The Interview
Heery:
Good afternoon, Dr. Ellis. I'm Dr. Mrytle Heery. I'll be interviewing you for an audience of psychotherapists to learn about your rational emotive therapy and yourself.

Ellis:
Rational emotive behavior therapy (REBT)

Heery:
Okay, okay. Can you tell us a little bit about how this emerged as a behavior therapy?

Ellis:
I stupidly became a psychoanalyst and did psychoanalysis for six years, but I found that was even more passive.Yes. I was trained in Rogerian therapy but gave that up right away because it's so goddamned passive.

It gets nowhere very fast, and then I stupidly became a psychoanalyst and did psychoanalysis for six years, but I found that was even more passive. You listen for years and you go into every irrelevancy under the sun - your early childhood, which has almost nothing to do with your disturbance - and then you miss all the philosophic relevancies, your cognitions, your philosophy, what you think about things which are really important and make you disturbed.

So I abandoned that and investigated lots of therapies, about 200 at that time, and formulated rationally emotive behavior therapy as the best and I hope the briefest and most complete and most intensive of the lot.

Heery:
And over the years how have you seen this help people?

Ellis:
We have now with rational emotive behavior therapy and cognitive behavior therapy, which followed it 10 years later after I was the first to formulate and do it, we have over 2,000 studies which show the effect of this. And Rogerian therapy, psychoanalysis, and all but behavior therapy, have few successful studies. All the rest of the therapies also have relatively few successful outcome studies. We're the only one that has so many studies which tend to prove - not absolutely - the effectiveness of REBT.

Heery:
When you say not absolutely, could you clarify that for us?

Ellis:
Well, you could never prove any hypothesis absolutely. You can show that it works so far and seems to work better than other hypotheses, but you can't prove that it will work forever in the future. Even the law of gravity might be abolished in the future, so we don't know.
Ellis Sings an Irrational Song

Heery:
I also have heard you use a sense of humor when you're describing your work and how you relate to life. Can you talk a little about humor and the use of that in your therapy?

Ellis:
See Yes, that's very important because people disturb themselves. They don't get disturbed; that's psychoanalytic nonsense. They disturb themselves largely by what they tell themselves, and they first take adversities, hassles, problems and the like seriously, which is good, but then they take themselves too seriously and lose their sense of humor. So we have many cognitive, thinking techniques, many experiential emotive, feeling techniques, many behavioral techniques, but one of the ones that overlap is humor because it's a thinking technique.

It interrupts your nutty thinking, and it's a feeling technique and it's also behavioral. It pushes you on. So we give all our clients my famous group of rational humorous songs that rip up anxiety and depression and horror humorously, and they sing them to themselves when they're upset. Then they temporarily get un-upset but then they have the leeway to think about what they did to upset themselves and to undo what they did to make themselves upset.
Heery:
Could you give us one of these humorous songs?
Ellis:
Well, it you would have let me know beforehand - I only remember a few of my own songs, but I'll see if I can do one and remember it.

Heery:
Okay, go for it.

Ellis:
This is to the tune of Yankee Doodle: Love me, love me, only me or I will die without you. Make your love a guarantee so I can never doubt you. Love me, love me, totally, really try, really try. For if you demand love, too, I'll hate you 'till I die, dear. And it goes on.

Heery:
Do you sing this to yourself regularly?
Ellis:
Shame is always wrong because shame means I did the wrong thing, which may be correct, but I'm no damned good as a human for doing it, which is totally incorrect.No, but many of my clients do. We also, in Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy, have my famous shame attacking exercises. We get people togo out in public and do ridiculous, stupid, foolish things and not feel ashamed.
Shame is always wrong because shame means I did the wrong thing, which may be correct, but I'm no damned good as a human for doing it, which is totally incorrect. And six billion out of six billion people believe that nonsense that they can rate themselves, their being, their essence by what they do, and they can't, it's impossible. But they all do it. Why? Because they're out of their goddamed heads, and they're born that way.
Heery:
Are they really?

