Albert Ellis Research Paper

Albert Ellis was born in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania on September 27, 1913. He was the first-born child of two Jewish parents, and with his father being a businessman; he mostly relied on his mother. However, in his autobiography, Ellis described his mother as a self-absorbed woman with bipolar disorder. His siblings consisted of a two-year younger brother and a four-year younger sister. With both of his parents being emotionally distant from their children, Ellis stepped up and helped to care for them in their place. He did his best, but he had numerous health issues when he was young. At five, he was hospitalized with a kidney ailment; and later, he was hospitalized with tonsillitis. All in all, he reported eight hospitalizations between ages
After his graduation, he began a career in business. However, this career didn’t last very long and he soon turned to writing. He began by writing fiction titles, but received little success due to the Great Depression. Ellis then turned to writing works of non-fiction, finding that he could write it just as well as fiction. He began showing an interest in human sexuality and researched and wrote on that topic. After so much writing and researching, many people came to Ellis in search of counseling. He accepted and began to do counseling in his free time; and, from there, he realized his interest and passion in the subject and decided to go back to school to start a career in clinical
Other influences on Ellis’ ideology in general consisted of Karen Horney, Alfred Adler, Erich Fromm, and Harry Stack Sullivan. His work for REBT began in 1940 and carried on throughout the remainder of his life; however, his break from psychoanalysis was not concluded until 1953 when he gave himself the title of rational therapist. Rational Therapy became official in 1955 when he presented it to the public. It introduced the idea of the therapist helping their client understand that his or her personal philosophy and ideology contained beliefs that contributed to his or her own emotional pain and stress. This type of therapy stressed working to defeat the client’s beliefs that were causing the emotional stress or pain. The belief was that through rational analysis and cognitive reconstruction, one would be able to understand his or her self-defeatingness and therefore be able to reconstruct themselves to be free of their irrational