Albert Ellis & Mike Abrams 
Personality Theories 
Critical Perspectives

Personality Theories: Critical Perspectives is the groundbreaking, final text written by Albert Ellis, long considered the founder of cognitive behavioral therapies. The book provides students with supporting and contradictory evidence for the development of personality theories through time. Without condemning the founding theorists who came before him, Ellis builds on more than a century of psychological research to re-examine the theories of Freud, Jung, and Adler while taking an equally critical look at modern, research-based theories, including his own.




Features and Benefits:

• Helps students develop the scientific thinking required to evaluate current and forthcoming theories


• Encourages the reader to re-examine preexisting theories


• Provides the missing link between previously disparate disciplines of abnormal and normal personality theories, a feature especially important to students in graduate clinical programs 


• Prepares the upper-level student for the growing trend in clinical programs to link human behavior, personality, and psychopathology to the neurological substrates


• Encourages more focus on relevant theories than on the biographies of those who developed them

Intended Audience:

This enlightening text will provide insight into personality theory for students in courses on personality. It should be required reading for upper-level undergraduate and graduate courses in psychology, counseling, and social work.

Table of Content

Introduction

Ch 1. The Study of Personality: Introduction

Ch 2. Historical Perspectives on Personality

Ch 3. Personality Research

Ch 4. Freud and the Dynamic Unconscious

Ch 5. Psychoanalysis in Theory and Practice

Ch 6. Freud′s Followers

Ch 7. Psychiatric and Medical Models

Ch 8. The Neo-Freudians

Ch 9. Personality and Traits

Ch 10. Behaviorist Views of Personality

Ch 11. Humanistic Views of Personality

Ch 12. Carl Rogers and Humanist Psychotherapy

Ch 13. Early Cognitive Views of Personality

Ch 14. Biology, Genetics, and the Evolution of Personality

Ch 15. Abnormal Personality and Personality Disorders

Ch 16. Albert Ellis and the Rational Emotive Behavioral Theory of Personality

Ch 17. Religious, New Age, and Traditional Approaches to Personality

Biographical Index

Glossary

References

Index

About the Authors

About the author

Lidia Dengelegi Abrams, Ph.D., is the executive director of Resolve Community Counseling Center, Inc., a private, nonprofit mental health agency. She also maintains a private clinical psychology practice and consults for the New Jersey Division of Youth and Family Services, the New Jersey Office of Parental Representation, and the New Jersey Division of Vocational Rehabilitation. Dr. Abrams has co-authored one other book with Dr. Ellis and has published research in the areas of AIDS education and prevention, eating disorders, and comparative psychotherapy efficacy. For several years, she conducted research on health care utilization at Rutgers University’s Institute for Health, Health Care Policy, and Aging Research. She has a master’s degree in psychology from New York University and a Ph.D. in psychology from Temple University. She is a fellow and supervisor of the Albert Ellis Institute. Dr. Abrams has taught at New Jersey City University.