The Academy of ​Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy
What is REBT?
Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT) is a problem-focused, solution-oriented, evidence-based approach to addressing self-defeating emotional and behavioral responses to various problems. It is the original form of cognitive behavior therapy, developed by Albert Ellis in 1955 and refined during his sixty-year career as a practising psychologist.
This system of ideas helps people manage their reactions to adversity in their personal and professional lives. REBT aims to train individuals in flexible, non-extreme ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving so they respond to life’s challenges in healthy and creative ways. REBT emphasizes scientific thinking to optimize effective responses, thereby enabling people to change what is possible and to find some happiness even when negative circumstances are unchangeable.
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Aims of The Academy of REBT
- To promote excellence in training professionals and paraprofessionals in REBT
- To train Academy-certified therapists to supervise others in REBT
- To provide ongoing supervision of Academy-certified therapists
- To create and maintain a directory of Academy-certified REBT professionals and a directory of Academy-certified REBT supervisors
- To provide Masterclasses in the implementation of REBT for professional and public audiences
Who are the Trainers?
Windy Dryden, Ph.D.
Windy Dryden, PhD, is a co-founder of the Academy of REBT and Emeritus Professor of Psychotherapeutic Studies at Goldsmiths University of London. He has almost 50 years’ experience as an REBT practitioner, trainer, supervisor and writer. He is a Fellow of the Albert Ellis Institute, where he served as a core training faculty member for many years. He has authored or edited 118 books on REBT. He also edited the Journal of Rational- Emotive and Cognitive Behavior Therapy from 2002 to 2012.
Walter J. Matweychuk, Ph.D.
Walter J. Matweychuk, Ph.D., is a co-founder of the Academy of REBT, a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania Health System, and a psychotherapist in New York City. He has 37 years of experience with REBT as a practitioner, trainer, supervisor, and author. He is a Fellow of the Albert Ellis Institute and an adjunct professor at New York University. Dr. Matweychuk also served as a subject-matter expert on mental fitness and endurance for a U.S. Navy project.
Publications
Practical Ideas and Strategies for Helping
Your Clients to Achieve Their Goals
Emotional Responsibility
Help your clients acknowledge that adversity occurs and that they can choose a healthy response to it. Encourage them to focus on what they can change and accept the unchangeable.
Unconditional Person-Acceptance
Encourage your clients to evaluate behavior, but not people. Show them how to unconditionally accept themselves and others, flaws and all.
Uncertainty Tolerance
Aim to help your clients acknowledge that only probability, not certainty, exists. Encourage them to take calculated risks, avoid foolhardy ones, and do what is best in the long run.
Long-Term Hedonism
Show your clients that frustration and discomfort are difficult to withstand, but not unbearable. Inspire them to tolerate the required effort to achieve their goals and accept that the easy path often fails.
Self-Reliance
Encourage your clients to think independently, make their own choices, and be responsible for the outcomes.
Vitally Absorbing Interests
Help your clients cultivate and sustain engaging interests and fulfilling commitments to lead a meaningful life.
Unconditional Life-Acceptance
Help your clients accept that perfection and utopias do not exist. Facilitate their adoption of realistic attitudes toward life’s adversities and encourage them to act on them.
Strong Desires, Not Rigid Attitudes
Encourage your clients to maintain their desire for excellence, success, control, respect, love, and approval, but not to view these as necessities for happiness.
The History of REBT
Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT) is one of the earliest forms of cognitive-behavioral therapy and remains a foundational influence in modern psychotherapy. It was developed in the mid-20th century by American psychologist Albert Ellis, whose innovative ideas challenged the dominant psychoanalytic approaches of his time and helped reshape the direction of clinical psychology.
REBT was formally introduced in 1955 by Albert Ellis. Trained initially in psychoanalysis, Ellis grew dissatisfied with the slow pace and limited effectiveness he observed in traditional Freudian therapy. He found that clients often gained insight into their childhood experiences yet showed little meaningful change in their emotional well-being. Seeking a more active and practical method, Ellis began to develop an approach focused on present thinking patterns rather than unconscious conflicts.
Learn MoreREBT as a Philosophy of Life
REBT is an action-oriented, philosophy-based psychotherapy that goes beyond being an evidence-based, unique form of CBT therapy. It suggests an orientation to life to promote emotional well-being, resilience, happiness, satisfying relationships, and a sense of purpose. As a philosophy of life, REBT encourages you to incorporate these elements into your daily life.
- Self-interest & Social interest
- Acceptance of Others
- Healthy Sense of Humor
- Self-Acceptance
- Self-reliance & Independent thought
- Emotional Responsibility
- Having a Mission in Life
- Self-Discipline
- Frustration Tolerance & Adaptability
- Acceptance of Adversity & Death
- Scientific Thinking
- Calculated Risk taking
How is REBT different from CBT?
Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy
REBT targets deeper-level cognitions, called basic attitudes, from the outset of therapy. While generic CBT approaches will emphasize the importance of inferences, automatic thoughts, and cognitive distortions in emotional disturbance, REBT argues these are insufficient to mediate dysfunctional emotional and behavioral reactions. REBT theory holds that negative automatic thoughts require underlying rigid and extreme attitudes to produce self- defeating emotional and behavioral reactions. By targeting these underlying, disturbance-producing, rigid, and extreme, deeper-level attitudes, clients can have healthy, self-helping emotional and behavioral reactions to adversity. Profound emotional change can be achieved by targeting these anti-empirical, rigid, and extreme attitudes, which enable emotions that motivate practical, creative, and persistent problem-solving and lead to changes in one’s circumstances.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is a broad term for a therapeutic approach that focuses on the connection between thoughts, feelings, and behavior. REBT is a specific form of cognitive-behavioral therapy and is among the first of several second-wave cognitive-behavior therapies. It was developed in 1955 by Dr. Albert Ellis, an American psychologist, who integrated ideas from ancient and modern philosophy, behavior therapy, and general semantics to create his problem-focused, solution-oriented, evidence-based therapy for addressing self-defeating emotional and behavioral reactions to various issues. Some elements of REBT seem to have been adopted and renamed by other CBT methods, often without acknowledgment of their similarity to concepts and strategies that have been part of REBT since its inception.
Applications of Rational Emotive
Behavior Therapy
REBT is a transdiagnostic cognitive-behavioral therapy developed by Albert Ellis in 1955 and refined over his 60-year clinical career. It applies to a wide range of diagnosed emotional, behavioral, and personality disorders, as well as psychotic disorders, when individuals are stabilized by antipsychotic medications. Ellis, an active practitioner, is believed to have accumulated 180,000 hours of face-to-face client contact, leading to a highly practical form of psychotherapy. REBT can address various issues in adults, adolescents, children, families, and couples.
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