Joamal of Rational-Emotive & Cognitive-Behavior Therapy Volume 13, Number 1, Spring 1995
PUTTING THE "B" IN RET: IT HAD TO BE Raymond J. Corsini Honolulu, Hawaii
Editor's Note: The history of RET will show that in the early 1990s, Albert Ellis modified the name of his therapy to rational emotive behavior therapy (REBT). Ellis gives much of the credit and responsibility for the name change to Ray Corsini--the highly-regarded anthologist of modern-day systems of counseling and psychotherapy. Dr. Corsini was kind enough to contribute his own view as to why the name change was warranted. The lively debate concerning the inclusion of the word "behavior" in rational-emotive therapy will be taken up in the next issue of JRECBT with reactions of Gerald Davison, Cyril Franks, Arnold Lazarus and Albert Ellis. The addition of the word behavior in Albert EUis's system of therapy now called Rational-Emotive-Behavior Therapy is in recognition that behavior is and has always been an essential aspect of his theory. However, this term as used re his therapy must be defined strictly since I imagine that any problems with this word is caused by misapprehensions of the meaning of behavior. To the layman behavior has, I imagine, the same meaning as conduct that is to say observable (overt) actions. Not so for psychologists: there is covert behavior (thinking, feeling and wanting) or the classic equivalent terms of cognition, affection and conation, and so by a lexical trick, as it were, psychologists are students not only of overt behavior but also of covert behavior. But this is not the issue with Ellis's use of the term behavior. Behavior as used in Ellis's system has nothing to do with the nonsense of behavior modification of the radical Skinnerian type, a concept based essentially on reward and punishment (although punishment Address correspondence to Raymond Corsini, Ph.D., 140 Niviki Circle, Honolulu, Hawaii 96821. 5
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has been subordinated, but still reward and punishment are the two sides of the same coin and reward always implies the absence of reward, and t h a t can be considered punishment). This kind of treatment is not and can never be a system of psychotherapy for intact people. Its tenets and techniques are only suitable for aments (retarded people), dements (the insane) and unments (infants). So, we toss away reward and punishment as a possible method of psychotherapy; t h a t is forcing people to behave in certain ways to achieve certain desirable goals. It just doesn't work, even when it appears to work. What is left then? Two things: Firstmactions that a person must take in order for that person to achieve a particular desired goal. A classic example is what Ellis himself did in treating himself. Being at that time unskilled in the gentle art of seduction, laden with feelings of inferiority, he required of himself a dramatic behavior t a s k - - t o talk to a certain number of females and to ask them for datesmsomething he knew he had to do to break free of his essential pessimism about himself at t h a t time. And we all know t h a t Ellis became one of the most gifted swordsmen of his generation. I have satisfactory even though indirect proof of his amatory abilities. I am reminded of having done more or less the same behavior in a much less spectacular manner at the age of 14. Already hooked on cigarettes, I bought a new package of my favorite Lucky Strikers and dropped the unopened package in the gutter of a street and said to myself: "If you don't pick it up, you will never smoke cigarettes again." And I didn't. Consequently, one of the two implications of the term behavior as applied to REBT is that as part of the therapy is it is not enough to be able to verbalize, one has to do something to get the results wanted. One has to make behavior changes during the therapy itself for it to be therapy. There is an interesting parallel between two versions of Christianity in this matter: having to do with the views of some Protestant groups and the Catholic Church on the all-important question of salvation. The Protestants state that what is necessary to achieve salvation is to accept Jesus as God and Savior. Catholics on the other hand argued that this is not enough: to be saved one has to do good works. The term behavior as it is used here, and good works as employed by Catholic apologists are identical. There is still another related reason for giving Ellis's system the word behavior in the title and this is because what is needed is behav-
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ior after the fact of successful therapy to give both the client and the therapist evidence of the success of the therapy. The evidence may come via talk. After all, the therapist cannot be expected to follow a client and get direct assurance of change. But any therapist with any sensitivity will know whether or not the client has put into suitable behavior what has been learned. On the basis of doing perhaps ten percent of what A1 Ellis has done as a therapist in my some 50 years of doing counseling and psychotherapy, I assert that I could often tell when a behavior change was about to come about often before the client would know. So, two types of behavior are here identified: behavior during the process of therapy to achieve the goal and then behavior after the therapy as evidence of the success of the therapy. Now, some theory. All therapy is essentially cognitive. Whether the therapy is what Eugene Landy calls disjunctive therapy, purely actional as in the case of George Bach's having husbands and wives beating each other with batacas to effect marital harmony, or Ernst Simmel's unusual procedure for curing shell shocked German soldiers during World War Imby having them attack straw-filled officer's uniforms with bayonetsmGerman officers' uniforms, by the way--or whether it be via Breuer's talking method; in every successful therapy the locus of change is in the mind--but for the change to be meaningful, more than just words are needed, action must take place during the process and be proved by action after the therapy. In examining the five attempts at treating the same patient in a book called Five Therapists and One Client, a close examination showed that in the treatment of this client all therapists did in fact use behavior in the two ways indicated. Some thirty years ago I predicted that therapy would be like the Mississippi River in spreading out in diverse manners, and that has come to pass. I have personally recorded more than 250 systems of therapy in my Handbook of Innovative Therapies and in the past 20 years at least that many additional systems have arisen. However, now another trend appears to be in progress and that is consolidation. All therapies tend to be moving in the same general direction that in effect affirm dualism: mind and body, talk and behavior. And Ellis's system is in the forefront of the parade as it were by acknowledging this fact.