Re: Ellis vs. Beck, exhibit C

Jim, you say that: "Another difference is that the therapist in CT tries to work collaboratively with the client to jointly examine the client's thoughts and beliefs while the therapist in REBT often takes a more confrontational, disputational stance."

The REBT literature is full of admonitions to work collaboratively with the client, on the grounds that this is essential to therapeutic success. REBT also promotes strongly the use of a Socratic approach to both the eliciting and the restructuring of dysfunctional beliefs. You appear to be misunderstanding the use of the work 'disputation' - in REBT, 'disputation' is a sophisticated process of helping the client explore a belief to check out for themselves whether it is: (1) helpful to them in terms of achieving their goals; (2) supported by the evidence; and (3) logical, in that it follows from the evidence.

I suspect that the idea of REBT as being so 'confrontational' comes from people who have viewed the 'Gloria Tapes' (the 3 1960's movies of Rogers, Perls, and Ellis interviewing a client called Gloria) where Ellis was quite confronting. But this is 1999 (in fact, tomorrow is the first day of 2000 here in New Zealand)! REBT has moved a long way in its 45-year history. Let's get up to date!

Regards, Wayne Froggatt (rational@voyager.co.nz)

Replies:

Re: Ellis vs. Beck, exhibit C, by Quinto Emilio, 12/09/02

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