Editing Albert Ellis (section)

==Early life==
Ellis was born in [[Pittsburgh]], [[Pennsylvania]], and raised in [[The Bronx]] borough of [[New York City]] from a young age. His paternal grandparents were Jewish immigrants from the [[Russian Empire]],<ref name="Harry Ellis">{{cite web |url=https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:MJPW-SMT |title=United States Census, 1920 |website=[[FamilySearch]] |access-date=2019-03-18 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211126184521/https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:MJPW-SMT |archive-date=November 26, 2021 |url-status=bot: unknown }}</ref> while his maternal grandfather originated from [[Galicia (Eastern Europe)|Galicia, Poland]] in [[Austria-Hungary]]. He was the eldest of three children. Ellis' father, Harry, was a broker, often away from home on business trips, who reportedly showed only a modicum of affection to his children. By his teenage years, his parents [[divorce]]d, and he lived solely with his mother. His father never again played a significant part in his life.<ref name="Albert I Ellis">{{cite web |url=https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:X76N-ZYZ |title=United States Census, 1930 |website=[[FamilySearch]] |access-date=2019-03-18 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221028155257/https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:X76N-ZYZ |archive-date=October 28, 2022 |url-status=bot: unknown }}</ref>

In his autobiography, Ellis characterized his mother, Hattie, as a self-absorbed woman with a [[bipolar disorder]]. At times, according to Ellis, she was a "bustling chatterbox who never listened." She would expound on her strong opinions on most subjects, but rarely provided a factual basis for these views. Like his father, Ellis' mother was emotionally distant from her children. Ellis recounted that she was often sleeping when he left for school and usually not home when he returned. Instead of reporting feeling bitter, he took on the responsibility of caring for his siblings. He purchased an alarm clock with his own money and woke and dressed his younger brother and sister.

When the [[Great Depression]] struck, all three children sought work to assist the family. Ellis was sickly as a child and suffered numerous health problems throughout his youth. At the age of five he was hospitalized with a [[kidney disease]].<ref name="nytimes.com">New York Times: [https://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/25/nyregion/25ellis.html Albert Ellis, Influential Psychotherapist, Dies at 93] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191102042255/https://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/25/nyregion/25ellis.html |date=November 2, 2019 }}</ref> He was also hospitalized with [[tonsillitis]], which led to a severe [[group A streptococcal infection|streptococcal infection]] requiring emergency surgery. He reported that he had eight hospitalizations between the ages of five and seven, one of which lasted nearly a year. His parents provided little emotional support for him during these years, rarely visiting or consoling him. Ellis stated that he learned to confront his adversities as he had "developed a growing indifference to that dereliction".

Ellis committed numerous sexual assaults<ref name="Prometheus Books">{{cite book |last1=Ellis |first1=Albert |title=Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy: It works for me – it can work for you |date=2004 |publisher=Prometheus Books |location=Amherst, NY |isbn=1591021847}}</ref> against women during his teens and early twenties, writing that he became addicted to nonconsensual [[frotteurism]] at  the age of fifteen, and claimed to have had “hundreds of frotteur-incited sex adventures” until his twenties. He reported that he "sought out crowded trains, standing rooms in the back of movie theaters, crowded elevators, and other places where I could rub my midsection against women's backsides and hips and soon get delicious orgasm,” stating that the encounters were “sometimes nonconsenting.”<ref name="Prometheus Books"/> Ellis also wrote, “I am now, when I think about it, guilty about my acts. I have remorse for what I did,” adding that, “I deplore the sin and accept the sinner” but then went on to say “I knew that frotteurism was wrong – that it is sometimes nonconsenting” but “Subway sex was the cheapest and easiest sex I ever had, and I continued it into my twenties . . . . But in some ways it was great: no fuss, no obligations, no time wasted, no having to put up with the inane conversation of most women, no pregnancy, no disease, no boredom.”<ref name="Prometheus Books"/>

Illness was to follow Ellis throughout his life; at age 40 he developed [[diabetes]].<ref name="REBT Interview">psychotherapy.net: [http://www.psychotherapy.net/interview/Albert_Ellis An Interview with Albert Ellis, PhD Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081225020622/http://www.psychotherapy.net/interview/Albert_Ellis |date=December 25, 2008}}</ref>

Ellis had exaggerated fears of speaking in public and during his adolescence, he was extremely shy around women. At age 19, already showing signs of thinking like a cognitive-behavioral therapist, he forced himself to talk to 100 women in the [[Bronx Botanical Gardens]] over a period of a month. Even though he did not get a date, he reported that he desensitized himself to his fear of rejection by women.<ref>{{cite book |title=How To Control Your Anxiety Before It Controls You |first=Albert |last=Ellis |date=August 1, 2000 |publisher=Citadel |isbn=978-0806521367}}</ref>

=== Education and early career ===
Ellis entered the field of [[clinical psychology]] after first earning a Bachelor of Arts degree in business from what was then known as the [[Baruch College|City College of New York Downtown]] in 1934.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.baruch.cuny.edu/magazine/documents/Baruch-Winter07.pdf |title=Baruch College Alumni Magazine |date=November 10, 2022 |access-date=September 1, 2013 |archive-date=November 18, 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171118130600/http://www.baruch.cuny.edu/magazine/documents/Baruch-Winter07.pdf |url-status=live }}</ref> He began a brief career in business, followed by one as a writer. These endeavors took place during the [[Great Depression]] that began in 1929, and Ellis found that business was poor and had no success in publishing his fiction. Finding that he could write non-fiction well, Ellis researched and wrote on [[human sexuality]]. His lay counseling in this subject convinced him to seek a new career in [[clinical psychology]].

In 1942, Ellis began his studies for a PhD in clinical psychology at [[Teachers College, Columbia University]], which trained psychologists mostly in [[psychoanalysis]]. He completed his Master of Arts in clinical psychology from Teachers College in June 1943, and started a part-time private practice while still working on his PhD degree—possibly because there was no licensing of psychologists in New York at that time. Ellis began publishing articles even before receiving his PhD; in 1946 he wrote a critique of many widely used pencil-and-paper [[personality test]]s. He concluded that only the [[Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory]] met the standards of a research-based instrument.

In 1947, he was awarded a PhD in Clinical Psychology at Columbia, and at that time Ellis had come to believe that psychoanalysis was the deepest and most effective form of therapy. Like most psychologists of that time, he was interested in the theories of [[Sigmund Freud]]. He sought additional training in psychoanalysis and then began to practice classical psychoanalysis. Shortly after receiving his PhD in 1947, Ellis began a Jungian analysis and program of supervision with [[Richard Hulbeck]], a leading analyst at the Karen Horney Institute (whose own analyst had been [[Hermann Rorschach]], the developer of the [[Rorschach inkblot test]]). At that time he taught at [[New York University]], [[Rutgers University]], and [[Pittsburg State University]]<ref>{{cite web |url=https://sites.newpaltz.edu/news/2002/04/founder-of-rational-emotive-behavioral-therapy-to-speak-about-coping-with-disasters-at-suny-new-paltz/ |title=Founder of rational emotive behavioral therapy to speak about coping with disasters at SUNY New Paltz – SUNY New Paltz News |website=sites.newpaltz.edu |date=April 8, 2002 |access-date=April 4, 2018}}</ref> and held a couple of leading staff positions. At this time, Ellis' faith in psychoanalysis was gradually crumbling.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.rebt.ws/albertellisbiography.html |title=Albert Ellis Biography by Dr. Mike and Dr. Lidia Abrams |website=rebt.ws |access-date=April 4, 2018}}</ref>