Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy...
has several leaders who, some who have actually initiated its practice and others who have advanced it.  Here is a partial listing of the current leaders in the field:

Albert Ellis, Ph.D.

"There is virtually nothing in which I delight more," says Albert Ellis, "than throwing myself into a good and difficult problem." Rational emotive behavior therapy is a direct and efficient problem-solving method, well suited to Ellis' personality. His self-assurance -- some would even say arrogance -- enables him to confront his clients about their beliefs and tell them what is rational and what isn't. The success of his clinical practice, his training institute, and his books testify that his methods work for many and that he is one of America's most influential therapists.

Ellis was born in Pittsburgh in 1913 and raised in New York City. He made the best of a difficult childhood by using his head and becoming, in his words, "a stubborn and pronounced problem-solver." A serious kidney disorder turned his attention from sports to books, and the strife in his family (his parents were divorced when he was 12) led him to work at understanding others.

In junior high school Ellis set his sights on becoming the Great American Novelist. He planned to study accounting in high school and college, make enough money to retire at 30, and write without the pressure of financial need. The Great Depression put an end to his vision, but he made it through college in 1934 with a degree in business administration from the City University of New York. His first venture in the business world was a pants-matching business he started with his brother. They scoured the New York garment auctions for pants to match their customer's still-usable coats. In 1938, he became the personnel manager for a gift and novelty firm.

Ellis devoted most of his spare time to writing short stories, plays, novels, comic poetry, essays and nonfiction books. By the time he was 28, he had finished almost two dozen full-length manuscripts, but had not been able to get them published. He realized his future did not lie in writing fiction, and turned exclusively to nonfiction, to promoting what he called the "sex-family revolution."

As he collected more and more materials for a treatise called "The Case for Sexual Liberty," many of his friends began regarding him as something of an expert on the subject. They often asked for advice, and Ellis discovered that he liked counseling as well as writing. In 1942 he returned to school, entering the clinical-psychology program at Columbia. He started a part-time private practice in family and sex counseling soon after he received his master's degree in 1943.

At the time Columbia awarded him a doctorate in 1947 Ellis had come to believe that psychoanalysis was the deepest and most effective form of therapy. He decided to undertake a training analysis, and "become an outstanding psychoanalyst the next few years." The psychoanalytic institutes refused to take trainees without M.D.s, but he found an analyst with the Karen Horney group who agreed to work with him. Ellis completed a full analysis and began to practice classical psychoanalysis under his teacher's direction.

In the late 1940s he taught at Rutgers and New York University, and was the senior clinical psychologist at the Northern New Jersey Mental Hygiene Clinic. He also became the chief psychologist at the New Jersey Diagnostic Center and then at the New Jersey Department of Institutions and Agencies.

But Ellis' faith in psychoanalysis was rapidly crumbling. He discovered that when he saw clients only once a week or even every other week, they progressed as well as when he saw them daily. He took a more active role, interjecting advice and direct interpretations as he did when he was counseling people with family or sex problems. His clients seemed to improve more quickly than when he used passive psychoanalytic procedures. And remembering that before he underwent analysis, he had worked through many of his own problems by reading and practicing the philosophies or Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Spinoza and Bertrand Russell, he began to teach his clients the principles that had worked for him.

By 1955 Ellis had given up psychoanalysis entirely, and instead was concentrating on changing people's behavior by confronting them with their irrational beliefs and persuading them to adopt rational ones. This role was more to Ellis' taste, for he could be more honestly himself. "When I became rational-emotive," he said, "my own personality processes really began to vibrate."

He published his first book on REBT, How to Live with a Neurotic, in 1957. Two years later he organized the Institute for Rational Living, where he held workshops to teach his principles to other therapists. The Art and Science of Love, his first really successful book, appeared in 1960, and he has now published 54 books and over 600 articles on REBT, sex and marriage. He is currently the President of the Institute for Rational-Emotive Therapy in New York, which offers a full-time training program, and operates a large psychological clinic.

REBT is a therapy growing in popularity (thousands now practice it), but also a very old one. It owes at least as much to the Stoic philosopher, Epictetus, as to Sigmund Freud. Yet REBT's origin is not to be found simply in the logical temperament Ellis shares with a long line of rational philosophers. "The irrationalities -- even in regard to REBT -- which I have beautifully tolerated for many years of my life would tend to belie this hypothesis," he says. But he loathes inefficiency and will not tolerate passivity, and these traits were important forces in REBT's evolution. "I love my work and work at my loving," Ellis says. "That is the secret of my present unusually happy state."

Maxie C. Maultsby, Jr., M.D.

Dr. Maultsby is an internationally recognized normal people’s psychiatrist.  That means Dr. Maultsby is both an American Psychiatric Board certified psychiatrist and an expert on psychosomatic learning theory and psychology of normal people's mental, emotional and physical behaviors. 

Dr Maultsby was born in Pensacola, Florida and is the eldest of three siblings.  His mother was a  school teacher in an one-room, first-through eighth grade school located on a turpentine plantation.  His father was the plantation’s master  stiller operating a large two-still operation. For the first seven years of his education, Maxie’s mother was his only teacher.  He received his  bachelor’s degree from Talladega College and his medical degree from Case Western Reserve University, College of Medicine.  Because Maxie received academic scholarships to both Talladega and Case Western, his parents used to kid with him: “Son, educating you was the only easy thing about raising you.” 

