Albert Ellis

Dr. Albert Ellis (1913–2007) was the founder of Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy, the first of the cognitive therapies. He received his PhD from Columbia University in 1947 and began to practice classical psychoanalysis. Disappointed with the lack of positive results, citing psychoanalysis as “unscientific and even antiscientific” and too long winded and inefficient, he began to formulate his own approach, which he introduced in 1955 as Rational Therapy. It focused on helping people change their dysfunctional behavior and disturbed emotions by teaching them to identify their irrational beliefs and to replace them with rational ones. Author of close to 80 books on a variety of psychotherapy issues, he is held in the highest esteem in his field. In 2001 Psychology Today stated, “It’s safe to say that no individual—not even Freud himself—has had a greater impact on modern psychotherapy.” Dr. Ellis died some months after our interview with him.