ABSTRACT

In the 1980s, Dryden wrote of the importance of doing Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy (REBT) in a vivid way. By this, Dryden meant making your interventions memorable so that your clients can readily recall the rational principles you are teaching them. Since REBT is an educational approach to psychotherapy, your clients will be more likely to use rational principles in their lives if they are able to remember them. Vivid methods are effective because they stimulate your clients' imagination and therefore more fully engage their emotions. To ascertain that your clients have understood the meaning, you need to ask them to share their understanding of the points you are trying to make. The same is true when you use vivid interventions, particularly when the rational principle that you are attempting to teach is implicit in the intervention.