Ellis:
As I often say, if the Martians ever get down here and they're sane, they'll die laughing.And they're raised by their parents and culture to say you're a good boy when you can't be a good boy or a bad girl when you can't be. Becauseyou always would have to do good or bad things and be damnable for doing them and doing them in the future. So as Alfred Korzybski, the head of General Semantics, says, the "is" of identity, I am what I do, is utter bullshit of the worst order. And all humans, every single one, believe it to some degree, which just shows how crazy the human race is. As I often say, if the Martians ever get down here and they're sane, they'll die laughing.

Heery:
They will, huh?

Ellis:
Yeah.

Heery:
Do you mind if I call you Albert?
Ellis:
No, that's quite okay.

Heery:
Listen, Albert, I want to know how you apply this to yourself personally? How has it worked in your own life?

Early Attempts at Dating and the Genesis of REBT

Ellis:
See "A Brief Sketch of Albert Ellis" for a quick look at his background, accomplishments, and motivations.Well, I originated it because at the age of 19 when I read in philosophy, which was my hobby, that if you did what you're afraid of doing, then you got over your phobia about it. And it was your idea that you constructed that failing is horrible and being rejected is horrible, which was making you upset. It wasn't the business of failing or of being rejected.
I had a public speaking phobia, and I read in John B. Watson, the early behaviorist, that if you took a feared animal like a rabbit or a mouse, andput it at one end of the table and a little kid at the other end, the kid was terrified.
He and his assistants gradually moved it closer and the kid got unterrified and started petting the animal after a short while. So I said shit, if it's good enough for little kiddies, it's good enough for me. So I made myself uncomfortably speak and speak and speak in public instead of phobically avoiding it, and completely got over my public speaking phobia in seven weeks.
So what's more important was women. I was scared shitless of approaching women. I flirted with them in Bronx Botanical Garden near my home, but I never approached them, made up all kinds of excuses.

