The Amoralism of Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy

This book is an extensive, detailed critique of two of the central ideas of REBT: (1) The concept of ‘unconditional self-acceptance’; and (2) The idea of life as being fundamentally unfair, and that it should be accepted as such, and never complained about. In the process we also deal with Albert Ellis’s idea that people should never be blamed for anything; that praise and blame are bad; that guilt and shame are to be eliminated, and never taken to be indicators that we’ve done something wrong.Along the way we have a debate with Dr Michael Edelstein about the role of fairness in couple relationships.Part 1 is concerned with the task of distinguishing the concept of good from the concept of evil, so we know what we are looking for.Part 2 explores the concepts of justice and fairness, including defining objective terms for judging fairness in practice.Part 3 looks at what is wrong with the ideas of ‘unconditional positive regard’ and ‘unconditional self-acceptance’; and the importance of teaching morality: in particular the importance of praise and blame, and the moral emotions of guilt and shame.