In the mid nineteen fifties the American psychologist Albert Ellis grew dissatisfied with the therapy of his day: years of talking about childhood, with little result. He looked for a foothold and found it in a sentence by Epictetus he had read as a student: people are disturbed not by things, but by the views they take of them. On that he built an entire therapy: if the judgment makes the complaint, then the judgment can be examined and changed. His work, together with that of Aaron Beck, became the basis of cognitive behavioral therapy, today the most researched psychotherapy in the world. Ellis never made a secret of where it came from.
No dramatic moment but a quiet one: a craftsman sees that his tools do not work, and has to choose between continuing as expected or going to look elsewhere.
What his profession expected of him: not his. Where he looked for his answer was. The pleasing thing about this case is the reversal: the sorting you practice here is not only ancient wisdom but tested treatment. Millions of people have received, over recent decades, a therapy that traces back to one line from Nicopolis.
Which tool do you still use because it is expected, while you notice it is not working? And where could you go looking for the answer?
Yours, Not Yours · A Stoic practice ground · All cases