Psychotherapist Albert Ellis put power in patients' hands

The no-nonsense therapist advocated that people get over it and get on with it.

By John Barry, Times Staff Writer
Published August 5, 2007

When St. Petersburg therapist J.A. Booker heard that Albert Ellis had died, his first thought was, "It's about time."

Dr. Albert Ellis was the pioneer of modern, stop-your-whining psychotherapy. He was the profanely outrageous psychological showman who said Freud was "full of horse----." He was the inspiration for the Dr. Phil pop catchphrase "How's that working for you?" Besides that, he was 93. He would have liked the epitaph "It's about time."

He died at his home at the Albert Ellis Institute in Manhattan on July 24. If you're not familiar with his name, it doesn't mean you haven't been touched. If you've ever read a self-help book, watched Oprah and Dr. Phil, or told yourself to "suck it up" and get on with your life, you've been influenced by Albert Ellis.

"I think the guy was a genius," Dr. Phil McGraw said Thursday from Los Angeles. "He recognized the power of words. A woman would tell him, 'What my husband said to me was horrible.' He'd say 'That's not horrible. Go see kids in a burn unit - that's horrible.' "

Famous Dr. Ellis quotation:

"There are three musts that hold us back: I must do well. You must treat me well. And the world must be easy."

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Therapist Booker witnessed Ellis' legendary Friday evening therapy demonstrations several years ago in Manhattan while Booker was a graduate student at Columbia.

Ellis held forth at his institute before hundreds of therapists, students and patients. Anyone could watch. Booker liked to go because he was broke and the seminars were free. "They were part psychotherapy demonstration and part magic act."

Ellis invited anyone in the audience to write personal problems down on slips of paper. He'd shuffle through the slips and pick one for a demonstration.

"This one looks interesting."

Someone had written, "I'm really mad at my father. He wasn't there for me as a teenager."

The person would come onstage. Ellis would say, "Now what do you really want to talk about?"

This was a demonstration of what Ellis called Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy. It displaced the Freudian method of "unguided exploration," in which doctor and patient would spend years exploring events or relationships from the past without ever arriving at a course of action for the future.

He claimed to be able to accomplish more in one session than Freudian analysts could accomplish in three sessions a week for seven years.

Ellis would say there were worse things in life than being unloved by your parents. With just a few questions, he'd probe not what happened to a patient when he was 4, but how he thought about his life and circumstances and how it made him think and behave as a result. He'd prescribe: "Don't sit there and be miserable. Be honest. Get on with it."

He commanded acceptance of the fact that everyone is "a fallible, f----- up human being." He called the concept of self-esteem a plague upon humanity.

The key was to take action, to change behavior.

It profoundly changed mental health care.

"This was a new way of psychotherapy that was fairly easily taught," said David Baker, director of the Archives of the History of American Psychology at the University of Akron. "At the time Ellis began, there was a great need for mental health professionals among returning veterans. We're seeing the same thing today."

As a young practitioner, Dr. Phil felt confounded by what he called "the bipolar opposites in psychology."

"There was the deep-drilling intervention most people didn't want and couldn't afford, and the behaviorists who ignored solutions. Dr. Ellis came up with a way to give the power back to the patient. He'd say, 'This is you solving the problem.' "

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At one time or another, Ellis made almost everyone mad at him.

Some colleagues and patients couldn't get past his sexual crudity and outrageousness. He talked about having experimental sex with his 13-year-old brother when he was 15. He bragged about being the first to say f--- and s--- at an American Psychological Association conference. The institute he founded stopped hosting Ellis' lectures in 2005. He sued the board of directors and won. He made up a song about it for New York Magazine:

"Glory, glory, hallelujah, people cheer you, then pooh-pooh ya."

Kristene Doyle, associate executive director at the Ellis Institute, said they never made up, even as he grew terribly ill. "I've taken the last two years and put them on a shelf."

Ellis dismissed pain as purely symptomatic. He was like a surgeon, Booker said, who wouldn't let pain stop him from setting a broken leg. He dismissed depression this way in an interview with the Village Voice:

"It's 'I run the f---ing universe and it should do my bidding.' That's arrogant and indulgent."

But his demonstrations and his 75 books, one whimsically titled How to Stubbornly Refuse to Make Yourself Miserable About Anything - Yes, Anything, changed the world.

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Doyle had asked what Ellis wanted most. He told her, "I want the institute to keep going."

For a half-century, Albert Ellis kept on.

There he was, just a couple of years ago, in Tampa for one of his demonstrations. The old man had recently had his large intestine removed.

Therapist Booker went to see him.

"He gets older and older," Booker marveled, watching from the audience, "but he never loses energy."

John Barry can be reached at (727) 892-2258 or jbarry@sptimes.com.

[Last modified August 3, 2007, 17:35:54]