William Glasser

William Glasser was born on 11 May 1925 in Cleveland, Ohio, and died on 23 August 2013 in Los Angeles. He first studied chemical engineering before turning to psychology and medicine. He earned his medical degree at Case Western Reserve University and completed his psychiatric residency at the Veterans Administration hospital and the University of California, Los Angeles. During this period his mentor G. L. Harrington taught him to call patients to take responsibility for their behavior rather than merely probing their past.

In the 1950s and 1960s Glasser worked at the Ventura School for Girls in California, a facility for delinquent adolescents. His experience there laid the foundation of Reality Therapy, which he set out in detail in Reality Therapy (1965). On this approach, psychological problems largely stem from unsatisfying present relationships, and treatment should focus on present behavior and on planning to improve those relationships. Glasser rejected the notion of mental illness as understood in mainstream psychiatry, as well as the widespread use of medication and conventional diagnoses, and wrote Warning: Psychiatry Can Be Hazardous to Your Mental Health (2003) on the subject.

In 1967 he founded the Institute for Reality Therapy, later known as the William Glasser Institute, which played a role in training counselors and teachers in many countries. In the 1980s, influenced by William Powers' perceptual control theory, he developed Control Theory, later renamed Choice Theory. Its core claim is that human behavior is an internally motivated choice and that unsatisfying relationships are the chief source of unhappiness. He identified five basic needs: survival, love and belonging, power, freedom and fun. In his view, "total behavior" consists of four components: acting, thinking, feeling and physiology. Glasser also contrasted the "deadly habits" of criticizing, blaming and threatening with the "caring habits" of listening and supporting.

In education he wrote Schools Without Failure (1969) and The Quality School (1990), arguing for less coercion, the avoidance of punitive grading and supportive relationships between teachers and students. His other works include Positive Addiction (1976), Control Theory (1984) and Choice Theory (1998). Glasser's ideas have influenced school counseling, family therapy, management and rehabilitation, though some researchers have criticized them for limited empirical support and for oversimplifying psychological problems.