Albert Ellis at 85: Personal Reflections

Journal of Rational-Emotive & Cognitive-Behavior TherapyVolume 16, Number 4, Winter 1998

ALBERT ELLIS AT 85:PERSONAL REFLECTIONS

Michael E. BernardCalifornia State University, Long Beach

ABSTRACT: Coinciding with his 85th birthday, Michael Bernard interviewedAlbert Ellis focusing on more personal than professional issues. Topics ad-dressed in the interview include: a) morning mood, b) management of physi-cal ailments, c) spirituality, d) recent pleasant moments, e) mentors, andf) regrets.

MICHAEL BERNARD: As one of numerous REBT practitioners, Ithink I am not alone in saying that REBT continues to help each of usnot only be successful in our professional lives, but to cope with ourown individual personal, bumpy roads. For this, we are indebted toyou.

ALBERT ELLIS: Fine!MICHAEL BERNARD: So how is Albert Ellis generally feeling to-

day? When you wake up in the morning, are you typically up or downor neutral?

ALBERT ELLIS: Well, when I wake up for the first few minutes, Idon't practically feel like rising and shining, nor feel deliriously happy.I feel a little tired and a little groggy from the tiredness. But I neverdelay. I don't use that as an excuse not to get up. Because I could say,"Well, five minutes more or ten minutes more," which I used to doyears ago, when my alarm clock woke me. But then I might take fif-teen minutes more sleep and be late for whatever I had first sched-uled. So I get up right away and within five minutes or so I'm okayand feeling fine. I feel a little tiredness from sleeping and then I getover it right away. But I don't wake up depressed. I may wake up

Address correspondence to Michael E. Bernard, College of Education, California State Univer-sity, Long Beach, 1250 Bellflower Blvd., Long Beach, CA 90840.

213 © 1998 Human Sciences Press, Inc.

214 Journal of Rational-Emotive & Cognitive-Behavior Therapy

concerned about some special thing, like today I have all kinds ofthings: I have clients, I have supervision of our therapists. And then Ihave to catch a plane to give an out of town workshop tomorrow. SoI'm a little more concerned about making sure everything is in order.For example, unluckily our goddamned street has been blocked off fortwo months, so the limousine that picks me up can't park here. So wehave to arrange things differently. I had to remind Ginamarie todaythat they'll pick me up around the corner, at 625 Park Avenue. Socertain mornings I'm more concerned about logistics than other morn-ings. But I'm just about never depressed, and I rarely wake elated. ButI'm in quite good shape after five minutes of getting rid of the tired-ness just by washing my face and dressing. So by the time I get downhere, which is only ten minutes after I got up, I'm fine and sort ofraring to go.

MICHAEL BERNARD: Great. How are you managing the variousailments that go along with being 85?

ALBERT ELLIS: Fairly well. I don't have any serious sequelae ofdiabetes. My eyes have just been checked again. But I have to checkvery regularly with my diabetologist, my ophthalmologist, my ear noseand throat specialist, my orthopedist, and recently my podiatrist, be-cause as I get older I have more minor ailments. Now I think I'll haveto change my blood pressure medicine, because I think it's risingagain. It's not seriously high, but I'll check it in a couple of weeks andsee if I have to get some more powerful blood pressure medication. So Ihave more aches and pains, more slow-downs than before. I can't walkas fast as I used to walk. And my arthritis of the thumb joints is quitepainful and limiting. So my disabilities are mainly from aging, morethan from the diabetes. Because I have taken care of my diabetes. Somy aches are a royal pain in the ass, and my ailments take time andenergy to go to the doctor to check, to do my exercise, to keep to mydiet. So it's a nuisance, but I just do it. So far, as I said, I keep all themajor sequelae of diabetes under control, after over forty years, so I'mdoing quite well.

MICHAEL BERNARD: And the mindset that you have toward yourailments?

ALBERT ELLIS: Again, that they are a pain in the ass. But if I don'tdo the things that take the time and energy to control them, I'll losemore time and energy later, die earlier, or get more dismal results. So Ijust accept that attending to them had damn well better be done. AndI very rarely avoid doing them. I regularly take care of my body.

