Albert Ellis: biography of the creator of rational emotive behavioral therapy

Albert Ellis will go down in history as one of the most important psychotherapists of all time. He was the creator of rational emotive behavioral therapy, a type of therapy that was revolutionary for its time and widely applied today.

Ellis contributed significantly to the visibility and dissemination of psychology. Throughout his career, he wrote more than 800 scientific articles and 80 books, many of which are leading works in his field.

Furthermore, his work not only covers his best-known therapy. Albert Ellis He was a man deeply interested in human behavior and investigated topics as varied as society, sexuality, depression, anxiety and how to achieve happiness from his psychological approach. In this article we want to show you some of the most notable events in his life.

A hard childhood

Albert Ellis was born on September 27, 1913 in the city of Pittsburgh, although he grew up and lived the rest of his life in New York. He was the eldest of three brothers, for whom on many occasions he had to take responsibility.

Ellis described his parents as absent on numerous occasions.. Her father was a businessman who spent a lot of time away from home, and her mother was a distant woman with very marked mood swings. According to Ellis himself, she suffered from bipolar disorder. His parents divorced when he was eleven years old, although according to his words, it was not a traumatic event for him.

He was a particularly sickly child and spent a lot of time in hospitals. His parents barely visited him, and although he was tough at first, Ellis used his rationality to learn to accept what you couldn’t change. In some ways, his early experiences would later lead him to develop one of the best-known psychological therapies.

The Youth of Albert Ellis

Albert defined himself as a reserved boy marked by two fundamental fears: speaking in public and talking with women with whom I could have a date. Far from giving in to his fears, Ellis spent time researching how to overcome his phobias. These did not disappear overnight, but he put so much effort into them that he finally overcame them by exposing himself to his most feared fears.

He was married four times and had a total of 53 love affairs according to his own calculations, and he would go on to become a great speaker.

On the other hand, the Great Depression affected a large part of American families, and both Albert and his brothers had to work to help financially at home. Despite this, he was able to study and in 1934 he graduated in Business Administration.

At that time, Ellis already showed an interest in philosophy and psychology, and wrote a large number of stories, books and articles about love, sex, marriage and happiness. None of them were published. However, Albert Ellis had already chosen his path and started walking along it. So, In 1942 he enrolled at Columbia University to graduate in clinical psychology..

The beginnings of Albert Ellis as a psychotherapist

Once graduated, Ellis completed his doctorate and tried to work as a psychology professor, although he did not succeed. It was not until years later that he was contacted to teach at New York University and Rutgers University. At that time he also became the head of clinical psychology at the New Jersey Diagnostic Center.

The first years as a psychologist Albert Ellis worked as a psychoanalyst, the predominant orientation at that time. However, he did not feel comfortable with that type of therapy and reported that on many occasions his patients worsened.

Ellis began to investigate other types of treatment and In 1955 he formulated the first version of his therapy. He called it rational therapy. In 1956, he presented it to the American Psychological Association, but was harshly criticized because it was based on beliefs. Society was not yet ready for her new approach.

The consecration of Albert Ellis: rational emotive behavioral therapy

Shortly thereafter, in 1959, Ellis founded the Albert Ellis Instituteto which he dedicated the rest of his life. Thousands of therapists have trained there to learn their psychotherapy model. The center also has 15 associated institutes on five continents.

Thanks to having his institute, Albert Ellis was able to popularize his therapy through conferences and workshops, as well as making numerous collaborations on radio and television. Ellis’s rational therapy was renamed rational emotive therapy in 1961, and later, in 1993, it became what we know today as rational emotive behavioral therapy. Let’s see what it consists of.

According to Ellis, any psychological therapy is based directly or indirectly on philosophical principles. In your case, one of its greatest influencers was Epictetus and his maxim“What disturbs men is not things, but the opinions that are formed about them.”. That is to say, it is the person himself who creates his own disturbances independently of the external event.

What also fuels these disturbances is the person’s belief system. But this, far from being negative, is an opportunity for change, since if the person modifies his thoughts and, consequently, his behavior, he will be able to face problems in a much more rational and decisive way (Ellis, A. et al., cited in Chávez, AL, 2015).

His last years of life

Albert Ellis practiced as a psychotherapist until the end of his days. However, the path was not without difficulties. One of the most difficult events he had to face was when At 92 years old he was expelled from the board of directors of his own institute. According to the rest of the members, both his excessive medical expenses and his eccentric and confrontational way of being put the continuation of the center at risk.

Despite this, Ellis rented a space near his center and continued teaching workshops. Finally, The New York Supreme Court ruled in favor of him in 2006 and authorized his reinstatement on the Board of Directors.. He suffered from pneumonia and would have to be hospitalized for 14 months, during which time he continued to teach workshops, write and give interviews. Finally, he died at his home from heart and kidney failure on July 24, 2007.

The legacy of Albert Ellis

He obtained several recognitions as a professional, especially in the second half of his life. And proposing a model totally opposite to that accepted by his contemporaries is not always well received or understood at first.

However, Ellis was brave enough to put forward a different theory. Thanks to her, psychology advanced, since rational emotive behavioral therapy is considered to have contributed to the development of cognitive behavioral theory in a very significant way.

Likewise, he collaborated with a good number of therapists when conducting research and sharing his reflections. He also worked as an editor and consultant for different scientific journals. Albert Ellis has left a marked mark in the academic world, accompanied by no less valuable outreach work..

You might be interested…