Seven Principles of Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy

by Windy Dryden

In this book, Professor Dryden outlines seven core principles of Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy. Arguing that effective REBT is based on the development and maintenance of a good working alliance, Professor Dryden states that the REB therapist first needs to encourage the client to assume emotional responsibility and see that their problems are underpinned by a set of rigid and extreme attitudes which need to be changed Professor Dryden emphasizes that effective REBT is also based on an accurate adversity-based assessment of the client’s problems and on goal-setting that acknowledges that it is healthy to experience negative, but non-disturbed emotions about the adversities that feature in the client’s problems. Perhaps the key task of the REB therapist is to promote attitude change as a way to help the client to solve their emotional problems and this given due weight in this book. However, given that REBT is flexible, the therapist needs to be able to promote different forms of change and deal with a range of client issues in therapy, those that reflect, disturbance, dissatisfaction and development.

104 pages, Kindle Edition

Published March 4, 2021

About the author

Windy Dryden is one of the leading practitioners and trainers in the UK in the Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) tradition of psychotherapy. He is best known for his work in Rational-Emotive Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (RECBT), a leading CBT approach. He has been working in the field of counselling and psychotherapy since 1975 and was one of the first people in Britain to be trained in CBT and has trained with Drs. Albert Ellis, Aaron T. Beck, and Arnold Lazarus.

He has published over 200 books and has trained therapists all over the world, in as diverse places as the UK, the USA, South Africa, Turkey, and Israel.

He is Emeritus Professor of Psychotherapeutic Studies at Goldsmiths, University of London.