Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy...

has several leaders who, some who have actually initiated its practice and others who have advanced
it. Here is a partial listing of the current leaders in the field:

Albert Ellis, Ph.D.

"There is virtually nothing in which I delight more," says Albert Ellis, "than
throwing myself into a good and difficult problem." Rational emotive
behavior therapy is a direct and efficient problem-solving method, well
suited to Ellis' personality. His self-assurance -- some would even say
arrogance -- enables him to confront his clients about their beliefs and tell
them what is rational and what isn't. The success of his clinical practice,
his training institute, and his books testify that his methods work for many
and that he is one of America's most influential therapists.
Ellis was born in Pittsburgh in 1913 and raised in New York City. He made
the best of a difficult childhood by using his head and becoming, in his
words, "a stubborn and pronounced problem-solver." A serious kidney
disorder turned his attention from sports to books, and the strife in his
family (his parents were divorced when he was 12) led him to work at
understanding others.
In junior high school Ellis set his sights on becoming the Great American Novelist. He planned to study
accounting in high school and college, make enough money to retire at 30, and write without the pressure
of financial need. The Great Depression put an end to his vision, but he made it through college in 1934
with a degree in business administration from the City University of New York. His first venture in the
business world was a pants-matching business he started with his brother. They scoured the New York
garment auctions for pants to match their customer's still-usable coats. In 1938, he became the personnel
manager for a gift and novelty firm.
Ellis devoted most of his spare time to writing short stories, plays, novels, comic poetry, essays and
nonfiction books. By the time he was 28, he had finished almost two dozen full-length manuscripts, but
had not been able to get them published. He realized his future did not lie in writing fiction, and turned
exclusively to nonfiction, to promoting what he called the "sex-family revolution."
As he collected more and more materials for a treatise called "The Case for Sexual Liberty," many of his
friends began regarding him as something of an expert on the subject. They often asked for advice, and
Ellis discovered that he liked counseling as well as writing. In 1942 he returned to school, entering the
clinical-psychology program at Columbia. He started a part-time private practice in family and sex
counseling soon after he received his master's degree in 1943.
At the time Columbia awarded him a doctorate in 1947 Ellis had come to believe that psychoanalysis was
the deepest and most effective form of therapy. He decided to undertake a training analysis, and "become
an outstanding psychoanalyst the next few years." The psychoanalytic institutes refused to take trainees
without M.D.s, but he found an analyst with the Karen Horney group who agreed to work with him. Ellis
completed a full analysis and began to practice classical psychoanalysis under his teacher's direction.
In the late 1940s he taught at Rutgers and New York University, and was the senior clinical psychologist
at the Northern New Jersey Mental Hygiene Clinic. He also became the chief psychologist at the New
Jersey Diagnostic Center and then at the New Jersey Department of Institutions and Agencies.
But Ellis' faith in psychoanalysis was rapidly crumbling. He discovered that when he saw clients only once
a week or even every other week, they progressed as well as when he saw them daily. He took a more
active role, interjecting advice and direct interpretations as he did when he was counseling people with
family or sex problems. His clients seemed to improve more quickly than when he used passive
psychoanalytic procedures. And remembering that before he underwent analysis, he had worked through
many of his own problems by reading and practicing the philosophies or Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius,
Spinoza and Bertrand Russell, he began to teach his clients the principles that had worked for him.
By 1955 Ellis had given up psychoanalysis entirely, and instead was concentrating on changing people's
behavior by confronting them with their irrational beliefs and persuading them to adopt rational ones. This
role was more to Ellis' taste, for he could be more honestly himself. "When I became rational-emotive," he
said, "my own personality processes really began to vibrate."
He published his first book on REBT, How to Live with a Neurotic, in 1957. Two years later he organized
the Institute for Rational Living, where he held workshops to teach his principles to other therapists. The
Art and Science of Love, his first really successful book, appeared in 1960, and he has now published 54
books and over 600 articles on REBT, sex and marriage. He is currently the President of the Institute for
Rational-Emotive Therapy in New York, which offers a full-time training program, and operates a large
psychological clinic.
REBT is a therapy growing in popularity (thousands now practice it), but also a very old one. It owes at
least as much to the Stoic philosopher, Epictetus, as to Sigmund Freud. Yet REBT's origin is not to be
found simply in the logical temperament Ellis shares with a long line of rational philosophers. "The
irrationalities -- even in regard to REBT -- which I have beautifully tolerated for many years of my life
would tend to belie this hypothesis," he says. But he loathes inefficiency and will not tolerate passivity,
and these traits were important forces in REBT's evolution. "I love my work and work at my loving," Ellis
says. "That is the secret of my present unusually happy state."
Maxie C. Maultsby, Jr., M.D.