Michael E. Bernard 215

MICHAEL BERNARD: Have you done any recent thinking in thearea of spirituality?

ALBERT ELLIS: Well, I do a lot of reading and if I ever have thetime I'm going to do a big book on the subject, and I may do an articlesoon if I have the time—mainly showing that practically everybodytoday is using spirituality wrongly. For many years we downplayed it,and I was one of the leaders in showing how it may be pernicious inpsychotherapy. Because spirituality has two different meanings, andone of them is crazy and the other is quite sane. The crazy one is thatthere are spirits, gnomes, fairies, gods, and central forces in the uni-verse—spiritual forces—and if you get in touch with them and kisstheir asses properly, then you get great physical and mental results.And the facts tend to show that supernatural spirits in all probabilitydon't exist. There may be such a thing but there most probably isn't.No evidence whatsoever has ever been forthcoming. ESP studies haveshown consistently that researchers fake their evidence and come upwith specious findings. Many investigators, most of them biased, aresupposedly showing that people who are religious and who pray getbetter, and even that if you pray for others they get better. That's mostquestionable. If you pray for yourself, you might get better becauseyou think you'll get better. Your optimistic Beliefs, as REBT theorizes,might help you change your disturbed negative feelings. So devout be-lief in the most implausible kind of spirits might sometimes help—especially if you are the kind of person who refuses to use more scien-tific forms of therapy. Belief in the Devil could also help disturbedpeople who strongly believe that He or She is on their side. Belief inalmost anything—such as errant superstitions—may lead to goodemotional results.

But devout belief in spirits or supernatural entities has a lot of dis-advantages, such as disillusionment later when the spirits don't actu-ally come to your aid. Many spiritually inclined therapists today areencouraging magical and supernatural "solutions" to emotional prob-lems. But others, like Victor Frankl, are using the term spiritual dif-ferently. They encourage clients to be "spiritual" by getting involved,spiritually, with purposes, with larger goals in life, with humanisticcauses, and with community spirit. They make spirituality synony-mous with going for your own good and the good of your community. Sothat's somewhat confusing, because why call it spiritual? Call it pur-posiveness or, as Alfred Adler did, social interest. That kind of spiritu-ality is what REBT has always endorsed. It's a sort of existential posi-


tion. You choose your goal, value, or purpose to which you devote your-self. You preferably, but not necessarily, pick an individualistic andsocial purpose. What I called, in 1961, a vital absorbing interest. If youpick it and push for it you will tend to lead a better life than if you findit in some kind of spirits out there, who supposedly give it to you.

MICHAEL BERNARD: So you have no belief that there is any formof life beyond our current existence?

ALBERT ELLIS: Well, that has two answers. There may be life onother planets. But as far as we know we humans live for 90 yearsthese days or so and, then, are utterly non-existent. Now our atomsexist, and our goals and purposes may go on after our death, so in asense, we have immortality. But personal immortality, as far as weknow, is illusory. It is invented by people all over the world. Just aboutall cultures tend to have it. Because many people won't face the factthat because you're here, you're here for a limited time, and you'regoing to eventually be dead as a duck. They just won't face that, sothey invent all kinds of afterlives, in which you're sometimes a piece ofsoap, and sometimes you're a god or goddess. But they all tend to holdthat you go on after your physical death and to our knowledge no sin-gle person has ever come back. So my book or my big article will showthat one kind of natural spiritual approach may be very helpful, whileanother kind of supernatural spiritual approach may help some peoplebut has its dangers. It has distinct disadvantages, the biggest oneprobably being that you never really rely on yourself. You usually hold,"I need some other supernatural force, god, or spirit to help me." Andit implies that you can't help yourself, when really you're doing so bybelieving in some kind of outside force. How ironic!

MICHAEL BERNARD: Yes. It's quite self-efficacious. You constructyour own god out of your own imagination. And that helps you to sur-vive difficulty.

ALBERT ELLIS: And so will the Devil if you believe enough in theDevil!

