ears through examination of his thoughts. For example, when he was five years old, a girl he liked very much moved away with her family, leaving him feeling very depressed. However, he conquered his depression with a series of coping statements, saying to himself statements such as, "There will always be other girls and I can always have a good time with them." He was still doing this when, at 19 years of age, he dealt with fears of rejection using self-statements to help him initiate conversation with women at the Bronx Botanical Garden.
According to Weiner (1988), the second defining moment in Ellis' life was The Great Depression. Prior to the Depression, while still in junior high school, Ellis had plans, great plans of going to college, studying finance and even becoming a famous novelist. However, the practical realities of living during "hard times" led him to eventually get a degree in business and take a job as a manager for a novelty firm. He still wrote in his off hours, but he could get nothing published. It was at this point that Ellis had to face the fact that writing fiction was not his forte, and so he turned to writing non-fiction, specializing in sexual themes. During this same time, he noticed that because of his expertise, his friends often asked him questions about their sexual/love life and he enjoyed talking matters over with them. This was when he realized that not only did he like counseling others, he was good at it. He made the decision to study clinical psychology at Columbia University, eventually receiving a doctoral degree in 1947.
Weiner (1988) notes that it was really disenchantment with psychoanalysis that led Ellis to eschew the aloof, non-directive approach to therapy and embrace a more active role, offering advice and interpretations to clients, sharing with them the same keen logic and thoughtfulness that he had been using on himself since childhood. Noticing that this approach seemed to inc...