by DK
Meaning is something we “discover rather than invent,” according to Frankl, and we must find it for ourselves. We find it through living, and specifically through love, creating things, and the way we choose to see things.
"A man who has nothing else in this world may still know bliss."
Viktor Frankl
See also: Rollo May • Boris Cyrulnik • Martin Seligman
IN CONTEXT
APPROACH
Existential psychotherapy
BEFORE
1841 Søren Kierkegaard claims that people misinterpret Christian ideology and misuse science to falsely defend against the anxiety inherent in existence.
1942 Swiss physician Ludwig Binswanger combines existential philosophy with psychotherapy in his Basic Forms and the Realization of Human “Being-in-the-World.”
1942 Carl Rogers, a pioneer of humanistic psychology, publishes Counseling and Psychotherapy.
AFTER
1980 Irvin Yalom discusses in Existential Psychotherapy the four ultimate concerns of life: death, freedom, existential isolation, and meaninglessness.
In the mid-19th century, philosophers such as Martin Heidegger, Frederick Nietzsche, and Søren Kierkegaard challenged social dogma and demanded that people expand their ways of thinking to incorporate a fuller understanding of human experience, in a movement now known as existentialism. The notions of free will, personal responsibility, and how we interpret our experience were all of interest to the existentialists, who wanted to ask what it means, fundamentally, for a human to exist.
Psychologist Rollo May’s The Meaning of Anxiety (1950) brought this human-centerd philosophical approach into psychology for the first time, and May is often referred to as the father of existential psychology.
An existential approach
May viewed life as a spectrum of human experience, including suffering as a normal part of life, not as a sign of pathology. It is self-evident that as human beings, we tend to seek experiences that allow us to be comfortable. We enjoy our familiar environments, and favor experiences that keep the mental and physical senses in a state of balance and ease. This tendency, however, leads us to judge and label experiences as “good” or “bad,” depending only on the levels of pleasure or discomfort they may bring. May says that in doing so, we do ourselves a disservice, since we are fighting against processes that lead to immense growth and development if we can accept them as a natural part of life.
May proposes an approach to life that echoes Buddhist thought, where we accept all forms of experience equally, rather than shunning or denying those we judge to be uncomfortable or unpleasant. We also need to accept our “negative” feelings, rather than avoid or repress them. Suffering and sadness are not pathological issues to be “fixed,” he says; they are natural and essential parts of living a human life, and are also important because they lead to psychological growth.
See also: Søren Kierkegaard • Alfred Adler • Carl Rogers • Abraham Maslow • Viktor Frankl • Boris Cyrulnik
IN CONTEXT
APPROACH
Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy
BEFORE
1927 Alfred Adler says that a person’s behavior springs from his or her ideas.
1940s The role of perception in creating reality is popularized by the Gestalt Therapy movement.
1950 Karen Horney suggests we escape from the “tyranny of the shoulds.”
AFTER
1960s Aaron Beck says that depression is a result of unrealistic negative views about the world.
1980 American psychiatrist David Burns gives labels to cognitive distortions such as: Jumping to Conclusions, All or Nothing Thinking, Always Being Right, Over Generalizing, and Catastrophizing.
Epictetus, an ancient Greek philosopher, proclaimed in 80 CE, that “men are disturbed not by events, but by the views which they take of them.” This principle is the foundation of Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT), devised by Dr. Albert Ellis in 1955, which asserts that experiences do not cause any specific emotional reaction; instead it is the individual’s belief system that produces the reaction.
Practicing as a psychoanalyst in the 1940s and 50s, Ellis began to realize that while many of his patients gained an insight into 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 with the idea that something should (magically) be different from how it is. The struggle to reconcile these thoughts with reality is a painful and unending one. Rational thinking, on the other hand, focuses on acceptance; it maintains the balanced sense that sometimes things happen that we would prefer not to, but they are a part of life.
"People and things do not upset us. Rather, we upset ourselves by believing that they can upset us."
