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    The ABCs of REBT Revisited: Perspectives on Conceptualization
    The ABCs of REBT Revisited: Perspectives on Conceptualization
    The ABCs of REBT Revisited: Perspectives on Conceptualization
    Ebook195 pages2 hours

    The ABCs of REBT Revisited: Perspectives on Conceptualization

    By Windy Dryden

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    About this ebook

    ​​​
    ​The cornerstone of Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy is
    its ABC framework which helps therapists make sense of clients' problems. As it turns out, however, this model is often misunderstood by both clients and professionals. Research investigation on this misunderstanding forms the basis of this book. It addresses the doubts, reservations and objections clients had to the ABC framework in a research study of an REBT-based program in a psychiatric hospital. Additionally, errors and confusions on the part of those writing about the therapy is reviewed. Further, study was made on the accuracy of REBT
    therapists, themselves, in teaching this therapy to students. Also included is an analysis of how Albert Ellis, himself, has explicated the ABC's. This book is the first to systematically study how different groups conceptualise the ABCs of REBT and the errors that are commonly made in interpreting and putting them into practice. It will be of value to students and practitioners of REBT, and those teaching REBT in academic settings.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSpringer
    Release dateNov 9, 2012
    ISBN9781461457343
    The ABCs of REBT Revisited: Perspectives on Conceptualization

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      Book preview

      The ABCs of REBT Revisited - Windy Dryden

      Windy DrydenSpringerBriefs in PsychologyThe ABCs of REBT Revisited2013Perspectives on Conceptualization10.1007/978-1-4614-5734-3_1© Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2013

      1. Introduction

      Windy Dryden¹ 

      (1)

      Goldsmiths, University of London, London, UK

      Abstract

      Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT) was founded in the mid-1950s by Dr. Albert Ellis who at that time called his approach Rational Psychotherapy (Ellis 1958). Responding to critics who claimed, wrongly, that Rational Psychotherapy neglected emotions, Ellis (1962) changed the name of the therapy to Rational-Emotive Therapy (RET) in 1961. Thirty-one years later, Ellis (1993) once again changed the name of the therapy to Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT) in response to critics who, again wrongly, claimed that it neglected behavior. REBT is placed firmly in the cognitive-behavioral tradition of psychotherapy and indeed was the first and oldest member of this tradition.

      Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT) was founded in the mid-1950s by Dr. Albert Ellis who at that time called his approach Rational Psychotherapy (Ellis 1958). Responding to critics who claimed, wrongly, that Rational Psychotherapy neglected emotions, Ellis (1962) changed the name of the therapy to Rational-Emotive Therapy (RET) in 1961. Thirty-one years later, Ellis (1993) once again changed the name of the therapy to Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT) in response to critics who, again wrongly, claimed that it neglected behavior. REBT is placed firmly in the cognitive-behavioral tradition of psychotherapy and indeed was the first and oldest member of this tradition.

      1.1 What Are the ABCs of REBT?

      A key aspect of Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT) is how this therapy conceptualizes clients’ problems and healthy solutions to these problems. Whenever REBT is written about by its adherents, taught in professional and academic settings, and employed with clients, there is a very good chance that what has become known as the ABCs of REBT will be used to show how this therapy assesses psychological problems and how it views healthy but realistic alternatives to these problems.

      The ABCs of REBT are so called for two reasons. First, the letters are deemed to stand for something. While there are several versions of the ABCs in the literature, the most frequent version holds that A stands for activating event, B for beliefs, and C for consequences. Second, the letters are used to denote that the ABCs are to be found whenever clients’ problems are conceptualized and are easy to ­understand. The very term ABCs denotes simplicity.

      Given that the ABCs of REBT are meant to be simple, one might expect that those writing about it from outside REBT would present them with accuracy. However, this remains to be tested. Consequently, the focus of this chapter is on how the ABCs of REBT are portrayed in textbooks on counseling and psychotherapy written by those outside the field to see how accurately the ABCs are portrayed.

      In order to carry out a study into how accurately the ABCs of REBT are ­portrayed in counseling and psychotherapy textbooks, it is important to have a yardstick against which these textbooks are being evaluated. This is no easy matter as in fact, REBT therapists themselves cannot agree about the nature of the ABCs (see Chap. 4). Indeed, if one consults Ellis (1985, 1991), Grieger (1985), and Wessler and Wessler (1980), for instance, one is presented with different conceptualizations of the ABC framework.

      Given this problem, I decided to use my own version of the ABC framework as the standard against which the accuracy of the textbooks’ portrayals would be evaluated. I am fully aware of the biases and problems that such a stance throws up, but in the absence of a universally accepted ABC framework, one has to use some yardstick, and as sole author of the study which this chapter documents, I decided to put forward my own version. What follows is the ABC model that I used to evaluate how the different groups represented in this book conceptualized the ABCs of REBT.

      1.2 The ABCs of REBT: The Dryden Framework

      In outlining this framework, I will consider a specific example of a client’s psychological problem as if I were assessing this problem in therapy.

      1.2.1 Situation

      When a client disturbs himself,¹ he does so in a specific situation. This situation may be present in actuality, or it may be present in the person’s mind. For me, the situation is not a part of the ABC; rather, it provides the context in which the ABC occurs.

      Consequently, it is a description and constitutes what Maultsby (1975) called the camera check, where the person is encouraged to describe the situation as would be captured on camera. The important point about the situation is that it does not include any of the client’s inferences.