So I gave myself a brilliant homework assignment at the age of 19 when I was off from college, to go to Bronx Botanical Garden every day that month, and whenever I saw a woman sitting alone on a park bench, I would sit immediately next to her - not in her lap - which I wouldn't dare do before, and give myself one lousy minute to talk to her. If I die, I die, screw it so I die. And I did that. I found 130 women sitting alone that month on the park bench. I sat next to all of them, whereupon 30 got up and walked away, but that left me an even sample of 100 good for research purposes. I spoke to the whole hundred for the first time in my life about the birds and the bees, the flowers, their reading.
And if Fred Skinner, who was then teaching at Indiana University, had known about my exploits, he would have thought I would have got extinguished, because of the hundred women I made one date and she didn't show up. But I prepared myself philosophically even then - it was before cognitive therapy really - by seeing that nobody took out a stiletto and cut my balls off, nobody vomited and ran away, nobody called the cops. I had a hundred pleasant conversations and the second hundred I got good at and made a few dates. So I used what I later developed into rational emotive behavior therapy on myself by thinking philosophically differently, that nothing is awful, terrible, it's just a pain in the ass, that's all it is.
And that there's no horror in being rejected. I forced myself uncomfortably to do what I was afraid of, the opposite of what phobics do, because whenever they're afraid of innocent things like elevators, they beat it the hell out and then never get over their fear. They increase their phobias, as I at first did. So in rational emotive behavior therapy I combine thinking and philosophy for the first time with feeling, emotion, and also and with behavior therapy, which I got from John B. Watson, Fred Skinner and others. So it's one of the very few therapies that is multi-modal in Arnold Lazarus' sense, and it includes thinking, feeling and behavior, and has about 20 or 30 techniques under each heading; it has lots of evidence in favor of it. That doesn't mean it's completely true and will work for anybody.
Ellis in the Here and Now Moment
[top]
Heery:
It sounds like it's helped you both personally and professionally. It's been a great success professionally and it helped you in interviewing the women in the park. I'm a little interested in how it's helping you right now between the two of us.
Ellis:
...if you don't like me, I don't like that - I'd like you to like me, but if you don't who really cares?Well, between the two of us it's helping me because if I screw up, fuck it,so I screw up. It's too bad that I did the bad thing, screw up, but I'm not a worm, I'm not a louse, I give myself what we call USA - unconditional self-acceptance, just because I'm alive and human, for no other reason. So therefore, if you don't like me, I don't like that - I'd like you to like me, but if you don't who really cares? What's going to happen to me - very little!
Heery:
That's a very interesting question. I'm glad you brought it up. Who does care? Do you care about yourself and what's going to happen to you?
Ellis:
I don't love myself but I care unconditionally about myself. To love yourself, when you love anything you love because you like certain aspects of it. You love a man or you love a woman because they're bright, they're beautiful, etc. But that changes. That's not unconditional, that's conditional love.
The greatest sickness known to man or woman is called self-esteem. If you have self-esteem, then you're sick, sick, sick, because you say: I'm okay because I do well and because people love me, so when I do poorly, which I'm a fallible human and will, and people hate me because they may jealously hate me or they just don't like me, then back to shithood I go.
I worry, worry, worry about doing well and winning other people's approval, and I worry, worry, worry about the future even if I do well in the present. So that's the worst sickness - self-esteem - ever known to man or woman because it's always conditional. And unconditional self-acceptance means: I'm okay just because I'm me, just because I'm alive and human, so I'd better only rate what I do for my goals and purposes. I like to do well and be loved, etc., because it gets me goodies, but I never rate my person or myself. That's asinine, and all humans do it. Not equally, some are in the mental hospitals, and all therapists do it because they're about as crazy as other humans and they often endorse self-esteem.
Heery:
Tell me something just between the two of us right now. How's it going for you?
Ellis:
Fine. Besides, I don't give too much of a shit, again, how it goes. I keep focusing on what I'm doing and what I'm saying, and not on how I'm being rated by you or anybody else for doing it. So it always goes well.
Why Does Albert Ellis Swear So Much?
[top]
Heery:
I notice quite often you use the words "shit" and "fuck" and this kind of language. Is that okay with you? Is that some part of your vernacular?
Ellis:
They always use it to themselves, but not in public, so in 1950 I was the first psychologist probably to say "shit" and "fuck" at the American Psychological Association Convention.Well, even when I was a nutty psychoanalyst I realized that people were afraid to use it. They always use it to themselves, but not in public, so in 1950 I was the first psychologist probably to say "shit" and "fuck" at the American Psychological Association Convention. It's not just part of rational emotive behavior therapy - people think it is - but it's part of my believing that I will be myself and use my language in public, and if people don't like it they don't like it. Too damned bad, but it's not awful and horrible.
Heery:
It sounds as if you're really absolutely in touch with what Albert Ellis wants to do and that's it.
Ellis:
Don't use "absolutely." That's a human sickness. There are no absolutes. So I'm definitely what is called myself. I do what I like and I do what I dislike, but I never get into trouble. I'm a long-range hedonist, which we teach, rather than a short-range one. The short-range hedonists smoke and drink and overeat and get into trouble for the pleasure of the moment. So I look at the moment as many philosophers have done years ago, as well as the future. So I'm a long-range hedonist and go after what I want. But if I don't get it, that's too bad. It's never awful. Nothing is awful or horrible in the universe. Do you know why?
Heery:
I'd like to question you on that, because I do think murder is a little bit horrible, don't you? Or not?

