to see how they work for you. It encourages you to get answers for yourself rather than giving you the answers and asking you to have faith in them. It does not tell you what your goals should be; it helps you discover them. It also shows you ways to figure out how you block yourself from reaching your goals and then how to unblock yourself and start moving ahead.
Rational-Emotive Therapy (RET) sees humans as having important capacities to grow, actualize, and choose new directions. It views people as able to unlearn old habits and learn new ones to correct for their tendencies toward self-defeat. RET especially holds that individuals had better accept responsibility for their own behavior so as to have the best chance to change that behavior and transform themselves.
When AA Doesn't Work For You: Rational Steps to Quitting Alcohol is the first book that applies the insights of rational-emotive therapy to the recovery from problem drinking.
Why Some Therapies Don't Work: The Dangers of Transpersonal Psychology
With Raymond J. Yeager, Ph.D.
Albert Ellis, one of the most controversial figures in modern psychology, stands in the distinguished company of such luminaries as Sigmund Freud and B.F. Skinner in his uncanny knack for arousing adherents and opponents alike. Joined by his colleague, Raymond J. Yeager, Ellis explains the revolutionary technique of rational-emotive therapy (RET) and contrasts it with transpersonal psychology and psychotherapy in a devastating analysis of cult therapy.
Ellis developed rational-emotive therapy in response to the disillusionment that he shared with his fellow therapists when using more traditional techniques of psychoanalysis. Today, many thousands of people who are desperately seeking to understand and overcome the emotional problems they face in daily life are being threatened by the inefficient and antihumanistic methods of popular cult therapies, many of which fall under the umbrella of transpersonal psychology. Ellis and Yeager offer compelling examples of the psychological, social, and political dangers posed by this cult phenomenon.
Contrasting the theories, methods, and results of transpersonal psychotherapy with the more sensible and effective RET approach, Ellis and Yeager explain the goals of psychotherapy in terms of human well-being, showing how transpersonal psychology can actually increase a person's frustration, intensify neurotic defenses, and impede the development of a healthy self-image.
A tremendous amount of research supports the effectiveness of RET and its related forms of treatment. The cognitive-therapy revolution, with its realistic approach to life problems, is gaining momentum both inside clinical practice and among the general population. In Why Some Therapies Don't Work, Ellis and Yeager emphasize the inherent dangers of the transpersonal phenomenon, in whatever form it might take. By comparing and contrasting RET and transpersonalism, they provide professionals with a valuable resource while offering general readers a functional and clearly written self-help guide.
Books By Other Authors
The REBT Super-Activity Guide: 52 Weeks of REBT For Clients, Groups, Students, and YOU!
Pamela D. Garcy, Ph.D.
Featuring a Foreword by Dr. Debbie Joffe Ellis. The first activity guide to help you to not only use REBT, but to live it! You'll learn the philosophy behind the therapy that Dr Pamela D. Garcy uses to help her clients overcome the effects of depression, anxiety, anger, and more! Using small and easy action steps which "pack a punch," you'll discover new connections between your thoughts and your life! Create "Aha" moments with your clients and help them put their ideas into action!
Click here to read a review in the SMART Recovery newsletter (PDF. The review appears on page 12.)
The Cognitive Behavioral Workbook for Depression
William J. Knaus
In the 1950s, Albert Ellis pioneered a form of psychotherapy that combined ways of detecting and changing irrational thoughts with techniques for replacing negative behaviors with positive ones. This type of cognitive behavioral therapy, called rational emotive behavior therapy (REBT) by Ellis, proved especially effective at relieving problems like anger, anxiety, and depression. In this book author William Knaus, a close associate of Ellis, develops the best REBT techniques into a powerful and comprehensive self-help workbook for the treatment of depression.
The New Rational Therapy: Thinking Your Way to Serenity, Success, and Profound Happiness
Elliot D. Cohen
Throughout the ages, great thinkers such as Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, Aquinas,Descartes, Spinoza, Kant, Nietzsche, and many others have had incredibly useful things to say about overcoming the strife of everyday living and attaining happiness. Unfortunately contemporary approaches to psychology have made only limited use of this guidance. At last, here is an uplifting psychology that systematically applies the wisdom of the ages to attaining life pregnant with insight, meaning, value, and purpose. Guided by the vision of great minds, this book shows you how you can still feel secure and hopeful in a precarious, uncertain universe; face evil with life-affirming courage; build self-esteem, respect for others, and global reverence; become your own person; take control of you're emotions and behavior; strengthen your willpower; confront moral problems creatively; build rapport and solidarity with others; and hone your practical decision-making skills. Unlike classical approaches to rational psychology that only scratch the surface of what's deeply wrong in your life, The New Rational Therapy gets to the core and offers you penetrating, philosophical antidotes for transcending your malaise, and for attaining an enduring, profound happiness
The Marriage-Work Connection: A Couple's Guide to Balancing Your Life Together
Joel Block
“Finally! A book that executives can use to see how their behavior impacts the bottom line in their relationships! As a professional coach, I often get called in to address business issues or competencies at the executive level in organizations, but I inevitably end up having to work with an executive to solve his or her personal crisis at home. While there are a great many other books on relationships out there, Dr. Block's book is the first one I've found that writes about relationships in a way that business leaders will understand. By skillfully writing about the complexities of relationships and framing them in a "business" context, Dr. Block's book is filled with highly useful stories and practical advice that any executive would appreciate if they're looking for a better return on investment from their personal lives. If you're the CEO of a company and you don't recognize the other adult and two children sitting across from the dinner table that you see maybe once a month and on holidays, Dr. Block's book is definitely for you!”
Jim Jenkins, President, Creative Visions Consulting