Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy

Distinctive Features

Windy Dryden

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• eBook ISBN: 9781000339338
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Cognitive Psychology & Cognition
• Index: Psychology

Rational emotive behaviour therapy (REBT) encourages the client to focus on their emotional problems in order to understand and change the rigid and extreme attitudes that underpin these problems.

Following on from the success of the first and second editions, this accessible guide introduces the reader to REBT while indicating how it is different from other approaches within the cognitive-behavioural therapy spectrum. Divided into two sections, the Distinctive Theoretical Features of REBT and the Distinctive Practical Features of REBT, this book presents concise information in 30 key points.

Updated throughout, this new edition of Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy: Distinctive Features will be invaluable to both experienced clinicians and those new to the field.

Part I

THE DISTINCTIVE THEORETICAL FEATURES OF REBT

1

Terminology and theory

Albert Ellis, the founder of rational emotive behaviour therapy, was rarely afraid to speak his mind. During his professional life, he was always updating his ideas and counselled his followers to take his lead by taking REBT seriously, but by not sacredizing it. While I am not sure Ellis would have approved the changes in terminology that I have made to REBT theory and which I outline in this opening chapter, he would surely have approved of me being my own person and taking the risk to begin this book by outlining and explaining these changes.

So in this chapter I make a number of changes to established REBT terminology. First, I explain why I no longer use the term ‘belief’ when speaking of the main cognitive determinant of emotion and behaviour and why I now use the term ‘attitude’ instead. Second, I also explain why I prefer the phrase ‘rigid and extreme’ to the term ‘irrational’ and the phrase ‘flexible and non-extreme’ to the term ‘rational’. Third, I explain the problems that I have with the term ‘disputing’ attitudes (previously ‘beliefs’) and why I prefer the term ‘examining’ attitudes instead. Finally, I call for the replacement of the term ‘activating event’ with the term ‘adversity’ when discussing what clients largely disturb themselves about in emotional episodes. On this last point, I do note that, towards the end of his career, Ellis had begun to do just this, as shown in one of his last published books on REBT (Ellis & Joffe-Ellis, 2011).

The reason that I have begun this book by outlining and explaining these changes is that they permeate the entire book and without understanding what these changes are and why I have made them readers who know something about REBT would be confused.

From ‘belief’ to ‘attitude’

Traditionally in REBT, the term ‘belief’ has been used to describe a particular kind of cognitive processing that mediates between an adversity and a client’s responses to that adversity. While there have always been problems with the term ‘belief’, it has been retained, in my view, in part because it begins with the letter B and thus shows in REBT’s ABC framework that adversities at A have their impact on a range of psychological responses to these adversities largely because of the ‘beliefs’ that people hold at B.

Research that I carried out on how REBT’s ABC framework is understood by different professional and lay groups¹ revealed a range of confusions and errors made by these groups about each element in the framework (Dryden, 2013a). Such confusions and errors about B may be cleared up by using the term ‘attitude’ rather than belief since the term ‘belief’ is often used by people in a way that is very different from the way it is used in REBT.

Thus, the term ‘belief’ has been defined by the Oxford Dictionary of Psychology, 4th edition (Colman, 2015) as ‘any proposition that is accepted as true on the basis of inconclusive evidence’. Thus, a client may say something like: ‘I believe my boyfriend is cheating on me’, and while they think that they have articulated a belief, this is not actually a belief as the term has been used in REBT, but rather an inference (see Chapter 3). As I will presently discuss, it is very important to distinguish between an inference at A and what I am calling here an attitude at B, and anything that helps this distinction to be made routinely is to be welcomed. Using the term ‘attitude’ rather than ‘belief’ in REBT is one way of doing so.

Definitions of the term ‘attitude’ are closer to the meaning that REBT theorists ascribe to the term ‘belief’. Here are three such definitions of the term ‘attitude’:

•‘an enduring pattern of evaluative responses towards a person, object, or issue’ (Colman, 2015)

•‘a relatively enduring organization of beliefs, feelings, and behavioral tendencies towards socially significant objects, groups, events or symbols’ (Hogg & Vaughan, 2005: 150)

•‘a psychological tendency that is expressed by evaluating a particular entity with some degree of favor or disfavor’ (Eagly and Chaiken, 1993: 1).

