Interview with Albert Ellis

RE: What’s an irrational belief, and how can it interfere with our normal functioning?

AE: If something is irrational, that means it won’t work. It’s usually unrealistic. People are terrified of other people or difficult projects because they tell themselves that they could fail or be rejected. Failure can lead to sorrow, regret, frustration and annoyance—all healthy, negative feelings without which people couldn’t exist. But then they add, “I absolutely must succeed and must be loved by significant persons, and if I don’t, it’s terrible and I’m no good.” Those are irrational beliefs. As long as people keep them, they’ll be terrified of life and will put themselves down when they get rejected.

AE: In my very first paper on what we now call REBT, I outlined 11 common irrational beliefs. Later I added 30 or 40 more common irrational ideas. Beginning in the 1960s, many studies showed that people who hold what we call irrational beliefs are significantly more disturbed than when they don’t hold them, and the more strongly they hold them, the more disturbed they tend to be.

We started doing outcome studies, and then later Aaron Beck and Donald Meichenbaum began to do them, and now there are probably 2,000 or more studies on the effectiveness of cognitive behavior therapy, which I originated. The studies tend to show that when people change their irrational beliefs to undogmatic flexible preferences, they become less disturbed.

I get people to truly accept themselves unconditionally, whether or not their therapist or anyone loves them. Self-esteem is the greatest sickness known to man or woman because it’s conditional. “When I do well and am loved by significant others, then I’m okay.” … .In REBT, we give clients unconditional acceptance but we also teach them how to give it to themselves.

RE: Let’s get more concrete about this. A man comes in and says “I’ve been feeling horrible lately, and I think it’s because I may have been abused as a child.” How do you react?

AE: We’d assume the worst, usually as a hypothesis. Let’s suppose somebody abused you sexually. You still had a choice—though not a good one—about what to tell yourself about the abuse. Given that you’re still upset about the abuse, you probably told yourself two things about it. First, you said things like: “I don’t like it. I wish to hell it weren’t so. How unfair.” That made you feel sorry and regretful, which is okay. But you also in all probability told yourself that the abuse should not exist. You were disturbed as a child because of both the adversity you experienced and what you told yourself about that adversity. If adversity alone caused disturbance, then everybody who experienced such adversity would turn out the same, but we know they don’t. So we teach people that they upset themselves then and that they’re still doing it now. We can’t change the past, so we change how people are thinking, feeling and behaving today.

RE: Do you think it’s irrational for people to say “I don’t want to be in a relationship?”

AE: It could be rational or irrational. It’s irrational when it’s defensive because they’re really afraid of rejection. But they could rationally decide that prolonged relationships take up too much time and effort and that they’d much rather do other kinds of things. But most people are afraid of rejection.

RE: You appear to be unflappable. Is there anything I could say that would upset you?

AE: I doubt it. As a matter of fact, as a result of my philosophy, I wasn’t even upset about Hitler. I was willing to go to war to knock him off, but I didn’t hate him. I hated what he was doing.

RE: Your philosophy is not just something you teach; it is something you live by.

AE: I hope so.

RE: Any final thoughts?

AE: People don’t just get upset. They contribute to their upsetness. They always have the power to think, and to think about their thinking, and to think about thinking about their thinking, which the goddamn dolphin, as far as we know, can’t do. Therefore they have much greater ability to change themselves than any other animal has, and I hope that REBT teaches them how to do it.

RE: So there’s hope for humanity?

AE: Yes. I think there’s definite hope. But there are three musts that hold us back: “I must do well. You must treat me well. And the world must be easy.” And I sometimes think that as long as we keep the second must, which is socially learned, then some screwballs 100 years from now will manufacture atomic bombs in their bathtub and maybe annihilate the whole human race because they demand that the rest of the world must agree with their dogmas. When we don’t agree, they may zap us. So we’d better work hard on getting rid of that second must—Other people must do what I want them to do!” It’s what makes people hostile, nasty, mean and combative, and it leads to feuds, wars and genocide. We’d better do something about that.