MICHAEL BERNARD: But it's very external, isn't it? It's not reallyefficacious, because even though you're doing it, you're not ascribingthe power of change to yourself.

ALBERT ELLIS: Yes. And it's hypocritical, because you're inventingit and then saying it actually exists. So it has—and when I write atlength about it, I'll show that a belief in spirits has ten or twenty—disadvantages. But today the literature is rife with spiritualism, thepsychological literature. Many articles push it, and some of them arepretty good, because they really stick to the human purposiveness. But


many articles go beyond that and imply or say very strongly there issomething out there that you can miraculously tap into that will helpyou be less disturbed.

MICHAEL BERNARD: Is that all part of people's search for mean-ing in life?

ALBERT ELLIS: Yes, and the search for meaning, as Frankl showsand the existentialists show, is an essential innate tendency to try tolive a good life. But then there is the tendency to invent supernaturalmeaning. You see, you've got two tendencies. Everybody had betterhave a meaning or purpose because he or she will most likely livebetter with one. But the human condition is to invent something be-yond human meaning. Superhuman meaning. So most people inventit. That's why it is so rife, especially when other things are bad—whenwe have wars, terrorism, famine, etc. Then people probably invent itmore.

MICHAEL BERNARD: Do you think they're doing it more today?ALBERT ELLIS: One main reason today is a different one. It's

ironic. But I think that science fiction, which began in the nineteenthcentury, with Jules Verne and other writers, became very popular be-cause it's different and strange. It's fascinating. But now almost everyother movie is science fiction and has some miraculous devil, or god, orsuperhuman entity, in it. So I think that's one of the big reasons whythe questionable kind of spiritualism and supernaturalism is so popu-lar today. People easily become confused about spirituality. They thinkthat Christianity and Judaism don't work well in regard to mentalhealth and that Buddhism has better ideas, which is true probably. It'smore practical and it's closer to REBT. But people often call Buddhismspiritual. Really Buddha, as far as we know, was an atheist and wasn'tspiritual at all in the supernatural sense. But Buddhist groups oftenhave temples and godlike images of Buddha, which I don't think Bud-dha himself would have liked. People also think that the practice ofmeditation and yoga are spiritual, and to some degree they are. Butyou can practice them without any spiritualism or religiosity.

MICHAEL BERNARD: Do you think that's because today commu-nity life has broken down and that the strength of community is muchless than it was years ago?

ALBERT ELLIS: Maybe. In the old days people had a community, aneighborhood. Now, do you even have a neighborhood in cities? Yearsago, they had religious communities. They went to school or churchregularly. And then, they had town meetings and communities to helpfight outside threats and pursue constructive projects. So that may be,


really, one of the big reasons why they go now for more community.But they often add spiritual aspects, which are irrelevant to commu-nity cooperation.

MICHAEL BERNARD: And do you think that with the rising pros-perity and economic security that people are now looking for meaningsbeyond how do I put bread on the table for my family?

ALBERT ELLIS: Yes, but it goes the other way, too. In the old days,you could make a million dollars. Now, today, it's much harder. Andlots of people are just getting by, partly because of our population in-crease. Yet, because you have some degree of economic security, andsocial security, some people may be, therefore, striving for somethingelse. Something in addition.

MICHAEL BERNARD: Do you think people have worse mentalhealth today, or better mental health, than they did fifty years ago?

ALBERT ELLIS: My guess is that they have worse, possibly for ge-netic reasons. In the old days, the principle of survival of the fittestruled. Mentally ill people either died early or didn't marry and havechildren. Now they take psychotropic medication, largely stay out ofthe mental hospital, and relate better to others. So more severely dis-turbed people, psychotics and people with severe personality disorders,may be having children. Then, also, life is harsher. In some respects,it's easier, as we said a few minutes ago, with Social Security, but it'salso harsher in some respects. Partly overpopulation, again, and someother harsh elements.

MICHAEL BERNARD: What are some of the pleasant momentsyou've experienced recently? The things that you take satisfactionfrom and you've said, "I really enjoyed that."?

