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Why I (Really) Became a Therapist

Albert Ellis
Albert Ellis Institute

This article describes how the author really became a therapist and worked
on his own social and performance anxiety. He was at first a follower of
liberal psychoanalysis, but, in successfully using in vivo desensitization on
himself, he overcame his anxiety and became highly constructivist. He
finally created rational emotive behavior therapy, the pioneering cognitive-
behavior therapy; integrated it with emotional-evocative and experiential
methods; and used it to cope with much criticism he received about his
active-directive techniques. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Clin Psychol/In
Session 61: 945–948, 2005.

Keywords: psychotherapist; rational emotive behavior therapy (REBT);


treatment methods; person of the therapist

Why did I (really) become a psychotherapist? In a word, because I primarily wanted to


help myself become a much less anxious and much happier individual. Oh, yes, I wanted
to help other people, too, and I wanted to help the world be a better place, with healthier
and happier people who fought like hell to create better conditions. But I really and
primarily wanted to help me, me, me!
Not that I was that disturbed as a child. Unlike my brother, Paul, and my father,
Henry, I was not seriously angry and rebellious. Unlike my sister, Janet, I was not severely
depressed and self-hating. But like my mother, Hettie, I was quite anxious about being
outstandingly successful and about being universally approved. Not that I was terrified or
panicked. But I was worried about innumerable performances and was preoccupied with
succeeding at them and avoiding any risks of failing.
I was particularly phobic about speaking in public from the age of 5 onward, so I did
my damnedest to avoid doing so and beautifully succeeded. Naturally, with every avoid-
ance of public speaking, I became more phobic about it, as is often the case!

Portions of this article also appear in the Journal of Rational-Emotive and Cognitive-Behavior Therapy pub-
lished by Kluwer.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to: Albert Ellis, Ph.D., Albert Ellis Institute,
45 E. 65th Street, New York, NY 10021; e-mail: aiellis@aol.com.

JCLP/In Session, Vol. 61(8), 945–948 (2005) © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI: 10.1002/jclp.20166
946 JCLP/In Session, August 2005

Similarly, I began falling madly in love with a succession of girls from my fifth year
onward, and for fear of being rejected, I never talked to them if I could possibly help it.
During my adolescence, I lusted after about 101 of 100 females and flirted with many of
them at a distance, but, again, I never approached any of them and consequently never
had a single date.
Naturally, I was disturbed about my phobias; equally naturally, I was anxious about
my anxiety—particularly because my younger brother, Paul, was an inveterate lady-killer
as soon as he reached early adolescence. How shameful of me not to equal his exploits
and to be capable of talking with the girls to whom I was attracted only when they
approached me first! Otherwise, my mouth was frantically closed.
I completely overcame my social anxiety at the age of 19 when I gave myself the
homework assignment of going to Bronx Botanical Gardens every day in August and
forcing myself to sit next to and talk to 130 women on the park benches. I was enor-
mously afraid of rejection but used philosophy to convince myself that nothing terrible
would happen if I kept failing to date them.
Actually, I failed miserably, for of 130 prospects, I made only one date—and she
didn’t show up! But I saw philosophically that nobody cut my balls off, no one called
a cop, and none of the women ran away vomiting. Although I was totally unre-
inforced, and Fred Skinner (1971) would have thought I would have been extinguished,
I valiantly continued, talking to another 100 women, and I made a few dates. Gone was
my social anxiety!
I also worked on my performance anxiety, especially in sports, and was soon able to
play badly, acknowledge my many errors, and stubbornly refuse to put myself down. My
performances were often bad, but I never saw myself as an inadequate person—just as a
lousy ballplayer.
As I have related elsewhere (Ellis, 2001b), I turned to philosophy, especially the
philosophy of happiness, in order to conquer my extreme shyness, as well as my panic
about speaking in public. My protective hobby, from the age of 16, was reading all the
leading philosophers, ancient and modern, and learning from their constructivism. I par-
ticularly learned from Gautama Buddha, Epicurus, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, John Dewey,
and Bertrand Russell. I saw that Sigmund Freud and John B. Watson highly exaggerated
family and environmental causes of human disturbances. Instead, most of the philoso-
phers I read clearly pointed out that people partly constructed their own feelings of
anxiety, depression, and rage. As Epictetus (1890) said 2000 years ago, “ People are
disturbed not by events that happen to them, but by their view of these events.” This idea
was a revelation to me, which I took seriously and with which I trained myself to be much
less anxious about many things—but unfortunately not dating and public speaking. I was
still scared shitless and phobic about those two enormously “risky” situations. Using my
constructivist tendencies, I finally cured myself of my phobias for public speaking and
approaching new women by using the in vivo desensitization techniques of John B. Wat-
son and his associates (Watson, 1919). Without inquiring where a young child’s fear of
animals originated, they desensitized several 6- to 9-year-olds to exposure to feared rab-
bits or mice and, within 20 minutes or so, had the children pleasurably petting the animals.
Great! I combined my newly acquired philosophic teachings and forced myself, when
I was 19, to take the homework assignment of making myself speak in public twice a
week for 7 weeks. This exploit was also the first time for me and I was exceptionally
anxious about doing it. Voilà! I almost completely got over my panic states—yes, for the
rest of my life. In the process, I seem to have invented cognitive behavior therapy and
primed myself to create rational-emotive behavior therapy (REBT) later. My reading
paid off very well!
Why I Became a Therapist 947