Ellis:
Not even genocide.
Heery:
That's not horrible, genocide is n ot?
Ellis:
Nothing is horrible because "horrible" means that people don't think when they use these words.
Heery:
So it's a language problem?
Ellis:
Partly. Korzybski, the head of General Semantics, points out that "horrible" means it's very bad, and let's agree that murder and rape and incest and terrorism and war are very bad.
Heery:
Do you actually agree to that? Do you actually agree to that, that that's very bad?
Ellis:
Yes, but horrible, awful and terrible means it's so bad that it should not exist, and whatever exists, exists.
Heery:
That seems to be a very existential point, don't you think?
Ellis:
That's right.
Heery:
Tell me something. How is this related to existential philosophy? Or is it related to existential philosophy?
Ellis:
Oh, yes. In using REBT, we are humanists and partly even post-modernists, but we're largely existential, following its philosophy -- some of what I told you before, I got from Paul Tillich, who wrote "The Courage to Be."
Heery:
I know this book well.
Ellis:
...some of the existential therapists are soft-headed and think if you just have nice existential discussions with people, they get better.You can be yourself whether or not you do well, whether or not people love you. So we're existentialists but at the same time we're realists, and some of the existential therapists are soft-headed and think if you just have nice existential discussions with people, they get better.They practically never do; they get more confused. So we teach them what they're doing, that what they're telling themselves will often do them in. Very often that's what existential therapists tell their clients, they would be done in, and then we show them existentially two main things. One I just said, USA, unconditional self-acceptance, no matter what, no conditions. And unconditional other acceptance. You accept all humans because they're human. You don't like what they do and you stay away from some of them and you put some of them in jail if they act immorally, but still fully accept them as persons.
Heery:
Let's look at that for just a moment. Let's say I do murder someone and I go to jail and I do your USA inside myself as a murderer. Is that okay?
Ellis:
No, no, no, you would say: I did the wrong thing.
Heery:
I would say that? Many murderers don't say that.
Ellis:
Because you live in a social group and murder is wrong, and that will get you into jail, trouble. So you follow the rules generally of the social group that you live in. So again you'd say: I made a mistake, I preferably should not have murdered that person, it was wrong, but I absolutely did it, too bad. I am not a worm or a louse or a loser, I'm a fallible, screwed-up human who made a mistake this time. Now let me learn from it and next time I'll make fewer mistakes. Not none, because I'll never be perfect, but I'll always say that if other people do me in, treat me unjustly, unfairly, that is bad by my standards. I want to be treated justly and they've treated me unjustly, so that's against my goals and purposes.
But they are never bad people. Hitler, Stalin, Genghis Khan are never bad people and if you condemn them you're going to condemn yourself, when you do bad. So that's an existentialist position, which few people have.
Paul Tillich, Spirits and Santa Claus
[top]
Heery:
I'm beginning to understand a connection here between the existential thought and your thought, but I'm also beginning to see a pretty major difference which has to do with the concept of the spirit, of the soul. How does that intertwine with what you're saying?
Ellis:
Obviously there are no fairies, no Santa Clauses, no spirits.Spirit and soul is horseshit of the worst sort. Obviously there are no fairies, no Santa Clauses, no spirits. What there is, is human goals and purposes as noted by sane existentialists. But a lot of transcendentalists are utter screwballs.
Heery:
What about Paul Tillich?
Ellis:
...a lot of transcendentalists are utter screwballs.Oh, yeah, Paul Tillich was an existentialist, but I think he was really an atheist who didn't have the guts to say that, because he was a minister -
Heery:
Right, he was a minister. He was a minister, so I'm wondering how you ally with that.
Ellis:
We'll never know about Tillich-
Heery:
I'm wondering how you ally with that.
Ellis:
I ally with that because I accept that I do stupid, wrong things very frequently because I'm a fallible human and fallible humans do. And that's bad, it's not good, it's not neutral, it's bad. But I, a human, am too complex to rate. You can only rate what he or she does. So therefore I say I did badly and again I hope to change it next time especially as I live in a social group and choose to live in that group amicably.
Heery:
That's a very good point. Let's stop there for a minute, because you do live in a social group, and one of the feelings I have even as you talk is kind of like: I'm going to do what I do, the goddamned hell it impacts you; screw you, lady, or screw whoever it is, I'm just going to do what I'm going to do.
Ellis:
No, but I think whatever I think, however bizarre or unprofessional or unlikely it is....
Heery:
So it's not the doing-
Ellis:
I'm going to live by certain social rules and personal rules, but the social rules are okay and, as I said before, if you go against the social rules, then you get into trouble.
Heery:
For instance yourself saying "fuck" whenever and wherever you want to say "fuck," I mean, there is a general social rule not to just say "fuck" anywhere.
Ellis:
If they really would take arrows and bows and try to kill me, then I'd stop saying it.Some people don't like me but they still haven't cut my balls off for saying "fuck," so they don't do much about it. If they really would take arrows and bows and try to kill me, then I'd stop saying it.
Heery:
Oh, would you?
Ellis:
Yeah. It wouldn't work, because, again, we're very practical in Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy.
Heery:
This is important, the practicality of this therapy?
Ellis:
The things we say to ourselves create our feelings and behaviors. People have rational beliefs, preferences - I like this and hate that, and irrational beliefs - demands, commands, shoulds, oughts and musts, as Karen Horney said years ago. So we help them to change the irrational beliefs into preferences, into rational beliefs. But one of the ways of doing that, we have many ways - cognitive, emotive and behavioral - is to show them that the irrational beliefs don't work. They're pragmatically impossible.
Heery:
Let me ask you this. Do you have a belief that inside the individual, behind the thought patterns, that they actually know what's best for themselves?
Ellis:
No. They would have to be perfect. Who would know? Nobody certainly knows. They think they know what's best for themselves.
Heery:
So you know what's best for them, would you say?
Ellis:
No, and very often what they think works. If it didn't work they would be here as clients, so very often it works. But we show them that they think and feel many things that screw them up. For example, the one I just said before. Whenever you take any wish, preference, goal, which is fine - whatever you like, you like; whatever you dislike, you dislike - and you make it as if it were a universal command - because I like it, it must be, I must get it; because I dislike it, it shouldn't exist - then that's not only against reality, it's even against social reality. It won't work, so it gets you into trouble, so therefore we show you that you make yourself upset.
You don't get upset, you make yourself upset by taking your perfectly rational preferences - I like this and I dislike that - and making them into arrogant, grandiose, perfectionist demands. Now, all humans do that and some do it much more, such as those with severe personality disorders, but they all tend to do it. Why do they do it? Because they're out of their minds, they're crazy. Read Korzybski, who was a scientist and an engineer. It's largely our language but really it's our thoughts behind it.
"Therapists are Crazy!"
[top]
Heery:
What I'm curious about is it seems as if you're coming at the person quite a bit with a technique, an idea that you're going to impose on this person.
Ellis:
That's because you're probably a therapist and therapists are often pretty crazy. They think...
That's because you're probably a therapist and therapists are often pretty crazy.
Heery:
You think I'm crazy?
Ellis:
Well, therapists often are. I don't know if...
Heery:
If I'm a therapist and you think therapists are crazy, let's just break it here...
Ellis:
Because they're often fucking babies who need...
Heery:
Am I a fucking baby?
Ellis:
...the love and approval, among other things, of their clients.
Heery:
Oh, I see. Do you think I need that?
Ellis:
I don't know. I don't know you at all.
Heery:
We're getting closer to the fact that I'm a therapist and maybe that might be something I need.

