Albert Ellis was born on September 27, 1913 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and raised in New York. He was the oldest of the three Ellis children and played the role of their main caregiver due to their parent’s lack of interest in such things. Their father was somewhat nonexistent and although their mother was present in their lives she was much the same. Ellis described his mother as a self absorbed woman with a bipolar effect (Ellis, Abrams, and Abrams, 2012, para. 1). He was a sickly child and developed a serious kidney disorder which led to multiple hospitalizations. These hospitalizations “turned his attention from sports to books” (Ellis Institute, 2014, para. 2) and he found enjoyment through writing. Even with all of Ellis’s health issues, his parents were still very much indifferent towards their children and he continued to care for his siblings until he left to study at the City University of New York.
Ellis had wanted to become a novelist, but the Great Depression changed his plans. He graduated from the university with a degree in business administration in 1934. After graduating, Ellis attempted to become and entrepreneur and started a pants matching business with his brother where they found pants that matched the customer’s coat. He only stayed in the business world for a few more years before trying his hand as a fiction author. He wrote many fictional works, but at the age of 28 with no published manuscripts he decided his talents lay elsewhere. Ellis (1977) chose to switch to nonfiction on sex, love, and marriage which he states “I was interested in and I thought would sell” (para. 25). He researched, read and became somewhat of an expert on the topics to where friends and family started asking for his advic...
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...n impact on the use of self-help as a form of therapy. This allows the patient to achieve better psychological health with less time spent in therapy sessions. He provides the patient with varying worksheets as homework which helps them make larger, longer lasting gains in treatment. Ellis was “one of the very first psychotherapists to employ such assignments within a general psychotherapy practice” (Yankura and Dryden, 1994, p. 133). He has also written a large number of self-help books in his early days as a sex and marriage counselor and throughout his career in psychotherapy up until his death in 2007. Yankura and Dryden (1994) state that he has “written a greater number of self-help books than any other major psychotherapy theorist” (p. 134). The books have made self-help an increasingly popular type of therapy and placed Albert Ellis at the front of the field.
In 2010 author Andre Dubus III had an excerpt published called “My Father Was a Writer”. The author writes about how his father who was a Marine and how life was as a military family. Eventually the stresses of being a Marine took its toll on the relationship between his father and the family. In 1963, the author’s grandfather passed away and not long after his father retired from The Marines and traveled down a new path and was accepted into Iowa Writers’ Workshop. As time went by the father’s life began to change. From hugging and kissing his wife to letting his appearance change from clean cut and shaved to growing his hair and having a mustache. Showing the author and his siblings more attention from sitting with them at night just to tell
Butler, Judith. "Besides Oneself: On the Limits of Sexual Autonomy." Ways Of Readers An Anthology For Writers. Ed. Davis Bartholomae and Anthony Petrosky. 9th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2011. 240-257. Print.
In this memoir, James gives the reader a view into his and his mother's past, and how truly similar they were. Throughout his life, he showed the reader that there were monumental events that impacted his life forever, even if he
The story of Lewis Grizzard began on the twentieth day of October Nineteen Hundred Forty Six in Columbus, Georgia. He was born to an Army soldier, Lewis Grizzard Sr., and a school teacher, Christine; they were later divorced and Lewis and his mother moved to Moreland, a small town near Newnan. Grizzard earned his B.A. in journalism in 1968, after which he went to work for the Atlanta Journal and Constitution as a sports writer. During his college years, at The University of Georgia he “shunned the school newspaper in favor of the independent Athens Daily News”, according to the biography written by his wife (D. Girzzard) . Sorrowfully, the literary world suffered a great loss as Grizzard passed away due to a congenital heart defect in March of Nineteen Ninety-four.