I was thrilled with my quick cure of my phobias, told many of my relatives and
friends about it, discovered that they could also use my methods to lessen their own
disturbances, and became a volunteer psychotherapist at the age of 19. Mostly, however,
my goal was to become a writer and to write essays, books, novels, plays, poems, and
songs with philosophic leanings. I wanted to spread the gospel according to Saint Albert
to the heathens, especially in regard to bringing about a liberal sex revolution. So between
the ages of 19 and 28 I wrote many articles and 20 book-length manuscripts, most of
them with my meticulous therapeutic messages.
Unfortunately, these articles and books were often given accolades by editors and
publishers—but, alas, still rejected. Nothing daunted, I decided to go to graduate school
when I was 28 to become a professional therapist.
Naturally, I was already philosophically and behaviorally prepared. My graduate
school, Teachers College, Columbia University, was almost completely psychodynamic
and client centered. So I gracefully put up with its psychotherapeutic teachings and went
my own highly active-directive way. My philosophic and behavioral techniques, which I
mainly learned from my reading, took a no-nonsense approach and often helped people to
improve themselves, very often in record time. So I adopted their hard-hitting methods.
I sidetracked myself for 6 years because I foolishly thought that the neo-Freudian
psychoanalysis of Fromm, Horney, and Alexander and French was deeper and more
intensive than other forms of psychological treatment. So I was trained in liberal psy-
choanalysis by Richard Hulbeck, a training analyst of the Horney school, and practiced
psychodynamic therapy for 6 years. But I found that even liberal psychoanalysis was
quite long-winded and inefficient and was lacking in behavioral homework assign-
ments. I therefore abandoned it after 6 years. I wrote two monographs summarizing
scores of therapy techniques and started using REBT in January 1955. It soon became
the first popular cognitive-behavior therapy, now one of the most used integrative ther-
apies in the world.
REBT theorizes that people, in order to make themselves minimally disturbed, had
better achieve unconditional self-acceptance (USA), unconditional other-acceptance
(UOA), unconditional life-acceptance (ULA), and a philosophy high frustration toler-
ance (HFT). In my personal life, I follow my theory in all three of these major ways:

