Influence of E-prime in Psychotherapy
While teaching at the University of Florida, Alfred Korzybski counseled his students to
eliminate the infinitive and verb forms of "to be" from their vocabulary, whereas a second group continued to use "I am," "You are," "They are" statements as usual. For example, instead of saying, "I am depressed," a student was asked to eliminate that emotionally primed verb and to say something else, such as, "I feel depressed when . . .," or "I tend to make myself depressed about . . ."
Korzybski showed measurable improvement "of one full letter grade" in the grades of students in the first group. Although this took place before the invention of E-Prime, it does show the application of general semantics to psychotherapy.
Albert Ellis advocated the use of E-prime, especially in writing, as a way to avoid muddled and blame-based thinking that makes psychotherapy patients distressed. According to Ellis,
REBT has favored E-Prime more than any other form of psychotherapy and I think it is still the only form of therapy that has some of its main books written in E-Prime.
E-prime is used in neuro-linguistic programming as a technique, and the theoretical basis of NLP relies heavily on Korzybski and Bourland's work.
Read more about this topic: E-Prime
Famous quotes containing the words influence of and/or influence:
“We could not well camp higher, for want of fuel; and the trees here seemed so evergreen and sappy, that we almost doubted if they would acknowledge the influence of fire; but fire prevailed at last, and blazed here, too, like a good citizen of the world.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Women stand related to beautiful nature around us, and the enamoured youth mixes their form with moon and stars, with woods and waters, and the pomp of summer. They heal us of awkwardness by their words and looks. We observe their intellectual influence on the most serious student. They refine and clear his mind: teach him to put a pleasing method into what is dry and difficult.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)