Albert Ellis, the groundbreaking and sometimes controversial psychotherapist who invented Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy in the fifties and in a 1982 APA survey was ranking the second most influential psychotherapists of the last hundred years, ahead of Freud, died today at 93. Matt Dobkin profiled Ellis for New York in 2005, when the board of directors of his Albert Ellis Institute had essentially thrown him out. Dobkin found Ellis characteristically pugnacious, fighting for his institute and continuing to see patients and hold his long-running weekly seminars. A state Supreme Court judge reinstated him the next year, and he died this morning in his apartment above the institute.

Behaviorists Behaving Badly [NYM]
Albert Ellis, Who Streamlined Freud, Dies at 93 [NYT]