Dr. Maultsby is an internationally recognized normal peoples psychiatrist. That
means Dr. Maultsby is both an American Psychiatric Board certified psychiatrist
and an expert on psychosomatic learning theory and psychology of normal
people's mental, emotional and physical behaviors.
Dr Maultsby was born in Pensacola, Florida and is the eldest of three siblings. His
mother was a school teacher in an one-room, first-through eighth grade school
located on a turpentine plantation. His father was the plantations master stiller
operating a large two-still operation. For the first seven years of his education,
Maxies mother was his only teacher. He received his bachelors degree from Talladega College and his
medical degree from Case Western Reserve University, College of Medicine. Because Maxie received
academic scholarships to both Talladega and Case Western, his parents used to kid with him: Son,
educating you was the only easy thing about raising you.
After completing his internship at Philadelphia General Hospital, he opened a very busy family practice in
Cocoa, Florida. During his four years there, Dr Maultsby had his first shocking medical surprise: He
could not find anything medically wrong with up to 30 percent of his patients. At first he reacted to that
fact with depressive self-doubt and fear that his medical colleagues would find out and think that he was
incompetent. Fortunately he was honest enough to ignore his fears and get advice about his self-doubts
from an older respected colleague. After hearing Maxies confession the colleague gave him a
reassuring smile and said: Welcome to the real world of family medicine. Stop worrying, you are a well
trained physician, it is just that medical schools do not usually teach us how to manage the worried well
or the sick from worry patients. But they are our patients for all seasons. They experience daily lifes
emotional stress mainly as symptoms and signs of imagined medical disorders. These patients need both
the art and science of medicine. So listen to them and they will tell you their diagnosis. Then advise
them as best you can about their emotionally distressing life events.
Since that time Psychosomatic medical research has revealed that many entirely normal people have a
genetic tendency for their brains to convert prolonged emotional distress into medical symptoms and
psychosomatic diseases. Ideal patient care for such patients is state of art cognitive behavioral medicine
that's based on the psychosomatic learning theory. Dr. Maultsby is one of the genuine pioneers in that
newest of medical specialities.
Dr. Maultsby became an American Board Certified psychiatrist after completing psychiatric residency
training in adult and child psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin Hospitals, Madison, Wisconsin. While
in Wisconsin, he made an in depth study of and research on the psychosomatic findings of Drs. Grace,
Graham and Wolpe and Albert Ellis, Phd.. While professionally standing on the "research" shoulders of
those early pioneering giants in the mental health profession, Dr. Maultsby developed Rational Behavior
Therapy (RBT). RBT is the most comprehensive, short-term, cognitive-behavioral methods of
psychotherapy and counseling that produces long-term results. The book by the same name is
considered a classic in that approach to comprehensive patient care.
After his residency Dr. Maultsbys first academic appointment was at the University of Wisconsin Hospital,
in Madison. There he did pioneering psychosomatic research with Dr, David Graham. Dr. Graham's
research validated the ABC models of human emotions, formulated by Albert Ellis, Ph.D. During the past
25 years Dr. Maultsby has taught and done research at the medical schools of the Universities of
Kentucky, South Carolina and Nevada at Las Vegas. From 1989-95 he was the Chairman of Psychiatry
at the College of Medicine, Howard University, where he still is an active teaching and research professor
of psychiatry.
Dr. Maultsbys contributions in psychiatry are mainly in the field of Cognitive-Behavioral Medicine. He has
written several books and numerous publications, which have been translated into several
languages. During his long and active career Dr. Maultsby has conducted hundreds of workshops for
mental health professionals, corporate executives and of courses for normal, but unhappy and
underachieving people.


David D. Burns, M.D.

