rational emotive behavior therapy

n. (REBT) A therapy in which it is assumed that thoughts, emotions, and behavior are aspects of an integrated system such that influencing one affects the others. It was a development of rational emotive therapy (RET), which placed more emphasis on the behavioral aspects of therapy than did the original RET. Both RET and REBT focus on recognizing automatic thoughts, which are often irrational, negative, and self-defeating, and altering them as a basic approach to therapy.