Ellis:
But therapists generally try to quiet clients down and help them feel better, and they do that mainly by loving them, caring for them, showing them that they're okay, encouraging them, etc. But they don't basically help them to get better, because getting better means first acknowledging one's symptoms.

Second, showing what's behind the symptoms, the philosophy, the thought and the feeling that's behind the symptoms.

Thirdly, minimizing the symptoms. Fourthly, minimizing related anxieties and depression. But, fifthly, especially, getting clients to the point where they change their basic philosophy of musts, shoulds, oughts, demands, so they stop upsetting themselves theoretically about anything, and the world could literally come to an end and they'd say: Too damned bad. Now how do I enjoy the last few minutes? Why whine and scream because it's coming to an end and I don't like that?

Heery:
That's an important point. I'd really like to look at that with you. Is coming to the end, coming to the end of your own life - because you're aging, you're growing older...


Ellis:
I'm 86.

Heery:
And how is this therapy, how are you using it to help you as you're aging?

Ellis:
Well, I have a couple of papers on that. I'm also diabetic, have been diabetic for 46 years. That again is unfortunate. I don't like it, it's a pain in the ass, but it's not horrible, it's not awful, it's too bad that that's the way it is, so I adjust to it and live with it. I don't like my aging process, I certainly don't like my diabetes, I have several other minor ailments, not serious but I don't like them. But I live as happily as I can live with these ailments, and therefore I don't worry about them. I could drop dead tomorrow.

