Analysis Of Beck 's Cognitive Therapy

Unlike Person-Centred therapy Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) is a scientific model founded in the 1960’s by Aaron Beck. It joins the theories of both Cognitive therapy and behavioural. He noticed that many of his counselling clients had an “Internal dialogue” (Beck, 1979) that was often negative and self-defeating and influenced behaviour. He realised that by working on these internal dialogues and making them positive it could effectively lead to positive changes in the behaviour of the clients. CBT focuses on the images, self-belief and attitudes held by the client and how these things can affect the client’s

This essay will review the literature on the effectiveness of cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT). Cognitive Behavioural Therapy was developed by Aaron Beck in the early 1960s and originally it was defined as cognitive therapy (CT). According to Beck (1967, 1976) cognitive therapy is a time restricted but structured approach, which is used effectively in treatment of many different mental illnesses. Despite the fact that the literature covers this therapy in a variety of contexts, this paper will mainly focus on applying CBT to depression. Depression can be described as a type of afflicted psychological well being, where the individual lacks confidence in their own worth (DH, 2004). Overall, this paper will review literature which is of

Beck introduced the term “automatic thoughts”, which are a person’s responses towards specific stimuli. When these beliefs are not held in a logical and reasonable way they are considered cognitive distortions, which cause issues in people’s lives and tend to be the reasons why individuals seek counseling. He believes that there we specific cognitive distortions people hold. One of these distortions is arbitrary inference, which is thinking the worst of a situation, without any evidence. Next is selective abstraction, which is only basing your conclusion on one event or one piece of information. There is also overgeneralization, where individuals take one belief or concept and apply it to every situation, no matter the relevance. Another distortion is magnification and minimization of facts, where someone over emphasizes a negative event, or diminishes the positive events. Personalization is a distortion in which one relates all events back to themselves, as if they had control and it was their fault something when wrong. Mislabeling and labeling is the act of an individual having negative views about themselves based on past actions and events. Finally, dichotomous thinking is a distortion Beck views as seeing the world in extremes. A person holds an either-or type of view of the world and sees no middle ground. The goal of cognitive therapy is to recognize these thoughts and rearrange them into positive views, while making logical and rational decisions(Corey,

Cognitive-behavioral therapy was developed by Aaron Beck (Hammen 141). It assumes that the patient's faulty thinking is causing the current depression and focuses on changing the depressed patient's thought patterns and perceptions. The therapist helps the patient identify negative or distorted thought patterns and the emotions and behavior that accompany them, and then retrains the depressed individual to recognize the thinking

Many advocates of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) believe that changing the way one thinks can greatly impact one’s emotional response (Shurick et al., 2012). In his 1985 cognitive theory of anxiety Beck asserted, “that maladaptive thought patterns play a central role in the development and maintenance of anxiety” (Beck, Emery, & Greenberg, 1985, p. 12). In his theory Beck proposes that cognitive change is necessary in the treatment of anxiety disorders, and that this can be achieved directly through cognitive restructuring (Nortje & Möller, 2008). In cognitive restructuring the patient and therapist collaborate to alter core beliefs as well as reappraise and reinterpret stimuli in a less negative way in order to reduce negative affect (Shurick

Automatic thoughts can be neutral, positive, or negative. We all have our own automatic thoughts as we move through our day-to-day lives and interact with others. In regards to individuals with psychological disorders, the cognitive model looks at how negative thoughts influence the individual’s feelings and behaviors (Beck, 1995). From a CBT lens, it is the negative automatic thoughts that an individual has that perpetuate symptoms of psychological disorders, the occurrence of negative mood, uncomfortable physiological responses, and maladaptive or inappropriate behaviors (Beck, 1995). While we all have moments of experiencing negative automatic thoughts, for those with psychological disorders, and more pervasive difficulties in living, negative thoughts are often experienced in situations that are neutral, producing negative feelings that lead to maladaptive behaviors or responses that would not

Before Dr. Aaron T. Beck developed the idea of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), the world of psychoanalysis was concerned with “invisible psychic forces” (Smith, 2009) that to him, a young graduate of medical school “seemed soft-minded and esoteric, more a faith than a medical discipline” (Smith, 2009). This mystical ability to find a seemingly sound analysis for every condition was alluring to Beck. As he evolved as a practitioner however, he sought empirical evidence to support these evaluations. This search led him to the development of CBT and to push for psychotherapy techniques that could be evaluated based on their ability to make measurable, practical differences in the lives of patients. The development of CBT opened the field of psychoanalysis to empirically supported methods and a more rigorous approach to treating patients.

