ABSTRACT
In an important early but sadly neglected paper, Paul Hauck discussed what he called the neurotic agreement in psychotherapy. By this, he referred to the situation where you share your clients' irrational beliefs. Thus, if one of your clients is talking about how horrible it would be to lose their job and you also believe that it would be horrible to lose your job, then it will be difficult for you to do effective REBT with the client on this issue. A clue to the existence of a neurotic agreement in psychotherapy is that your normally skilful practice of REBT breaks down. You may subtly change the subject when your clients discuss material that you find disturbing, or you may be quite tentative when the time comes to dispute your clients' irrational beliefs. Occasionally, when you share your clients' irrational beliefs you may attack them too vigorously.
