Neurosis is “just a high-class word for whining.”

Said Albert Ellis, dead at age 93:

[He] challenged the deliberate, slow-moving methodology of Sigmund Freud, the prevailing psychotherapeutic treatment at the time.

Where the Freudians maintained that a painstaking exploration of childhood experience was critical to understanding neurosis and curing it, Dr. Ellis believed in short-term therapy that called on patients to focus on what was happening in their lives at the moment and to take immediate action to change their behavior....

In 1955, however, when Dr. Ellis introduced his approach, most of the psychological and psychiatric establishment scorned it. His critics said he misunderstood the nature and force of emotions. Classical Freudians also took offense at Dr. Ellis’s critical observations about psychoanalysis and its founder. Dr. Ellis contended that Freud “really knew very little about sex” and that his view of the Oedipus complex, as suggesting a universal law of human disturbance, was “foolish.”

ADDED: Glenn Reynolds links to this post saying:

ALBERT ELLIS HAS DIED. The InstaWife has always been a fan, particularly of his How to Make Yourself Happy and Remarkably Less Disturbable. We could use more of that in the blogosphere sometimes . . . .

Further thoughts from Ann Althouse.

Which struck me as a little weird, because what "further thoughts" have I got here? But then I went to the "InstaWife" post, which was written back in March, and it does refer at some length to a conversation she and I had on Bloggingheads and then, continuing, in written blogging. So I actually do have some "further thoughts" on Albert Ellis, back here in this March post of mine. Just in case you were inclined to curse me out for getting the cheapest Instapundit link ever! And, oddly enough, that March post begins with an exclamation about how convoluted the conversation had become.