Heery:
Now, that issue, death. There is death, so how do you bring that into the picture for yourself.
Ellis:
Death is exactly the same state you were in before you were conceived. Do you remember that, before you were conceived?
Heery:
Some people say they remember it. I don't remember it in the moment.
Ellis:
They're crazy, they're neurotic.
Heery:
They're neurotic, those people, all those people who remember what happened?
Ellis:
And therapists help them be neurotic to remember that crap.
Heery:
That's crap, okay...
Ellis:
So do you really remember the state before you were conceived? Do you?
Heery:
Do I personally right this very minute? Not right this very minute, no.
Ellis:
The answer is you're being dishonest. You know, and if you don't remember...
Heery:
Well, I'm dishonest, and this very minute I don't remember. That's my honest answer in this minute.
Ellis:
No, you don't remember, but everybody I ask says they don't remember the state they were in before they were conceived. I've heard it thousands of times. So I say that's exactly in all probability the state you're going to be in after you're dead. Dead as a duck. You're not going to feel anything, you're not going to be in pain or anything. Now why be afraid of that?
Heery:
Are you afraid of it?
Ellis:
Of course not.
Heery:
It's just going to happen, right?
Ellis:
So it's going to happen. Tough shit.
Heery:
We don't know when, we might as well enjoy being here while we can.
Ellis:
If I worried about death I wouldn't enjoy being here. I'd worry, worry, worry, oh, I'm going to die. So humans are all FBs, fucking babies, who...
Heery:
Well, you're one of those people.
Ellis:
...who, they live for a certain while and make up gods, devils, Santa Clauses, and an afterlife, which is utter shit of the worst sort. Even the Buddhists make up an afterlife and they're pretty good as religions go. And they're afraid to die, die, die, when they're going to anyway.
...they live for a certain while and make up gods, devils, Santa Clauses, and an afterlife, which is utter shit of the worst sort. Even the Buddhists make up an afterlife and they're pretty good as religions go. And they're afraid to die, die, die, when they're going to anyway.
Heery:
You said a minute ago that humans are fucking babies. You're one of those humans. Are you a fucking baby?
Ellis:
Well, actually I overgeneralized. They're babies who act fuckingly much of the time, but no overgeneralization. If you overgeneralize as humans always do, then you label and labeling is not great. But people act as fucking babies much of the time all their lives, and I show them how to grow up, be themselves and not give too much of a shit for what other people think of them. But at the same time to give UOA, to give unconditional other acceptance to all humans just because they're human, period.
Heery:
That's an important point.
"Silence is a Bore..."
[top]
(Several seconds of silence)
Heery:
How are you doing at this moment? I saw you just take a quick breath. How are you?
Ellis:
I'm fine.
Heery:
Good. You talk a lot.
Ellis:
Oddly enough I had a phobia for public speaking. When I was young, I never spoke in public. But when I forced myself uncomfortably to speak, speak, speak and got over my phobia, I found out that I have an innate talent for talking, which I never knew because I was so phobic about speaking.
Heery:
Do you spend any time in silence?
Ellis:
Silence would be the most boring thing I ever thought of. I spend time thinking, if you call that in silence, but I don't meditate or anything like that. That's a waste of time except that it's cognitive distraction and temporarily gets people not to worry, but it doesn't show them the basic philosophy behind worrying. So a lot of meditation is just useless. But temporarily in REBT we teach people how to do it.
Heery:
Could you clarify that? I'm not sure what it is you're teaching them.
Ellis:
We teach them various methods, whichever they want to use, of yoga, meditation, Jacobson's relaxation techniques. But we tell them that relaxation doesn't change your basic outlook. It just distracts you from telling yourself how horrible the world is and that you're no good. Then you go back to masturbatory self-talk.
Heery:
So you do incorporate meditation in your work?
Ellis:
We have lots of cognitive and emotive and behavioral techniques including that. But if you do meditation to extremes, an hour or two a day, then you just piss away a lot of your life. So you can meditate for 20 minutes while you're anxious and that will temporarily allay the anxiety since it's cognitive distraction. Then you go on to dispute your anxiety creating thoughts. Most of the people use meditation to stop their thinking and then they never rethink. So it does much more harm than good in some instances.
