ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Frank Farrelly

Frank Farrelly was a smart man who created a way of thinking about how people behave called "provocative therapy."

This means that he wanted to help people change their behavior and how they feel by challenging them in a really funny and silly way. For example, if someone was feeling really sad, he might say "Oh come on, stop crying like a baby! Whose nose do you need to blow?"

Now, this might sound mean, but in fact it was kind of like a joke. Farrelly believed that sometimes people need a little bit of a shock to break out of their old patterns and start doing things differently.

So instead of getting upset, most people would end up laughing and feeling better after he challenged them in this way. Farrelly was really good at understanding people and helping them change, so many people found his ideas to be very helpful.

Overall, his method was all about making people feel better by helping them see things in a different way and breaking up their old ways of thinking.