PSYCHOTHERAPY 143
See also: Alfred Adler 100–101 ■ Karen Horney 110 ■ Erich Fromm 124–29 ■ Carl Rogers 130–137 ■ Aaron Beck 174–177 ■
Martin Seligman 200–201
themselves and their childhood,
their symptoms unfortunately
remained. It seemed that when one
problem was resolved, the patient
would put another in its place.
The issue, Ellis decided, lay in the
way the person was thinking (their
cognition), and it required more
than insight to change it.
Irrational thinking
Ellis began to describe his way
of working as Rational Therapy
because he believed that the
majority of long-standing emotional
problems are almost always due to
irrational thinking. One of the most
common ways in which irrationality
occurs, he says, is the tendency to
draw extreme conclusions,
especially negative ones, about
events. For example, if a man who
is an irrational thinker loses his job,
to him it is not merely unfortunate,
but awful. He believes that he is
worthless because he was fired,
and that he will never find another
job. Ellis describes irrational
beliefs as illogical, extreme,
damaging, and self-sabotaging
because they cause unhealthy
emotional consequences.
Rational thinking creates the
opposite effect. Ellis defines
rational thinking as helpful to the
self. It is based on tolerance and
the ability to bear distress without
assuming catastrophic negative
conclusions, and is rooted in a
belief in positive human potential.This is not to say one turns a blind
eye to negative factors in favor of
naïve, positive beliefs—rational
thinking does acknowledge
reasonable feelings of sorrow, guilt,
and frustration. The rational thinker
may lose her job; it may have even
been her fault that she lost the job,
but she knows she is not worthless.
She may be upset with herself, but
she knows that rationally there is
the possibility of another job.
Rational thinking is balanced and
always allows room for optimism
and possibilities; it creates healthy
emotional consequences.
Ellis’s notion of irrational
thinking is influenced by Karen
Horney’s idea of the “tyranny of
the shoulds”—a preoccupation ❯❯...react “automatically” and irrationally...When negative things happen,
we can......take time to consider a response......and think about new, rational ways
to respond that may be useful
and beneficial to us.We realize that our negative opinions
are unjustified and the world holds
infinite possibilities for us....which reinforces habitual ways
of thinking that may be
unhelpful and not beneficial to us.We become even more convinced that
our poor opinions of ourselves
and the world are justified.