The Doctor Is In for Therapy--at $5 a Workshop
Though people gather at this Upper East Side address every Friday evening, this is no after work “happy hour” ritual.
Friday nights are reserved for open therapy workshops at the Institute for Rational Emotive Therapy, when anyone with $5 and a problem to share can walk into the gray stone building on East 65th Street and Park Avenue. There, one can observe or participate in, if he or she is brave enough, a live demonstration of rational-emotive psychotherapy from the 80-year-old founding father of the technique: Dr. Albert Ellis.
The $5 cover charge pays for post-therapy cookies and coffee.
The institute, which maintains a staff of 24 therapists, opened in 1961; Ellis initiated the Friday evening program four years later, in 1965.
In developing RET, Ellis said he used the ideas of philosophers like Epictetus and Spinoza, both of whom concluded that “events themselves” do not determine people’s lives, but rather that “the perception of events” shapes their emotions.
His concept “spawned a whole new religion in the world of psychotherapy,” with Ellis at the pulpit expounding upon the merits of a new kind of therapy that focuses on short-term actions people can take to change their attitudes, said Barry Lubetkin, Ph.D., a psychotherapist.
This evening, however, the doctor is out. Ellis’ surrogate is Dr. Dominic DiMattia, associate director of the institute.
Christina is the first volunteer for the workshop with DiMattia.
In a low voice, she speaks of how she has been “in school” her entire life, either earning one of her five university degrees, including a Ph.D. in medieval Renaissance history, or teaching, as she has for the last 15 years at Columbia University.
Christina also describes how a 17-year relationship with a man ended suddenly--after she had subsidized his entire college education. After the breakup, she quit her job and moved to Queens, leaving her Manhattan apartment to her ex-lover.
Reaching for a tissue from the box in front of her, Christina wept quietly, telling DiMattia, “I can’t take care of myself.”
DiMattia goes to work. Through a combination of encouragement and Socratic method, he elicits information about what makes Christina feel good, which turns out to be her fiction writing. But, she adds, her ex-lover said her writing “would never amount to anything.”
DiMattia responds: “And you believed him? It’s your own interpretation and evaluation that has changed.” He chips away at Christina’s “awfulizing,” or dwelling on negative aspects of the past.
“Accept your humanness and move on! If you can learn to be self-destructive, then you can unlearn it,” DiMattia exhorts.
Christina says that she has tried psychoanalysis to get over her depression. DiMattia seizes the chance to hammer home a common belief of RET practitioners: that psychoanalysis is overrated. “I don’t want to knock psychoanalysis, but when you spend your time analyzing the past, it only reminds you of bad memories,” he says.
Dr. Gerry Lanoil, a psychoanalyst, said that in recent years, some therapists have become prejudiced against psychoanalysis. Increasingly, he said, more emphasis has been placed on short-term, action-oriented therapy. But “there is room for both, because the goals are different,” he said.
Leah, an audience member on Friday night, said that she has gone to the institute for the last seven years, volunteering for the open workshop three times. RET “makes you do the ABCs of what troubles you,” she said.
But Leah also had some criticism of the institute: “They will try to avoid dealing with childhood and go on about the short processes, but I believe you should talk about your childhood too.”
Leah added: “I try to take from it (RET) what I can, but I don’t believe in it completely.”
Back at the institute after giving a lecture in Chicago, Ellis sprawled out in a recliner with his shoes off and grumpily answered a question about mental health in the city. “New York City is a rotten place for therapy!” he says.
Why?
“Because there are so many analysts!”