Heery:
So you yourself never meditate?
Ellis:
It's a fucking waste of time. Why should I meditate? I'm not anxious.
It's a fucking waste of time. Why should I meditate? I'm not anxious.
Heery:
What is the most important use of your time?
Ellis:
The important use of my time? There are many things. I love my work, I love my writing. I've written over 60 books. I love going around the world spreading the gospel according to St. Albert to the heathens of this world, and I just enjoy living. I love my relationship. I've lived in sin with a woman for 36 years, so I enjoy that, friendships, etc. I have a fucking ball.
(Several seconds of silence)
Ellis:
Anything else?
Heery:
I was just enjoying the silence for a moment with you.
Ellis:
I think silence is a bore.
Heery:
You're bored right now?
Ellis:
It lets you think, doesn't it?
Heery:
I'm feeling pretty comfortable with the silence. Are you?
Ellis:
If you like it, like it.
(Short silence)
Love, Albert Ellis Style
[top]
Heery:
You've brought up an important word here, which is love, and not just the object of sex and intercourse but the emotion of love. How does love fit in with your therapy and this whole idea of...
Ellis:
Well, my original research was on love. I wrote my Ph.D. thesis on love but Columbia University thought it was too sexy so they made me write another thesis. But love consists of attachment, emotional attachment, caring for another person. Now, most of it, as I said before, is conditional. Unfortunately you love because the person has a good nose, good eyes, or good intelligence, so a great deal of it is conditional. And you don't wholly love, you don't love forever.
Also if you're a normal human you love other people than the one beloved that you're mated to. And of course you love your children, we assume. So love means that you get attached and care for and you like the other person to be caring for you. But you'd better not deify and obsess about it, as the movies show you're supposed to do, to think of only one person for the next 50 years. That's nonsense of the worst sort.
Heery:
It sounds as though you're trying to move the emotion of love right through the brain and have some control over this emotion.
Ellis:
You're saying this because you have a bigoted point of view which I can't go into now. So you're seeing me, what I say, this whole interview in your semi-mystical notion, so please don't say what I'm trying to do. You're trying to do that, but we're not here to argue the point.
Heery:
I'm sorry, I didn't realize I was trying to do that. It's a good thing you pointed that out.
Ellis:
You'd better realize it. It would be nice, if not necessary, if you could do it for the rest of your life. Because you're obviously very, very biased against what I call sanity, rationality, etc., and you stupidly think --I think it's stupid -- that it's different from feeling and behavior. As I said in 1956 in my first paper on REBT at the American Psychological Association in Chicago, when you think you also feel and behave. When you feel you also think and behave, and when you behave you also think and feel. They're all integrated, and I used the word holistic and said that thinking, feeling, and behaving were holistically integrated. You can't separate them and you're trying to get me into some box where you're separating feeling and thinking
Heery:
I'm glad we clarified that because this is for the public to hear. There is no separation, it is a holistic that you're speaking of?
Ellis:
It is difficult to give up your demands, commands, shoulds, oughts, and keep your preferences. People are allergic to doing that.Yes, and therefore it would be better if therapists used many rational techniques, very, very forcefully and vigorously; many emotionally evocative experiential techniques, also forcefully, and many behavioral techniques to help people to PYA - push your ass - until they change, keep changing, and stay changing. Because changing is partly biologically against the human condition. It is difficult to give up your demands, commands, shoulds, oughts, and keep your preferences. People are allergic to doing that. When they really desire something strongly, they often make it a must. They do it because that's their nature to do it and they also learn to do it.
Heery:
I think we've clarified some very, very important points and it's been wonderful for me personally to listen to you. I appreciate your clarification of your ideas and views. I hope that's come across to you.
Ellis:
I enjoyed the interview despite certain differences we have.
Heery:
That's good because we got a little bit clarified through the differences, and I enjoyed meeting you and spending some time with you. I appreciate your giving your time to us today.
Ellis:
Thank you.
Heery:
Thank you very much.

