Great read, and I never thought about it this way:
“Incidentally, if you’re going to damn yourself as a fundamentally STUPID or INCOMPETENT person, you’ll soon be tied up in philosophical knots. You are the one evaluating things. If you genuinely believe that you are completely STUPID and INCOMPETENT, how can you trust your own evaluation of yourself? Surely you’d be too STUPID and INCOMPETENT to know for sure how STUPID and INCOMPETENT you actually are? It’s an operational self-contradiction.”
A terrific summary of Ellis’s work. It’s a great practical guide to having a less stress filled life. As a chronic worrier - like my mum was - I especially relate to the combo of catastrophic thinking with low frustration tolerance. Having learned alternative more helpful ways to think and act in any situation has been a life changing experience. A good friend of mine called chronic worrying like a departure board in an airport. Just get over one worry when up pops the next one. Sort of related to that. Thx Donald.
What about the aim? Once false judgment is corrected (if it can be), what should reason do next? Is freedom from disturbance the goal, or only the condition for right action? This is where Stoicism goes the step further, where right reason must give rise to right action. Without that , rationality risks becoming maintenance rather than direction.
I wondered what blunt language could possibly have hindered the effectiveness of Ellis’ message and then got to the part about “musterbation” and thought that would do it . Great article . I had been aware of the relationship between CBT and the stoics but hadn’t actually read about its genesis . Was there something specific to Ancient Greece that they had many schools of living philosophy and then it seems to have paused after the death of Marcus Aurelius right up to the enlightenment ?
Presumably Ellis had studied Epicureans, Cynics and Eastern philosophies as well, did he critique them all in terms of their usefulness in CBT ?
Great read, and I never thought about it this way:
“Incidentally, if you’re going to damn yourself as a fundamentally STUPID or INCOMPETENT person, you’ll soon be tied up in philosophical knots. You are the one evaluating things. If you genuinely believe that you are completely STUPID and INCOMPETENT, how can you trust your own evaluation of yourself? Surely you’d be too STUPID and INCOMPETENT to know for sure how STUPID and INCOMPETENT you actually are? It’s an operational self-contradiction.”
A terrific summary of Ellis’s work. It’s a great practical guide to having a less stress filled life. As a chronic worrier - like my mum was - I especially relate to the combo of catastrophic thinking with low frustration tolerance. Having learned alternative more helpful ways to think and act in any situation has been a life changing experience. A good friend of mine called chronic worrying like a departure board in an airport. Just get over one worry when up pops the next one. Sort of related to that. Thx Donald.
What about the aim? Once false judgment is corrected (if it can be), what should reason do next? Is freedom from disturbance the goal, or only the condition for right action? This is where Stoicism goes the step further, where right reason must give rise to right action. Without that , rationality risks becoming maintenance rather than direction.
I wondered what blunt language could possibly have hindered the effectiveness of Ellis’ message and then got to the part about “musterbation” and thought that would do it . Great article . I had been aware of the relationship between CBT and the stoics but hadn’t actually read about its genesis . Was there something specific to Ancient Greece that they had many schools of living philosophy and then it seems to have paused after the death of Marcus Aurelius right up to the enlightenment ?
Presumably Ellis had studied Epicureans, Cynics and Eastern philosophies as well, did he critique them all in terms of their usefulness in CBT ?