When I was a teenager, television offered little encouragement for learning. One weekly show stood out, The David Susskind Show. Broadcast from New York City, it featured thoughtful conversations not only with famous guests but also with some of the most brilliant minds of the time.
By the age of thirteen, I was saying to the world that I wanted to be a psychiatrist. So, one of David Susskind's guests especially fascinated me: Albert Ellis. I listened to his every word. He was the first person I heard speaking to my life aspiration, and he began to shape my understanding of psychotherapy.
Today, the Albert Ellis Institute carries on his legacy. The institute's website outlines his gradual shift from practicing the then-prevalent psychoanalysis to creating his groundbreaking approach, Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy. In the twentieth century, becoming a psychoanalyst required experiencing psychoanalysis as a patient. Fortunately, Ellis embarked on his personal path to self-healing before starting his training as a psychoanalyst, delving into ancient philosophical texts.
While working with his clients, he remembered reading Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, and Spinoza during his youth. He moved away from psychoanalysis and interacted with his clients in a Socratic manner of repeated questioning. This approach involved a rational dialogue, allowing his clients to gradually think, feel, and act based on the lively interchanges with Ellis.
Ellis was a gifted clinician and a prolific writer throughout his five-decade career. He was not a researcher. Aaron Beck was a professor of psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania for more than fifty years. Beck was a clinician, teacher, writer, and, importantly, a researcher. He and his colleagues provided the scientific underpinning to what became Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. Beck also acknowledged a debt to the ancients. The works of Ellis and Beck are the bedrock for modern psychotherapies.
Psychoanalysis never made sense to me. REBT and CBT did, and for decades I had the hope of visiting Athens, cradle to so much of what is good in the West and the home of the great philosophers who inspired Ellis and Beck.
A conversation last year with my teenage granddaughter Elizabeth and my son-in-law Robert inspired a trip to Athens. This summer, my wife Mary Elizabeth, my daughter Sara and family, and I walked the grounds of the Ancient Agora as Socrates had. The ideas of Albert Ellis, heard sixty-five years ago, came full circle as I shared these ancient origins with my family, including Elizabeth and her sister Katherine.
As my family and I sailed the Mediterranean I returned to a book I had read several years ago, The Philosophy of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy by Donald Robertson. I found myself reading it differently as I followed threads of influence through two millennia.
"The origins of modern CBT can be traced...back to the ancient therapeutic practices of Socratic philosophy, especially Greek and Roman Stoicism..."
Near the end of his book, Robertson writes:
"The enormous literary and philosophical value of classical texts, such as the works of Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Arelius, add another dimension to the study of psychotherapy for those drawn to the beauty of thought and expression in ancient literature."
As I write this modest essay, I am thumbing through my copy of The Greatest Empire: A Life of Seneca by Emily Wilson, the now-renowned professor of classical studies at the University of Pennsylvania. The title of Wilson's book is directly from a quote by Seneca.
"The greatest empire is to be emperor of oneself."
Dr. Wilson has gained international recognition. Christopher Nolan acknowledged her translation of The Odyssey as an inspiration for his film adaptation. Could she serve as a muse once again? Lucius Annaeus Seneca, who inspired Ellis, left behind the most extensive collection of ancient philosophical works. Like Ellis, Seneca employed the philosophy crafted by the Athenians to gain self-understanding.
Maybe in the future, Seneca's writings will captivate young minds just as Homer's do today. A film about Seneca's life and philosophy could be as enthralling as Ellis's words were for me.
Comments