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This is a special issue of the Journal of Cognitive and Behavioral Psychotherapies (JCBP), in the honor of the celebration of 100 years since the birth of Albert Ellis. Albert Ellis is the founder of Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT), the original foundational approach of what is today called Cognitive-Behavior Therapy (CBT).
Albert Ellis laid the foundation of REBT (and thus CBT) in the mid 1950s (as Rational Therapy/RT), thus starting a cognitive revolution in clinical psychology/psychotherapy, paralleling the cognitive revolution in psychology (with more or less bidirectional influences). Indeed, historically, what we today call CBT was born as RT! At that time, Albert Ellis and CBT were under severe dismissing attitudes from psychoanalysis and behaviorism, which dominated the academic and clinical settings. However, despite these adversities, Albert Ellis continued his work in developing and promoting CBT (e.g., Rational Therapy has evolved into Rational-Emotive Therapy/RET) and even integrated behavioral theories and techniques into the new cognitive approach (thus, the cognitive paradigm became the cognitive-behavioral paradigm and Rational-Emotive Therapy became Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy/REBT). It was really a work that could be seen under the motto: Per Aspera Ad Astra! Many other CBT pioneers (e.g., Aaron T. Beck, Arnold Lazarus, Michael Mahoney, Donald Meichenbaum etc.) joined this effort of Albert Ellis, working together and/or independently.
The first CBT conference...