Albert Ellis Dead!

This weeks post has taken me a bit by suprise I recieved news yesterday that Albert Ellis had passed on so I thought I'd do this weeks post early. Albert Ellis is the founder of Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy REBT and it is his work that inspired this Blog and Self Esteem is a Joke.com.

This man has revolutionised the lives of many including my own and his passing is felt in the hearts of many. Thank you DR Ellis for all you have given us!

Please read on and check out http://albert-ellis-friends.net/ if you are interested in learning more about this remarkable man.

Dr. Albert Ellis, 93, Creator of Psychology's Cognitive Revolution, Dies
July 24, 2007

Dr. Albert Ellis, the controversial psychologist who revolutionized the field of psychology when he created Rational Emotive Therapy in 1955, died at home on July 24, 2007. His wife, Debbie Joffe was with him. He was 93. He had been seriously ill for more than a year.

Dr. Ellis was born in Pittsburgh on September 27, 1913, and was raised in New York City. He received his M.A. (1943) and Ph.D. (1947) degrees in clinical psychology from Columbia University. He practiced psychotherapy, marriage and family counseling and sex therapy for over sixty years. He was the founder of Rational Emotive Therapy, the first of the now-popular cognitive therapies. In later years, he called his creation Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy, REBT.

Recognizing the slowness and frequent ineffectiveness of Freudian psychoanalysis, Albert Ellis broke away from it in January 1953, calling himself a rational therapist. He presented REBT to the psychological community in 1955, starting a revolutionary paradigm shift in the way psychology thought about human problems and changing the way psychotherapy is practiced around the world.

REBT is a comprehensive approach to psychological issues and problems that deals with the emotional and behavioral aspects of human disturbance, and places emphasis on how people think. REBT reminds people that they control their own emotional destiny according to whether they think in healthy, rational ways or unhealthy, irrational ways. It teaches people how to forcefully analyze and change their self-defeating thoughts and behaviors. A major aspect of REBT is unconditional acceptance of self, others and life.

His influence extended into areas other than psychology, including education, politics, business and philosophy. He wrote extensively on the problems the world currently faces, such as terrorism and nuclear weapons.

Dr. Ellis received the highest awards from professional societies, including recently the New York State Psychological Association's Lifetime Distinguished Service Award. In a 1982 survey, American and Canadian psychologists rated Albert Ellis as having more influence on psychology than Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung or B.F. Skinner. Psychology Today called him The Prince of Reason. He was also called the greatest humanitarian since Gandhi.

Bullying, violence and murder

welcome to another post today's effort comes once again from wikipedia and sheds light on certain social problems and how they, as previously thought, are not the product of low self esteem.

Some of the most interesting results of recent studies center on the relationships between bullying, violence, and self-esteem. People used to assume that bullies acted violently towards others because they suffered from low self-esteem (although supporters of this position offered no controlled studies to back up this belief).

“	These findings suggest that the low-esteem theory is wrong. But none involves what social psychologists regard as the most convincing form of evidence: controlled laboratory experiments. When we conducted our initial review of the literature, we uncovered no lab studies that probed the link between self-esteem and aggression.	”
—Baumeister, 2001

In contrast to old beliefs, recent research indicates that bullies act the way that they do because they suffer from unearned high self-esteem.

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Violent criminals often describe themselves as superior to others - as special, elite persons who deserve preferential treatment. Many murders and assaults are committed in response to blows to self-esteem such as insults and humiliation. (To be sure, some perpetrators live in settings where insults threaten more than their opinions of themselves. Esteem and respect are linked to status in the social hierarchy, and to put someone down can have tangible and even life-threatening consequences.)

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“	The same conclusion has emerged from studies of other categories of violent people. Street-gang members have been reported to hold favourable opinions of themselves and turn to violence when these estimations are shaken. Playground bullies regard themselves as superior to other children; low self-esteem is found among the victims of bullies, but not among bullies themselves. Violent groups generally have overt belief systems that emphasise their superiority over others.	”
—Baumeister, 2001

The presence of superiority-complexes can be seen both in individual cases, such as the criminals Baumeister studied, and in whole societies, such as Germany under the Nazi régime.

The findings of this research do not take into account that the concept of self-esteem lacks a clear definition and that differing views exist of the precise definition of self-esteem. In his own work, Baumeister often uses a "common use" definition: self-esteem is how you regard yourself (or how you appear to regard yourself) regardless of how this view was cultivated. Other psychologists believe that a "self esteem" that depends on external validation of the self (or other people's approval), such as what seems relevant in the discussion of violent people, is not, in fact, "true" self-esteem. Nathaniel Branden labeled this "pseudo self-esteem", arguing that "true self-esteem" comes from internal sources, such as self responsibility, self sufficiency and the knowledge of one's own competence and capability to deal with obstacles and adversity, regardless of what other people think.

If you enjoyed this check out the resource page at www.selfesteemisajoke.com for more whilst your there why not get your free e-course and learn more about why this insidious social disease must be stopped.