Rational emotive behavioural counselling: Albert Ellis

Abstract

Albert Ellis was born in 1913 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, but grew up in the city of New York. His father was frequently away from the home and his mother was more interested in her own pursuits than in Ellis and his brother and sister. At the age of four Ellis nearly died of tonsilitis and nephritis (a chronic kidney inflammation). He was in and out of hospital for the next few years, and at the age of 12 he found out that his parents had divorced. Although a shy boy he was successful at school, and at the age of 19 managed to beat his shyness with women by talking to a hundred girls one after the other in the Bronx Botanical Gardens in New York. He achieved a BA in business administration from the City University of New York and later entered the clinical psychology programme at Columbia University, where he received an MA. He went on to set up a private practice in marital and sexual counselling, and was awarded a PhD by Columbia University for his thesis on personality questionnaires. He trained in psychoanalysis and went to work for the New Jersey Mental Hygiene Clinic while maintaining his private practice. He rebelled against psychoanalysis and preferred to call himself a psychotherapist. It was the development of his ideas that led to the emergence of rational emotive therapy.