ABSTRACT
Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy (REBT) therapists avoid basing their communications on an authoritarian position. This chapter considers three styles of teaching that are relevant to the practice of REBT: authoritative; laissez-faire; and hypothesizing. Authoritative REBT therapists demonstrate clearly that they know what they are doing. Such therapists need to guard against unwittingly doing a lot of work for the client, as it is easy to do that when you are in an authoritative mode. In laissez-faire teaching, the message the therapist communicates to the client is 'You do all the work and I will encourage you the best I can'. Hypothesizing is similar to that advocated by cognitive therapists in their principle of collaborative empiricism. Here the message is 'Let's work together to discover the answer to your problem'. Therapists must vary their influence base and avoid using the wrong base with clients.
