On Monday, I jaunted over to Starbucks for some curry chicken salad and parked myself at one of their diminutive tables to hork it. I hadn't really planned on eating there, or I would've brought some reading material. But I'm spontaneous and crazy, as well as easily bored. So I rifled through the castoff newspapers by the door, and found a section of the NY Times, which is where I found the summation of Albert Ellis' life's work in the area of Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy.
Man alive (or recently deceased, I guess), it was like someone had taken some of my long simmering thoughts and beliefs and turned them into a tasty and presentable meal. I'm not ego maniacal enough to claim that I coulda been a towering figure in the world of therapy or anything like that. But it's nice to see that my take on neuroses and such isn't a fringe perspective.
Small gripe to my alma mater: WHY wasn't Albert Ellis mentioned in Psychology 001 for goodness sakes? We spent most of the semester on William James, and then crammed in every other psych-ologist/iatrist since the dawn of the DSM in the final few weeks. Go ahead and argue that Ellis was a behaviorist and shouldn't be lumped into psychology. The behaviorism designation didn't stop my prof from including B.F. Skinner.
Ahem. Anyway, it was crazy to me that it was only upon his demise that I became aware of Albert Ellis. Here I am, thinking I'm all sorts of edumacated about incredibly influential people, and then I find out about him. Shows to go that Socrates was right about knowing that we know nothing, eh?
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