Albert Ellis
Conditioned response
We become so used to our responses to people and events that they appear to be almost automatic; our reaction becomes inextricably linked to the event itself. However, Ellis aimed to teach people to recognize how an event may contribute to a feeling, but it does not directly cause that feeling. Our emotional response depends on the meaning we put on what took place, which in turn is governed by rational or irrational thinking.
As the name implies, Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy examines both the emotional response (a cognitive process) and the behavior. The links between these two flow in both directions: it is possible to change your thinking through changing your behavior, and to change your behavior through changing your thinking. Ellis suggests that the way to change one’s thinking involves being able to recognize and then dispute irrational beliefs, challenging them with rational thoughts.
Challenging beliefs
During REBT, an individual is asked to consider whether they have several overriding beliefs about themselves and their position in life as these contribute to irrational responses. This process is known as “disp
uting.” For instance, some people hold the belief that “I am the only really dependable person I know” or “I am destined to be always alone in this world.” In therapy, the individual is encouraged to search their personal history to find rationalizations for these belief systems. Someone who has been through the break-up of several relationships may have the delusion that it is their “destiny to be alone” or that they are somehow “unlovable.” REBT encourages people to allow for the pain of loss or loneliness, and to logically evaluate factors that led to the loss; but discourages the practice of believing that one or two instances mean that something will always happen, and therefore being happy is impossible.
One of the difficulties inherent in irrational thinking is that it tends to perpetuate itself, because in thinking, for instance, “nothing good ever happens to me,” there is little or no motivation to seek opportunities where good things might happen. The irrational thinker sees the possibilities of having a good experience as so unlikely that he gives up searching for them. It also makes him blind to the good things that do happen. Many people express the self-perpetuating belief: “Yes, I have tried, and I know that good things never happen,” which rationalizes and reinforces their belief system.
Irrational thinking is “black and white;” it stops an individual from recognizing the full spectrum of possible experiences. If a faulty belief system leads us to always interpret situations negatively, then it prevents the possibility of alternate positive experiences. Though it often appears that “seeing is believing,” the reality is that what we believe is what we see.
"The best years of your life are the ones in which you decide your problems are your own… You realize that you control your own destiny."
Albert Ellis
If someone has been unlucky in love they may feel sad and rejected. However, there is a difference between feeling these emotions and allowing them to become a belief system.
Constructivist theory
REBT is a constructivist theory, suggesting that although our preferences are influenced by our upbringing and culture, we construct our own beliefs and reality. As a therapy, it attempts to reveal people’s inflexible and absolutist thoughts, feelings, and actions; and helps them see how they are choosing to “disturb themselves,” as Ellis puts it. It suggests how to think of and choose healthier pathways; and how to internalize and habituate new, more beneficial beliefs. In so doing, the therapist becomes obsolete—once the client grasps the idea of becoming self-aware in decision-making, and choosing deliberately (and often differently), the therapist is no longer needed.
REBT identifies the patterns of irrational thinking that lead to unhealthy and entrenched beliefs, and describes how to challenge them.
An active therapy
Albert Ellis’s theories challenged the slow-moving methodology of psychoanalysis and created the first form of cognitive behavioral therapy, an approach that is popular today. He was an active and directive therapist and in place of long-term, passive psychoanalysis, he put the work and power squarely in the hands of the client—an approach that prefigured Carl Rogers. He also emphasized that theorizing was not enough—“you have to back it up with action, action, action,” he said. REBT became one of the most popular therapies of the 1970s and 80s, and was highly influential on the work of Aaron Beck, who described Ellis as an “explorer, revolutionary, therapist, theorist, and teacher.”
ALBERT ELLIS
Albert Ellis was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His father was often away on business and his mother suffered from bipolar disease; Ellis frequently took care of his three younger siblings. Ellis began a career in business and then became an author, before his writing on sexuality led him to start studying clinical psychology at Columbia University in 1942. Initially, Ellis practiced psychoanalysis and was influenced by Sigmund Freud, Albert Adler, and Erich Fromm. However, his Rational Therapy broke away from psychoanalytic theory and is considered to have led the shift toward cognitive behavioral therapy. He is recognized as one of the most influential psychologists in the US. He wrote more than 70 books, continuing to write and teach until his death at the age of 93.
