Wit & Attitude Quote by Albert Ellis

Ellis is doing something rare for a founder of a therapeutic school: he’s puncturing his own origin myth. The first word that matters is “foolishly.” It’s a confession, but also a calculated jab at the prestige economy that long propped up Freudian psychoanalysis. In one clause he sketches the old hierarchy: “deeper,” “more intensive,” therefore more legitimate. Then he flips it by admitting he bought the hierarchy, invested years in it, and only later recognized the mistake. The sting is that his critique isn’t coming from an outsider; it’s coming from someone who paid full tuition.

The subtext is a cultural one. Mid-century psychoanalysis sold itself as a kind of intellectual luxury good: insight as status, complexity as proof, non-directiveness as sophistication. Ellis is signaling how easily clinicians can confuse a therapy’s aura with its effectiveness. “More directive forms” is a pointed phrase, because “directive” was often treated as crude, even authoritarian. He’s reclaiming it as practical. In Ellis’s universe (and in the therapies he helped pioneer, like REBT), the goal isn’t to excavate symbolic depth forever; it’s to change thinking and behavior now.

Context sharpens the intent: Ellis became a key figure in the cognitive-behavioral turn that challenged the analytic establishment’s dominance. This line reads like a postmortem on an era when therapy could mistake interpretive elegance for results. He’s not just revising his past; he’s warning the field about its recurring weakness: fetishizing “depth” because it flatters both therapist and patient, even when it delays relief.