ABSTRACT
This chapter provides the exploration of the implicit and explicit uses of the concept of personal responsibility across a number of different counselling and therapeutic approaches. Rational-emotive therapy is much more a theory about how irresponsible thinking is sustained than about how initially it was acquired. People reindoctrinate themselves with irrational thinking and faulty self-statements. Human beings, for good or ill, largely control their own destinies through the innate, acquired and continuously reindoctrinated beliefs they hold or, in ABC terms, what happens at B. People's beliefs can be either rational and functional (rB) or irrational and self-defeating (iB). Characteristics of irrational beliefs include: demandingness, self-rating, awfulizing and attribution errors. Anxiety is viewed as an indicator that coping skills may either need to be developed or implemented. There are a number of points to make about coping through the use of selfinstruction.
