Showing posts with label Albert Ellis. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Albert Ellis. Show all posts

Thursday, July 26, 2007

Reflection on the passing of Albert Ellis and on psychotherapy schools

Alfred Adler was the first one who split with Freud where I would fault Freud. Adler had the idea that people had a 'will to power' and that could be used in therapy for them to take control of their lives. In Freud: The Mind of the Moralist, Rief points out that Freud's social views, for instance on women, were those of the group that he grew up identifying with. He was not sui generis completely. A recent Article in the Wall Street Journal's weekend addition points out the composer Wagner had a philosophy of 'a complete cultural, musical folk experience.' He emphasized the Power of the Will and was antisemitic. Freud's milieu objected to Wagner. I believe an antagonism toward Wagnerian thinking may have led Freud to overreaction and rivalry with conscious cognition driven therapies which Albert Ellis later came to represent.