Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy (REBT) Review

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Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy (REBT) is an action oriented counseling approach developed by Albert Ellis in 1950s. REBT is the product of Ellis’s life experiences starting from his childhood that made him find ways to deal rationally with misfortunes of life such as illnesses, social phobia, and poor family relationships (Ellis, 2004). Ellis, whose personality was very energetic and action oriented, who was very efficient with his time, found traditional psychoanalysis boring and not effective. Thus, he created his own approach that gave relatively quick results and makes people get better instead of feel-better (Capuzzi & Gross, 2003). REBT is the first cognitive-behavioral therapy that was introduced into psychotherapy (Capuzzi & Gross, 2003). 

REBT is based on the theory that humans have physiological tendency “to think irrationally or dysfunctionally, as well as rationally and functionally” (Capuzzi & Gross, 2003, p. 237). Also, the core philosophy behind REBT is that there is a strong connection between thinking, feeling, and behaving. One can not feel or behave without thinking and thinking impacts emotions and actions (DiGuiseppe as cited in Capuzzi & Gross, 2003). Another belief that guides REBT is “the idea that events and other people do not make us feel bad or good” (Capuzzi & Gross, 2003). It is our dysfunctional thoughts that make us feel bad and cause emotional distress. Thus, basic goal of REBT is to modify people’s thinking from dysfunctional that causes emotional distress into realistic and functional. Ellis and his followers believe and many times proved that dysfunctional or irrational believes could be changed, however one has to work very hard at it (Weinrach, Ellis, MacLaren, DiGuiseppe, Vernon, Wolfe, Malkinson, & Backx, 2001). 

            Ellis developed an ABC model and identified four major concepts of REBT.   ABC model helps analyze and modify irrational thoughts and believes with rational that would cause healthy emotions. “A” in the ABC model stands for Activating experience; “B” stands for Belief or interpretation of experience; “C” stands for emotional Consequence. One can not have total control over A but one can exchange initial irrational belief by disputing – “D” that would cause “E” - emotional effect (Ellis, 2004).

            The four major concepts of REBT categorize people’s irrational thinking. The four concepts are “Awfulizing,” “I can’t stand it,” “Musterbating,” and “Self-judgments” (Kottler & Brown, 2000). 

“Awfulizing” means people tend to have habits to exaggerate and catastrophise reality by stating for example “I will NEVER pass this stupid test, no matter how hard I will study.” In reality, thinking rationally, if one will take time to study and understand the material the test will be passed. 

“I can’t stand it” is a common irritant of people with low tolerance for frustration (LTF), who get frustrated when things don’t happen the way they wanted (Ellis, 2005). If things constantly don’t go the way person wanted them to go it creates a lot of pain. However, in reality, Ellis argues that “people can stand anything but death” (Kottler & Brown, 2000, p.146).   

“Musterbating” is another dysfunctional concept that creates emotional disturbance. Use of “musts,” “shoulds,” and “oughts” are unrealistic expectations. For example, “I must get an “A” in this course or it is over…” In reality, setting high expectations like this one can cause emotional distress. Even if one will get “B,” “C,” or even “F,” life is not going to be over. This concept directly relates to irrational and self-defeating beliefs of perfectionism (Ellis, 2004).

“Self-judgments” indicate our irrational beliefs when we condemn ourselves or others for making mistakes. For example “I am so stupid, I can’t do anything right.” Ellis (2004) suggests that instead of disapproving people, one can disapprove their behavior and not the personhood for example “I am a good person, who doesn’t have skills fixing computers.” 

Intervention strategies of REBT include Cognitive, Emotive, and Behavioral interventions (Capuzzi & Gross, 2003). Cognitive interventions focus on disputation of irrational thoughts. Emotive intervention uses humor in the form of exaggeration, role play, and rational emotive imagery. Behavioral interventions include experiential exercises such as shame attacking exercise, very similar to existential Paradoxical intention or other exercises where clients learn skills that help change their lives by focusing on specific problem.

            Research showed that REBT is effective in treatment of anxiety (Linden, Zubraegel, Baer, Franke, & Schlattmann, 2005), depression, obsessive compulsive disorder, panic and agoraphobia (Capuzzi & Gross, 2003), work related stress (Jenkins & Palmer, 2003). It is effective with children, adolescents, and adults (Vernon, 1996). All of the problems above relate to the amount of irrational believes that person holds. A person who experiences anxiety often catastrophizes, awfulizes, uses “musts,” etc. language, and negatively “self judges” him or herself. Thus, a person develops a fear of being criticized, or afraid of events that are catastrophized. For example, one has a fear of flying because plane can crash. Rationalizing this fear would be to look at reality and probability of plane crash happening. In fact there are more car crashes happening in USA every minute then planes crashing in the world throughout a year.

            REBT is known for its quick and effective results, for strong research that backs up the theory and practice, and for its simplicity but not easiness. Weinrach et al. (2001) realistically admit that REBT is not for everybody or any situation. People who can benefit from REBT are the ones that have ability to think logically. This approach may not work with young children or people with limited intelligence (Kottler & Brown, 2000).  REBT had been criticized by many because it is based on Western, white, middle class mentality and may not be accepted or understood by minorities or other collectivistic cultures. However, this author learned from personal communication that now, REBT is very popular and effective in Japan and China (2005). 

REBT may not “work 100% of the time” (Weinrach et al., 2001, p.267). REBT does not explore history or root of the problem. It focuses only on the thoughts related to specific events. 

Another critique relates to REBT’s confrontative approach which is seen as lack of humanism or lack of sensitivity. This critique had been defended by Vernon (1996) where author showed that even though REBT does not explicitly emphasizes humanism, it nevertheless is there and important part of successful use of REBT. The last but not least critique of REBT is that counselor’s job is to confront the client with dysfunctional believes, thus, it might make client feel overpowered (Kottler & Brown, 2000). 

References

Capuzzi, D., & Gross, D. R. (2003). Counseling and psychotherapy: Theories and interventions,

(3rd ed.). Columbus, OH: Merrill Prentice Hall.

Ellis, A. (2004). Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy: It works for me-it can work for you. 

New York, NY: Prometheus Books.

Jenkin, D. & Palmer, S., (2003). A multimodal assessment and rational emotive behavioral

approach to stress counseling: A case study. Counseling Psychology Quarterly, 16 (3),

265–287.

Kottler, J.A & Brown, R. W. (2000).  Introduction to therapeutic counseling: Voices

from the field. (4^th Ed).  Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.

Linden, M., Zubraegel, D., Baer, T., Franke, U., & Schlattmann, P. (2005). Efficacy of cognitive

behaviour therapy in generalized anxiety disorders. Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics,

74 (1), 36-42.

Vernon, A. (1996).  Counseling Children and adolescents: Rational emotive behavior therapy

and humanism.  Journal of Humanistic Education & Development, 35 (2), 120-128.

Weinrach, S.G., Ellis, A., MacLaren, C., DiGuiseppe, R., Vernon, A., Wolfe, J., Malkinson, R.

& Backx, W. (2001). Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy success and failures: Eight personal perspectives. Journal of Counseling & Development, 79, 259-268.

A.G.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Cool. thanks.
I didnt really see much of me in the symtoms (much I said lol) until I saw the self judgement one.
Thats me for sure. I always judge myself and self critizise and I cant take critisizm really well.
I can, but only in certain situations (like online lol)

thanks again though.