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NAJP: Looking back over the last 50 years, what hath REBT wrought? What has it done, and what changes has it brought about in the field of therapy and counseling?
AE: In January 1955, when I first started to do REBT, after I figured it out from 1953 through 1955, there were practically no cognitive behavior therapies and the main cognitive therapy was Alfred Adler's therapy, but that had very few behavioral and emotive aspects. So REBT - Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy - was one of the pioneering cognitive behavior therapies, which was followed more than 10 years later, by Aaron Beck's Cognitive and Donald Meichenbaum's Cognitive Behavior Therapy. Since the 1970s, the cognitive behavior therapies have become very popular and many practitioners of psychoanalysis and other therapies often use its methods. So it has revolutionized the field of psychotherapy and it has produced many outcome studies, which shows that it works as well or better than other major forms of therapy. The field of therapy and counseling has changed enormously as a result of Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy and the Cognitive Behavior Therapies that followed it.
NAJP: Could you address the issue of culture and how it often works against success? I am thinking of our fast food, expediency, and immediate gratification culture.
AE: According to REBT, it would be better if people practiced more long range hedonism and less short range hedonism and didn't mainly go for pleasures of the moment but also for the pleasures of the moment that also help them in the future. Our particular culture pushes fast foods, expediency, and immediate gratification. So it encourages short-range hedonism. This is because the economic system under which we work benefits more by short-range hedonism in some ways. Therefore, we could benefit by showing people how not to be hung up on immediate gratification and how to do better today and also in the future.
NAJP: What work still needs to be done in terms of REBT?
AE: REBT can help people to think more rationally, to feel less anxious, depressed, and enraged when they fail and get rejected, and to act more hopefully to get more of what they want and less of what they don't want.
NAJP: What are the...