ALBERT ELLIS: Well, I'm still devoted to a large degree to music,and I listen to quite a bit of it, especially on Sunday or Saturday nightwhen I'm reading or writing. So I still find great enjoyment listeningto it. The recordings today are better than they ever were. I can't hearthem as well with my poor hearing, but they're better. And a lot morematerial is now recorded. In the old days, it was the old standbys—Beethoven's Fifth, etc. Now it goes beyond that. So I get to hear newthings, and that's a great pleasure and it always has been.

Then reading is most enjoyable. Science keeps learning, learning,learning new things all the time. I read lots of journals and someamount of books. And I enjoy it and wish I had more time for it than Ido.

I keep traveling and go to new places, like Taiwan. Janet and I werein Taiwan recently, and it's a different kind of culture. It has its disad-vantages, but it has its advantages and differences.


And I sort of like getting awards. I'm now probably the only psychol-ogist who got the main award from APA, ACA—The American Coun-seling Association—and AABT, not to mention a few others. I got thehigh award of the American Psychopathological Award despite the factthat, years ago, they refused to make me a member of that Associa-tion, because I wasn't that directly into psychopathology. I was moreinto psychotherapy. And most of the members are psychiatrists.

So I like those things. I still like going around to different places—likeI'll go today to Minneapolis briefly—talking to people there, meetingnew people. I don't like the actual traveling. But I always have things todo on the plane, or waiting for it, so I don't waste time. That's good.

I don't have that many close friends, because I haven't had time forthem. But I certainly have people with whom I interact. I have Janetall the time, fortunately. I never have enough time for all my enjoy-ments. So I'm always restricted, by being very busy—which I defi-nitely enjoy. I get a good deal of pleasure in almost everything that Ido, including working with my clients, where I spend so much time. Istill find therapy interesting, after doing it for over 55 years. I'm aproblem-solver, and I like solving people's problems. And if I were nota therapist I would probably be an efficiency expert. Because I liketaking a whole mess of stuff and then putting it in order. I'm just theopposite of the ADD people who get confused and disorganized. I likeputting things in order.

So I lead not an ecstatic life, but a very interesting one. And I'm veryrarely bored. Because when I'm bored, such as at cocktail partieswhere there's much trivial chit-chat, I stay away, leave fast, or stayand seek out an interesting conversation. So I can get bored, but Imanage my life so that very little of it is boring.

MICHAEL BERNARD: If you were going to do it again, would youchoose to be a psychotherapist, a psychologist, or would you pick adifferent area?

ALBERT ELLIS: I probably would pick a different area, because thepractice of psychotherapy today is definitely restrictive, because of theHMO's. And you have to keep making out reports, so there's a lot ofclerical work, which in the old days was much less. So that's a pain inthe ass. And many psychologists have to keep scrounging for clients,and will have to do other kinds of work. Therefore, today if I really hadto start all over again, I would probably push myself into the field ofmusic and really study it and compose all kinds of operas, symphonies,musical comedies, etc.

MICHAEL BERNARD: When you were growing up, did you have amodel, someone whose work and life inspired you to inspire yourself?


ALBERT ELLIS: The answer is to some degree, yes, because fromthe age of about—well, first even earlier I read a great deal and I tookmodels from both fiction and non-fiction. Especially from the age of 12onward, the fiction that I read, which was good deal, was sort of heavyfiction and had social implications. Like the work of H.G. Wells andUpton Sinclair. So, therefore, I think I used as models some of thefictional characters, but also some of the people who wrote literature. Istarted to be absorbed in philosophy at the age of 16. Immanuel Kantwas one of my models for a time. Although I was never enthusiasticabout Karl Marx, I was into other writers on politics, economics, andwomen's lib. So I used some of those people as models, but I don'trecall that I worshipped any of them or anything like that.

MICHAEL BERNARD: What about a mentor or a significant personthat in a certain period of your life was helpful to provide advice, re-solve problems?

