Rational behavior therapy

Rational behavior therapy (RBT) is a form of cognitive behavioral therapy developed by psychiatrist Maxie Clarence Maultsby Jr., a professor at the Medical College at Howard University. RBT is designed to be a short term therapy which is based on discovering an unsuspected problem which creates unwanted mental, emotional and physical behaviors. Rational behavior therapy (RBT) is a form of cognitive behavioral therapy developed by psychiatrist Maxie Clarence Maultsby Jr., a professor at the Medical College at Howard University. RBT is designed to be a short term therapy which is based on discovering an unsuspected problem which creates unwanted mental, emotional and physical behaviors. According to Maultsby, RBT addresses all three groups of learned behaviors directly: the cognitive, the emotive, and the physical. It also involves systematic guidance in the technique of emotional self-help called rational self-counseling. One of the features of rational behavior therapy is that the therapist assigns the client 'therapeutic homework'. Rational behavior therapy is the result of four significant influences in Maultsby's professional life: his experience as a physician, the neuropsychology of Alexander Luria, B. F. Skinner's behavioral learning theory, and Albert Ellis's rational emotive behavior therapy. It was Ellis who had the most significant impact on the development of RBT as a psychotherapy method. However, unlike Ellis's technique, RBT leaves philosophical issues to patients' individual preferences.