Copyright © 2001 Psychotherapy.net. All rights reserved. Published August 2000.
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comments@psychotherapy.net or submit them in our Guestbook.About Albert Ellis, PhD
"There is virtually nothing in which I delight more," says Albert Ellis, "than throwing myself into a good and difficult problem." His self-assurance -- some would even say arrogance -- enables him to confront his clients about their beliefs and tell them what is rational and what isn't.
Albert Ellis was born in Pittsburgh in 1913 and raised in New York City. He made the best of a difficult childhood by using his head and becoming, in his words, "a stubborn and pronounced problem-solver."

A serious kidney disorder turned his attention from sports to books, and the strife in his family (his parents were divorced when he was 12) led him to work at understanding others. Ellis made it through college in 1934 with a degree in business administration from the City University of New York. His first venture in the business world was a pants-matching business he started with his brother. In 1938, he became the personnel manager for a gift and novelty firm.

Ellis devoted most of his spare time to writing short stories, plays, novels, comic poetry, essays and nonfiction books. By the time he was 28, he had finished almost two dozen full-length manuscripts, but had not been able to get them published.

In 1942 he returned to school, entering the clinical-psychology program at Columbia. He started a part-time private practice in family and sex counseling soon after he received his master's degree in 1943. At the time Columbia awarded him a doctorate in 1947 Ellis had come to believe that psychoanalysis was the deepest and most effective form of therapy. He decided to undertake a training analysis, and "become an outstanding psychoanalyst the next few years."

The psychoanalytic institutes refused to take trainees without M.D.s, but he found an analyst with the Karen Horney group who agreed to work with him. Ellis completed a full analysis and began to practice classical psychoanalysis under his teacher's direction.

In the late 1940s he taught at Rutgers and New York University, and was the senior clinical psychologist at the Northern New Jersey Mental Hygiene Clinic. He also became the chief psychologist at the New Jersey Diagnostic Center and then at the New Jersey Department of Institutions and Agencies.

But Ellis' faith in psychoanalysis was rapidly crumbling. He discovered that when he saw clients only once a week or even every other week, they progressed as well as when he saw them daily. He took a more active role, interjecting advice and direct interpretations as he did when he was counseling people with family or sex problems. His clients seemed to improve more quickly than when he used passive psychoanalytic procedures.

And remembering that before he underwent analysis, he had worked through many of his own problems by reading and practicing the philosophies or Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Spinoza and Bertrand Russell, he began to teach his clients the principles that had worked for him.
By 1955 Ellis had given up psychoanalysis entirely, and instead was concentrating on changing people's behavior by confronting them with their irrational beliefs and persuading them to adopt rational ones. This role was more to Ellis' taste, for he could be more honest himself. "When I became rational-emotive," he said, "my own personality processes really began to vibrate."
He published his first book on REBT,

How to Live with a Neurotic, in 1957. Two years later he organized the Institute for Rational Living, where he held workshops to teach his principles to other therapists.

The Art and Science of Love, his first really successful book, appeared in 1960, and he has now published 54 books and over 600 articles on REBT, sex and marriage. He is currently the President of the Institute for Rational-Emotive Therapy in New York, which offers a full-time training program, and operates a large psychological clinic.

"I love my work and work at my loving," Ellis says. "That is the secret of my present unusually happy state."

Note: Much of the above was excerpted with permission from the Albert Ellis Institute website.
About the Interviewer:

Myrtle Heery, PhD, MFT
Myrtle Heery, Ph.D., M.F.T. has a private psychotherapy practice in Petaluma, California, and is the director of the International Institute for Humanistic Studies (www.human-studies.com). She conducts training for psychotherapists in the United States and internationally, and publishes in existential-humanistic and transpersonal psychology. In addition, she and her husband are learning more about life from their teenage son.