ABSTRACT
Here is how I (WD) respond to such a question. ‘The famous American psychologist Carl Rogers (1957) wrote a seminal paper in the late 1950s on the therapeutic relationship which for many set the standard against which other approaches should be judged. Rogers argued that there were a set of necessary and sufficient “core conditions” that the therapist had to provide, and the client had to perceive the therapist as having provided these conditions, for therapeutic change to occur. Two years later Albert Ellis, the founder of REBT, published a reply in which he acknowledged that these conditions were important and frequently desirable, but they were hardly necessary and sufficient. This has been the REBT position ever since. Thus, REBT therapists do not neglect the therapeutic relationship. However, they do not regard the relationship as the sine qua non of therapeutic change. Some REBT therapists regard the development of a good therapeutic relationship as setting the ground for the “real therapy” to take place, that is, the application of REBT techniques.
