If you have the rigorous honesty necessary to conduct self-analysis, this book can be the most important one you have read. For although it makes no promises, it can help you more than all the other self-help books put together. Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy can teach any intelligent person how to stop feeling miserable about practically anything. Direct, get-to-the-heart-of-the-problem methods teach you what you often do to needlessly upset yourself and what you can do, instead, to make yourself emotionally stronger. These practical, proven methods of changing your self-defeating emotions and behaviors reflect the authors' vast experience as therapists and as teachers of therapists from all over the world, and have been backed by literally hundreds of research studies. A Guide to Rational Living provides much sought-after answers for individuals with problems, and it can help everyone to feel better about themselves and to deal with their lives more effectively.
Albert Ellis, Ph.D., is an author and psychologist who developed Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy (REBT), a therapeutic approach that stimulates emotional growth and teaches people to replace self-defeating thoughts and actions with more effective ones. REBT gives individuals the power to change the unhealthy behaviors that interfere with their ability to enjoy life. The Albert Ellis Institute is a world center for research, training, and practice of REBT.
Born in 1913, Dr. Ellis established his interest in counseling while promoting what he called the “sex-family revolution.” As he was collecting materials for a treatise called “The Case for Sexual Liberty,” his friends, considering him an expert on the subject, started to ask him for advice. In 1942, he entered the clinical psychology program at Columbia University and started a part-time private practice in family and sex counseling soon after receiving his master’s degree.
Dr. Ellis, who earned his Ph.D. from Columbia as well, began to practice classical psychoanalysis and became a college professor and clinical psychologist. By 1955, he gave up psychoanalysis entirely and instead concentrated on changing people’s behavior by persuading them to confront their irrational beliefs and adopt rational ones. He has written approximately 800 articles and 75 books on REBT, sex, and marriage, including A Guide to Rational Living.