ABSTRACT
Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) is a collection of therapies sharing philosophical assumptions and similar techniques. Two therapies that I describe in this chapter are cognitive therapy (CT; A. Beck, 1991; J. S. Beck, 1995), and rational–emotive behavior therapy (REBT; Ellis, 1994; Walen, DiGiuseppe, & Dryden, 1992; Weinrach et al., 1995). Although students of CBT may view the theoretical contributions of CT and REBT researchers and therapists form only a contemporary vantage point, it may surprise them to learn that the development of CBT was influenced by schools of thought that occurred thousands of years ago. In particular, Albert Ellis was a student of Greek stoicism. During the golden age of Greek philosophy, Zeno of Citium proposed that man is a logical creature, and therefore could understand the physical world around him. His ideas emphasized that the root causes of problems for humanity were found within the emotions of man (Zeno’s understandably sexist language), and that to truly understand the world, man must distance himself from his emotions.
