Logic-based therapy as bibliotherapy

Abstract

Situated within the larger practice of Philosophical Counselling (PC), Elliot D. Cohen’s Logic-based Therapy (LBT) is a logical variant of Albert Ellis’ Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy (REBT), developed as a psychotherapeutic practice in the 1950s. Through the review and use of sound logic, LBT aims to dispel the debilitating and self-defeating emotional and behavioural problems faced by counselees as a result of poor reasoning. It borrows Aristotle’s practical syllogism to distil the counselee’s perspective of a particular situation into a series of premises leading to a practical conclusion. Through thus, it hopes to identify and reveal to the counselee any false premises or invalid arguments that they held. Subsequently, to defeat the 11 Cardinal Fallacies— the most prevalent and pervasive informal logical fallacies— LBT proposes a Guiding Virtue as a counterpart for each Cardinal Fallacy. For the counselee, this virtue is honed through the adoption of an Uplifting Philosophy to guide them. Through LBT’s 6-step framework, counselees should attain a veracious understanding of their life problems and, hopefully, feel better. My paper is a self-help extension of LBT— it elucidates Uplifting Philosophies that readers can learn of and adopt at their own discretion.