CBT was first described by Professor Aaron Beck in the early 1950’s (Wilding & Milne, 2008). In contrast with many of the psychological therapy models of the time, CBT was based on the belief that maladaptive thoughts and behaviours arise not from what has happened in our lives, but from how we think about what has happened to us (Taylor, 2006; Newman, 2013). A variety of approaches are considered to fall within the domain of CBT – these include Rational Emotive Behaviour Therapy (Dryden, 2009), Beck’s CBT approach, and Meichenbaum’s Cognitive Behaviour Modification (Meichenbaum, 1977) These approaches share 3

The philosophy of cognitive behavioral therapy is that “think and feeling are connected people are creative (Halbur & Halbur, 2015, p.47)”. The key aspects of theory are to challenge the irrational beliefs that we hold about ourselves. Aaron Beck the primary founder of cognitive behavior theory assumed that people can control how they feel and what they think. He believed that our inner thoughts and beliefs affected how we are affected on the outside. One of the key concepts is that the client’s dysfunctional thinking can be derived from an erroneous internal process or bias.

Aaron Beck is an American psychiatrist and a professor emeritus in the department of psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania (GoodTheraoy.org). Beck has had an interest in the changes of human nature goes as far back as he can remember. Beck is known as a trailblazer in the psychology world because he focused on disoriented thoughts that lead to problematic behaviors such as depression. “Beck struggled to find a way to help his depressed client’s better capture their emotions. He realized that many of his depressed clients experienced recurring negative thoughts and that as long as they believed these thoughts to be true, they would continue to have symptoms of depression”(GoodTherapy.org). Beck spent much of his career at the University of Pennsylvania and advocated for the application of cognitive behavioral therapy in the treatment of depression and other mood problems (GoodTherapy.org).

From this realization, he created an intervention geared towards altering individuals’ negative self-concepts and challenging their way of thinking. Beck’s cognitive behavioral therapy is based on the cognitive model theory (Heffner, n.d.). The cognitive model holds the premise that our thoughts are responsible for how we behave. So, flawed thinking is at the root of all mental disorders. Beck used cognitive model to understand that a change in the mental process can treat depression (Beck, 2005). Although Beck’s cognitive therapy intervention started off as a treatment for depression; it has been modified and adapted to fit the needs of many different mental and psychical illnesses.

Aaron Beck developed the cognitive therapy concept in the 1960s. Beck was very ill as a child and perceive his mother to be depressed and unpredictable due to losing two children in their infancy due to illness. Beck graduated from Brown University and Yale Medical School. According to Beck’s daughter Judith, cognitive therapy is based on the ideas of the stoic philosophers in Greece and Rome (Seligman et al, 2014, p. 294) Cognitive Behavioral Therapy was founded by Donald Meichenbaum, a distinguished professor emeritus at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada. While he was working on his dissertation for his doctoral degree, he noticed that people with schizophrenia who were taught healthy self-talk fared better in other measures than those with schizophrenia who were not talk about healthy self talk.

Depression is one of the common and severe major depressive disorder that affects the way of feeling, thinking and behaving. Depression can lead to a range of emotional and physical difficulties which may result in a person’s capability to function at work and home because of the feelings of sadness and loss of interest in activities once enjoyed. However, between 80 percent and 90 percent of people gain some relief from their depression symptoms after treatment. Therefore, depression is among the most treatable mental disorders. The development and maintenance of depression can be explained by the critical cognitive theories from Beck’s cognitive model of depression (1976). Furthermore, one of the most effective methods for treating depression has been created by this model. The central constructs within Beck’s model (1976) are schemas, negative, dysfunctional attitudes, cognitive distortions, the cognitive triad, and

Cognitive-behavioural therapy or CBT is representative of the integration of behavioural therapy and cognitive therapy. It encourages the empowerment of an individual to be able to change how they think (cognitive) and how awareness of particular problematic patterns may impact upon our consequent responses (behaviour) (R ch7). Pivotal to our understanding of such mental health problems from a CBT perspective is Beck’s ‘Cognitive theory of emotion’. It purposes that events and situations are not responsible for emotional responses. Instead it is the ‘meanings’ we attach which reflect the complex interaction between an individual’s history, mood and the context of experience. These