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LOVE IS EXCEPTION MAKING 233
Miss Rand entered the room and sat down, an awed hush fell over
most of the people who were gathered,” remembered the psychologist
Albert Ellis, the founder of rational emotive behavior therapy (REBT).
Ellis’s therapeutic technique was based on rational examination and
understanding of emotions. He proposed a debate with Branden
after hearing about Objectivism from many of his clients. The debate
was a raucous affair, with Rand shouting from the sidelines and the
Objectivist audience clapping for Branden and booing Ellis. Afterward
Ellis was deeply disturbed. A year later he published a slashing attack
on Rand and Branden, Is Objectivism a Religion? Even those friendly to
Objectivism were disconcerted by the NBI lectures. Before their break,
John Hospers sent Rand an unusually frank letter describing his experience:
“I felt as if I were in a strange church where I didn’t belong,
where all the other people were singing the chants they were expected
to and only I did not conform, and where to deny a single thing was
considered heresy. . . . And the attitude of the audience in the lecture
hall shocked me even more. Rational? Good heavens—an Army of the
Faithful, repeating the same incantations and asking questions only
about details or applications, never questioning the tenets of the True
Faith.” 46
But this was as Rand wanted it, she responded angrily to Hospers.
In her letter she exhibited a striking contempt for those who showed
the most interest in her philosophy. “Through all the years that I spent
formulating my philosophical system, I was looking desperately for
‘intelligent agreement’ or at least for ‘intelligent disagreement,’ ” she told
Hospers. “Today, I am not looking for ‘intelligent disagreement’ any longer,
and certainly not from children or amateurs.” In other parts of the
letter she called participants in her classes “weaklings” and denied, predictably,
that she should have any concern for their interests. She argued
that neither she nor Branden should be expected to present themselves
as “uncertain” for the benefi t of her students: “If you think that our certainty
will intimidate the poor little ‘social metaphysicians’ what do you
think our uncertainty would do to them? Would it make them think
independently?” 47 Rand was oblivious to the idea that presenting multiple
sides of an issue might stimulate students to independently measure
and evaluate the validity of each option, thereby exercising their reason
and arriving at their own, individual conclusions.
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