To test the impact of making this change of terminology, I used the term ‘attitude’ rather than ‘belief’ with my clients and found that it was easier for me to convey the meaning of B when I used ‘attitude’ than when I used ‘belief’, and they, in general, found ‘attitude’ easier to understand in this context than ‘belief’.

Consequently, in this book, I will use the term ‘attitude’² instead of the term ‘belief’ to denote an evaluative stance taken by a person towards an adversity at A which has emotional, behavioural and thinking implications. In deciding to use the term ‘attitude’ rather than the term ‘belief’, I recognize that when it comes to explaining what the B stands for in the ABC framework, the term ‘attitude’ is problematic because it begins with the letter A. Rather than use an AAC framework, which is not nearly as catchy or as memorable as the ABC framework, I suggest using the phrase ‘basic attitudes’³ when formally describing B in the ABC framework. While not ideal, this term includes ‘attitudes’ and indicates that they are central or basic and that they lie at the base of a person’s responses to an adversity (Dryden, 2016).

In using the term ‘basic’, I have thus preserved the letter B so that the well-known ABC framework can be used. However, throughout the book when not formally describing the ABC framework I will employ the word ‘attitude’ rather than the phrase ‘basic attitude’ when referring to the particular kind of cognitive processing that REBT argues mediates between an adversity and the person’s responses to it.

From ‘irrational’ to ‘rigid and extreme’ and ‘rational’ to ‘flexible and non-extreme’

Second, instead of using the terms ‘irrational’ and ‘rational’ as descriptors of the word ‘attitude’, I suggest the use of the terms ‘rigid and extreme’ and ‘flexible and non-extreme’ respectively. The reason I have done this is that the term ‘irrational’ is often understood to mean ‘crazy’, a pejorative term in the field of mental health and one that has been unfortunately associated with women when they wrestle with their emotional problems. Also, the term ‘rational’ is often understood as ‘cold’ and ‘unemotional’, which is not what REB therapists want to convey to clients as healthy ways of functioning. So, I decided not to use these terms any more in my work because they obscure more than they clarify, which is not the case with respect to the terms ‘rigid and extreme’ and ‘flexible and non-extreme’.

It will not be lost on you that the name of the therapy under discussion in this book is ‘rational emotive behaviour therapy’ and I am not suggesting that we change the name of this approach,⁴ although Ellis did confide in me once that he wished he had called the approach ‘cognitive emotive behaviour therapy’, which indicates that he had some reservations about the term ‘rational’ himself.

From disputing to examining

As I will discuss fully in Chapter 3, the ABC framework in REBT has three components: A which stands for ‘adversity’, B which stands for ‘basic attitude’ and C which stands for the consequences of holding a basic attitude towards the adversity. When the therapist and client have agreed that the client’s Bs account for their disturbed responses at C to the adversity at A, they move on to D which traditionally stands for ‘disputing’. Again I do not like this term for two reasons. First, the meaning of dispute is to have a disagreement or an argument and it thus conjures up the idea that the therapist and client are clashing. While I know some REB therapists have no problem with this and view it as part of the process, it does put off some clients and quite a few therapists who move away from REBT as a result rather than towards it. Second, when the REBT community talk about disputing, they speak of the therapist disputing the client’s attitudes, the emphasis being on what the therapist does.

I prefer the term ‘examining’ to the term ‘disputing’ because the former does not convey the meaning of the therapist and client arguing or disagreeing with one another. I use the term ‘helping the client to examine their attitudes’ rather than disputing their attitudes because the term ‘examining’ here lends itself to what the two are doing together and has the quality of them working together, which is quite a way from what the term ‘disputing’ conveys.

You will note, however, that the term ‘examining’ begins with E not D, so to preserve the letter D so that we can speak of ABCD I suggest the use of the term ‘dialectical’. Conducting a dialectical examination of rigid/extreme attitudes and flexible/non-extreme attitudes acknowledges that these attitudes are diametrically opposed and cannot be resolved. It therefore encourages the client to choose one over the other after careful examination. E stands for the effects of such examination, by the way. However, becau...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Information
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• Preface
• List of abbreviations
• Part I THE DISTINCTIVE THEORETICAL FEATURES OF REBT
• Part II THE DISTINCTIVE PRACTICAL FEATURES OF REBT
• References
• Index