Key works
1957 How to Live with a Neurotic
1961 A Guide to Rational Living
1962 Reason and Emotion in Psychotherapy
1998 Optimal Aging
See also: Alfred Adler • Karen Horney • Erich Fromm • Carl Rogers • Aaron Beck • Martin Seligman
IN CONTEXT
APPROACH
Family therapy
BEFORE
1942 Carl Rogers publishes Counseling and Psychotherapy, emphasizing the role of respect and a nonjudgmental approach in mental health treatment.
AFTER
1953 US psychiatrist Harry Stack Sullivan publishes The Interpersonal Theory of Psychiatry, which states that people are products of their environment.
1965 Argentinian-born psychiatrist Salvador Minuchin brings family therapy to prominence at the Philadelphia Child Guidance Clinic.
1980 Italian psychiatrist Mara Selvini Palazzoli and her colleagues publish articles about their “Milan systems” approach to family therapy.
The role that a person assumes in their “family of origin” (the family they grew up in) tends to be the seed from which the adult will grow. American psychologist Virginia Satir recognized the importance that the original family plays in shaping personality, and looked at differences between a healthy, functioning family and one that was dysfunctional. She was especially interested in the roles that people tend to adopt in order to compensate when healthy dynamics are lacking between family members.
A healthy family life involves open and reciprocated displays of affection, and expressions of positive regard and love for one another. More than any previous therapist, Satir emphasized the power that compassionate, nurturing relationships have in developing well-adjusted psyches.
"By knowing how to heal the family, I know how to heal the world."
Virginia Satir
Role playing
When family members lack the ability to openly express emotion and affection, Satir suggested that personality “roles” tend to emerge in place of authentic identities. She noted five commonly played roles that individual family members are likely to adopt, especially in times of stress. These are: the family member who constantly finds fault and criticizes (“the blamer”); the non-affectionate intellectual (“the computer”); the person who stirs things up in order to shift the focus away from emotional issues (“the distractor”); the apologetic people-pleaser (“the placator”); and the open, honest, and direct communicator (“the leveler”).
Only levelers maintain a healthy, congruent position, with their inner feelings matching their communications with the rest of the family. Others adopt their various roles because low self-esteem makes them afraid to show or share their true feelings. Placators are afraid of disapproval; blamers attack others to hide feelings of unworthiness; computers rely on their intellect to stop them acknowledging their feelings; and distracters—often the youngest in the family—believe they will only be loved if they are seen as cute and harmless.
These adopted roles may allow the family to function, but they can overwhelm each individual’s ability to be his or her authentic self. Satir believed that in order to cast aside these false identities, whether as children or as adults, we must accept self-worth as a birthright. Only then will it be possible to start moving toward a truly fulfilling existence. This begins with a commitment to straightforward, open, and honest communication.
The need for basi
c, positive, emotional connections lies at the root of Satir’s pioneering work. She believed that love and acceptance are the most potent healing forces for any dysfunctional family. By fostering close, compassionate relationships with her patients, she mimicked the dynamic she was encouraging them to adopt.
Five distinct personality roles, according to Satir, are commonly played out by individual family members in order to cover up difficult emotional issues.
VIRGINIA SATIR
Virginia Satir was born on a farm in Wisconsin, and is said to have decided she wanted to be a “detective of people’s parents” at the age of six. Losing her hearing for two years due to an illness helped to make her acutely observant of nonverbal communication, and gave her a sensitive insight into human behavior. Her father was an alcoholic, and she was well aware of the dynamics of caretaking, blaming, and pleasing that went on around her during her own childhood.
Satir trained as a teacher, but her interest in problems of self-esteem in children led her to take a master’s degree in social work. She set up the first formal family therapy training program in the US and the “Satir Model” is still hugely influential in personal and organizational psychology.