Recently, I saw a movie about female tennis champion – Billie Jean King, and although I have never been into the feminism (neither can I say that I quite understand it), her character woke up some other kind of sensitivity in me. After this – to me significant change – I could not help myself not to notice different approaches of John Steinbeck and Kay Boyle to the similar thematic. They both deal with marital relationships and it was quite interesting to view lives of ordinary married couples through both “male” and “female eyes”. While Steinbeck opens his story describing the Salinas Valley in December metaphorically referring to the Elisa’s character, Boyle jumps directly to Mrs. Ames’s inner world. Although both writers give us pretty clear picture of their characters, Boyle does it with more emotions aiming our feelings immediately, unlike Steinbeck who leaves us more space to think about Elisa Allen.
The author and Wes Moore faced very similar environmental changes and challenges. The differences that resulted these two on opposite ends of the spectrum was their family’s influence upon their decisions. The actions of each Wes Moore’s mothers had a great effect in their lives. The author Wes’s mother, as well as his grandparents, played a key role in his success as an adult. The sacrifices of time and the minimal amount of extra money she made went towards the author and his other siblings which ensured him the best educational environment. Without his mother, Joy, a college graduate herself, who “raised all of her children together, and she worked multiple jobs to send all of her children to private school” Wes could not have aspired to be where he is today (Moore 48). She persisted with him by laying down her expectations for him to excel in ...
When he was fifteen years old, his mother died from appendicitis. From fifteen years of age to his college years, he lived in an all-white neighborhood. From 1914-1917, he shifted from many colleges and academic courses of study as well as he changed his cultural identity growing up. He studied physical education, agriculture, and literature at a total of six colleges and universities from Wisconsin to New York. Although he never completed a degree, his educational pursuits laid the foundation for his writing career.
In individual searches to find themselves, Frank and April Wheeler take on the roles of the people they want to be, but their acting grows out of control when they lose sense of who they are behind the curtains. Their separate quests for identity converge in their wish for a thriving marriage. Initially, they both play roles in their marriage to please the other, so that when their true identities emerge, their marriage crumbles, lacking communication and sentimentality. Modelled after golden people or manly figures, the roles Frank and April take on create friction with who they actually are. Ultimately, to “do something absolutely honest” and “true,” it must be “a thing … done alone” (Yates 327). One need only look inside his or her self to discover his or her genuine identity.
Belkin, Lisa. “The Sex Life.” NYTimes.com The New York Times. 09 Feb. 2011. Web. 01 April 2014.
Griffin strikes all of these aspects in her essay. What is most compelling about the essay, however, is the way Griffin incorporated personal, family, and world history into a chilling story of narrative and autobiography, without ever losing the factual evidence the story provided. The chapter reads like an entire novel, which helps the audience to understand the concepts with a clear and complete view of her history, not needing to read any other part of the book. Two other authors, Richard Rodriguez, and Ralph Ellison, who write about their experiences in life can possibly be better understood as historical texts when viewed through the eyes of Griffin. Rodriguez explores his own educational history in his essay “The Achievement of Desire” and Ralph Ellison depicts his own journeys and personal growth in his essay, “An Extravagance of Laughter”. Both essays, which when seen through Susan Griffin’s perspective, can be reopened and examined from a different historical view, perhaps allowing them to be understood with a more lucid view of history and what it is really about.
Bartholomae, D., & Petrosky, A. (2011). Ways of reading: an anthology for writers (9th ed.). Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's. “Judith Butler; Beside Oneself: On the Limits of Sexual Autonomy.”
Corey, G. (2013). Theory and practice of counseling and psychotherapy (9th Edition). Belmont, CA: Brooks/Cole Publishing.
.... This is where the freedom comes in. If the Therapist were to force something on the client by saying this is what's wrong, and here is how you fix it, they might head in the right direction at first, but not because of their own will. By allowing them to make a conscious effort to help themselves it will mean more and last longer. In reading this book I learned a lot about the way existential therapy works, and how I can go about helping people that come to me for advise. Not only do I understand that people have the freedom to make there own choices, but also now I understand that people have the freedom of responsibility which allows them to change their lives and better themselves.
young lovers, or is this his personal commentary on their union, harking to an inspirational writer
On the other hand Brantenberg’s novel exploits the real worlds views of sexuality and applies them in th...