Description: Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy (REBT) can, on first impressions, appear to be simple to practise. Its well-known model of emotional disturbance and change, ABCDE, describes a clear, direct and uncluttered approach to therapy: find a problem at A, discover the individual's rigid beliefs (B) about this problem which, in turn, lead to his or her disturbed emotional reactions at C, dispute (D) these disturbance-creating beliefs in order to develop a new and effective (E) philosophy of living. It is therefore not surprising that some REBT students think that REBT will be a therapy that is easy to absorb and implement. However, the easy progression implied by the model belies the often extremely difficult tasks that the therapist has to execute in each component of the model in order to facilitate this progression. For example, if a client's presenting problem is 'my whole life', the therapist has to help the client translate this amorphous problem into a specific one and then link it to goals that are behavioural, measurable and observable.

This book sets out to demonstrate the complexities of REBT in order to do justice to a system of psychotherapy that is both sophisticated and efficient in tackling emotional disturbance.

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