      1.2.2 A

      My practice is to reserve A for the aspect of the situation that the person was most disturbed about. This is step 4 of Wessler and Wessler’s (1980) emotional episode model of the ABCs. In most cases, the A will be inferential in nature, and when assessing it, it is important to know precisely what the person’s ­emotional C is, as the emotion gives a clue to the inferential theme of the A which itself facilitates a more accurate identification of the A. I will illustrate this later in this chapter.

      In the situation in which the person experienced an example of his psychological problem, it is possible for him to make several different inferences, all of which could be As if the person focused on them and had an emotional response to them. Since several different As are possible in the specific example of the person’s problem, I sometimes refer to the aspect of the situation about which the person disturbed himself as the critical A. When I am discussing A in the context of an example of the person’s problem, the terms A and critical A are interchangeable.

      1.2.3 B

      Perhaps the most distinctive feature of REBT as a cognitive-behavioral approach to psychotherapy is the idea that emotional disturbance is largely explained by the irrational beliefs that the person holds in the situation in which the disturbance is experienced. A corollary of this idea is that the person needs to hold an alternative set of rational beliefs to respond healthily in the same situation.

      1.2.3.1 Irrational Beliefs

      I am classic in my view about irrational beliefs at B in that I agree with Ellis (e.g., 1994) that there are four such beliefs that underpin psychological disturbance and that of these four beliefs, demands are primary and the other three (awfulizing beliefs, discomfort intolerance beliefs,² and self-, other-, and life-depreciation beliefs) are secondary in that are said to be derived from the demands.

      To underscore REBT’s distinctiveness within the larger CBT community, I follow Ellis’s (1994) and Wessler and Wessler’s (1980) lead in reserving B for beliefs, preferring to place other cognitive content, processes, and structure either at A or at C (see below). On this point, I see exaggerated inferences such as always-never thinking as cognitions that are produced by irrational beliefs rather than irrational beliefs in their own right, despite the fact that Ellis (e.g., Ellis and MacLaren 1998) sometimes conceptualized them as irrational beliefs.

      1.2.3.2 Rational Beliefs

      I am equally classic in my view about rational beliefs at B in that I again agree with Ellis (e.g., 1994) that there are four such beliefs that underpin psychological health and that of these four beliefs, what I call nondogmatic preferences (or flexible beliefs) are primary and the other three (non-awfulizing beliefs, discomfort tolerance beliefs,³ and self-, other-, and life-acceptance beliefs) are secondary in that they are said to be derived from the nondogmatic preferences (or flexible beliefs).

      1.2.3.3 Partial versus Full Rational Beliefs

      There is one important point that guides my thinking about rational beliefs. It is Ellis’s idea that people easily transform rational beliefs into irrational beliefs, particularly when their rational beliefs are strongly held. Thus, it is very important that rational beliefs are carefully distinguished from irrational beliefs. To do this, one needs to discriminate between partial rational beliefs and full rational beliefs. Partial rational beliefs are beliefs that assert the rational component of the belief but do not negate the irrational component. Thus, it is easy for partial rational beliefs to be implicitly transformed into irrational beliefs, whereas this is not possible with full rational beliefs since these latter beliefs are the antithesis of irrational beliefs. In Table 1.1, I outline and illustrate the differences between partial and full rational beliefs.

      Table 1.1

      Distinguishing between partial and full rational beliefs

      1.2.4 C

      C stands for the consequences of the beliefs held at B about the critical A. This is often shown as A × B = C. There are three such consequences at C: emotional, behavioral, and cognitive.

      1.2.4.1 Emotional Cs

      REBT theory distinguishes between healthy negative emotions (HNEs) and unhealthy negative emotions (UNEs). Healthy negative emotions are deemed to stem from rational beliefs and unhealthy negative emotions from irrational beliefs. As such, the REBT theory of emotions is a qualitative one and not a quantitative one. This means that HNEs and UNEs are placed on separate continua of intensity and not on a single continuum of intensity.

      There is some difference of opinion among REBT theorists concerning the length of the separate continua. Ellis (1994) argues that they are of the same length and that HNEs can be as intense at their zenith as UNEs, whereas my position is that the HNE intensity continuum is shorter than the UNE continuum in that at their height UNEs are more intense than HNEs. For example, blind rage (100% ) will be more intense than healthy anger at the highest possible level of intensity. Figure 1.1 presents these two positions.

      A302091_1_En_1_Fig1_HTML.gif

      Fig. 1.1

      Two versions of the two continuum model of unhealthy and unhealthy negative emotions with reference to levels of intensity (as exemplified in anger)

      Leaving aside the above differences, the point that distinguishes REBT from other approaches to CBT is that UNEs and HNEs are qualitatively not quantitatively different (Dryden 2009).

      Health and Flavor of Negative Emotions. I made the point above that beliefs largely determine the health of negative emotions with rational beliefs underpinning healthy negative emotions (HNEs) and irrational beliefs underpinning unhealthy negative emotions (UNEs). However, what gives emotions their flavor and what distinguishes among the different emotional flavors are the different inferences that people make at A.

      Let me provide an example. When a person is anxious (UNE), then according to REBT theory, they hold an irrational belief. The healthy alternative to anxiety in REBT theory is concern (HNE). When a person is concerned, but not anxious, then again according to REBT theory, they hold a rational belief. However, beliefs, on their own, cannot explain why the person feels anxiety or concern rather than, say, depression or sadness. What determines what I call the favor of an emotion is the theme implicit in the inference that the person makes at A which in the case of anxiety/concern is threat.

      While inferential themes at A determine the flavor of an emotion, they cannot on their own determine whether that resultant emotional flavor is healthy or unhealthy. As we have seen, beliefs

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