ABSTRACT
In the previous two chapters we attempted to establish a homology between Epictetus and Albert Ellis. However, there were important influences on Ellis from other twentieth-century writers, and these need to be considered in order to put the Stoic influence in perspective. They belong to the discursive formations of the time, rooted in the post-Enlightenment urge to put the world to rights and restore the American Dream through individual or political transformation. Ellis drew on a number of popular intellectual movements: operationalism, General Semantics, the holistic theory of emotion, cognitive psychology, psychoanalysis, and the self-help tradition. The pervasive influence of Stoicism cannot be excluded, especially from the self-help writers. Thus, Dale Carnegie, the best selling author, whose How to Stop Worrying and Start Living was published in 1948, took one of his catchphrases (“Our life is what our thoughts make it”) from the Stoic Marcus Aurelius.