After completing his internship at Philadelphia General Hospital, he opened a very busy family practice in Cocoa, Florida.  During his four years there, Dr Maultsby had his first shocking medical surprise:  He could not find anything medically wrong with up to 30 percent of  his patients.  At first he reacted to that fact with depressive self-doubt and fear that his medical colleagues would find out and think that he was incompetent.  Fortunately he was honest enough to ignore his fears and get advice about his self-doubts from an older respected colleague.  After hearing  Maxie’s “confession” the colleague gave him a reassuring smile and said:  “Welcome to the real world of family medicine.   Stop worrying, you are a well trained physician, it is just that medical schools do not usually teach us how to manage the “worried well” or “the sick from worry patients”. But they are our patients for all seasons.  They experience daily life’s emotional stress mainly as symptoms and signs of imagined medical disorders. These patients need both the art and science of medicine.  So listen to them and they will tell you their diagnosis.  Then advise them as best you can about their emotionally distressing life events”. 

Since that time Psychosomatic medical research has revealed that many entirely normal people have a genetic tendency for their brains to convert prolonged emotional distress into medical symptoms and psychosomatic diseases.  Ideal patient care for such patients is state of art cognitive behavioral medicine that's based on the psychosomatic learning theory. Dr. Maultsby is one of the genuine pioneers in that newest of medical specialities. 

 Dr. Maultsby became an American Board Certified psychiatrist after completing psychiatric residency training in adult and child psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin Hospitals, Madison, Wisconsin.   While in Wisconsin, he made an in depth study of and research on the psychosomatic findings of  Drs. Grace, Graham and Wolpe and Albert Ellis, Phd..  While professionally standing on the "research" shoulders of those early pioneering giants in the mental health profession, Dr. Maultsby developed Rational Behavior Therapy (RBT).  RBT is the most  comprehensive, short-term, cognitive-behavioral methods of psychotherapy and counseling that produces long-term results.  The book by the same name is considered a classic in that approach to comprehensive patient care. 

After his residency Dr. Maultsby’s first academic appointment was at the University of Wisconsin Hospital, in Madison.  There he did pioneering psychosomatic research with Dr, David Graham. Dr. Graham's research validated the ABC models of human emotions, formulated by Albert Ellis, Ph.D. During the past 25 years Dr. Maultsby has taught and done research at the medical schools of the Universities of Kentucky, South Carolina and Nevada at Las Vegas.  From 1989-95 he was the Chairman of Psychiatry at the College of Medicine, Howard University, where he still is an active teaching and research professor of psychiatry. 

Dr. Maultsby’s contributions in psychiatry are mainly in the field of Cognitive-Behavioral Medicine.  He has written several books and numerous publications, which have been translated into several languages.  During his long and active career Dr. Maultsby has conducted hundreds of workshops for mental health professionals, corporate executives and of courses for normal, but unhappy and underachieving people. 

David D. Burns, M.D.

David D. Burns, M.D., graduated magna cum laude from Amherst College, received his M.D. from Stanford University School of Medicine and completed his psychiatry residency at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. He has served as Acting Chief of Psychiatry at the Presbyterian / University of Pennsylvania Medical Center (1988) and Visiting Scholar at the Harvard Medical School (1998). Dr. Burns is certified by the National Board of Psychiatry and Neurology.

Dr. Burns is currently Clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Stanford University School of Medicine, where he is actively involved in research and teaching. In both 1998 and 2000, he received the Teacher of the Year award from the class of graduating residents at Stanford University School of Medicine.

Dr. Burns has received numerous awards, including the A. E. Bennett Award from the Society for Biological Psychiatry for his research on brain chemistry (1975) and the Distinguished Contribution to Psychology through the Media Award from the Association of Applied and Preventive Psychology (1995).

In addition to his academic writings, Dr. Burns has written four popular consumer books on mood and relationship problems. His best-selling book, Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy, has sold over 3 million copies in the U.S. and has been published throughout the world.

Feeling Good is the book most frequently "prescribed" for depressed patients by psychiatrists and psychologists in the United States and Canada. Surveys indicate that American mental health professionals rate Feeling Good as the #1 book on depression, out of a list of 1,000 self-help books. Dr. Burns’ Feeling Good Handbook was rated #2 on this list.

As an expert in the treatment of PTSD, Dr. Meichenbaum has presented throughout North and Central America, Israel, Japan, and the former Soviet Union.  This workshop presents the essence of Dr. Meichenbaum's approach to PTSD.  As a clinician and researcher, he has treated all age groups for traumas suffered from violence, abuse, accidents, and illness.

Dr. Meichenbaum is the author and co-author of numerous books including: A  Clinical Handbook/Practical Therapist Manual for Assessing and Treating Adults with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Stress Inoculation Training, Pain and Behavioral Medicine, and Facilitating Treatment Adherence .  His book, Cognitive Behavior Modification: An Integrative Approach, is considered a classic in its field.  He also serves as the editor of the Plenum Press Series on Stress and Coping.