Albert Ellis
You upset yourself with your beliefs
The American psychologist who founded Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy and helped launch the cognitive turn in talk therapy.
techniques
It is not events that disturb us, but the rigid beliefs we hold about them.
Who they were
Albert Ellis broke with classical psychoanalysis to argue that our suffering springs less from events than from the rigid demands we place on ourselves and the world. He built a practical method around his ABC model, teaching people to notice an activating event, the belief that follows, and the emotional consequence — then to dispute the belief itself. His insistence that we can examine and change our own thinking made therapy faster, plainer, and more self-directed. The approach he pioneered in the 1950s became a foundation for the cognitive behavioral therapies practiced everywhere today.
Famous books
What they left on the shelf
Terms they cared about
Ideas worth knowing
Their big idea
Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy
Albert Ellis argued that events themselves do not upset us so much as the rigid beliefs we hold about them. By noticing the belief that sits between a situation and our reaction, and questioning it, we can loosen needless distress.
The approach they founded
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
A practical, present-focused method: notice the thoughts that drive feelings, then test and reshape them.
Questions in their spirit
What they’d ask you
Sit with one. Answer online, or in the app.
Carry the idea forward
Ellis — What they’d ask you
Psipas asks you one small, honest question at a time — and builds the picture from your answers.