1. I give myself unconditional self-acceptance (USA), no matter what my personal


and professional failings are—and they often are considerable! I also accept myself
unconditionally, no matter who disapproves of me and my therapy. Because REBT
was anathema to most therapists for many years and because I was reviled for
creating and practicing it, I was able to keep it going and turn it into one of the
most popular psychotherapies by not giving much of a damn for the scathing
criticism that I and it kept engendering. Let the benighted faultfinders criticize! I
didn’t give that much of a shit. I accepted me with my crummy performances
(Dryden, DiGiuseppe, & Neenan, 2003; Ellis, 2001a, 2001b, 2002; Ellis & Harper,
1997; Walen, DiGiuseppe, & Dryden, 1992).
2. Although I have been unfairly presented to the professional and lay public many
times because of my liberal sex and love views (Ellis, 2003; Ellis & Blau, 1998),
and although some of the best elements of REBT have been unjustly copied with-
out my consent by writers and therapists who gave me no credit, I have never
hated my detractors and purloiners and am not angry at them. In accordance with
REBT theory, I deplore their unfair behaviors, but I do not denigrate them as
persons for behaving badly. I thereby use my and REBT’s philosophy of uncon-
ditional other-acceptance (UOA) (Ellis & Blau, 1998).
948 JCLP/In Session, August 2005

3. In spite of the hassles and adversities mentioned, and in spite of my physical


disabilities—among other things, I have had insulin-dependent diabetes for 47
years, with its innumerable problems and difficulties—I keep working to develop
REBT and to spread it around the world. My unconditional life-acceptance (ULA)
and my high frustration tolerance (HFT) in this respect have enabled me to write
more than 75 books, to publish more than 700 articles, to see thousands of indi-
vidual and group therapy clients, to give hundreds of lectures and workshops, to
train almost innumerable therapists, and to do various other nefarious things.
How do I do it? With REBT theory in mind, I follow one of its main rules inces-
santly: PYA—push your ass. So far, my ass hasn’t worn out, though I admit I’ve
fallen on it quite a few times (Ellis, 1962, 1994, 2003).

Am I, then, a self-made therapist? Not exactly—largely self-read and self-activated.


But I had plenty of dead and living mentors for whom I am very grateful.

Summary
I really became a psychotherapist mainly because I was very anxious in several respects
and wanted to solve my own problems. This led me, first, to use the constructivism of
many philosophies combined and integrated with the behavior therapy of John B. Watson
(1919) and Fred Skinner (1971). To these techniques I later added the emotional-
evocative and experiential methods of several Buddhist philosophers and of psychother-
apists. But before I used them with other people, I actively-directively, philosophically,
and emotionally tried them out on myself.
They worked! And they have continued to work with many of my clients, workshop
attendees, and readers. In many respects, then, I have experimented with my favorite and
most fascinating subject: me. As the years go by, I continue these personal experiments
and the guidelines I discover from them to help others. But primarily, I help myself and
try to benefit others. Both/and, not either/or!

Select References/Recommended Readings


Dryden, W., DiGiuseppe, R., & Neenan, M. (2003). A primer on rational-emotive behavior therapy.
Lafayette, IL: Research Press.
Ellis, A. (1962). Reason and emotion in psychotherapy. Secaucus, NJ: Citadel.
Ellis, A. (1994). Reason and emotion in psychotherapy (Rev. ed.). New York: Kensington.
Ellis, A. (2001a). Feeling better, getting better, staying better. Atascadero, CA: Impact.
Ellis, A. (2001b). Overcoming destructive beliefs, feelings, and behaviors. Amherst, NY: Prometheus.
Ellis, A. (2003). Rational-emotive behavior therapy: It works for me, it can work for you. Amherst,
NY: Prometheus Books.
Ellis, A., & Blau, S. (1998). The Albert Ellis reader. New York: Kensington.
Ellis, A., & Harper, R.A. (1997). A guide to rational living (Rev. ed.). North Hollywood, CA:
Melvin Powers/Wilshire.
Epictetus. (1890). Works of Epictetus. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Skinner, B.F. (1971). Beyond freedom and dignity. New York: Knopf.
Walen, S., DiGiuseppe, R., & Dryden, W. (1992). A practitioner’s guide to rational-emotive ther-
apy. New York: Oxford.
Watson, J.B. (1919). Psychology from the standpoint of a behaviorist. Philadelphia: Lippincott.

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