Theories of Counseling meets Morgan Freeman

I have reached a whole new level of nerdiness on this the first day of final exams.

After a very late night of studying and eventual insanity with my roommates, I woke up this morning to finish studying for my first exam: Theories of Counseling.

Whilst I was getting ready for my day, I had a particularly poignant revelation about Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy (which means nothing to most, I'm sure, but it was a big deal to me). I was so excited about the potential of writing an essay on this topic that I was actually beaming as I walked to my exam.

Imagine my complete and total disappointment upon discovering that the essay portion would be covering either feminist or postmodern therapy. Now, don't  get me wrong, I actually have nothing against these models, and I did well on my postmodern explanation, but oh the disappointment.

Then I came to the realization at how nerdy I had truly become: I was upset because my favorite essay question wasn't on the exam. Wow. I had to suppress laughter at myself.

Since I didn't get to share my wondrous epiphany on my exam, though, would you like to hear it?

Allow me to start with the events leading to this morning that contributed greatly to these thoughts.

A few months ago, I watched a portion of the film "Lean on Me", starring Morgan Freeman. While I regrettably was unable to watch the whole thing (it's on my list of things to do), one part that I was able to watch really stood out to me.

In the scene, Principle Joe Clark confronts a drug user at his school by taking him up on the roof and telling him to jump, citing that if he was going to kill himself by smoking crack, he needed to do so "expeditiously". Morgan Freeman says it so much better than I could ever describe; the clip is available on YouTube.

At first, I was absolutely horrified at the thought of an authority figure telling a high school student to jump off the roof. Then I realized the brilliance behind the method.

Fast forward to this past Tuesday, the last day of classes. In Theories of Counseling, we learned about a man named Albert Ellis and his model known as Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy. Now, the main premise of this therapy is to change cognitions in order to positively affect behavior and emotion. The thing to remember for our purposes today, though, is that Ellis wasn't always the most kind and relational purpose. According to Dr. Stone, he was even known to use profanity and to yell at clients. Apparently it worked, though. Ellis usually saw over 80 clients a week.

Do you see where this is going yet? Principle Joe Clark was actually utilizing REBT methods to make his student to see the fallacy of his own drug use. It is a bit extreme, but it worked!

I guess Machiavelli was onto something when he asked if it was better to be feared than loved.

Synthesis of ideas is an amazing thing. I love learning!