ALBERT ELLIS: To a minor degree I had mentors in junior highschool, at the age of 12. I did an essay for one of my teachers, and shewas astounded. I thought it was okay, but she enthusiastically said,"You'd better be a writer." In high school I had a great advisor who wasalso my English teacher who pushed me to do better than I would havedone otherwise. And in college I had one or two professors who wereokay, but none of them unusually good models or anybody I was enrap-tured about. I just used them to some degree.

MICHAEL BERNARD: What about post-college, through the 50's,60's, and 70's, were there people who provided you with support?

ALBERT ELLIS: Again, I began graduate work in 1942. And thensome of the psychologists that I mainly read about—at my school wehad quite a group of good people, Irving Lorge, my advisor PercivalSymonds, and Bruno Klopfer. But I didn't worship any of them. I sawthat they all had flaws and the ones I followed more were people likeSkinner, Hull, Tolman, outside psychologists. I particularly liked Tol-man who made contributions to the field of psychology. So I probablymodeled myself more after these thinkers.

MICHAEL BERNARD: What about in terms of solving problems?You know, in terms of dealing with life's problems. Was there someonewho helped you solve your own problems, or have you always beenself-reliant?

ALBERT ELLIS: Through my life, when I was only five or six, I hada friend who was seven or eight—maybe even a little older—and hewas a good friend and helpful. And then later on I had a few friendswho were a couple of years older and wiser and seemed to be on the


ball. But mainly the people I modeled after were people I didn't reallyknow. They were people I read about, novelists, playwrights, psycholo-gists, writers, philosophers, etc. They were the ones I was really mod-eling after to some degree.

MICHAEL BERNARD: So you've basically been self-reliant in termsof relationship issues, you know, in terms of your own life?

ALBERT ELLIS: Yes. That may have been because I certainlywasn't helped by my mother and father. My father was never around.He was a very bright man, but absent. My mother was around, sort of,but she wasn't that bright, so she never seriously guided me. She justlet me do my thing; so did my father. So they may have encouragedme, maybe, to be on my own. But I think I actually took to it.

MICHAEL BERNARD: Looking back over the years, are there anyregrets that you have?

ALBERT ELLIS: Well, the one big regret is I really think I have anoutstanding talent for composing music. I gave up on learning to playthe piano because I had a lousy teacher who taught me with one handand then was going to switch to two. So I never really tried. I taughtmyself to play a little later, but not proficiently. And I taught myself alittle harmony. But if I had to do it over again, I'd definitely start at anearly age and really study music, because I enjoy it, I do it easily, andI have a talent for it. And I now compose songs, rational humoroussongs and all kinds of songs, but I write the lyrics and don't write themusic. I compose it in my head, but don't write it out.

MICHAEL BERNARD: Is there anything that you would like to donow that you haven't been asked to do or haven't had time to do, likeparachuting out of a plane?

ALBERT ELLIS: I still would like to, if I had the time, even withoutthe musical training, to write an opera, both the words and the music.There are a few things like that that I'll probably never have the timeto do. But if had more time to live, or I couldn't do some of the otherthings I now do, I might throw myself into them. And I once thoughtyears ago, but I never got around to it, of organizing a society for theplaying, recording, and promoting of neglected music. There is muchpopular music which we play over and over which is okay. But there isalso considerably neglected music—classical and semi-classical—which has been lost in the shuffle because it is not pushed. So I'd liketo form a society for neglected music.

MICHAEL BERNARD: Do you have any family members that youcontinue to maintain contact with?

ALBERT ELLIS: Well my main family member that I really was


close to and who was very helpful to me and to the Institute—he wason our board of directors—was my brother, Paul, who was 19 monthsyounger than I and very bright. From the age of 5 or 6 onward, wewere buddies. I didn't see him that much in his later years because helived in New Jersey. But he was my main support. My other closefamily members—mother, father, sister, uncles, aunts—are all de-ceased. My cousins I never was that close to. I have nephews andnieces that I'm a little close to, but they live in other cities and wedon't get together too often.

MICHAEL BERNARD: Thank you.

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Albert Ellis at 85: Personal Reflections