Title: Per Aspera Ad Astra: 100 Years since the Birth of Albert Ellis. from Shadow to the Mainstream
Abstract: This is a special issue of the Journal of Cognitive and Behavioral Psychotherapies (JCBP), in the honor of the celebration of 100 years since the birth of Albert Ellis. Albert Ellis is the founder of Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT), the original foundational approach of what is today called Cognitive-Behavior Therapy (CBT).Albert Ellis laid the foundation of REBT (and thus CBT) in the mid 1950s (as Rational Therapy/RT), thus starting a cognitive revolution in clinical psychology/psychotherapy, paralleling the cognitive revolution in psychology (with more or less bidirectional influences). Indeed, historically, what we today call CBT was born as RT! At that time, Albert Ellis and CBT were under severe dismissing attitudes from psychoanalysis and behaviorism, which dominated the academic and clinical settings. However, despite these adversities, Albert Ellis continued his work in developing and promoting CBT (e.g., Rational Therapy has evolved into Rational-Emotive Therapy/RET) and even integrated behavioral theories and techniques into the new cognitive approach (thus, the cognitive paradigm became the cognitive-behavioral paradigm and Rational-Emotive Therapy became Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy/REBT). It was really a work that could be seen under the motto: Per Aspera Ad Astra! Many other CBT pioneers (e.g., Aaron T. Beck, Arnold Lazarus, Michael Mahoney, Donald Meichenbaum etc.) joined this effort of Albert Ellis, working together and/or independently.The first CBT conference was organized by Albert Ellis in New York, in 1976, at what is today the Albert Ellis Institute, bringing together the main pioneers and professionals in the field (e.g., Aaron T. Beck, Marvin Goldfried, Michael Mahoney, Donald Meichenbaum, etc.). The journal of Cognitive Therapy and Research was created as a result of this conference, having Michael Mahoney as the first editor. Over the years, the impact of these pioneers and their followers made CBT the mainstream psychotherapy approach that it is today, moving it from shadow to mainstream!Interestingly, Albert Ellis always thought about his approach as being a revolution emphasizing the primacy of cognitions in psychopathology. Therefore, any research confirming the role of cognitions in psychopathology was counted by Ellis as a support for his new paradigm/approach. However, many of his CBT colleagues and/or followers took the cognitive approach initiated by Ellis for granted! Therefore, later, some of them even criticized Albert Ellis that he is not reviewing the data more specifically. Indeed, he (i.e., the original proposer of the cognitive paradigm in clinical psychology/mental helath) and they (i.e., some REBT and CBT professionals) had sometimes different ways of understanding the field: while Albert Ellis was still defending the cognitive paradigm/revolution, looking for support of this new cognitive paradigm, other CBT professionals took the CBT paradigm for granted and started to look at specific models/approaches (e. …
Publication Year: 2013
Publication Date: 2013-11-01
Language: en
Type: article
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