A Review Of
Albert Ellis, Ph.D.
Feeling Better, Getting Better, Staying Better
Impact Publishers, 2001
By: mine_1, 12/02/02
1. The Book's Overall Content:
This book by Albert Ellis is a self-help book for people who irrational think negatively about situations. In this book Mr. Ellis tries to help the reader get better by helping them to see and understand what they are doing wrong and how they can change their thinking and keep away from irrational thinking. Mr. Ellis tries to do this through some major concepts in his book, they are: 1. REBT, 2. Unconditional Self-Acceptance, 3. Irrational Beliefs, 4. Thinking and Philosophizing Methods, 5. Emotive, Evocative & Experimental Methods, 6. Behavioral & Activity Methods, 7. Realistic, Logical, and Pragmatic Methods, and 8. Experiment.
REBT means Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (chapter one, page 15), and is Ellis' major form of therapy. Ellis uses REBT to try and explain how rational beliefs will lead you to have a happy and healthy lifestyle. One of the major parts of REBT is Unconditional Self-Acceptance (chapter three, page 23). Unconditional Self-Acceptance means excepting yourself, independent of your performances, whether or not you do well or bad or earn the approval of others. Another major part of REBT is Irrational Beliefs (chapter two, pages 18-19), which is demanding that you must do well and be approved by others and if you don't you are an awful person.
Irrational Beliefs are the reason why he talks about Thinking and Philosophizing Methods (chapter four, pages 41 to 52), Emotive, Evocative & Experimental Methods (chapter five, pages53-68) and Behavioral & Activity Methods (chapter 6 pages 69-86). All three topics are ways to avoid or deal with irrational beliefs. The difference between the three is that thinking and philosophizing are broad concepts, while emotive, evocative &experimental methods deal with specific ways to internally (mentally) avoid or deal with irrational beliefs and finally behavioral & activity methods deal with specific external (physical) ways to avoid or deal with irrational beliefs.
The next major topic of this book deals with Realistic, Logical, and Pragmatic Methods (chapter tweleve, pages 197-210). This is linked to irrational beliefs also but in this approach you are weighing beliefs based on facts and realistic, logical thinking. The other methods dealt with avoiding irrational thinking while this approach shows you why you are thinking irrationally and how it affects you. The last topic this book discusses is Ellis' suggestion about experimenting with everything in this book. He says that, while emotive, evocative & experimental methods might not work for you, maybe behavioral & activity methods will. He says that every person is different and what might not work for one person may have a tremendous effect on another.
While all the topics in this book are interesting, I think Ellis did a an exceptionally splendid job at how he structured the book. He started out introducing the basics of his therapy and then he showed you ways you could avoid and deal with the problems. Each chapter built on each other, or they talked about different ways techniques, which you could use to help you start feeling better. I started this book being interested in the ideas and topics in this book but, as the book progressed I found many flaws in Ellis' ideas and found that I disagreed with many of his ideas.
While topics that Ellis discusses in his book are ones that are familiar to everyone. The only thing people would have to learn are the terms that Ellis uses and they would have to understand how to use REBT. I am very sure that Ellis wrote this book to help people through their problems but, I don't think it would be of much use to the general public. This is not a self-help book, instead it is a book that promises to make problems go away and in a majority of the book I think he over simplifies problems.
2. The Book's Importance:
Some of topics that Ellis discusses in this book are: how to use unconditional self-acceptance and he has methods to use to achieve USA on page25-29. Another problem that Ellis takes into account is disturbing yourself more then you need to and to solve this problem offers many plausible techiniques that are talked about through out the book, like meditating, jacobson's progressive relaxation technique, using self-efficacy, using support groups, etc.
The main topic that Ellis discusses in this book is over reacting. He uses many terms for this like catastropic thinking, disturbing yourself, etc. When all it really is, is over reacting to the situation that you are in or having. While I think this is a big problem for society today I think Ellis over simplifies the problem. Over reacting can be anything from road rage to trying to kill yourself. These things cannot be solved overnight or as easily as Ellis makes it seem. While I don't like his ideas about the topic I do think his ideas are important to psychology as a field and to the general public.
It's important because over reacting is a regular problem in everyone's daily life. We do it without knowing and we think it's normal, when it's really not. Take my previous example of road rage. Road rage is a part of everyday life and it shouldn't be. Road rage is caused when someone gets mad at another driver for something as small as "cutting" in front of them in traffic. I myself, used to fall victim to this situation but, I've caught myself and now I try and not over react to something so trivial.
Things like how to handle road rage should be taught in todays' society and it is a very important topic. Psychology majors should have a required course on the topic of over reacting and road rage should be a big topic in that course. Ellis' book does not answer this problem adequately. As a matter of fact it almost confuses me with all of his different terms and techniques.
3. The Book's Structure
I think what would have helped me to understand Ellis's ideas better is if he would have had more diagrams, tests and exercises. While the book does have one diagram ( a REBT self-help form on page 121) that is the only one out of the whole book. Other exercises consist of songs for various self-disturbing situations. Which frankly make me laugh at why I bought this book, rather than make me feel good about myself.
As for the REBT self-help form, it mainly relies on the person's ability to keep up and do the form. You can't trust people do to this on their own. I myself would not stop to do this form when I get into an ugly situation. By know you must be thinking...this girl must be wrong. This book wouldn't have been published if it was so bad! WAIT! There is a reason why people published this book and why so many people bought it. First Albert Ellis is a respected psychologist and second, if you look at the back of the book at the people that gave great reviews they are all Ph.D.'s. They aren't normal people off the street. They are people that know the terminology and ideas offered in this book.
The Index in this book are also very detailed and helpful. If you need to look up a particular term or concept they are all nicely listed alphabetically. Unfortunantly the positive things I have to say about this book are few. For instance, the chapter titles are very complicated and they are repetitive. Instead of inventing new chapter names, I think that he should just condense the chapters.
4. Critique of the Book
The books' overall content is dissapointing to me. But I must admit that there are some parts of the book that I do like. Like when Ellis talks about the ABC's of disturbing yourself. I like the way that he explains to the reader how we must accept the Accept the adversities and know that some are not within our control. Then he explains that our Beliefs our what we have control over and they can either depress us or make us feel better. He then concludes it by explaining the Consequences of our actions. I also like the techniques he suggests to help yourself from disturbing yourself. These techniques range from support groups to using athletics and sports to take up your time.
I like the ABC's idea because it takes people through a step by step process that people can understand. It explains the idea without any fancy words or technical concepts. It's as easy as 1-2-3! As for the techniques that he suggests, it's any particular ones that I favor but rather the large number of techniques that he suggests. He gives such a large amount of suggestions that no matter your personality you will find something you like from one of the techinques.
I would encourage anyone to look at the book and not be derailed from only my opinion. If you would like some other opinions here are some links to some other people who have reviewed the book:
1) http://www.soc.hawaii.edu/LEONJ/459s2002/frankychan/book%20review.htm
2) http://www.soc.hawaii.edu/LEONJ/459s2002/mendoza/bookreview.html
3) http://www.division42.org/MembersArea/Nws_Views/articles/Reviews_Books/feeling_better.html
4) http://www.bibliotherapy.com/reviews/fbgbsb.html
5) http://www.anxietysupport.org/cc19menu.htm
6) http://www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/459s2002/aftershock/bookreview.html
5. Additional Observations
As I said before I would encourage anyone to read this book and not be discouraged by my review of the book. Albert Ellis is a respected therapist and I don't doubt that his techniques are useful in the right controlled enviornment. Thank-you very much for reading my book review.