David D. Burns, M.D., graduated magna cum laude from Amherst College,
received his M.D. from Stanford University School of Medicine and completed his
psychiatry residency at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. He has
served as Acting Chief of Psychiatry at the Presbyterian / University of
Pennsylvania Medical Center (1988) and Visiting Scholar at the Harvard Medical
School (1998). Dr. Burns is certified by the National Board of Psychiatry and
Neurology.
Dr. Burns is currently Clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral
Sciences at the Stanford University School of Medicine, where he is actively involved in research and
teaching. In both 1998 and 2000, he received the Teacher of the Year award from the class of graduating
residents at Stanford University School of Medicine.
Dr. Burns has received numerous awards, including the A. E. Bennett Award from the Society for
Biological Psychiatry for his research on brain chemistry (1975) and the Distinguished Contribution to
Psychology through the Media Award from the Association of Applied and Preventive Psychology (1995).
In addition to his academic writings, Dr. Burns has written four popular consumer books on mood and
relationship problems. His best-selling book, Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy, has sold over 3
million copies in the U.S. and has been published throughout the world.
Feeling Good is the book most frequently "prescribed" for depressed patients by psychiatrists and
psychologists in the United States and Canada. Surveys indicate that American mental health
professionals rate Feeling Good as the #1 book on depression, out of a list of 1,000 self-help books. Dr.
Burns Feeling Good Handbook was rated #2 on this list.
In 1995, Dr. Burns and his family returned to California. When he is not crunching statistics for his
research at Stanford, he can be found giving lectures to civic and professional groups around the world.


Donald Meichenbaum, Ph.D.

Donald Meichenbaum, Ph.D., a founder of Cognitive Behavioral Modification, was
voted one of the ten most influential psychotherapists of the century by North
American clinicians in a survey reported in the American Psychologist. Dr .
Meichenbaum is Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of Waterloo,
Ontario, Canada, and maintains a private practice as a clinical psychologist.
As an expert in the treatment of PTSD, Dr. Meichenbaum has presented throughout
North and Central America, Israel, Japan, and the former Soviet Union. This
workshop presents the essence of Dr. Meichenbaum's approach to PTSD. As a
clinician and researcher, he has treated all age groups for traumas suffered from
violence, abuse, accidents, and illness.
Dr. Meichenbaum is the author and co-author of numerous books including: A Clinical
Handbook/Practical Therapist Manual for Assessing and Treating Adults with Post Traumatic Stress
Disorder, Stress Inoculation Training, Pain and Behavioral Medicine, and Facilitating Treatment
Adherence . His book, Cognitive Behavior Modification: An Integrative Approach, is considered a classic
in its field. He also serves as the editor of the Plenum Press Series on Stress and Coping.

Donald Meichenbaum
Research Director of The Melissa Institute for Violence Prevention and Treatment of
Victims -- Miami, Florida
Donald Meichenbaum, Ph.D., is one of the founders of Cognitive Behaviour Modification (CBM), and his book
Cognitive Behaviour Modification: An Integrative Approach is considered a classic in the field. He has also
authored Coping with Stress; Stress Inoculation Training; A Clinical Handbook for Assessing and Treating Adults
with Post-traumatic Stress Disorder; co-authored Pain and Behavioral Medicine; and Facilitating Treatment
Adherence: A practitioner's Guidebook; and co-edited Stress Reduction and Prevention and The Unconscious
Reconsidered. He was Associate Editor of Cognitive Therapy and Research from its inception and is on the editorial
board of a dozen journals. He is the editor of the Plenum Press series on Stress and Coping. He is currently Professor
Emeritus, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, and a clinical psychologist in private practice. He was
a recipient of the prestigious Izaak Killiam Fellowship Award administered by Canada Council. This award allowed
him to devote his full time to research. Dr. Meichenbaum is a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.
He is Research Director of The Melissa Institute for Violence Prevention and Treatment of Victims, in Miami,
Florida. The Melissa Institute is designed to bridge the gap between research findings and clinical application and
public policy.
In a survey reported in the American Psychologist, North American clinicians voted Dr. Meichenbaum "one of the
ten most influential psychotherapists of the century". A survey of academic psychologists in Canada indicated that
Dr. Meichenbaum was the most cited psychology researcher at Canadian universities. He has presented workshops
and lectures throughout the United States, Canada, Mexico, Europe, Israel, Japan, the Caribbean, and Russia. He has
consulted widely for adolescent offenders, developmentally delayed, head injured clients, as well as for educational
institutions.